truly devoted to muscle. Bruno was terrifying because he truly looked willing and able to kill people, without hesitation and without regret afterward. Bruno looked truly feral. He looked old and beaten, too, like a very sick wolf. He looked as if he had chewed off his own leg and eaten it and enjoyed the flavor.
For a man driving to his own execution, Bruno was remarkably cheerful and philosophical. She’d never met anyone bent on death who seemed so truly pleased about the prospect. He kept making little wisecracks to Therese, in some criminal south-of-France argot that baffled Maya’s wig translator. Quite often he used obscenities. This was the sort of language no one used nowadays. Obscenity had simply gone out of use, vanished from human intercourse, gone like the common cold. But Bruno spoke obscenely and with relish. This verbal transgression would always upset Therese no end. She never failed to scold Bruno while showing unmistakable signs of arousal. It was like a table-tennis game between the two of them, and appeared to be their version of courting behavior.
The three of them ate in the car. The condemned man ate a hearty lunch. They finally drove up into some dense patch of forest north of the Czech border. This didn’t seem to be the actual Black Forest, but this seemed to matter not at all. The trees were leafing out and there was a warm spring breeze. The car—it belonged to Emil’s ex-wife—protested bitterly at being ordered into the shrubbery at the side of the road. But there they left it.
Bruno retrieved a folding shovel and a heavy valise from the boot of the car. Then they set out on foot. Bruno knew very well where he was going.
They emerged in a small hillside meadow. Bruno opened the sharp ceramic shovel, hung his hat and jacket neatly from a branch, and began digging. He removed a wide circle of sod and carefully set it aside. As he dug, he began reminiscing.
“He says this is an old secret resting place,” Therese translated. “Romany people used it a long time ago. Later, some other people put some troublemakers here.”
Bruno wiped sweat from his brow. Suddenly he spoke up in English. “A man,” he pronounced, “does his own work in this life.” He looked at Maya and smiled winningly.
Bruno dug until he hurt too much to dig anymore. He sat down ashen faced and puffed at a gunmetal inhaler. Therese dug for him. When she got too tired, Maya had a turn. She’d dressed in flats and pants and a light sweater, not too bad for gravedigging. The only fashion touch was the furoshiki. She’d set it for olive and khaki. Something not too alluring.
They followed Bruno’s direction. The result was not a normal grave. It was a conical pit with a round rim the size of a manhole cover. Bruno tossed out a few final wedges of dirt, and then explained to them the theory and craft of concealed burials.
The crux of the matter was rapid and complete decomposition. Truly high-speed decomposition caused the corpse to bloat rapidly. This side effect would disturb the surface of the grave. Therefore it was necessary to saw through the ribs up both sides, and to ventilate the intestines.
Bruno opened his valise. He had thoughtfully brought all the proper equipment. It had seen plenty of use. He had an old-fashioned ceramic bone saw, battery driven. He also had some kind of horse-doctoring veterinary hypodermic, with a great spike of a steel needle that could have stitched sheet aluminum.
Bruno now disrobed. He was covered from neck to groin in tattoos. Snakes. Roses. Handguns. Mottos in gutter Francais. At least Therese had never lacked for things to read.
Bruno heartily pinched his own goosefleshed hide to show where the needle should go in. Into the thighbones. Into the meat of the calves. Into the biceps. Into the buttocks. Into the skull. He had a little canister of some highly carnivorous rot bacterium. Eating its way out from the injection sites, the decomposer would cook him down like tallow.
After he was settled nicely into the pit, they would have to shovel the dirt around him and carefully replace the lid of sod. It was best to leave a dome of extra dirt below the lid. This looked suspicious at first, but it would look much better in the long run because of the settling. The leftover dirt had to be scattered in the forest. And of course they must remove his clothes and the tools. Nothing metal to be left around the site. Nothing to attract attention.
“Ask him if he has any metal inside of him,” Maya said. “Dental work, anything like that?”
“He says he’s not old enough to have dental work made of metal,” Therese translated. “He says the only thing on him made of solid iron is his manhood.” She began to cry.
Bruno took two canisters the size of his thumbs from the pockets of his discarded pants. He then climbed, naked and peaceable, into his grave.
He stood there, leaned back casually, and shook the first of the thumb-sized objects in his fist. He sprayed a fine layer of black paint over his right hand. He beckoned to Therese, calling out something in the argot. She came over, trudging, reluctant, afraid. He gripped her hand gently with the black-painted hand, shook her hand firmly, pulled her close, whispered, kissed her.
Then he called Maya over. He kissed her as well. A long and deep and contemplative and very bitter kiss. He trapped the nape of her neck with his left hand. He didn’t touch her with the painted black hand.
At last he released her. Maya gasped for breath, stumbled back, and almost slid into the pit with him. Bruno watched Therese for a moment. He seemed to be fighting tears. Therese was sprawled on the ground, watching him, sobbing bitterly.
He then picked up the second object, an inhaler. He stuck the muzzle into his mouth, squeezed the trigger, and sucked in a breath. He tossed the thing aside like a dead cigar, and went into instant convulsions. He was dead in five seconds.
“Get it off!” Therese screamed. “Get it off me, get it off!” She was waving her black-stained hand, clamping her wrist left-handed.
Maya began scrubbing the painted hand with Bruno’s discarded jacket. “What is it?”
“Lacrimogen!”
“Oh my goodness.” She scrubbed harder, but rather more carefully.
“Oh, I loved him so much,” Therese howled, rocketing into hysterical grief. “Oh, I thought he’d beat me again and have sex with me in the grave. I never thought he’d give me the black hand. I wish I was dead.” She broke into frantic Deutsch. “[Where is the poison? Spray it in my mouth. No, let me kiss him, there must be poison on his tongue to kill a hundred women.]”
She began crawling toward the lip of the grave, exploding with drug-propelled grief. Maya caught her by the ankle, and hauled her back. “Stay away from him, I mean it. Get away from him, and keep away. I’m going to cut him up now.”
“[Maya, how can you! How can you saw him up and make him rot? It’s not some piece of meat, it’s Bruno!]”
“I’m sorry, darling, but once you’ve lived through the great plagues like I have, you really do learn that when people are dead, they’re just plain dead.” She could have bitten her tongue for that confession, but it didn’t matter; Therese was too far gone, beyond listening. Therese began to howl till the woods rang, great horrid wails of primal bereavement and anguish.
Maya found a sheet of alcionage in Therese’s backpack. It was pretty mild stuff, alcionage, so she reeled off six of them. Therese made no resistance when Maya stickered her neck. The impetus of her grief kept her rocking and moaning in a fetal position, clutching her tainted hand. Then the tranquilizer sandbagged her.
Maya fetched out the last of a mineralka and gave Therese’s hand a thorough wet scrubbing. It was nasty stuff, that spray-on lacrimogen. You could murder somebody with it easily. She could hardly imagine a defter way to kill.
She walked over to the lip of the grave. Bruno was still dead. A little more dead, if anything. She closed his eyes for him. Then she filled the hypodermic.
“Well, big guy,” she told him, “rest easy. You’ve found yourself a little girl who is truly happy to do this.”
It was dark by the time she was done. It had been a very nasty job. It was like some macabre parody of medical practice. But it was enough like medical practice that it felt like honest work.
Therese had recovered. Therese was young and strong. Young people could whip their way through more moods in a day than old people managed in a month. Therese tottered back with Maya to the car.
“Where’s his suitcase?” Therese said, red-eyed and trembling.
“I put it in the boot with all the clothes and tools.”
“Get it out for me.”
Therese searched through Bruno’s case with frantic eagerness. She came up with a long rectangular tray of
