AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He could not make the faces move any more than he could flesh the gibbon. But it was the gibbon who smiled behind his fangs, lipless, his mandible curving in a grin, and the Blue-Eyed One smiled then, the bemused expression burnt in Hannibal’s mind. And then the smell of wood smoke in the lodge, the tiered smoke in the cold room, the cadaverine breath of the men crowded around him and Mischa on the hearth. They took them out to the barn then. Pieces of children’s clothing in the barn, stained and strange to him. He could not hear the men talking, could not hear what they called each other, but then the distorted voice of Bowl-Man saying, “Take her, she’s going to die anyway. He’ll stay freeeeeaaassh a little longer.” Fighting and biting and coming now the thing he could not stand to see, Mischa held up by the arms, feet clear of the bloody snow, twisting, LOOKING BACK AT HIM.
“ANNIBA!!” her voice—
Hannibal sat up in the bed. His arm in bending pushed the plunger of the hypodermic all the way down.
And then the barn swam around him.
“ANNIBA!!”
Hannibal pulling free running to the door after them, the barn door slamming on his arm, bones cracking, Blue-Eyes turning back to raise the firewood stick, swinging at his head, from the yard the sound of the axe and now the welcome dark.
Hannibal heaved on his garret bed, his vision going in and out of focus, the faces swimming on the wall.
Past it. Past the thing he could not look at, the thing he could not hear and live. Waking in the lodge with blood dried on the side of his head and pain shooting from his upper arm, chained to the upstairs banister and the rug pulled over him. Thunder—no, those were artillery bursts in the trees, the men huddled in front of the fireplace with the cook’s leather pouch, pulling off their dog tags and throwing them into the pouch along with their papers, dumping the papers from their wallets, and pulling on Red Cross armbands. And then the scream and brilliant flash of a phosphorus shell bursting against the hull of the dead tank outside and the lodge is burning, burning. The criminals rushing out into the night, to their half-track truck, and at the door the Cooker stops. Holding the satchel up beside his face to protect it from the heat, he takes a padlock key from his pocket and tosses it up to Hannibal as the next shell came and they never heard the shell scream, just the house heaving, the balcony where Hannibal lay tipping, him sliding against the banister and the staircase coming down on top of the Cooker. Hannibal hearing his hair crisp in a tongue of flame and then he is outside, the half-track roaring away through the forest, the rug around him smoldering at its edge, shellbursts shaking the ground, and splinters howling past him. Putting out the smoldering blanket with snow, and trudging, trudging, his arm hanging.
Dawn grey on the roofs of Paris. In the garret room the phonograph has slowed and stopped, and the candles gutter low. Hannibal’s eyes open. The faces on the walls are still. They are chalk sketches once again, flat sheets moving in a draft. The gibbon has resumed his usual expression. Day is coming. Everywhere the light is rising. New light is everywhere.
40
UNDER A LOW GREY SKY in Vilnius, Lithuania, a Skoda police sedan turned off the busy Sventaragio and into a narrow street near the university, honking the pedestrians out of the way making them curse into their collars. It pulled to a stop in front of a new Russian-built hive of flats, raw-looking in the block of decrepit apartment buildings. A tall man in Soviet police uniform got out of the car and, running his finger down a line of buttons, pushed a buzzer marked Dortlich.
The buzzer rang in a third-floor flat where an old man lay in bed, medicines crowded on a table beside him. Above the bed was a Swiss pendulum clock. A string hung from the clock to the pillow. This was a tough old man, but in the night, when the dread came on him, he could pull the string in the dark and hear the clock chime the hour, hear that he was not dead yet. The minute hand moved jerk by jerk. He fancied the pendulum was deciding, eeny meeny the moment of his death.
The old man mistook the buzzer for his own rasping breath. He heard his maid’s voice raised in the hall outside and then she stuck her head in the door, bristling beneath her mobcap.
“Your son, sir.”
Officer Dortlich brushed past her and came into the room.
“Hello, Father.”
“I’m not dead yet. It’s too soon to loot.” The old man found it odd how the anger only flashed in his head now and no longer reached his heart.
“I brought you some chocolates.”
“Give them to Bergid on your way out. Don’t rape her. Goodbye, Officer Dortlich.”
“It’s late to be carrying on like this. You are dying. I came to see if there is something I can do for you, other than provide this flat.”
“You could change your name. How many times did you change sides?”
“Enough to stay alive.”
Dortlich wore the forest green piping of the Soviet Border Guards. He took off a glove and went to his father’s bedside. He tried to take the old man’s hand, his finger feeling for the pulse, but his father pushed Dortlich’s scarred hand away. The sight of Dortlich’s hand brought a shine of water to his father’s eyes. With an effort the old man reached up and touched the medals swinging off Dortlich’s chest as he leaned over the bed. The decorations included Excellent MVD Policeman, the Institute for Advanced Training in Managing Prison Camps and Jails, and Excellent Soviet Pontoon Bridge Builder. The last decoration was a stretch; Dortlich had built some pontoon bridges, but for the Nazis in a labor battalion. Still, it was a handsome enameled piece and, if questioned about it, he could talk the talk. “Did they throw these to you out of a pasteboard box?”
“I did not come for your blessing, I came to see if you needed anything and to say goodbye.”
“It was bad enough to see you in Russian uniform.”
“The Twenty-seventh Rifles,” Dortlich said.
“Worse to see you in Nazi uniform; that killed your mother.”
“There were a lot of us. Not just me. I have a life. You have a bed to die in instead of a ditch. You have coal. That’s all I have to give you. The trains for Siberia are jammed. The people trample each other and shit in their hats. Enjoy your clean sheets.”
“Grutas was worse than you, and you knew it.” He had to pause to wheeze. “Why did you follow him? You looted with criminals and hooligans, you robbed houses and you stripped the dead.”
Dortlich replied as though he had not heard his father. “When I was little and I got burned you sat beside the bed and carved the top for me. You gave it to me and when I could hold the whip you showed me how to spin it. It is a beautiful top, with all the animals on it. I still have it. Thank you for the top.” He put the chocolates near the foot of the bed where the old man could not shove them off on the floor.
