“And extermination,” said Muntle somberly.
“Yes, I know. I regret that I cannot deny that possibility as well.”
“Are these men truly such monsters?” asked Miss Bocker.
“It has happened before,” replied Miss Wolf in a tone of sobriety matching that of her interlocutor. “And there is even a word for it. Genocide. It came with the wholesale slaughter of six million Jews in the 1930s and 1940s by a German dictator by the name of Adolf Hitler. There is an older word, as well, that was appropriated for this unthinkable act. The word is ‘holocaust.’”
It was quite telling — the fact that Miss Wolf could not give a definitive answer to the question of our future. I was convinced now that she had been placed with deliberate intent into the uninformed darkness. She was, in effect, more like us now than like those from whom she came. Perhaps it was because they could no longer trust her.
My heart had softened towards Miss Ruth Wolf. I would not trade places with her for worlds: fully trusted, fully embraced by no one — not we Dinglians nor the Outland masters for whom she worked. She was adrift.
And she was beautiful.
But she would not be mine.
Chapter the Thirty-eighth. Friday, July 4, 2003 and Saturday, July 5, 2003
ater that day, Muntle was dismissed from his office as sheriff of Dingley Dell.
It was Lord Mayor Feenix himself who had informed him of the PetitParliament’s decision. Feenix came to Muntle’s apartments in the Inn-of- Justice, accompanied by the man who was to take his place — or rather the boy, for Muntle had lost his position to none other than his lowest deputy, Billy Boldwig, whose behaviour, in spite of the rather grave and humiliating circumstances, was marked by callous exuberance for his new position and for his new lodgings — it being required that Muntle vacate his apartments immediately and the boy registering nothing of Muntle’s devastated demeanour, except that he moved slowly.
I did not know any of this at the time. My friend Vincent, being a proud man, confessed to me later that he had been reluctant to tell anyone. When one’s professional life comes to a sudden, ignominious end, even the most garrulous of men are apt to keep quietly to themselves.
At dawn the next morning I was awakened by a scream. I thought for a moment that it had been emitted by some wraith within my dream — for I always dreamed heaviest in the hour prior to waking, and at that moment was immersed quite deeply in a goblins’ croquet game. (Please don’t ask me why, for I have never played it.) I sat up in bed and listened. Muffled voices filtered up from Mrs. Lumbey’s dress shop showroom below. I quickly donned my robe, threw open the door to the stairwell that led down to the shop, and hurriedly but cautiously descended the dark stairs (for the sun, though rising, had yet to infiltrate every nook and cranny of the passage).
Mrs. Lumbey stood in the centre of the showroom, wearing her dressing gown, her hands outstretched to coax her frightened apprentice Amy Casby, crouched and quivering in a far corner of the room, to come into her enfolding embrace. The girl quickly consented to Mrs. Lumbey’s offer of temporary harbourage and stood for the moment weeping and clutching, but giving no explanation for what could possibly have incited such a fearful outburst.
A moment later, Hannah Pupker appeared. There was genuine concern written upon her face as well for the woman with whom she had formed a loose friendship of circumstance. Gathering the plaits of her own gown in a distempered hand, she darted her eyes about the room to descry the cause of Amy’s distress (wondering all the while if her provocative presence here were somehow implicated).
“Speak up, dear girl,” said Mrs. Lumbey to her assistant, whilst gently smoothing back the young woman’s sleep-tangled hair. “Dry your tears and tell us what has frightened you so.”
“It frightens me still, Mrs. Lumbey. He. That man there, lying behind the dress rack. See his legs jutting out like those of a corpse?”
The three of us, who had yet to notice the legs, now positioned ourselves to do that very thing. But the legs were no longer simply fixed in their spot; now they moved. Behind a row of frocks and gowns a man now seemed to be pulling himself up from a prone orientation into a seated one, his identity masked by the wall of vendible wardrobe in front of him. Once drawn up, the legs disappeared altogether.
“I heard a noise,” whispered Amy, her voice quavering. “I thought that it was Mrs. Gallanbile’s cat come in through the cellar window. But that is no cat!”
“Whoever is hiding there,” I sternly commanded the unseen interloper, “kindly make yourself known this instant.”
There ensued the sound of someone struggling to raise himself to his feet. It took a moment for the man of mystery to complete the task and a moment longer for him to step aside of the clothing rack and reveal himself to the four of us.
For a second I felt as if my eyes were playing tricks on me — that it was a ghost standing before me — one come back briefly to commune with the living after a season with the dead. For a brief second I could not believe that my own brother Augustus, holding himself weakly and unsteadily against the pole, which supported one end of the clothing rack, his legs all but buckling beneath him, had materialised into flesh and blood before my very eyes.
“As I live and breathe!” exclaimed Mrs. Lumbey.
“It is my brother Augustus,” I said to Miss Casby to calm her fluttered spirits. “He will not harm you.” I went to Gus, took him by the arm, and led him to a chair.
“Dear, dear man!” said Mrs. Lumbey. “You look as if you’ve been trampled by a coach-and-eight, and have lived to tell the story.”
“Yes, and I feel exactly the same,” replied Gus.
“What is required, you poor dear? Food? Drink? You’ve taken a little rest through the night upon my showroom floor, but that will not do. When you’re able to make the climb, Frederick will take you up to his bed.”
Gus nodded. In a broken, crusty voice, he said, “I should very much fancy a longer, more cushioned sleep, for Beyonders know nothing of Eiderdown.”
As Gus and I shared a look of fraternal affection which for the moment required no appendance of words, Mrs. Lumbey began to issue instructions; Amy was to put a kettle on for tea and her boarder Hannah was to go to the larder and get bread and butter and cold beef and anything else that would provide her famished-looking visitor needed sustenance.
“You’ve come back,” I said to my brother, not knowing what else at that odd moment to say.