All of Fleischer’s plans had come to nothing. The breeding parlours, the supply of fleyber, meant nothing now. The blind criminal and his whore who had perverted his noble schemes were to be held directly responsible for this disaster. With the military hoard already leaving the city with its tail between its legs and the Timber Guild in confusion, he chose his plan with cool, determined menace, an experience he had never savoured before. The stupid death of Urs, the duplicity of Hoffman and Maclish, the price that he felt he owed Maclish’s impressive widow, all this joined with his humiliation of losing the validation of finding the Limboia the first time, his triumph given to a common criminal. This time the victory would be his and only his. The heat of his plan twitched and burnt his mangled hand. Every time he looked at it he became ill with remorse. How could he have let Wirth and his filthy beast get away with this? Why in God’s name did he ever trust him in the first place? Every day that man existed was an affront to Fleischer’s carefully structured life. The short-term, apparent success of his control over the Limboia had only made things worse. Well, now that was over and he would take everything away from the blind leech who had been vampiring his confidence and pride.
Fleischer poured himself a drink to quieten the trembling that had so excited his body. He had started picturing the demise of his enemy and the butchering of his disgusting hyena. Then there was Amadi: Wirth’s Masai sphinx, who had the ability of looking right through him, of reading every motive that bubbled within him, the intoxication of her beauty and strength that so exhilarated him. He wanted her power and grace at his side. He had fantasised about them panting together, sweating through the long dark nights. The crescendo of his dream was always dispersed by the sound of Wirth’s crude laughter; the two of them talking about him, the blind man guffawing, his hand clamped on her body, she tittering behind her immaculate hand, the other reassuringly touching Wirth’s scarred arm. Perhaps the best thing to do was to kill her too. Best to put her down and cleanse all memory of her existence.
He sent word that he needed loyal mercenaries: top-dollar hunters to obey his commands. In two days he had gathered a pack of the worst and the best available. He met with them in a tin hut on the far side of Essenwald and explained his plan. Even this gang of war-weary veterans was surprised at the basic savagery of his need.
“Let me get this right,” said the veldt man, “you want us to wipe out a blind man, a woman, and a dog?”
“I want two shooting teams to shred them in the cross fire.”
“Shred?” asked the mercenary.
“You heard me. I want them torn to pieces and finished with bayonets.”
“But that’s a job for one man, not all of us,” he said, looking at the gathered congregation in disbelief.
“You don’t know these three. And it isn’t a dog. This is what it did to me in a few seconds.” Fleischer pulled back his sleeve and thrust what was left of his once-delicate hand into the hunter’s face.
“I have seen them do worse than that. Some say they eat human corpses to steal their voice and then circle a house at night, calling their victims out in a man’s tongue,” said a darker-skinned man from the back of the pack. He was called Fillip and had ruined his life in the Tirailleurs Sénégalais. His accent indicated education, but his caste and what he had just said was a denial, and the other men ignored him.
Fleischer was fazed for a moment and then snarled, “Do you want the job or not?”
The eight men agreed that they did and the plan was confirmed by a shaking of hands. Most ignored the unoffered hand of Fillip, but Fleischer insisted on shaking it using his mangled claw that had just been trivialised. Before they left, he drew their attention to a small crate that had been sitting ominously on a chair. He was beaming as he opened it, peeling away the oiled paper and taking out the objects as if it were Christmas morning, giving each man one of the three-foot-long bayonets. Some took them, grinning like old friends; others held them as though they were snakes.
“You might have to adapt your weapons to accommodate these,” said the gleeful Fleischer. “I will of course pay for any such modifications.”
A bald man who wore the khaki shorts and jacket of a plains hunter was examining the triangular section of the blade.
“Jesus, man, you must really hate these fuckers to use these pig stickers on ’em.”
“Yeah, and a woman too,” added the veldt man.
“You have reservations?” snapped Fleischer, his smile wiped away by a sneer. “I will be the first to use these on them, if you have doubts about this, then—”
The bald man interrupted, “No doubts, boss, we are all in.”
At dawn the nine men split up and approached the slave house from different directions. Fleischer had told them about the hidden runways that connected to the warden’s house and how they might be used as possible escape routes. He told them that Wirth, his whore, and the hyena slept together somewhere in the warden’s house and that his plan was to lure them all out onto the front porch. That was to be the killing ground. Each man had his own trusted rifle: heavy-bore hunting guns with sights and triggers shaped by use into perfections as individual as signatures. The bayonets looked out of place on some of them, but all were firmly attached. The shooting team lay in the scrub grass facing the porch, angled so that their bullets would intersect, crossing trajectories near the door.
As the sun rose the sightless boy was heard on the road tapping his way towards the house. Chalky had been begging in and around Essenwald since the age of five. He knew every inch of it and everybody knew him. He could be trusted to carry messages and deliver small goods. As he reached his tenth year, he was beginning to dream of a worthy business moving news and objects about the city and giving up begging entirely. The parcel he carried today was the fanciest thing that he had ever felt and he did not understand why it smelt so strongly of meat and some other sweet thing that he could not name. Smooth, silky paper was held in place by a bow of velvety softness. He carried it very carefully in his sling. When he reached the porch he put his stick down, took out the parcel, and carried it up the three steps. He placed it gently on wooden floor. His instructions had been very clear: Do not take the parcel to the door. Leave it by the top step, knock on the door, then walk away. When you are on the road run back to collect more money for your work. Chalky was proud at being trusted. He knocked at the door, turned, and walked softly down the stairs, almost tiptoeing so as not to spoil the magic. When he retrieved his stick he noticed that his hands were wet. The parcel must have leaked. This worried him as he paced along the path towards the road. He did not want to get this delivery wrong, to be blamed about the leakage. He was frowning as he passed through the long grass and heard or sensed something move near, something that was hiding. This was not right. Nobody ever hid from the blind. He stopped and waited, listening for potential danger, fearing that it might even be his father spying on him to discover how much money he was really making. The door to the house opened and Amadi stood there totally naked. Behind her the head of Domino could be seen. Chalky turned, smelling the hyena and knowing that he was in grave danger and that running now would be the worst thing he could do. Amadi looked at the parcel and the boy and called back into the house. The sound of sharp metal crickets clicked around Chalky as nine safety catches were unlocked. Domino saw the boy and prowled forward. Near the parcel it smelt the fresh bleeding meat inside and lost interest in the boy. It grabbed the paper in its vast jaws and shook the parcel apart, devouring the meat in one mouthful. There was enough cyanide in it to poison an army. Amadi stepped up behind Domino and affectionately ruffled the spiky white fur of her collar and neck, while she bent down and picked up the blood-soaked velveteen ribbon. Another figure appeared behind her in the shadows of the doorway. Fleischer screamed, his excitement and joy tainting the word: “Fire!”
Chalky dropped his stick and covered his ears as the
first volley sounded around him. The second roared a moment later and made sure that his hands stayed there. There were two more, then the grass erupted and he heard the sound of running feet. These were mixed with the squeals of an animal, or was it a woman, maybe a girl? There was a hammering sound as if somebody was pounding the porch with a blunt chisel. Then it quietened for a long time before men began talking.
“Where’s Wirth?”
Up on the porch eight of the men stood over the carcasses of the albino hyena and Amadi. Lying back in the doorway was another woman whom nobody recognised and never would, because her face had been ripped apart by high-velocity bullets. It had not been Wirth standing behind Amadi when Fleischer gave his command. It had been a visitor, a passing innocent.
“Where is he?” shouted the distraught Fleischer. “Search the house.”
Three of the hunters moved inside while Fleischer staggered over to the balustrade to support himself. He slipped on the blood and kicked noisily against Domino, swearing loudly. The hyena’s pink eyes had swivelled wildly, giving it a comic expression.
One of the men who was searching the house came out and blandly said, “I think he’s in the tunnels.”
“What?” bellowed Fleischer, wiping his face with the back of his sleeve, smearing blood like a trophy across his face.
“There’s a kind of banging shuffle coming from the wall…Eh! There’s no more hyenas, are there?”
“Only the one,” he said dimly, regaining himself and moving to listen to the flap at the tunnel’s entrance. After a moment he said, “It’s him, he is crawling away. Spread out and find him.”
The men stepped onto the rough wooden structures that extended from the back of the house and connected to all the other buildings. They moved in haste and did not notice that Fillip was holding back. When they had left the veranda he quickly stooped and cut out Domino’s eyes, which were in fact stones that one Nebsuel would pay well for.
They were walking all the lengths of the planked-in structure, listening below their boots for sounds in the tunnels. A tall thin man started waving and pointing beneath him.
“He’s in here, I can hear him moving.”
Two more men climbed up onto the walkway on top of the tunnel and three climbed over it to the inner side.
“Bayonets,” said Fleischer.
The cheap wooden panelling gave no resistance to the unbending steel. All nine men took long twisting stabs into the splintering timber. They quickly found their mark, forcing their victim to crawl away while screaming for mercy, only to be punctured farther down the tunnel. They tightened their attack, concentrating the impaling until the begging voice coughed into silence and the caged kicking and shuffling ceased and blood flowed freely out of the broken holes. The bayonets were sucking up squirts of it every time they cleared the splintered wood. One of the panting men standing above said, “That’s enough, man, he’s dead. Nothing could survive that.”
* * *
—
After they had gone Chalky stood up in the long grass where he had been hiding. He did not understand what had just happened but knew it was bad and that he was part of it. It was the parcel he carried that caused all this shooting and screaming, the strange-smelling gift that felt so beautiful. Whatever demon had been inside it was ferocious and without pity. He had heard about boxes like that before. Dangerous locked boxes that imprisoned genies. He turned his back on the house and tapped his way to the road. Perhaps, he thought, perhaps begging was safer. He had never met a demon on the road or in the alleyways of the city. Occasionally people put bad things in his open hand, sometimes they hit him, but nothing like this. The business of boxes was a dubious affair; he would have to think it over carefully. He was chewing his finger in concentration as he walked. Behind him he heard the high shrieks of carrion birds arriving at the house. He thought again about hyenas and boxes, about the taste of almonds and the day he and his sister had eaten them. About how her face felt when she smiled…and then he dropped his stick. His wet finger had changed. The almonds had become bitter and alive. His little heart shrivelled and his mind thickened to a standstill as the effects of cyanide took him. He fell dead and kicking in a small circle of dust on the empty mud road.
* * *
—
Fleischer’s mercenaries collected their money and made their way out of the city, except for Fillip. He sent word via a bird to Nebsuel that he had a fresh pair of eye stones taken from the hyena, and that he would sell them to the old shaman or one of his emissaries. He named the cabin where he would wait, smoke hashish, and watch the nomadic passage of tribes and the inevitable retreat of all the white Men Without Substance. He could already hear the great drumming that was building from below the Scyles and to the west of the crumbling city wall. Another caravan of painted men was passing through or announcing the arrival of their encampment. As the bass pulse deepened, lighter echoing talking drums trembled and nailed the vastness of countryside and the closeness of unknown men. Campfires appeared, snake-charming black strings of smoke rose into the breezeless air. More and more ignited on the perimeter of the city, looking like fallen scattered coals from a looming, far-off volcano. The sombre drums added to this, making everything sway to their unseen percussion that greeted the swaying night. The Men Without Substance closed the windows and shutters of their dwellings as the black people opened all of theirs. The scent from the campfires perfumed everything as every grain of sand wanted to melt in the intoxication of the drums, melt and become glass so that it could at least reflect the stars in an attempt of gratitude. Three men died that night and no attempt was made to justify or apprehend the culprits. Such acts seemed to blend into the disjuncture of the city. The ligaments of control and alignment were slipping apart or fracturing under the pressure of the Vorrh. Even the stiff verticals of the German building was breaking down or softening with tendril vines and substantial growths of lichen.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
Cyrena had disappeared, vanished from the face of the earth. Ghertrude could not believe it. The world without Cyrena’s presence was unthinkable. Things between them had been difficult and strained. A distance had grown, but only a momentary one, only a gap in which her love for Thaddeus might be understood. It was never meant to be like this. She had last been seen near Pretoria in the cape. A friend of her uncle’s had spoken to her about the poet’s death. She had seemed greatly disturbed, he said. Then nothing. No trace. All her belongings and personal things were left scattered in her lodgings. Cyrena did not behave like that, something terrible must have happened. Weeks went by without any word and Ghertrude became more distraught with their passing. Thaddeus comforted her the best he could without disclosing the ugliness of his hypocrisy, because in his good heart lurked a glee about Cyrena’s exodus. From the moment he heard, a flutter of joy erupted. Of course, he quickly suppressed it and kept it securely caged over the progressing weeks, but it was there grinning inside him daily. He knew what Cyrena felt about him and never shared Ghertrude’s confidence that her dear friend would “come around” to understanding and see the love that bound them together. She had become his enemy and there was no way of resolving it without Ghertrude’s being hurt in the process. So when the news came, he could not believe his luck. She had been swallowed up hundreds of miles away. Hope of her survival was fading fast. She had not slid away on some caprice or spent her wealth on a travelling indulgence without telling her friends. She was simply gone. Devoured. Ghertrude had visited Talbot to ask for help and returned in angry tears. The loyal and doting friend had changed. At best he seemed indifferent and irritated by her questions. At worst, rude and dismissive. He said he had not heard a single word from her since he had gone to the trouble of arranging her expensive flight, and that after her disappearance he had of course made enquiries and found nothing “of consequence.” When pushed, he reluctantly told of some accounts of her travelling with a native black
man. Talbot’s face was sour and rigid as he gave Ghertrude the details. No trace of this man could be found. The name on the ticket was fictional and his whereabouts unknown. Wherever they had vanished to, it was obvious that they had vanished together. Talbot could do no more. Cyrena had made her own decisions and it was not his business to pry. He suspected that she had fled the continent, but where was anybody’s guess.
As he showed Ghertrude to the door of his elegant, stark office he had added spitefully, “Anyone who has ‘gone native’ cannot expect to find sympathy in their homeland or from those who consider themselves her friends.”
* * *
—
Meta was reading a book about ferns when she heard something being dropped through the letter box of 4 Kühler Brunnen. She carefully put the book down and retrieved a small box with her name written on it. Inside was a little stone and a folded note that read:
What has been taken from you can again be found in the camera. There is a wooden tongue hidden in its base. Put this stone under it.
Meta climbed the stairs towards the tower and the camera obscura, the stone in one hand and the paper in the other, her heart confused. A strong wind was buffeting the open window in the high room; leaves were being tossed and fluttered in the wide distance outside and a few fell to rest near the humming strings. Meta carefully placed the stone on the white paper of the letter, which she had smoothed flat and floated like a pure island in the shadows of the tall space. She sat and watched its inert concentration, some part of her hoping that it might give a sign or become activated without her essence being its catalyst.
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