The Cloven Read online

  He now stood outside the featureless confines of the house and deeply breathed the air that did not taste of mortal rot. He had just spoken to the herald of the Limboia, the only one of their number who even attempted to engage in language. The terse and sullen creature had said little that made any sense: odd words so divorced of content that they left Fleischer with a sense of impossible isolation. He took another deep breath and walked across the fenced space that sloped down towards the modest proportions of the overseer’s house, which looked like a child’s toy or a model next to the monolithic three-storey slave dwelling. He unlatched the wooden gate and walked into the domestic enclosure, stopping briefly to take some interest and solace from the small garden that was showing signs of early flowering among the unkempt rows of overgrown vegetables. He squatted to examine them and out of the corner of his eye saw that he was being watched. A man and a tall woman were standing on the other side of the house. For a brief disconcerting moment, he thought the worst. Then his sense and his focus locked in and he recognized the man who was waiting for him. The only man who had a good word to say about Ishmael at the curt trial.

  “Sergeant Wirth,” said Fleischer as he walked towards them, trying to regain his affable manner.

  “Herr Fleischer, I have come to talk to you about the position of overseer and the future of the Limboia.”

  “Please come in,” said Fleischer, fishing the keys out of his pocket and opening the door into the musty house. He stood back while the tall, lean woman guided Wirth forward using only the tips of her fingers on his arm. She came very close to Fleischer, her proximity completely ignoring him. He had no choice but to look into it and smell the radiance of her purple, blue-black skin. He shivered and knew without a doubt that he was in the presence of a human who was his natural superior. She never once looked at him or acknowledged his open stares. He marvelled at the shape of her head, so clearly seen because she was almost bald, her hair having been cropped to a shadow. Her ears were long and deformed, reshaped at childhood to hold the silver pendant jewellery that hung there now and shone against her smooth skin, as did the white beads and pearls that collared the longest neck he had ever seen. Her strangeness rewrote beauty as her silent authority and her grace glued him to the spot. He unexpectedly placed himself back with the Limboia, being closer to them than this vision that passed before him. His curiosity suddenly felt lecherous and voyeuristic, especially in the presence of the blind Wirth, who obviously owned her in a way that he could not imagine.

  “I want to apply for the position,” Wirth bluntly stated. “I have worked with them before and have some experience of Bill Maclish’s tactics of control. Also I am a survivor, as you know. Herr Ishmael and I were all that was left of the retrieval party.”

  There was a lull, a quietness in the air after his Transvaal bluntness. It put Fleischer in his place. He knew without Wirth and Ishmael the Limboia would still be lost in the Vorrh, and he might be rotting in there with them. He lifted his downturned face to look directly into the strength of Wirth’s face. It was speckled and pinched by the scars of dozens of wounds. Most parts of his body had been stabbed and torn, but he had survived when so many of his men had been mutilated. The small spinney of trees that he and his men had charged into with their bayonets were thorn trees, an unknown kind of black honey locust, their dagger-shaped spikes as resilient as steel. Things grew that way in the Vorrh, indifferent to mercy and unique in their cruel perfection. The entanglement of the men was brutal; the more they struggled the deeper the foot-long thorns punctured. Ishmael had said that some of the men had struggled so much that they had been drawn upwards and were found almost crucified in the branches. He said that Wirth had frozen on this side of panic, and it must have saved him, but only after both of his eyes had gone. Fleischer smeared his staring away from the horror of the soldier’s blind scars. Eventually he found his voice again.

  “But, Sergeant Wirth, would not your injuries make it very difficult for you to complete such strenuous duties? And you already have a pension for your significant contributions in the field.”

  “I am no good at being a lame man. I am not built to sit around and do nothing. I need a task to exist. Besides, I have Amadi here. She will be my eyes.”

  “Yes, I can see that, but I think the position might be too taxing, even for your exceptional capabilities.”

  A small quiet shuddered and gradually unfolded between them. For the first time Amadi’s eyes moved from Wirth to Fleischer, and while he was transfixed by them Wirth said, “I know about the fleyber.”

  Fleischer was hearing the word fleyber for the second time that day. First in the awkward mouth of the herald of the Limboia. He had no idea what it meant and assumed it was pidgin or one of the hundreds of native tongues.

  “Fleyber?” said Fleischer far too calmly.

  The woman sensed his disquiet and moved her hand on Wirth’s arm.

  “Fleyber, what is it?”

  Wirth turned his blind stare at the young man. “It’s a child born dead.”

  Wheels and cogs started moving inside Fleischer, as if a brake had suddenly been released and the obscure engine of the obvious chugged into motion.

  “Babies…” he said, almost to himself.

  “It’s what they want, the price to make them work. Ishmael promised them one and they followed us like sheep.”

  “Dead babies.” Now Fleisher really was talking to himself.

  “It’s how Maclish controlled them, he and his doctor friend,” said Wirth, seeming to be enjoying a distant joke.

  “Hoffman,” said Fleischer.

  “That’s the man. I think he supplied them and Maclish handed them over.”

  “What did they do with them?” asked Fleischer without hearing the normality of his question gather in the wheels of the machine that spun in the back of his mind.

  “Fuck knows, man! It’s disgusting.”

  There was a pause while each adjusted his position.

  “How do you know all this?” asked Fleischer.

  “I was there when the Limboia broke cover. They came right out to us. One up front and talking, holding the dead baby out to us, wanting to exchange it.”

  “For what?”

  “For another one, a fresher one. The creep who had it in his hand said it was worn out.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “Don’t really know, there were shots. After it was over we all went back to camp and some days later I had a talk with the speaking one and kinda understood some of the things he said. I was pretty fucked up and high on morph and booze, so it all sounded sensible to me. Anyways, that’s what they are waiting for. For their promised corpse. If you want ’em to work, you gotta pay up.”

  For no apparent reason the woman changed position, moving to the other side of Wirth and guiding him into the nearest chair. Fleisher was about to apologize for not offering a seat before, but his mind was far too full of possible solutions and their monstrous necessities.

  Fleischer found the words to ask, “How can we do that?”

  Wirth heard the “we” and closed in.

  “With your influence we could make inroads into the infirmary and maybe find some there.”

  “Some?”

  “We are going to need a constant supply to keep them working in the Vorrh.”

  “I am not sure I could get involved in such a business,” said Fleischer, suddenly backing away.

  “Maclish, Hoffman, and Ishmael did. That’s how it works, man.” Wirth was losing his moment of subservience and was now showing his true undiluted purpose. “It’s the only way you’re going to get them creeps out of their beds and chopping wood.”

  Fleischer had run out of speech: He had been given the solution that he so deeply craved but it involved a level of moral turpitude that he had never experienced before. The dilemma was immense
and he felt very alone in it. Until the mechanism of the obvious again lurched at him.

  “If you became the overseer, Sergeant Wirth, would you help us in this matter?”

  “Sure. That goes without saying, it’s what I would expect to do.”

  “Then I think that we might be able to work something out,” said Fleischer.

  “I even have a few ideas of my own,” said the now-excited Wirth.

  “What ideas?” said a cautious Fleischer.

  “Most of the business that bypasses the infirmary comes out of the bars and brothels of the Scyles and the old town. Well, if we set up our own house, we could farm the kids directly and also make a few shekels on the side. It would be no problem finding the girls; Amadi could help us collect them.” He squeezed the woman’s thigh and she looked up and smiled a weird crooked grin that was as innocent as a child’s and as knowing as an eternal courtesan’s. “Or maybe you could get some advice from that dirty old bastard in your ranks?” Wirth chuckled.

  “Who do you mean?”

  “The old fat fucker who has probably tasted every whore between here and Kilimanjaro.”

  “Krespka,” said Fleischer in resigned agreement. Ludvik Maximilian Krespka had never liked Fleischer. The old-school tyrant saw him as an upstart and a snivelling youth. Krespka’s influence in the Timber Guild was monumental. He had barely approved Fleischer’s scheme of retrieving the Limboia, and when it was achieved, he complained about the high cost of lives, even though everyone knew that he cared about nothing except his own wealth and personal pleasures, which were legendary. Wirth’s blatant statement declared his knowledge about the old man’s corruption, and Fleischer liked the tone and vehemence of its disrespect. Of course it was preposterous to even think about consulting Krespka about such matters, but it did turn up other possibilities of advantage and future leverage worth considering.

  They talked for another twenty minutes or so, Fleischer becoming more convinced of the need to bend a few laws to obtain what everybody wanted. Perhaps Wirth really was the man for the job, if he could be trusted to work under Fleischer’s supervision and control. There might even be some sense in his idea about brothel breeding pens. Under the right supervision such a thing might prove beneficial and lucrative, and only a select few would ever need to know. Fleischer might even gain favour or obtain something over Krespka and finally get him on his side. He could prove to be a much more powerful ally than Quentin Talbot ever had.

  Fleischer finished the meeting with Wirth and Amadi and asked them to return after he had made a few enquiries. His planning was now seriously engaged with the machinery of the obvious, and he was musing on whom he knew in the infirmary and how he could persuade them to smuggle out the necessary material.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The scratching at the window could not be heard above the storm that rattled its casements and the teeth of the solid door in the thickness of its stone mouth. It was a thin bony clawing that sounded like a long-dead branch fallen in the wind. The storms that came up and across that coast were famous in their intensity. As were their infamous echoes that came out of the Vorrh. Freak climatic conditions produced by the enormous area of transpiration, and the broken mountain that rose up through it, took the approaching sea storm that had grumbled inland and spun it around its own vortex, often sending it flying back into the panting sea. Those storms, which passed over Essenwald, shook the city to its core, causing spiralling winds that grabbed at roofs and picked up anything loose to toss into the ragged sky. Sometimes the spires of the cathedral shivered in St. Elmo’s fire, which spurted jagged sparks from one to the other. No one dared to enter its interior at such a time. Ball lightning would form and prowl the aisle and naves, frightening sheltering images of Christianity into reclusive shadow. The storm would finally wear itself out mid-ocean, where it collapsed in unwitnessed cold rain.

  * * *

  —

  Carmella and Modesta had not been outside their home in three days. Nor had anybody else in the desolate village. They feared for their lives, exposed to such a tumult. This storm was outside the circle of seasonal rains and too fierce for the few remaining villages to attempt to collect precious water in their wells and cisterns. When it cleared, the sun peered through a yellow sky, shutters opened onto a wet morn where vast puddles blinked with the last few drops of rain.

  Carmella opened the bolted, sodden door, putting her weight behind its swollen resistance. The air smelt good and she walked into the rising temperature, leaving the house open to air. Every scent of the earth was rising, the olfactory kaleidoscope rippling in the primal reptile brain. Strongest from her animals in the inner courtyard, which were also vocal in their joy of the fresh day. Modesta was still sleeping as Carmella circumnavigated her property. Rare optimism warmed her muscles as she stood and saw the solidity of her portion of the world. The rest of the village could be heard peeling open, encouraging the warmth and the perfume of the sea to enter their stuffy rooms. She completed her cycle and returned to her door, stepped in, and gave an involuntary shriek.

  Such an adolescent reaction should have been beyond her years of experience. All the dealings with the dead and dying. All the intercourse with the other world and its denizens of strangeness. What had stopped her in her tracks and made her cry was something different, something out of time or meaning. A different kind of impossibility.

  * * *

  —

  “It will come to lead you,” the voices had said, “you must follow the seraphim’s chosen pathway without question or hesitation. Its silence and presence will guide your way to paradise.”

  The voice had shaken Carmella’s trembling bedroom while she had lain prostrate before its majesty and the piebald Modesta had stood erect, smiling, her eyes gleaming with joy.

  “Wait for the seraphim, prepare for its coming. We will never speak to you again.”

  And every day Carmella looked along the winding track that led to her house and every night kept an eye on the dark door, while Modesta looked firmly into the depth of the blue sky, even at night in the black window of stars.

  It should have been a child who asked the old woman what a seraphim was, but Modesta was no longer that. She should have the earthly body of a child, but it had tautened into a sinewy womanhood. The mind and soul that seethed inside her lithe patchwork skin was of an age and perception that was beyond comprehension. Most of Carmella’s questions were ignored or answered with a curt “You already know,” so it was a shock when Modesta held forth in her answer to the old woman’s simple question.

  “The seraphim are a legion. Only one will come for us, a single seraph from the first dawn. We will know it by its otherness. It will have wings and hands to pray and to cover its face.”

  And again Carmella turned towards the door. Nothing was there, but both of them knew that it was already flying to be with them.

  * * *

  —

  Folding and unfolding in and out of visibility on her kitchen table was a creature that she had no reference for. True that some part of it resembled a bat or a bird that had been broken in half by the storm. But its animations seemed to come from light itself, flickering between black and dazzling silver, almost as if it still carried the pulse of the storm in its stencilled ligaments. A haze of shimmering blue flicked in and out of all its thin parts. Carmella approached cautiously, picking up a sturdy broom in the process, ready to beat it and shovel it off her table and out of her house.

  “The seraph…” hissed Modesta from the darkness of her room, her pale speckled body standing in the doorway. “It’s the seraph.”

  The old woman drew closer to the table and looked at the mangled slithering thing that was gently steaming as it tried to right itself and aim its pointed head at its audience, which now stood side by side, waiting. It opened its beak-like mouth and let out a blue light that dented and chipped th
e room and their ears with a sound like a cold chisel attacking a solid block of glass. They covered their ears until it ceased. Then Modesta raised her hand flatly above her head and made a circular motion while sinking to her knees. She tugged at Carmella’s dress, urging her to do the same. They both knelt, now with their heads below the level of the table. The seraph hitched itself to the edge of the scrubbed plateau and pushed its beak and eyes over the brink, staring down at the women. It made a softer mewing screech and they both bowed farther. After a few moments it closed its eyes and appeared to be sleeping. The women shuffled backwards to the far side of the room, where they watched it and whispered.

  “Are you sure it is the seraph?” asked Carmella nervously.

  “Of course it is, look at it. It was foretold. What else could it be?”

  Carmella was still doubtful but packed her travelling things anyway and stacked them by the door. She then made food for their departure.

  The seraph sprang awake and fell from the table, spilling outside through the doorway and onto the track, where it made its gristly noise and jerked forward, without any care about who was following. Modesta was after it in moments, calling to Carmella to follow. But slowed by the lopsided weight of the bundles and bags that she had roped about her, Carmella quickly lost sight of the piebald girl and the angelic emissary. She hastily pulled the gate shut and latched the heavy iron padlock.

  “Come, come, we are leaving the village,” cried Modesta at the end of one of the blank lanes. All three were united again in a narrow fenced pasture.

  “This is wrong,” said the old woman, adjusting one of the bundles that had slid around her body, making her look vastly pregnant. “This is Horacio’s land.”

  The seraph ignored her and flutter-leaped like a spastic hen across the carefully organized rows of vegetables. Modesta picked her footing warily behind it. Carmella looked for another way.