The sun is god, p.18
The Sun Is God, page 18
But then he dreamed he was walking in the jungle: hideous masked faces watching him from the trees. Finally, he dreamed of Africa: the war, the camp, the men wanting to know what to do.
“Fire! Kill them! Kill them all, sergeant! Kill every one of the bastards!”
A hand on his forehead.
“It’s all right, Will, it’s all right.”
“What?”
“You were having a nightmare.”
“Uh . . . I feel—everything aches.”
“What is the matter?” Kessler asked.
“I’m ill, Klaus,” he groaned. “I’m ill. Not well. I should never have come here without my quinine.”
“I will get Bethman.”
Will closed his eyes, and when he opened them, August Bethman was standing there with a stethoscope around his neck. His beard was soft, his hair golden, like a Kraut Jesus.
“He has a temperature of 101 degrees. It is not that serious. I will give him aspirin and heroin.”
“Klaus,” Will groaned.
“I am here, Will,” Kessler said.
“It’s never serious with this one. I’ll be dead and in my grave and he’ll still be saying that it is not serious.”
“Make sure he takes these Bayer aspirin and heroin pills with a little water,” Bethman said to Kessler.
“Tell him to take his Bayer aspirin and his Bayer heroin and shove it up his arse,” Will muttered.
Bethman got up to go but Will grabbed at his wrist. “How much heroin did you give Lutzow over the course of his final crisis?” Will asked.
“He was in great pain.”
“Too much opium can kill a man, is that not so?” Kessler wondered.
“We did not kill Lutzow with too much heroin powder or pills, Herr Kessler. Engelhardt is cautious with the supply and I am, or rather I was, a physician. Now is there anything else?”
Will shook his head and Bethman turned to Kessler. “Make sure he takes those.”
Bethman left and under Kessler’s relentless glare Will took his medicine. An hour later he was sitting up in the hammock and he had to admit that his head was starting to feel much better.
Kessler was dressed and looking at Will with affection.
“How do you do?” Kessler asked in English.
“Middling,” Will admitted reluctantly.
“That is German science at work!”
“German science,” Will muttered. “Where are you going anyway?”
“To talk to Karl, our pilot.”
Will grunted, and as Kessler stared at him he answered an unspoken question. “Tell him tomorrow will be the last day he has to do this. I think I have nearly everything I need now.”
“Are you sure?” Kessler asked.
“I believe so. And if I can get off this godforsaken island alive, I will tell you all about it in the safety of Governor Hahl’s residence.”
“Not here?”
“I think not.”
“Are we to make an arrest?”
“I need to ask a few more questions today. But you and I will not be doing any arresting. If necessary we will return with a troop of soldiers.”
“Nonsense! All German nationals will—”
“Let us hear no more idle talk of that, Klaus; rest assured that Germans murder their neighbors in as great a quantity as everyone else.”
“You can be certain, Will, that the Germans here on Kabakon will cooperate with us.”
Will let him talk but he didn’t listen to the predictable string of words that formed into one of Kessler’s predictable sentences. Klaus did not understand, but he would. When his lips stopped moving, Will said: “Maybe you’re right.”
“Take your time getting up,” Kessler said, giving him a fey little continental salute, before walking out into the piazza.
One more bloody day, Will thought.
An hour later he was in his cricket flannels and straw boater. The shirt and shoes again seemed unnecessary in the oppressive heat. He found his “walking stick” and went out into the piazza.
He avoided Harry, Christian, and Schreckengost, who were loitering at the breakfast table, and made his way to Engelhardt’s hut: the one that was closest to the statue of the Malagan.
“Come in!” Engelhardt said.
Will entered. Engelhardt was wearing clothes, which surprised Will. He had on a kind of coverall made of thick blue cotton, cotton that was stained nearly black by printer’s ink, for in this tiny space Engelhardt was running off a series of bills from a hand cranked press.
“Ah, Herr Detective Prior!” Engelhardt said cheerfully.
“Good morning,” Will said and glanced at one of the drying bills.
He read it and translated it in his head thus:
The Society of Sonnenorden on the Tropical Paradise of Kabakon are seeking a small and limited number of enthusiastic helpers to live the ideal of Naked Cocovorism in German New Guinea.
We have discovered the secret to eternal life that has been lost to man since his expulsion from the Garden of Eden! It is a secret no longer! “Sun bathing” and a strict “vegetarian” diet are the keys to eternal life!
On Kabakon, our new Eden, we do no labor and we are free to pursue our intellectual passions! Rid yourself of the tyranny of desire. Renounce the pressure of the world! Come to Kabakon and allow your spirit to grow!
Engelhardt saw Will’s eyes on the handbill. “What do you think?” he asked.
“Interesting,” Will said.
“We are going to post them up in Herbertshöhe and give them to travelers throughout the German Pacific. Tell me, in all candor, how do they seem to you, as an outsider?”
Will rubbed his chin. “Well, I do not think you should say the word “helper.” That sounds too much like there’s going to be hard work, and it contradicts what you say in the next couple of paragraphs. Maybe ‘follower’ would be better or ‘disciple,’ and you should mention that there are ladies here. Naked women will be a big selling point in Herbertshöhe, believe me.”
Engelhardt frowned. “We do not wish to attract the wrong type of people,” he said.
“Do you mind if I sit down?” Will asked. “I am feeling a little under the weather this morning.”
“Not at all,” Engelhardt exclaimed, far too loudly for Will’s fragile condition. In a more civilized tone he added: “You do not look well, Herr Prior.”
“That is what I have been trying to tell everyone.”
Engelhardt had no conventional chairs in the hut but there were a few awkward looking stools. Will sat and breathed a small sigh of relief.
“Would you like a glass of water? Or a few heroin pills?”
“No thank you.”
Engelhardt nodded. The silence grew from a few seconds to an uncomfortable half minute, which did not bother Will in the slightest, but Engelhardt was keen to get back to his printing. “As you can see, I am quite busy,” he said.
Will nodded and cleared his throat. “I am curious how you chanced upon this secret to eternal life,” he said.
Engelhardt shrugged. “It is no secret. It was known to the ancients. The myth of Eden is a reflection of a truth buried within the consciousness of all mankind. Do you read Doctor Freud?”
Not another bloody doctor,Will thought. “He too advocates the coconut?”
“He urges us to listen to the voices in our dreams. I have listened. Bradtke listened. We went where our heart told us to go. Without the sun there would be no life anywhere in this solar system. The sun is everything!”
“Fräulein Schwab says that Schopenhauer is the key to understanding your—”
“Fräulein Schwab is a novice in our philosophy! Schopenhauer has been quite exploded. His ideas are irrelevant here.”
“Oh? Yes?”
“Nietzsche has taught us how to live. Nietzsche teaches the doctrine of the Superman. We must cultivate our passions, not reject them. That was the error of the Greeks, as I am sure you know.”
“Umm . . .”
“The late Herr Nietzsche desires us to return to the days of the Pre-Socratics, of Dionysius, when the heart did the bidding of reason, not the reverse!”
“In the Bacchanal, if I am recalling correctly from my hazy school days, men were sometimes torn to pieces by followers of the Dionysian cult,” Will said.
“Yes.”
“Do you also believe that sacrifice is necessary to achieve apotheosis?”
“What a perfectly revolting idea. We are vegetarians here, Mr. Prior. Have you learned nothing of our ways since your arrival? You are still looking at us through the eyes of that world. That world where man can barely keep up! Flying machines, telephones, motor cars. New art, new books. But here we have something more important than all of that: new men! The Romantics had a word for it: Geistesgeschichte —the evolving history of the human spirit. You must try and understand, Herr Prior!”
“What I must try and understand, Herr Engelhardt, are the events surrounding the death of Herr Lutzow,” Will said.
“In case you are laboring under a misapprehension, Herr Prior, I must inform you that Lutzow was not torn to pieces by anyone,” Engelhardt said.
“When did you first hear about Lutzow’s death?” Will asked.
Engelhardt sat on the edge of his bed and shook his shaggy head. “I do not know the precise hour.”
“Was it on Saturday night? Early Sunday morning?”
“One or two o’clock in the morning, I suppose,” Engelhardt said dubiously.
“Who told you?”
“Harry.”
“He woke you?”
“Yes.”
“Then you went to Lutzow’s hut?”
“Yes.”
“And what did you find there?”
“He was dead.”
“Who else was there?”
“No one.”
“What about Bethman?”
“I sent for him.”
“None of the others were awake?”
“Fräulein Schwab came immediately. Later I heard Fräulein Schwab talking to Fräulein Herzen and Helena.”
“Lutzow was dead but you didn’t think it necessary to tell any of the others?”
“What good would that serve? They could do nothing.”
Will nodded. Although Engelhardt looked like a tuppeny Don Quixote, complete with cadaverous countenance, odd uniform, and ink-stained beard, his blue eyes were steady and he did not seem troubled or evasive.
“What made you change your mind about the burial arrangements for Max Lutzow, Herr Engelhardt?”
“What do you mean?”
“You were going to bury him here or at sea, but when Clark appeared with a sack of letters, you changed your mind and asked Clark to transport the body to Herbertshöhe.”
“ I did not ask him.”
“No, you did not. Fräulein Herzen did. Fräulein Herzen insisted. Why do you think she did that, Herr Engelhardt?”
“I have no idea.”
“You have no idea why she insisted that Clark take Lutzow’s body to Herbertshöhe?”
“None.”
Will paused until he got Engelhardt’s full attention. “I think you made a mistake granting Fräulein Herzen’s wish.”
“What do you mean?”
Will smiled. “We conducted an autopsy on Lutzow in Herbertshöhe. Do you know what an autopsy is, sir?”
“Yes.”
“We have a very good, patient, and observant doctor there.”
“Doctor Volker, I know of him, he—”
“Doctor Volker’s dead. A new doctor. Bremmer, a diligent, careful young man.”
“A Jew?”
“A Jew, yes.”
“I have known intelligent Jews and unintelligent Jews.”
“Bremmer is of the former type.”
Engelhardt nodded. The room was oddly silent now, as if the inanimate objects were holding their breaths, and both men could feel the tension being generated by this exchange, a tension as palpable as the electric current or a change in pressure.
“What did your new doctor discover?” Engelhardt asked.
“I think you know what he found,” Will said.
Engelhardt shook his head and looked Will square in the face. “I assure you that I do not,” he said, his voice as steady as a Color Sergeant on parade. It was a nice act, Will thought. A very nice act. You could get a run at the Theatre Royal with an act like that.
“Lutzow did not die of malaria,” Will said.
“Oh?”
“Our doctor found water in Lutzow’s lungs. He was drowned.”
Will let that sink in.
“Drowned?”
“Drowned. That is peculiar, is it not? How does a man drown in his own bed in the middle of the night, by himself?”
Engelhardt’s smile had faded, but he was not bereft. “I have no idea,” he said.
“Think on it,” Will prodded.
“I have no explanation.”
“Think of one.”
Engelhardt rubbed his inky fingers through his beard. “Perhaps I, too, should approach it like a policeman,” he said.
“Be my guest.”
“You have four witnesses who say that Lutzow died in his bed of malaria, but your doctor in Herbertshöhe says that someone drowned him. That does not make any sense, does it?”
“No,” Will agreed.
“Obviously your doctor has made an error.”
“And what about Fräulein Herzen? Why was she so insistent that Lutzow be taken to Herbertshöhe? Why did she wish to go there herself? What do you think she is telling the governor right now?”
“Nothing. I assure you of that.”
“Why?”
“Because there is nothing to tell. Lutzow died in his bed . . . of malaria. Your doctor has made a mistake, doubtless. He will gain notoriety if this becomes a cause célèbre, rather than what it transparently is—a simple case of a man in the tropics dying of a common tropical disease.”
Will nodded to himself. He was cool as a cucumber, but perhaps his eye had twitched just a little at the mention of Fräulein Herzen . . .
“Of course we will interview her thoroughly when we return.”
“I am sure you will do your job with consummate professionalism,” Engelhardt said cooly.
Will felt the ice and it unnerved him. He took a step back. Literally and figuratively. He did not want to push the thing just now. Engelhardt was a rum cove and no mistake. It was perhaps better to let the bones rattle around in the soup for some more hours.
“Of course,” Will said. “If the doctor has made a mistake then this whole investigation has been an utter folly.”
“I am amazed that someone of your perspicacity could be taken in. Let our own doctor, the esteemed Bethman, conduct your “autopsy” and I assure you he will find no drowning mark upon Lutzow.”
Will nodded slowly. “You may be right, sir.”
Engelhardt began a reply but a coughing fit from Will stopped his flow.
The smile returned to Engelhardt’s face and he put his arm about Will’s shoulders. He was a tall man, taller than Will by two inches, but so very thin and the overall seemed to extenuate his thinness. A moderate wind could blow him over.
“I like you, Herr Prior, and I trust you. I am certain that you are not going to let a little middling Jew doctor come between us,” Engelhardt said.
Will nodded. “Do you have a glass of water by any chance? As I said earlier, I am really not feeling myself today.”
Engelhardt poured him water from a covered pewter carafe.
“Here,” he said.
Will thanked him and drank.
“ Also,” Engelhardt said.
“ Also,” Will agreed. “I must go.”
“To Herbertshöhe?”
Will set down the cup. “We have missed our chance today, but perhaps we shall go back tomorrow.”
“And what will you tell Governor Hahl?”
Will’s head was thick. He took a minute to gather his wits. “I have uncovered no actual evidence of foul play. As you say, Doctor Bremmer has likely made some sort of error.”
“I am happy to hear it!” Engelhardt said delightedly. “But if this is your last night we must have a feast in your honor.”
Will shook his head. “That is not necessary. Neither Hauptman Kessler nor I wish to put you to any trouble.”
“Nonsense. It will be the ceremony of the new moon tomorrow. It is an occasion for a feast on Kabakon.”
Will swayed a little on the stool. He touched his forehead. His fingertip came back hot and clammy.
“If you will excuse me, Herr Engelhardt, I think I will lie down. As I say, I am rather . . .”
“I will send for Bethman.”
“I have already seen Bethman. He has prescribed aspirin.”
“You must take it!”
“I will. Good day, sir.”
“Good day to you.”
Will left but instead of going to his hut he walked with his stick as fast as he was able to the beach. The journey was not far but he had to stop several times to catch his breath.
Kessler was standing on the sand gazing out to sea.
“Good morning, Will,” he said.
“Has he come yet?”
“He has been and gone.”
“Damn it.”
“What is it?”
“We should have gone with him.”
“What is the matter?” Kessler asked with concern.
“I fear I may have overplayed my hand.”
“With Engelhardt?”
“He may want to do us a mischief.”
Kessler shook his head. “Engelhardt will not harm us.”
Will sighed. “I suppose we could not have gone anyway, could we? Not without Miss Pullen-Burry.”
“She may not go with us.”
“Indeed not?”
“She is quite enamored with the place. And I believe she has formed an attachment with the American.”
“Schreckengost? You astound me. I would not have thought it. He is as dumb as a post. As dumb as a baseball club I should say,” Will said.
“Miss Pullen-Burry is no beauty.”
“For shame, Klaus, I wonder that you can speak so of a lady!”
“You are quite right. It was ungallant.” Kessler examined his friend. “You look pale, Will.”
“I feel awful.”
