Dark Benediction

“I have seen to it, my child,” he told her gravely. “Captain Purvis faces court martial in the morning. I have directed it. I have directed too that you be repatriated forthwith, if it is your wish, for this is only common justice after what that monster has done to you. Now however let me implore you to remain with us and quit the forces of godlessness until the war is won and you can return to your home in peace.”

Marya watched his shadowy figure at the far end of the table. He was like Raleigh at the court of Beth, at once mighty and humble. Again she felt the surge of exhilaration, as when she had crawled along the ridge at the river, ducking machine gun fire. It was the voice of Macbeth’s wife whispering within her: Come to my woman’s breasts, and take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers, wherever in your sightless substances you wait on nature’s mischief! It was the power of death in her bosom, where once had been the power of life.

She arose slowly and leaned on the table to stare at him fiercely. “Murderer of my child!” she hissed.

“May God in His mercy—”

“Murderer of my child!”

“Marya Dmitriyevna, it is my deepest sorrow.” He sat watching her gravely and seemed to lose none of his lofty composure. “I can say nothing to comfort you. It is impossible. It is my deepest sorrow.”

“There is something you can do.”

“Then it is done. Tell me quickly.”

“Come here.” She stepped from the table to the edge of the dais and beckoned. “Come to me here. I have secrets to whisper to the killer of my son. Come.”

He came and stood down from her so that their faces were at the same level. She could see now that there was real pain in his eyes. Good! Let it be. She must make him understand. Be must know perfectly well that she was going to kill him. And he must know how. The necessity of knowing was not by any command of Porphiry’s; it was a must that she had created within herself. She was smiling now, and there was a new quickness in her gestures.

“Look at me, high killer. I cannot show you the broken body of my son. I can show you no token or relic. It is all buried in a mass grave.” Swiftly she opened the silk robe. “Look at me instead. See? How swollen I am again. Yes, here! A token after all. A single drop. Look, it is his, it is Nikolai’s.”

MacAmsward went white. He stood like a man hypnotized.

“See? To nourish life, but now to nourish death. Your death, high killer. But more! My son was conceived in love, and you have killed him, and now I come to you. You will give me another, you see. Now we shall conceive him in hate, you and I, and you’ll die of the death in my bosom. Come, make hate to me, killer.”

His jaw trembled. He took her shoulders and ran his hands down her arms and closed them over hers.

“Your hands are ice,” he whispered, and leaned forward to kiss a bare spot just below her throat, and somehow she was certain that he understood. It was a preconscious understanding, but it was there. And still he bent over her.

Come, thick night, and pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell, that my keen knife see not the wound it makes…

Of course the general had been intellectually convinced that it was entirely a figure of speech.

The toxin’s work was quickly done. A bacterial toxin, swiftly lethal to the non-immunized, slowly lethal to Marya who could pass it out in her milk as it formed. The general slept for half an hour and woke up with a raging fever. She sat by the window and watched him die. He tried to shout, but his throat was constricted. He got out of bed, took two steps, and fell. He tried to crawl toward the door. He fell flat again. His face was crimson.

The telephone rang.

Someone knocked at the door.

The ringing stopped and the knocking went away. She watched him breathe. He tried to speak, but she turned her back to him and looked out the window at the shell-pocked countryside. Russia, Nikolai, and even the Ami sergeant who had wanted to go home, it was for them that she listened to his gasping. She lit one of his American cigarets and found it very enjoyable. The phone was ringing furiously again. It kept on ringing.

The gasping stopped. Someone was hammering on the door and shouting. She stood enjoying the cigaret and watching the crows flocking in a newly planted field. The earth was rich and black here, the same soil she had tossed at the Ami sergeant. It belonged to her, this soil. Soon she would belong to it. With Nikolai, and maybe the Ami sergeant.

The door crashed loose from its hinges. Three Blue Shirts burst in and stopped. They looked at the body on the floor. They looked at Marya.

“What has happened here?”

The Russian girl laughed. Their expressions were quite comical. One of them raised his gun. He pulled the trigger six times.