Child of the Light (21 page)

Furiously, frustrated beyond words, Erich punched down, hitting his friend with such force that Sol was slammed against the tree.

Grace's head, abruptly released from the protection of Sol's lap, bounced lightly and lay still. Sol rolled over, groaning as he clutched his temple and his glasses.

"Goddamn four eyes!" Erich hopped around, his knuckles pressed against his lips.

"Feeling better now?" Sol muttered, taking off his spectacles and squinting at them in the weak light. They were bent but intact. He straightened the wire rims a little and put them on again.

Erich blew on his knuckles and fought the pain. If only Sol would lose his temper! That damn self-control of his was the most annoying thing of all. "You think you're a man because you've had a bar mitzvah! Hell, you haven't even undressed a girl, let alone--"

"Neither have you."

"Well, I could have. Ursula Müller wanted me to."

"She'd let anyone."

"Not a Jew, she wouldn't!"

Sol rose, apparently ready to resume the fight regardless of the inevitable outcome.

Though he was angry with himself for his outburst, Erich flexed his muscles. Then something wet and warm soaked his ankle. He looked down, horrified, to see Grace spasm. Her eyes were wide with terror. Blood gushed from her mouth and over his shoes.

"We've got to try to help her!" Erich collapsed over the dog, his arms around her neck. "Sol, please!"

"Take back what you said."

"Go to hell."

"I'll go, all right--back home." Sol stepped away and parted the branches.

"You know I didn't mean it," Erich said quickly.

Sol hesitated and Erich knew his friend would stay. Funny how you could love someone, need him, and be infuriated by him at the same time.

"Try pouring water down her throat," Solomon said. "It might help break the fever."

The thought was logical enough but Erich did not want logic; he wanted a miracle. Again and again he begged her to live. He cuddled and covered her; he poured water across his hands and patted her nose. When she did not respond, he reached inside the blanket and drew out the other two puppies.

"If she notices them she'll want to live," he said.

Standing in the moonlight, he toweled the tiny heads. Then his hands opened and he let the puppies fall, one at a time, onto the blanket.

"They're dead, Solomon!"

Sol touched the pups and nodded, saying nothing. A strangling sound from Grace pulled Erich to his knees beside her.

"They're just pups, don't you see?" He lifted a dead whelp by the scruff of its neck. "You can have more! Look, there's another one here." He ransacked the folds of the blanket and drew out the live pup. "We're here, girl. Me and the pup."

Sobbing, he rubbed Grace's nose with her pup. Sol placed a consoling hand on his friend's shoulder.

Erich shook it off. "Don't touch me! Don't touch the dog, either, or--"

He spotted the gun, still lying where he had thrown it. Without thinking about what he was doing, or why he was doing it, he grabbed hold of the pistol and pointed it at Sol.

His friend backed away, arms up, face constricted with fear.

What am I doing?
Erich stared in disbelief at the pistol, wondering how the thing could possibly have gotten into his hands. There was a dull pressure at the base of his skull, then an electric charge that made him arch his back involuntarily.

He rose up onto his toes as the thin, hot sensation ran the length of his spine, split in two, surged to his heels--and raced up again. He jerked involuntarily, groping for something to hold on to, but the force was too great and darkness spilled over him like paint.

He staggered forward, stumbled, tried to keep himself from falling into the blackness that was pulling him down into some bottomless abyss.

The choice was not his to make.

He felt the gun drop from his hand; felt the darkness envelop him; felt, rather than heard, himself scream.

Erich's scream hit Sol in the solar plexus with the force of a fist. He scrambled to his feet. All he could think of was that the pistol must have gone off accidentally. But then why hadn't he heard a shot?

He grabbed the flashlight from its perch in the willow and shone it directly at Erich. His friend had fallen onto the blanket; his fingers clutched at the air and his head lurched from side to side.

Trying not to panic, Sol recalled the only other time he had seen Erich having a full-blown seizure--after the accident in the sewer. His usual lightning seizures were over before anyone could fully react. A trembling or a simple spasm. A split-second rigidity. A gasp, during which, Erich said, he felt as if he were falling off a cliff--into darkness.

But this....

Sol sighed with relief as Erich stopped convulsing and opened his eyes. Turning awkwardly onto his side, Erich wrapped his arms around Grace's neck and pulled her head into his lap. "I...I loved you s-so much," he stammered, his voice broken, high-pitched. "We were a
t-team."
He kissed her muzzle, neck, ear.

Grace gave a guttural sound, like a deep-throated purring. Erich released her head. She slipped onto the ground like a heavy sack and lay staring at him, her legs moving against the dirt as if she knew her destiny and wanted to crawl away from it.

Erich stared blankly up into the branches. Without moving his body, he patted the blanket. "Men don't l-let their friends s-suffer." He stopped. His hand ceased moving. Balling the fingers of both hands into fists, he turned onto his side and began to sob. He stroked the dog as he wept.

Suddenly he swayed to his feet.

The action drew Sol out of the strange inertia he had been feeling and he darted forward, hoping to grab Erich and keep him from falling again. Erich easily shoved him away. Then he pushed between the branches and disappeared among the moonlit grasses and alders.

Now what? Sol thought, his heart thudding. There was no telling what Erich might do next. So what alternatives did that leave him? He could find his way home, but if something happened to Erich, he would never forgive himself. Besides, leaving meant taking the boat, which would infuriate Erich and possibly antagonize him permanently. He could not risk finding a camp leader, but many doctors lived in the Grünewald.

Wondering briefly why Erich's scream had not brought someone crashing through the trees from the campsite, he turned his attention to Grace. Even given Erich's emotional state, he was right about one thing: the dog needed to be released from her misery. At least he had not tried to shoot the dog. Gunfire would surely have brought trouble.

Sol checked the surviving pup. Asleep. Every now and again it quivered violently, as if the memory of its birth-throes intruded on its dreams. How sweet and small and defenseless it looked. He stroked it gently with the side of his finger.

Feeling powerless to change whatever course of events Erich was putting into motion, he looked around for something useful to do. He would bury the two dead puppies, he decided. He moved outside the umbrella of the willow and, using his hands and the heel of his shoe, fashioned a shallow grave beside a patch of wild strawberries. He placed the puppies inside, covered them with soil, and matted it down. Feeling the need of ceremony, he bent and smelled a flower whose center was white as snow and whose edges were tinged with red. He plucked it, and a second one, and laid them both on top of the grave. Bowing his head, he began a few words of prayer.

"What do you think you're doing!" Naked to the waist, Erich sprang toward Sol through the grass, his javelin raised overhead.

Terrified, Sol backed away and dashed wildly past the willow. Behind him, an animal's scream shattered the night. He stopped running and listened, but already the screaming had ended. All he could hear was his own pulse thundering in his ears.

He trudged back to the willow and carefully, quietly, parted the branches.

The scene made him gag.

Erich had rammed the javelin through Grace's left eye. Blood and something black oozed from the socket as the dog twisted and jerked against the shaft, which Erich held firmly, leaning his weight against it. "I love you," he said. "I love you."

Except for the small sound of her haunches thudding against the earth as she struggled to free herself, Grace made no noise. Her mouth opened and closed.

She slumped, shuddered, and lay still. As blood drained from her mouth, Sol thought of the Kabbalistic belief that animals, too, had souls.

In the silence, a cricket chirped.

Erich tugged the javelin from the wound. It made a sucking sound. He dropped it, clutched his head, and fell to his knees, eyes open wide.

This was no lightning seizure, Sol thought, panicking. Either his friend was having a grand mal seizure or this was his grotesque idea of a joke.

"Erich?"

His friend did not respond. Instead he began to shake as if with uncontrolled fury. His lips were pulled back, his teeth exposed. With each exhalation, his nostrils opened and closed like overworked valves. Then he toppled forward and lay jerking.

Have to do
something!
 
Block the mouth open if Erich ever has a bad attack, Papa had said. Otherwise he might bite his tongue in two. But block it with what?

He reached for the javelin, but the bloody tip made him retch. Seeing a stick close to the willow trunk, he leaned forward to pick it up.

The stick proved to be a root, stuck firmly in the ground.

He pulled at a willow branch. It bent resiliently. Frustrated, he returned to yanking at the root; it ran from the ground like a cable being unearthed. In desperation he lowered his head and gnawed at the wood. Something syrupy sweet oozed into his mouth, but he could not rip through the sinewy pulp.

Angrily thrusting aside the root, he reached for the javelin--and spotted the pistol. Though he had never touched a revolver before, he unloaded it easily and rolled Erich over. His friend was bathed in sweat, twitching. Saliva drooled from his mouth.

The barrel proved to be too short to fit neatly between Erich's lips, so Sol crammed the chamber in. He took a deep breath to calm himself, then with the edge of the blanket toweled Erich's face.

Suddenly Erich gripped Sol's shirt as if for support and arched his torso into a taut bow. His eyes rolled up until only the whites showed. Releasing Sol, he stretched out his arms and emitted a choking snarl. The gun fell from his lips. He reached upward with rigid fingers, muttered a stream of unintelligible syllables, and sagged in Solomon's arms.

Slowly he opened his eyes. "There was a jungle." His voice rasped and he licked his lips as though his mouth were parched. "A clearing in a jungle. And overhead, a moon. It was...melting."
 
His tone was in some way accusative but he did not resist when Sol eased him onto the ground and covered him with the stained blanket. "You were there, Solomon. I saw you."
 
Erich's face was pale and he seemed sleepy and disoriented. "I saw you." He was shivering.

Sol sat back, feeling flushed and wondering if it were his turn to faint. His head exploded with light and it ached so badly he could hardly see through the blue glow----

----an arm dangles from the battlement of bodies, its wrist blue and icy, its black hair frozen and stiff.
Thousands of bodies--thousands of dead soldiers--are the bricks and mortar in a breastworks five bodies thick.

The woman, Peat, crouches beside the breastworks, her carbine poked through an aiming hole at white-clad infantry ascending the hill. Some of them are crossing the slope laterally at a crouch, some are crawling, others stoop to fire at her position.

She pops off several rounds. Down the hill, a soldier clutches his head and topples. She sits on her haunches and watches the old man labor to drag yet another body toward her.

"I could use a bowl of semolina soup." He lets the body drop.

"Phfui! Food for pigs!" She positions the body, readying it to be hoisted to a worker on the higher tier. "No matter how much you sift semolina, it's like eating sand."

Above them, the worker grabs hold of the corpse and flops it down like a sandbag.

"Three days now the clouds have held," the old man says. "One more hour and we will have survived another day. Maybe your God does hold you Jews in special favor."

"You think Jehovah is maintaining our cloud cover?" Laughing, the woman rams a cleaning patch down the barrel of her carbine and reloads the magazine. "Perhaps we could get Him to send in a few yaks or Siberian ponies!" She stares down the hill. "Here come more people they don't care about. Look at them. Penal troops this time, I think. Surely no one believes they're real soldiers!"

The old man peers through the aiming hole.

"Dissidents," he says. "Children of White Russians and probably a lot of Jews like you, who never knew what it was to be Jewish until...Senseless! Germans shooting Russians, Russians shooting Russians, Jews shooting Jews, and in the end it's the winter that will kill us all." He looks along the line of people working behind the barricade. "What are you doing here, Peat, shooting at your own kind!"