Free The Cannibal by John Hawkes Page A

whirling in the night. But then the
     past told him the Merchant, or the Baron, or Herman would steal her off to a nest of
     feathers—before he could speak.
    He felt that his belt would burst, and so, just before reaching the line of
     Heroes, he stopped in the park. He thought that his mother would see, would stand looking at
     him in the dark, so he pushed behind the foliage, behind a bush that scratched at his
     fumbling hands. The rain became stronger and stronger and still he was rooted behind the
     bush, desperation on his face to be off, to be flying. Then he was running through the
     shadows like a flapping bird. When he passed the line of statues, each Hero gave him a word
     to harden his heart:
love, Stella,Ernst, lust, tonight, leader,
     land
. He felt that if old Herman ran at his side, he would tell him to get her in the
     britches. Already the guns were being oiled and the Belgians, not he, would use that
     Merchant as a target.
    “Tomorrow you’ll wake up and find we’re in a war,” said Cromwell. The
     carriage was turning the last corner, he turned his ready benevolence on the cruel castles,
     thought he’d like to tell his old father, but that was impossible.
    “Then you’ll go home?” she asked.
    “No. I think I’ll stay. It is pleasant, in moments such as these, knowing
     with certainty an approaching catastrophe, to view the whole incident that will probably
     extend fifty years, not as the death of politics or the fall of kings and wives, but as the
     loyalty of civilization, to realize that Krupp, perhaps a barbarian, is more the peg where
     history hangs than a father who once spoke of honor. If I could get into my father’s house,
     past his fattening memory, I would tell him what’s coming and leave him something to carry
     away with him.”
    “I, on the other hand, star of maidenhood, having found love, want to tell
     my father nothing, and if your prophecy should fall on our heads, could do nothing but
     protect my own. If in this hour of crisis, we must ride side by side, I will become, as you
     wish, your Archduchess for the people, but where your eyes and theirs cannot look, I am
     arrogant.”
    They were none the closer when they heard his running footsteps, when they
     looked in fear, back to the road they had just traveled, looked quickly over the low rear of
     the carriage. He ran up to them gasping out of the darkness, clutched the side of the
     carriage as if to hold it in his hand, and at thatmoment a bevy of
     disturbed birds chirped vividly in fright. They did not recognize him, did not speak, and
     for a moment, Cromwell waited to see the short muzzle of the pistol, to feel his ears
     enveloped in concussion, and on impulse almost took her in his arms for the last time. But
     the carriage continued, the coachman sleeping, and the assailant was dragged, half-running,
     half-stumbling, veins exploding around his eyes. Then, in great deliberation, she leaned and
     touched his fingers.
    “Come, get in,” she said.
    “No, no, I cannot.”
    Cromwell was a fool. He wouldn’t move, but back straight, hat over his eyes,
     he sat and waited. His gloved hands trembled on his knees. “I’ll come back,” Ernst said and
     once more took to his heels as the carriage reached the curb and a crowd seemed to gather.
     Stella knew, in this dark disrupted haze, that she was somewhere near her greatest love.
     Francis Ferdinand lay on the seat of the carriage, his light shirt filled with blood, his
     epaulettes askew and on the floor lay the body of his departed wife, while the assassin,
     Gavrilo Princip, ran mad through the encircling streets. Obviously the advent of the great
     war would not throw them all together, make them friends, or even make them enemies; Ernie
     was ready, even in the throes of love, for a goal of religious fanaticism; Cromwell simply
     longed, desperately, to fit into the conflict somewhere; and Stella knew only that she was
     climbing high and would someday