Lev Ruach spat at Burt, but the wind carried it away. “You son of a bitch!” he cried. “You foul Nazi bastard! I read about! You were, in many ways, an admirable person, I suppose! But you were an anti-Semite!”
7
Burton was startled. He said, “My enemies spread that baseless and vicious rumor. But anybody acquainted with the facts and with me would know better. And. now, I think you’d…”
“I suppose you didn’t write The Jew, The Gypsy, and El Islam?” Ruach said, sneering.
“I did,” Burton replied. His face was red, and when he looked down, he saw that his body was also flushed. “And now, as I started to say before you so boorishly interrupted me, I think you had better go. Ordinarily, I would be at your throat by now. A man who talks to me like that has to defend his words with deeds. But this is a strange situation, and perhaps you are overwrought. I do not know. But if you do not apologize now, or walk off, I am going to make another corpse.”
Ruach clenched his fists and glared at Burton; then he spun around and stalked off.
“What is a Nazi?” Burton said to Frigate.
The American explained as best he could. Burton said, “I have much to learn about what happened after I died. That man is mistaken about me. I’m no Nazi. England, you say, became a second-class power? Only fifty years after my death? I find that difficult to believe.”
“Why would I lie to you?” Frigate said. “Don’t feel bad about it. Before the end of the twentieth century, she had risen again, and in a most curious way, though it was too late…” Listening to the Yankee, Burton felt pride for his country. Although England had treated him more than shabbily during his lifetime, and although he had always wanted to get out of the island whenever he had been on it, he would defend it to the death. And he had been devoted to the Queen.
Abruptly, he said, “If you guessed my identity, why didn’t you say something about it?”
“I wanted to be sure. Besides, we’ve not had much time for social intercourse,” Frigate said. “Or any other kind, either,” he added, looking sidewise at Alice Hargreaves” magnificent figure.
“I know about her, too,” he said, “if she’s the woman I think she is.”
“That’s more than I do,” Burton replied. He stopped. They had gone up the slope of the first hill and were on its top. They lowered the body to the ground beneath a giant red pine.
Immediately, Kazz, chert knife in his hand, squatted down by charred corpse. He raised his head upward and uttered a few phrases in what must have been a religious chant. Then, more the others could object, he had cut into the body and removed the liver.
Most of the group cried out in horror. Burton grunted. Monat stared.
Kazz’s big teeth bit into the bloody organ and tore off a large “Chunk. His massively muscled and thickly boned jaws began chewing, and he half-closed his eyes in ecstasy. Burton stepped “up to him and held out his hand, intending to remonstrate. Kazz grinned broadly and cut off a piece and offered it. He was very surprised at Burton’s refusal.
“A cannibal!” Alice Hargreaves said. “Oh, my God, a bloody, stinking cannibal! And this is the promised after-life!”
“He’s no worse than our own ancestors,” Burton said. He had recovered from the shock, and was even enjoying – a little – the reaction of the others. “In a land where there seems to be precious little food, his action is eminently practical. Well, our problem of burying a corpse without proper digging tools is solved. Furthermore, if we’re wrong about the grails being a source of food, we may be emulating Kazz before long!”
“Never!” Alice said. “I’d die first!”
“That is exactly what you would do,” Burton replied, coolly. “I suggest we retire and leave him to his meal. It doesn’t do anything for my own appetite, and I find his table manners as abominable as those of a Yankee frontiersman’s. Or a country prelate’s,” he added for Alice’s benefit.