Emma remembered the sight of the top of his head, on that night when he bent to kiss her breasts while she watched in excited disbelief. Now her dress was torn wide, her body nakedly exposed. Probably the captain had seen her, but the nearness of death overwhelmed any modesty. Her consciousness faded again for some time.
In the hour before dawn Emma’s fever broke. She felt pain for real then, but her mind had calmed and she knew the ground beneath her. One eye was swollen shut, but with the other she saw Mémé, sitting near in the dirt, keeping watch.
The old woman saw the eye open, lifted her granddaughter’s head with care, and brought a glass of water to her lips. Although some spilled on Emma’s face and neck, she gulped greedily.
What was better than water? Elixir, life-giver, healer. With each swallow she felt the dirt washed not away, but deeper into her body, sluicing the dust and blood until she could breathe.
With a soft cloth Mémé washed Emma’s face, jerking away at the least wince, wiping her nostrils clear and dabbing around her damaged eye. The air grumbled from the direction of the village, the sky glowed with fires, but in that barnyard there was a moment’s peace. Then Mémé raised Emma’s head and scooted her lap underneath, making a pillow of her thighs.
Emma stared at the sky, feeling the return of clarity. Where could she go to avoid the captain? Should she take Mémé, too? How much of a journey was she capable of making?
Before any answers had come, Emma began hallucinating again. Those jellyfish in the sky had returned. No, they were the white seeds of a blown dandelion, swept by the wind. Or no again, they were parasols. Like so many fine ladies had gone boating on a summer’s day, parasols here and there all over the sky.
She remembered her umbrella on the beach, how artfully it had swung in the wind, and these hallucinations did the same thing. There were dozens, hundreds, all over the predawn sky.
Something was different, though, in her one-eyed vision. At the end of the handle, in the place of a hook these umbrellas had some unusual shape, what was it?
All at once she knew, and the whole world was revealed. On all of those umbrellas, in the place of a hook, there was a man. Descending ever so slowly in the June night sky, hundreds of men, thousands, each riding his silken jellyfish down to her village, and it was no dream.
And with the advent of these strange angels, the world became exactly as the Monsignor had foretold.
Part Five
Hell on Earth
Chapter 32
Dawn on the sixth of June delivered the loudest day in the history of the earth. Planes, bombs, responding ground fire, engines of tanks and trucks, all created a din so constant it seemed as if the hedgerows were shouting from their crowns.
The last hours of the night performed a departing trickery, too, as fires on the horizon snapped and climbed, and the sky oranged before Tuesday had actually begun. Emma lay on the kitchen floor facing east, thinking the colors were strangely beautiful, a halo on the land, when the sun rose, bringing a day too bright for the flames to be seen across a distance as anything more than wavering air beneath rising billows of black.
With that, the source of the roar appeared to be the sea. What strange monster had been unleashed? What appetite must it possess? Whom would it devour on this day?
Thalheim feared the quartermaster, but then, everyone did. Fat as a zeppelin, unflappable, aware of every nut and bolt in his beehive warren of supplies, he maintained order from his throne—a metal office chair atop a pile of wooden pallets—through sheer intimidating bulk, plus a whistle with which he was famously communicative. Despite the deep-of-the-night hour, soldiers of every need and disposition stood in respectful single file, waiting for the quartermaster’s attention. With the air battle under way and the invasion imminent, no one wanted to find himself low on ammunition. Thalheim stepped past them all, pulling rank because of his new assignment. Yet he had never dared to ask the quartermaster’s name.
But that whistle shrieked, and the man was scowling down at him. “State your business.”
“Message delivery for the Kommandant,” Thalheim said, waving the envelope with its official seal. He used his good arm, the other one sore and bandaged where Emma had slashed him.
The man-blimp took out his whistle long enough to spit on the ground, then point with a beefy arm. “Bike R7H has fuel. Return immediately. No joy rides today.”
Thalheim reached the armed checkpoint before daybreak, declared his business, spoke the password, and parked his motorcycle by the front door of a palatial villa. Moments later a corporal ushered him into a room with ornate wallpaper and fine furnishings, where he saluted despite the pain in his shoulder.
The colonel sat sipping tea. A bald man, who kept his monocle in place by maintaining a constant sneer, he nonetheless drank with pinkie erect. Setting the delicate teacup in its saucer on a table, he held out his hand for the envelope.
Normally Thalheim would have no idea what the contents of an officer’s communication might be, but in this case the colonel made it no secret. His eyes went wide as he read, the monocle falling to dangle from a strap clipped to his collar.
“Now he wants tanks?” he scoffed. “Now he wants me to bring tanks?”
Thalheim knew better than to speak, especially as the colonel stood and began to pace.
“Does he have any goddamn idea whose permission I must ask before I can do that? Does your imbecile commander have any idea?” He crumpled the paper and threw it on his desk, then spied the teacup, and swept his arm so that cup and saucer smashed on the far wall.
The maroon blotch on the wallpaper reminded Thalheim of something, though he could not say what. He waited until the storm had passed and the senior officer came to rest by the window, monocle restored. The captain clicked his heels together. “Sir, will there be a return communication?”
The colonel spun, as if surprised to discover the messenger still present, but then he spoke quietly. “Tell him it is far too late for such politics,” he said. “Tell him I said to go to hell.”
Thalheim saluted, and hurried from the room.
The engine of the motorcycle was loud enough that he did not notice anything special on the return trip. But when he paused between two fields to relieve himself, Thalheim heard the explosive roar of battle in the distance. He switched on his staff radio.