Back | Next
Contents

Home is Where the Heart Is

William Barton

William Barton writes things about human beings so unbearably true that they're difficult to publish; if you want to know what I mean, read When We Were Real . . . or this story about a German scientist making the best of it in a world he never made . . .

The dream becomes the dreamer, as with mandarin and butterfly. Silly. Strange. Like the dreams you have when you're in the hospital and they've pumped your ass full of drunks . . . drunks. Ah, can't think. What the Hell . . . oh, drugs. That's what I meant. When they fill your ass with drugs.

Two men talking, speaking some funny kind of English, nothing like the clipped Brits and twangy Yanks I'd known between the wars, the years between the wars, in Paris, when . . . Oh, Hell.

Men with funny, muddy voices, language less like German than any English I'd ever heard before, men talking as if I were. No. Flinch away from that. Now.

"Whyn't we jes kill this pony, suh? We'un got owah own engineeahs."

The other, von Something? Von Frankenstein? Fading in and out now, sharper voice, a little less mud in it, "Not like these we don't. And most got away 'fore we could get 'em."

One of them touched me, lightly, on the shoulder, smearing old, cold sweat, grease of fear sending a thrill from there to . . . Grüss Gott, making me shiver, stopping the breath in my throat. Von Somethingburg said, "There, there, Hans. All over now. You've told us what was needful . . ."

Hans? Not my name. Is it? Hans . . . Hansel and Brutal . . . I started to giggle, feeling those warm fingers press into my shoulder, oh-so-reassuring, then I started to cry and . . .

Morning. Rosy-fingered dawn lights the window.

Some afterecho of a second dream, dream forgotten, surrounded by dreams of torture and redemption. Me, in a coffle, coffle led by dark, black men, men with guns, staggering on bare, bleeding feet down a bombed-out bleeding street. Boom! Flash of light, looking up just in time to see a rolling ball of fire, smoke, orange and black all mixed together, rising from the roof of the Reichstag, black swastika spinning like a galaxy as it tumbled to the street below.

Pictured those famous faces, der Führer, der Dicke, stumbling in a coffle like mine, then moved on quickly, responding to a gentle tug on the neck chain, not wanting the black man's whip.

Bed. My bed. My home. The home they've given me. Safe. My God. Safe. Rich, crumpled cotton sheets under my back, sheets better than anything I'd ever had in Germany, clammy with night sweat now. Night sweat and dreams. Plaster ceiling, lit by red dawn, stripes of light and dark picking out irregularities, color and shadow.

I got up, sat for a minute on the edge of the bed, wishing. No. Not wishing for anything. Just looking down at my smallish gut, middle age settling in, round dome of hairy belly, black hair over fishbelly white. Well. Slippers and thin cotton robe, white with a pale print, ibises and river reeds, boy-slim Pharaoh knee-deep in Nile, bow well-drawn. Got up and walked to the kitchen, water from the tap, tepid but fresh, safe, just like this was Europe or America.

Safe.

Reached up to the little shelf over the sink and turned on the radio, little green Zenith, not new, not old, AM still staticky with night as I twisted the big plastic dial. Outside, the sky was turning blue over scrubby subtropical bushes, my neighbor's lawns, distant city buildings low on the horizon.

Announcer's voice with the Brit-like accent you still hear from people down around the Cape. Something about ongoing border negotiations with the Allies. India. Christ. What do they think is going to happen?

Well. Prepared the pot. Beans ground, water from the tap because that's what I had, put it on the gas ring, thud of ignition and hiss of gassy flame.

There was another sound in my head. Same thud of ignition, swirl of orangy fire and greasy smoke on the ground, then the pumps would run up, and there would be that wondrous waterfall roar. Aggregat Vier. Beautiful spear of yellow-white fire in the sky, rising, tipping over toward the west.

Fat man in the news. He never did get to piss in the Rhine.

A moment suppressing hysterical laughter, keeping silent.

Outside, the air was still cool, but with a sharpness promising the hot day to come, when the sun would burnish the sky, burning the wilderness lands around the base their tawny lion-colored shade of gold.

Bottle of milk in the cooler, newspaper at the end of the driveway, near the rear bumper of the old prewar Ford steamer they'd given me.

"Good morning, Mr. de Groot!"

The soft, musical voice of my next door neighbor, probably put me here so he could keep an eye on me for the bosses, dark man with sharp, alert features, deep black eyes, shiny, oily-looking black hair falling over a broad deeply-tanned brow.

"Ah, good morning Dr. Groening . . ."

Why the Hell would an Anglo-Indian chemist, product of the finest British schools want to be here, and work for these . . . these . . . Shut up. Those white buildings poking over the horizon. Archona. Remember just where the Hell you are, Helmut . . . no. It's Hans. Hans de Groot. Don't forget.

He walked up, grinning, and said, "Well . . ." Having as much trouble with W's as me, though English was certainly his native tongue, that special accent making it come out a bit like vwell, "today's the big day, eh? I'm sure you're looking forward to getting busy?"

A slow nod. "I . . . I am. Yes, I am, Dr. Groening."

He said, "Please, you must call me Apu . . ."

"Apu . . ." I remembered seeing his work under a very different name, before the war, gracing the pages of every chemical journal you could name. The Draka were our allies. Why shouldn't he have gone to work for them?

A soft hand on my forearm. "And you must remember, they say `Grooning' here, not `Grehnink.' "

"Sorry."

"Well, we all know who we are, Hans."

 

* * *

Closer to the equator, the midday sun is always high in the sky. Always summer here. Mad dogs and Englishmen. Well. I'm sure as Hell not an Englishman. I guess mad dog will have to do.

The sky seemed too dark a blue for all this heat. Too dark and too low. I remember back in the early Thirties, honeymooning with my young wife in the American southwest, seeing the haze of the Grand Canyon, making it looking like some cartoon canvas, more a work of art than a work of nature, under an impossibly high sky, pale blue so terribly far away, hinting at the depths of the planeteraumen beyond . . .

Planetary space. And that young wife . . . No will to wonder where she . . . Here, the sky seemed flat, as if there were no beyond. Flat blue sky over a sea of pale brown grass, amber waves rolling in the hot, dry wind. Far way, closer than the horizon, were the tiny figures of elephants walking.

Nearby, muscular black men, men burnt the color of coal by the sun, shining like anthracite, sweating in the heat, sang as they worked, snatches of Swahili and English, tribal chanteys and popular prewar radio tunes mingled as they took the crates from the backs of flatbed drags, breaking the straps and pulling them down, piling them in orderly arrays.

"No, dis vun over hier, Sambo . . ." says Hartmann, who can't remember his new name, and can't get the story straight. Verdammt idiot. No tigers in Africa, Hartmann. The story of little black Sambo comes from Dravidian India.

I remember how Apu laughed when I said that. Little black Hindoos . . . Funny. I expected our workers would be Frenchmen or something, excess labor being run into the ground, but . . . Right. Mad dogs and Englishmen.

The medium-brown overseer, toasty skin dressed up in white linen, had shrugged, running the whip between his fingers, assessing his line of workmen. These boys, sah, will get the job done. They's good men, these boys.

They worked like machines, glittering in the sun, sweat beading on black skin as lovely as a healthy horse's hide, singing, taking turns with the water barrel, bringing the crates on down.

"This one first," I said.

A black man came with a crowbar and opened the lid, nails squeaking as they pulled from wood. Shine of sunlight on silvery chrome, gray steel, golden brown copper. Not a bit of corrosion. Not a bit.

I reached out and touched the A-4 motor, running my fingers over the peroxide turbine's casing, feeling the edges of the stamped-in serial number . . .

Magic.

Magic that will take us to the stars.

I remembered a big, dark cavern. Bridge cranes rumbling overhead, conscript labor down in the squalor and darkness. Nordhausen. I remember how they starved and died. But they worked, and built these wonders for us, working by the numbers, dying in turn, so the missiles could spear up from Holland and Normandy, crawling away into the sky, on their way to holdout England.

Vergeltungswaffen too late. Jets too late. Maybe if we'd had the industrial organization of the Americans, the utter, all-consuming confidence of the Draka . . .

Common sense Draka knew how not to waste serf labor, unlike our fat engineers and kränkliche politicians.

These blacks now, working, singing in the sun.

I remembered being at some country estate, in the hill country north of the Zambezi, the day they took off my collar, the day . . . Handsome man with tawny brown hair, sun-streaked hair, casting the collar aside.

"You're a lucky man, Hans. Most landed immigrants had to have come over before the war started, or come over to our side before we got into Europe proper. Some of your old friends did, and they've asked for you as a coworker."

Humble. Oh, so humble, "Thank you, sir . . ."

"Don't thank me, Hans. If we'd had the reach to take America, there'd be no need for your kind. No need at all."

In the background, carefully sprawled on a brocaded divan, there was a naked woman, long, shiny black hair and pale white skin, maybe French or Italian, pretty like a movie star, half-reclining with her legs just slightly apart, staying the way he'd left her when they brought me in the room.

He saw where I was looking and smirked. "Get out Hans. There's a car waiting that will take you to Archona."

* * *

Hand on my shoulder in the here and now, under a sun so bright its rays seemed to punch through white clothing, through my tropical helmet, ultraviolet light cooking the substance of my brain. Musical voice, "Beautiful work you did. Incredible precision."

I nodded. Nothing to say. Still looking at the workers, so tireless.

Apu said, "Like's Rossum's machines, eh, Hans?"

I wonder where Karel Capek is now. Escaped to America? Slaving on a plantation somewhere? Or just dead?

Apu said, "They hardly look human."

These workers. Here and now. I said, "You surprise me, Apu. I mean, black . . ." I guess I nodded at him, all the dark tropical tan of him, before glancing back at the workers.

His lip seemed to curl for a moment, then he laughed, that same genuine-sounding chuckle that never changed. "These hubshi, Hans? Vwell." Another little titter. "My people were the ones who first called themselves Aryans, Hans, not your pathetic Hyperborean lot!"

He must have seen the surprise on my face.

"Look at him, Hans," pointing at a young Draka officer standing with the mulatto overseer, overseer who might be his half-brother for all he or we knew, going over some paperwork. "Look at him. See? Sahib Log must earn the right to their name."

Sahib Log's Hindi. I know that much from Kipling. It means Master Race.

And the British adopted Nigger for the Hindoo, who might well have been lighter than your average Sicilian, long before it was given over to the Guinea Men, whose own name, English pronunciation Portuguese spelling for native Ghana, became a pejorative for Italian . . .

* * *

Home again, with another day's sunburn crackling on my skin. Outside, I could hear dogs barking, children playing, no more than a distant chatter and clang, African sun staining the sky a vermilion-shaded red, sun already set, light fading fast. Soon it'll be quiet, children gone to bed, adults indoors, only the Night Watch abroad.

Dinner was a lead-acid battery sitting in the pit of my stomach, greasy fried Hamburger-sausage and stale bread with sauce mayonnaise and a clumsy slice of already-sprouted Bermuda onion . . . Gott verdamm I've got to learn how to cook. Figure out where to get some German-style food . . . nothing but curry around here it seems . . . What if I'd run the other way? Would I be sitting in some concrete bungalo in Arizona, sick from a meal of greasy fried tacos and . . .

I looked at the bottle of kirschwasser in my hand, lacking even the will to pour it in a glass. Another little swig? No. I put it on the floor, unfolded the paper across my lap, and started picking through the English. Newspapers are always the easiest read in a foreign language, vocabulary-limited, English so close to German, with so many loan words from a French I'd studied in gymnasium.

African news, lots of sports, non-classified military-interest pieces, foreign affairs . . .

There was a big picture on one of the tech-piece pages, Willy Ley, looking every inch the little fat Jew, head of the America's new ballistic missile agency, greeting an exhausted-looking but still richtig Wernher von Braun, formerly with the Wehrmacht, broken arm supported at shoulder height . . .

I remembered Ley all right, from the Verien für Raumschiffahrt days. Remember how hard it was to convince the registry court that raumschiffahrt was a real word? We got a good laugh over that one, eh, Willy? Space-ship-flight. Yes, sir. Not just raumfahrt. That could be astral projection as well. Yes, sir. As in Anthroposophy. The Götheanum and . . .

I remembered Ley from those days, but not von Braun, who'd been some teenager hanging about, older than Krafft Ericke but . . . but he remembered me, when the time came for us all to go to Peenemunde. Those who hadn't already gone to America.

Behind them both in the grainy photo, I could see that so-called Hungarian, Edvard Teller. Rumor says he's talking about something called "the Super". I remember Apu seeming pale and quiet when we talked about it.

"That would be bad," said his musical voice. "That would be . . . the end it."

Our boss, affectless, said, "Unless we'uns get it first."

We'd had a guest that day, a skinny, bruised, haunted-looking Russian introduced around the office by a translator because his English was so poor. When we talked about the Super, this Sakharov's eyes seemed to deepen with fear, but he kept his mouth shut.

I wonder.

What if Hitler hadn't hated the Jews? What if they'd given us the bomb first?

Imagine that. Britain. Russia. America. Ours. Maybe even these Draka. Where would I be sitting now?

Imagining myself in a garden on the Moon.

After a while, I went to bed, lay in the darkness, listening to soft breezes and phantom night-noises, feeling my skin crawl and itch, feeling every wrinkle in my sheets as a little princess-pea driving me crazy . . .

Something. Something I need. Can't remember though.

Everything from the past, memory, desire. Gone.

I got up after a while, went and peed in the bathroom, a faint splatter down the hole, far enough away I knew I wasn't missing and pissing on the floor.

Put on my robe and zoris, went out into the back yard and stood looking up at the stars.

Alpha Centauri was just about the brightest thing in the southern sky from here, Moon a slim crescent waxing in the southeast. I looked toward the ecliptic. Bright Jupiter over there. Which means Mars . . . yes. Red dot, right where it ought to be.

Raumschiffahrt.

What would we have done, had we been allowed to do it?

Newspaper story talked about the German-language edition of Von Braun's pamphlet Das Marsprojekt, now being reprinted in English.

I imagined the three-stage rocket, the Wohnrahd, the moonship, the Mars fleet. Alpha Centauri like a diamond in the sky, beckoning.

But then I remembered Kristallnacht. Broken-glass-night. And the Jews went away, then Germany went away, and here I am in Africa.

There was a smell of cooking from next door, the smell of curry, dark figures on Apu's patio, his wife and kids, being served whatever it is Anglo-Indians eat. Chutney on milquetoast? Boiled cabbage and mung beans? They were being served by a big fat black woman who lived in their house six days a week.

Dark shape coming my way, coming over to the low trellis fence where morning glories twined, waiting to bloom.

Soft, musical words: "Can't sleep, Hans?"

"No, Apu."

"A glass of warm milk and sugar, perhaps . . ."

Well. How Brit of you, Apu. "Time. That's all it'll take."

"I see."

Silence. I kept looking up at the stars and, finally, whispered, "Ah, God. What foolish dreams we all have dreamed!"

More silence, then Apu said, "You are too much alone my friend. At least . . . get yourself a manservant. Someone to cook, and press your clothes for you."

I shrugged.

In a little while, Apu went inside to bed. After not much longer, so did I. Morning came, and I went to work as usual, glad for the deeds that were there to do. The new motor was coming along fine, black serf machinest craftsmen every bit as meticulous as any German I could think of. And these new Russian boys . . .

Their patience was . . . a surprise.

I started looking forward to the day we could test fire the engine, and thinking about the . . . vehicle.

That's it then.

What dreams we all have dreamed.

* * *

At some times, in some places, when the season is right, the flat blue sky seems tarnished and tawny, golden dust mixed in with the blue, not a cloud in sight, depthless yellow-blue suspended above the world. This is the sky that says Africa to me, the Africa of the explorers' books.

I wonder where Lowell Thomas is, right now? Somewhere safe in America, telling his tales of Count Luckner the Sea-Devil, no doubt.

Over jungle Africa, maybe this sky would look green, but here . . . not desert Africa but . . . dry. The Veldt. The Drakensberg. Und so weiter. Hard to remember the opal sea is less than a day's drive off, waves crashing on the shore, fishermen standing with their rods, children swimming, surfers on their boards . . .

Kommensie, Hans. Let's see you shoot the curl.

Funny when some of the Dutch-descended Draka try to talk schoolboy German with me, those rough accents of theirs . . . same accent I faced one day near Osedom, faced over a deadly, short-barreled gun: Raus! Mit der hände hoch! 

And up went my cowardly hands: Kamerad! Kamerad! Balls shriveling away to nothing at all. And Göring's got two, but very small . . .

Funny. I thought they'd still be speaking Afrikaans in the cities of the South. A language I'd learn quickly, be more comfortable with. Lots of Dutch words in the English, fon for von, but the rest of it's gone.

One long, hard memory of being led away, shackled and bleeding with just a few other men, chosen men, stumbling through a haze of fear, confusion, Drak officer's machine pistol cracking, sharp and distinct, as he shot my friends, those lesser men, unnecessary men, right through the head, one by one by one . . .

"Okay, Hansel. Lemme know when y'all see what you want."

Billy Creech's hand on my shoulder, gesturing at the bustle of the common serf market all around. Maybe he was twenty-three years old, looking for all the world like some Antebellum American plantation overseer, with his tan hair, toothy grin . . . redneck is the word I'm thinking, learned from some novel I'd read between the wars, those Paris years . . .

The boss's words, once he finished snickering over what I proposed to do: "Go along with him, Billy. See this baby isn't robbed blind by those crooks."

Sometimes, you forget what the Domination is, forget where it's been, how all these people got to the here and now. Brilliant white cities, Archona, Virconium, faux-Classical architecture, gardens and boulevards and this was the noblest Roman of them all, like some Made-in-Hollywood fantasy world, as absurd in its way as Von Harbou's Germaniform Atlantida.

And Fritz Lang, they say, is Hollywood's rising star.

On a platform before me were a dozen tall, sleek black men, skin tone as of unfired sculptor's clay, more gray than brown, almost hairless, arms and legs thin but muscular, long, long penises dangling like dead mambas . . .

The man beside them, white djellaba-clad, with black beard a-bristle, black eyes already calculating a bargain. Arab, I thought. Zanzibar. Henry Stanley's famous newspaper accounts of Drakische Afrika. You forget who was here before, and what was going on, layered under the Draka, in and around their dream, those older dreams, straggling on into an unknown tomorrow.

Billy said, "Them boys're good workers, I hear, farmed up around the Suud these days. Course, they won't be cookin' anything you'd be willing t'eat."

I looked around, bewildered by sights, sounds, smells, dust and wind and tawny blue sky. Not what I was expecting. Not at all. This . . . scene. I . . . "Where are all the Europeans? I mean . . ."

Images of frightened, cowering Germans and French and Italians and Poles. Where are all the hundreds of millions now surrendered to the Domination? Where are my friends?

Billy said, "Well most of 'em's still wild. It'll be a few years 'fore you see too many hereabouts. Got to tame 'em first, see, but . . ." He took a long look around. "There." Pointing.

In the middle distance, all by himself on a platform, was a slim, handsome, dark-haired white man dressed up in diaphanous veil and thin silk kimono. Thin enough you could make out his body, slim and boyish. He was shading his face from the sun with a garish Chinese parasol, face made up with lipstick and rouge, steeply arched eyebrows neatly penciled in . . .

Billy snickered. "There's rich ole Draka will pay powerful good money for a pretty French queer. Exotic. Too exotic fo' the likes of us."

Exotic. And tame.

Billy said, "Must be something wrong with that 'un to be in a cheap market like this. Anyway, that's the sort of merchandise you always see first."

So. Milling crowds, eying the tame merchandise.

Arabs and Crackers, Bedwine Hindee and nasty little blond Dutchboys with their gaggles of property up for sale. Farm workers and household servants and whatever the Hell . . .

Voice, thick Draka Southron accent cut by something else, something undefined, spoken softly: "Girl, I done tol' you before, keep your legs apart 'f'n you don' want the switch later on! I want 'em to see yo' pretty little hole . . ."

Beyond the tall Nilotics, a little man with yellow skin and tight black peppercorn hair, dressed in bib overalls, nothing but rope sandals on his feet.

Billy said, "Hmh. Sometimes these here Reservation Hottentott get above themselves." Disdain. "Nothin' anybody'll ever do about it though. Museum piece, they say. `Heritage of Africa.' Shee-it!" Underlined with a gob of spit in the dust.

I felt my mouth suddenly go dry.

The little yellow man saw me looking, and . . ."Ah, step right up, you fine Archona Gentlemen! Step right up and feast yo' eyes on a prime piece o' real estate!"

Billy said, "Cripes. Like one o' mah grandaddy's plantation-bred preacher-boys . . ."

The girl stood still, slim and long-waisted, tall, brown of skin, black of hair and eye, standing hipshot, with one knee drawn out to the side, foot arched up en pointe as instructed, so we could see . . .

A little rise of bone there, right there where it counts, rising beneath the taut skin of her abdomen . . . Dry medical voice in my head, hypogastric region . . . There was a slight matching protrusion around her mouth, lips parted slightly, pushed open by a faint glint of white teeth, black eyes looking right at me, into my eyes and . . .

Strangling, I took a breath, looking away and . . .

Billy snorted, a single-syllable laugh, and said, "Well, I reckon she can cook and press yo' suits, Hansel ole boy. And I reckon yo' account can bear the expense . . ."

"I . . . I . . ."

"Just give the man yo' account number, Hans. Have him package her up fo' delivery and we'll get on back to work."

When I looked at the girl again, there was nothing at all in her face, black eyes impenetrable bits of night sky set deep in her face. I turned to the little yellow man and said, "Wha . . . what's her name?"

The man shrugged, hardly glancing at her. "Don't know."

Don't know? 

Billy said, "What difference does it make? You'll think of something, Hans. Let's go. You've got a guidance design review meeting in two hours, then this afternoon we've got the all-up shot."

Go.

* * *

That afternoon, the harsh sunlight over the veldt had a milky translucent quality that made the cloudless sky look almost white. We were under awnings, in the shade, but you could still feel its sting, stealthy on your skin.

In the distance, a mile or so away, the Test Article stood smoking on its pad, gentle curls of water vapor falling groundward, a fading wisp of cloud like a ghost-snake by the LOX overpressure vent.

Loudspeaker said, "Four minutes."

The Test Article looked like two long, thin A-4's stuck side-by side, each eighty feet tall, booster, my baby, a featureless silo beside the missile itself, with its broad white delta wings, cannards and twin vertical stabilizers. Ten thousand imperial gallons of alcohol and liquid oxygen aboard the booster, another ten thousand gallons of carefully refined and filtered kerosene aboard the missile.

From this angle, you couldn't really see the big pods of the twin ramjet engines, about to have their first all-up live-fire test. I felt confident, though. The Fiseler and Argus boys had done fine work, once they'd gotten properly organized under Dr. Kuznetsov. Who would've thought a Russian engineer, of all things . . .

"Three minutes. Oxygen system isolated." The vent wisp suddenly diappeared.

"Hans? Boss says you'll want to look at this." I turned away, unwilling. A thin, gray-faced man was holding out a folder full of papers.

"Thanks, Sergei." Korolyov was doing good job managing the engine team, but . . . you could tell his heart was damaged by the things that'd happened to him, before, during, after . . . They say Stalin had him in the gulag. What a fool. Stalin should have given him money and workers. Then Sergei Korolyov would have given him anti-aircraft missiles and rocket planes that might have done to the Nazis and Draka what . . .

Hell.

Dreams. All just dreams.

"Two minutes." Near the pad, a siren began to blow, and you could see tiny figures moving away, getting aboard their little steamers, raising clouds of dust as they drove toward us.

Sergei was looking over my shoulder as I opened the package. "See? What do you think of your friends now?"

The first sheet was a grainy telex photo, taken at a long slant angle across some stony gray desert country, low mountains in the background I recognized from mid-war newsreel footage. Jornada del Muerte. The Death's Journey Mountains.

Hanging against the pale sky, gray in the photo, undoubtedly bluer than this one, here and now, was a fat white rocket, two stages separated by a gridwork truss, rising on a long, transparent flame beaded with big shock diamonds.

"So," I said, just to myself. "So they went with the hypergolics after all." Aniline and nitric acid maybe? No. It'd have to be better than that.

Korolyov said, "Apparently. Chelomei has turned up in America." There was something else, in Russian, words I thought I knew. He leaned close, studying the photo. "Nitrogen tetroxide and unsymmetrical dimethyl hydrazine make a lovely clear violet flame."

I said, "Did you just say, `lucky bastard' about your friend Chelomei?"

"One minute," said the loudspeaker.

He shrugged. "Not quite. If you look at the stat sheet, you'll see that thing could deliver Teller's `Super' from a site in North America to anywhere on Domination territory."

I flipped the page. The next photo was of the rocket in the sky, bending in the middle, as its interstage truss gave way. The third page was a picture of a lovely explosion. I tried to imagine it as a purple flower in the sky. "They'd better try harder then, if he's to have any luck at all."

He said, "If the Draka don't win, the Americans will just give us jobs. Capitalists are like that."

In what Russian I could muster, I muttered, "Tíshe. Durák!" Shut up. You fool.

He shrugged, and . . .

The loudspeaker began, "Ten, nine, eight . . ."

"Ignition." The booster lit, black smoke and dull red fire fluttering around the base. After a few seconds, the dull thud and soft rumble.

"Turbine spin up." The fire brightened, blowing away the smoke, turning yellow, then white. Another delay, then that familiar, steady waterfall sound.

"Release."

The Test Article lifted off the pad, climbing on a clean yellow flame, turning so the missile would be on top as she headed out over the blue waters of the Indian Ocean.

Watching her go, shading his eyes against the afternoon sun, Sergei said, "What would it be like, if a man wanted to ride that thing, I wonder?"

My turn to shrug. "Well, now. A man's just not as heavy as an atom bomb, is he? If they let us do it, there will be . . . a lot of new work for the team."

Sergei smiled. "What was it you fellows used to say, Hans? Arbeit macht frei? Was that it?"

Unwilling, I remembered.

Before they got us sorted out, figured out who to cajole and who to kill, the Draka put us on work gangs, clearing away rubble, clearing streets, burning the sad debris of war, until, one day, I found myself with a rag tyed around my face, laboring through a fearsome stench, throwing dead Jews in a ditch, covering them with white lime and black dirt, while ritual-scarred Janissaries watched, laughing, joking with one another, uncaring, amused, relaxed black men with deadly black guns.

I remember I bent to pick up a skinny, naked, dead woman.

Skinny. I can't imagine how she got so thin, a skeleton covered with parchment skin. Everything about her sunken in but her mouth and pubis, all elbows and knees and hips.

I bent to pick her up, looking at that lovely tuft of shiny black hair, and wonder how, disembodied, dead, it still had the power to enchant me.

I remember how, suddenly, I wanted to . . .

No. Think about your rocket, Hans, rising into the sky.

Another part of me wanted to think about what was waiting for me at home.

And yet another did not.

As well try to turn back the tides of the sea.

* * *

Home, sunset staining the sky brick red, full dark rimming the eastern sky, beyond the mountains, out over the Hindoo Sea, Drakische Mare Nostrum soon enough, I went and stood by the mailbox, examining the day's worthless . . .

Apu crossed his lawn, dressed in loose, garish shorts, some wild maroon pattern print I understood was called Madras, a white linen shirt, sandals. "I saw it, Hans! What a sight that was!" Voice musical and full of enthusiasm.

I nooded, sorting the mail, trying not to think.

He said, "The range safety officer detonated her just after she cleared the coast. Ten thousand kilometers an hour, at full cruise! She would have been in Australia in no time all!"

I nodded again. What the hell are you doing outside? What are you waiting for? Hm?

He said, "My wife says you, ah . . . received a delivery today."

I felt my face burning, not looking up, not wanting to see whatever expression was on his face.

"Well," he said. "I won't be expecting to see you later on then!"

No? When I tried looking at him, his expression proved to be serious and gentle.

"Sometimes," he said, "I envy you, Hans." Then he turned and walked away, head down, hands in pockets, toward the veranda of his house, where I saw his wife sitting drinking a tall glass of tea. She waved.

When I opened the front door, the light was dim inside and . . . different. Something different here. As if I could smell something . . .

Abruptly, I remembered how, sometimes, I would become, oh, call it subliminally aware of my wife. She would come into a room where I was working, would just stand there, and no matter what I was doing, no matter how focused, no matter what she was wearing, however unflattering, I would suddenly imagine her naked, imagine her hips and thighs and belly . . .

We talked about it, the thought amusing her so, really, Hans, making her blush, and it turned out these things happened most often right around her fertile time, nature subverting all our attempts to control . . .

No sign of her in the Draka serf intake records. Sorry, Hans. Too bad, old man.

She stood, emerging from the shadows, apparently having been sitting on the bare floor between my battered divan and the cold ashes of the fireplace, which I'd been afraid to light for fear of burning the place down in my abstraction, my evenings full of dreams and regret.

"Massuh de Groot."

Her voice was soft. Throaty. Full.

"Uh." I stood there like an idiot. What does one say to a . . . serf? Nice little euphemism, that. Latin servus, meaning slave. In my family, we never even had servants.

She crossed the room, face shadowed, eyes glinting, uncertain, looking at me. Kneeled in some kind of ritual posture, making me feel even more ridiculous.

"Um. Your . . . name?"

She looked up at me, curious, eyes seeking, questioning, probing. What is it a serf needs to do, then? Understand the wishes of her master. Anticipate.

She said, "Khoikhoi called me—" something abrupt, with a couple of clicks embedded in it.

"Um. And your real name?"

"My Mammy say—" something musical, like Italian but obviously not. Malagasy?

"Um."

She stood, something odd in her face now. I felt myself strangling, unable to breathe. How am I going to manage this . . . this . . . Oh, you know.

She said, "Massuh, you want yo' dinnah now?"

All I could do was nod.

"Ah'll do my bes'. Yo' kitchen . . ." A slow shake of the head, an amused look. "Bes' I lights a fire too. Chase away them shaduhs . . ." Turning away then, and I thought, Talking like some American movie Negro. Where would they learn that?

What those movies were about, of course, was the world many of the Draka's ancestors had left behind, little Porgie helping Pocelain make the bed, nyuk-nyuk-nyuk . . .

I sat in my chair, helpless, watching her bend in a thin linen dress, looking at the shape of her, watching her move, suddenly half-starved and . . .

* * *

Later, suddenly later, I was in my room, sitting on the edge of the bed, that wonderful dinner a solid lump in my middle, a dish whose name I didn't know, made from ingredients I didn't know I'd had. When I asked, stuttering, she said what I thought was the name of the fat black woman who served Apu's family. "She a nice lady. Bonded servant. Almost free."

Whatever the Hell that means. Draka society was mostly a closed book to me, so many things, so many differences. Not at all like the Germany I'd known, Germany no more. Maybe a bit like America the Movie, but only a little bit.

Suddenly, she was in the open doorway of my room, standing there, looking at me, face . . . unreadable.

"Yes."

"Where you wants me to sleep, Massuh? They's a spare room, but no . . ."

Right. No bed. Not even a pile of rags for her to sleep on. "I . . ."

She came into the room then, dark shadow in wan lamplight, eyes shining on mine. "Well. I sees." Then she unbuttoned the few top buttons of her shift, reached around to untie the back, pulled it off over her head and was naked.

Nakeder than any woman I had ever imagined before.

She stood, posed, something like a smile, a knowing smile on her face, watching me stare.

Look at me. Mouth hanging open. Sweat beading on my brow. What next, a rope of drool from my lips?

She reached down, hand passing slowly over her smooth belly, going between her legs, pausing there, drawing in my eyes. Then she took her hand to her face, covering her mouth and nose, drawing in a deep breath.

And said, "This a good time fo' me, Massuh. Hopes to make it a good time fo' you, as well."

* * *

Some time later, we stood out in a slit trench, my comrades and I, out in the dry Namib desert under a featureless morning sky, sky the neutral color of the primer coat on a brand new steamer, just before the factory lays on that familiar enamel gloss, with all its color and glow.

We stood, and we waited.

Nothing. A soft, dry wind. The soft murmur of people talking, talking in whispers, as though . . . something were listening.

Apu put his hand on my shoulder, and said, "You seem . . . vwell. Relaxed."

Unbidden, the memory of her in the night, lying in the bed with my hands upon her, looking up at me, eyes . . . watching mine, looking into them, as if deep into my soul.

I remembered the way her breath had quickened later on, perfectly responsive, responses in sync with mine, as if . . .

I remember awakening from a dream, flinching out of it, running from a memory, three naked women standing by a ditch, pretty girls, Ukrainians I think, maybe Jews, maybe not.

The Three Graces. One so tall and brave. Another, smaller, almost like a child despite the pretty breasts and lovely pubic swatch, head down on the other's bosom, eyes closed. A third by her side, looking frightened and cold, but modest even now, one arm across her breasts, the other hand covering her vulva.

I remember the clatter of the bolt being drawn back, machine gun being cocked.

I remember, behind the women there was a ditch, already half full.

I can't remember why I was at Babi Yar that day, only that they invited me out to watch, as though to a picnic.

And when I awoke from the dream, gasping, covered with cold sweat, she said, "Theah now, Massuh. Jes' a dream, tha's all. You safe now. I's heah."

A voice with the power to make it all right again, lying under me, breath quickening, at just the right moment, clutching me close, crying out with joy.

I felt myself flush, avoiding Apu's smile.

Down the way, the boss said, "One minute, gentlemen. See to your goggles."

We were ten miles away, far behind the front lines, where soldiers and experimental subjects waited. I remembered the boss saying, "This had best work, gentlemen, now that Teller . . ."

Korolyov, in a harsh whisper, "Teller's Super is too heavy for the Atlas. We've got time yet."

Over a loudspeaker, someone's voice began counting down. I pulled down my goggles and the world was blotted away, nothing but darkness under a brilliant African sun, the sound of my breathing, other people . . . almost as if we were holding our breaths, no more whispers now.

"Four . . . three . . . two . . ."

The world came back, colored gray and silver, the desert cast with stark, impossible shadows.

Beyond, the entire horizon seemed to lift away, a flat line rising, then an impossible sunrise, ball of light bloating from the edge of the world, falling skyward like a huge bubble of steam lifting from the bottom of the sea.

There was a brilliant corona, streamers of light, a visible shockwave, atmosphere constraining the event as best it could.

The ground slammed my feet, making me stagger.

Darkness closing in as the bomblight faded.

I pulled up my goggles then, gaping at a towering malignancy, fat column of black smoke reaching already into the stratosphere, spreading there because it could go no farther, coming toward us swiftly, like the front of an onrushing storm.

"That's bigger than yo' said, I think. Some of them boys up front . . ."

Five megatons, I thought. We calculated five megatons. This . . . ten? Fifteen? Somewhere, we've done something wrong.

Watching the pressure wave cross the desert toward us, raising a cloud of dust, Apu, in a voice hushed with wonder and sorrow, said, " `I am become Death . . .' "

" `. . . the Destroyer of Worlds.' " replied Sakharov, lifting his goggles away, looking upward into face of his child, eyes like two pieces of dead, empty stone.

Then the hot wind struck and roared overhead, while we cowered together in the bottom of our ditch.

And, when I went home that night, dark, sweet Gretel was waiting for me just inside the door, wearing the new linen shift I'd bought her.

Ready and waiting, with a smile just for me.

Then the dreamer becomes the dream, as mourning became Electra, making her oh-so-pretty indeed.

 

 

 

 

Back | Next
Contents
Framed