A small crowd has gathered near the cabin. Several of the men carry hefty sticks, improvised clubs, while a number of the women have repurposed items from their kitchens — pans, knives — as weapons. Rainer walks towards them. As he does, they close ranks, raise their makeshift arms. He halts a safe distance from them and addresses one of the men, a tall Swede named Gunnar. He says, “She is gone.”
Gunnar nods. “For good?”
“For good.”
The crowd releases its collective breath. Their weapons dip. Inclining his head to Jacob and the others, Rainer says, “These men and I are going to see to the one who is responsible for this. It would be wise to gather your families and stay inside, tonight. I would not answer the door, no matter who seems to be knocking on it.”
“What about this place?” Gunnar says, pointing to Helen and George’s cabin.
“This is not a fit place for anyone, anymore,” Rainer says. “If it is burned to the ground, it will not be a bad thing. In the morning, though,” he adds. “Tonight, leave it be.”
Shortly after dawn the next morning, Helen and George’s former home bursts into flames. The camp has its own fire brigade, which is usually the model of efficiency, but on this morning, they take their time showing up, and when at last they do arrive, they’re noticeably short of the proper equipment. In fact, all they bring are sledge hammers to knock down any timbers left standing, buckets of sand for the embers, and shovels to spread the sand. For the length of time it takes the blaze to devour the house, the firemen stand with the group of people who have come to watch the conflagration. The smoke that pours off the fire is heavy, almost viscous. Several observers are sickened by its smell, and one boy who stands too close to the plume will be deathly ill by sunset, his skin riddled with what look like toadstools pushing their way out of it. He’s the last fatality of this whole strange affair.
XVII
It’s doubtful any of the company who embarked from the house the night before hears about the boy’s death, or the fire that led to it, for another day or two. Around the time the flames have fully enveloped the house, Rainer, Italo, Jacob, and Andrea are stumbling into their homes, offering mumbled words of reassurance to their wives or bunkmates, and falling into their beds, from which they will not rise again for the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours. Their boots and clothes are sodden, streaked with reddish mud whose color and consistency no one recognized, as no one could identify the dark green leaves whose serrated edges had caught in the men’s clothing. To a one, they moaned and cried out in their sleep, but none of their wives or bunkmates could rouse them. Those wives and bunkmates made excuses for the four to their bosses, despite which, Andrea loses his job. Once they’ve climbed out of their slumbers, the men offer little in the way of explanation, answering most questions with at best a shake of the head. Rainer and Italo both reassure their wives that the worst is over, the danger past, and Clara and Regina set about spreading the word. Free to depart the camp whenever he wishes, Andrea wastes no time in so doing: he packs his bags and leaves right away. If he has a destination in mind, he doesn’t share it with anyone.
As for Angelo, the story that circulates is that he’s run off, taken a handful of axes and lit out for parts unknown. It’s an explanation that’s so patently false, even the folks who know next to nothing about what’s been going on suspect it. Which is not to say that any of them challenges it, makes an effort to ascertain the man’s actual fate. Now that the camp has returned to something like normal, there’s no one in a hurry to disturb that.
What those folks would say if they heard what really became of Angelo, I don’t know. Most likely, they wouldn’t believe it. They’d refuse to believe it. Maybe they’d treat it as an elaborate joke, the shaggiest of shaggy-dog stories. Maybe they’d grow angry, the way people do, sometimes, when they’re confronted with the marvelous, the fantastic, as if they’re upset at the universe for springing this on them.
XVIII
With the exception of Rainer, I don’t imagine any of the men who set out from the camp anticipates what lies ahead of them. Maybe Italo has an inkling of what they’re headed towards, but there’s nothing in Jacob’s experience to prepare him for the night’s imminent events, and I expect the same holds true for Angelo and Andrea. Nor, for the first part of their journey, is there any hint of anything out of the ordinary. It’s a warm night, the air around them beginning to fill with mosquitoes on the hunt for a meal, the air above flapping with bats doing the same with those mosquitoes. The moon’s on the wane, but gives enough light for them to follow the road to the Station, and the Dort house. To either side of them, the Esopus valley is a study in systematic destruction. While the five of them have been at work on the dam and weir, other parts of the project have been moving ahead, as well. Every piece of ground that’s to be flooded has to be cleared of anything that might contaminate the water. That means houses, barns, shops, schools, churches, all have to go, either taken down and relocated, if someone can afford it, or burned to ash and carted away. Same thing with vegetation, from the tallest tree to the smallest weed, it has to be cleared and, in the case of the trees, the roots have to be dug up, as well. Every last grave must be opened, and its occupant removed, repackaged in a new pine coffin, and reburied somewhere else. The only thing that’s allowed to stay is rock, the foundations of some of the houses. I don’t know if you’ve seen photos of the First World War, those battlefields in France and Belgium, but that’s what it reminds me of, that same, almost lunar terrain. If there’s a difference, it’s that the devastation in the war pictures is more chaotic: in the midst of a cratered field, there’ll be a single, untouched apple tree, its branches drooping with fruit. What happens in the valley is methodical, relentless.
It’s possible for the men to judge how far they’ve walked from the camp by the state of their surroundings, the stage of the clearing. By Jacob’s estimate, they’re about halfway on their journey when Italo says, “So.”
There’s no mistaking whom he’s addressing. Rainer says, “So.”
“When the dead woman said her master was the Fisherman, you didn’t ask her any more about him.”
Rainer doesn’t answer.
“Does this mean,” Italo says, “you know him?”
“No,” Rainer says.
“But you know of him,” Italo says.
“Yes,” Rainer says. “Not much, but yes.”
Italo does not ask the obvious question. Rainer goes on, “You have heard of Hamburg, yes? In the north of Germany. It is a port city, to which all manner of people come. It has been for a thousand years. In the later years of the sixteenth century, a man named Heinrich Khunrath lives there. He is a scholar—”
“He is the Fisherman, this professor?” Italo says.
“No,” Rainer says. “Khunrath is interested in alchemy, in magic. He wants to find out whether a man can practice magic and be a good Christian. He is looking for those places where magic and faith meet. In the process of his research, he assembles a remarkable library. It is full of rare books, many of them from distant lands — one of the advantages to residing in an active seaport. I do not think the titles of these books would mean much to you, but there is one, The Secret Words of Osiris, that is the prize of the collection. It is very old.