The Orchids (15 page)

“Many prisoners,” Rausch whispered.

As the prisoners dropped from the cars, the soldiers began shouting at them: “Line up by fives! By fives! Quick now! Warm meals are waiting!”

The people continued pouring out of the cars: old men in suits, women with their heads covered by thick shawls, a group of children all dressed in their school uniforms of little red berets and short blue jackets, a man hobbling forward on a crutch. The air filled with the bustle of their disembarkation, their cries and moans and indiscriminate yells. Some scurried about looking for lost relatives, lovers, friends. Others merely stood with their arms folded, staring into the blinding white light.

All around them the soldiers continued their shouts: “By fives! Line up by fives!”

Some of the people began to assemble themselves as the soldiers instructed. But the general confusion seemed to paralyze the rest. Then the soldiers fell upon them, marching into the stunned crowd, beating them with truncheons. Some fell to the ground. Others merely staggered to the side. Some began to shout frantic questions at the assaulting guards. Others instantly fell to the ground and began to weave and wail. An old rabbi dropped to his knees and began digging a hole with his hands. Above him, a guard stood laughing. A woman spread a large quilt on the snow, laid her baby on it, and began to diaper the child. A soldier rushed forward and pulled her to her feet. “No time for that now!” he shouted. Then he pushed her into the moving crowd. The baby continued to lie on its back, watching the dark figures pass above it. It seemed amused, and for a moment it smiled.

Langhof turned to Rausch. “Who are these people?”

Rausch peered at the smoke rising from his cigarette. “A little of this. A little of that.”

Langhof turned his eyes back toward the crowd. Some of the people were still straggling out of the cars, stunned by the harsh light, rubbing their eyes. The dead were pushed out a little way from the tracks and stacked in piles, like cords of wood. From the top of one of the cars a guard shouted: “Quick now! There's warm soup waiting! Don't delay! It'll get cold!”

In fives the people began to file past a man who watched them closely and signaled left and right with a conductor's baton. From the caduceus on his cap, Langhof could tell that he was a doctor. He watched as the people moved under the doctor's gaze, following the signal of his baton, one column moving to the left, one to the right, as he directed.

Langhof could feel his eyes pulling the whole scene nearer to him. And after a moment the people seemed to march through a dark tunnel, the pupil of his eye. Marching, their heads bent forward, they seemed to move through him, staring downward at the stars.

H
ERE IN THE
R
EPUBLIC
it is difficult to be wise. For the face of the Republic is like the face of El Presidente in Casamira's portrayal — Goyaesque, with bloated cheeks, bulbous nose, bulging eyes set out from the cheeks like marbles on a board of Chinese checkers. This is the paradise of Dorian Gray, a perfect landscape of green shade where orchids spread their petals in the crystal air. And underneath, far underneath, below those upper layers of black soil where the worms seek cool and moisture, below the tarantula's crusty mortuary and the rocky shades of the iguana, below this is the pit dug for our madness. If it were not bottomless, we might sound it. If it were not a labyrinth, we might trace its pattern. But ours is a feeble labor against the relentless mystery of crime.

Dr. Ludtz, as he watched the vermin descend from the train, suppressed a little yawn. It had, after all, been a long journey. Langhof, on the other hand, sensed that his journey was just beginning.

“Is something amiss, Dr. Langhof?” Rausch asked.

Langhof shook his head quickly.

“Your face. It's pale.”

Langhof leaned back in the automobile seat and tried to adjust his body to its irregular contours.

“Are you sure you're all right, Doctor?” Rausch persisted.

“Yes.”

Rausch removed his cigarette and exhaled into the frigid air. Watching him, Langhof could not tell where the smoke ended and where his breath began.

“What were you told at the Institute?” Rausch asked.

“Very little,” Ludtz replied, although the question had not been directed at him.

“Is that so?” Rausch asked softly. He looked at Ludtz for a moment. “Well?” he said, turning his eyes toward Langhof. “Do you have any questions?”

Langhof folded his arms over his chest and said nothing.

“I have a question,” Ludtz said.

Rausch did not turn his eyes from Langhof. “No questions, Dr. Langhof?” he said.

Langhof did not move. He shifted slightly, then turned his lips inward, as if sealing a compartment.

Rausch smiled and turned to face Ludtz. “What is your question, Doctor?”

“Where will we be staying?” Ludtz asked.

“In the medical compound,” Rausch replied dully.

“I see.”

“Do you have any objection, Dr. Ludtz?”

“No.”

“It's really quite adequate. Certainly not as comfortable as an apartment in the capital, but adequate. More than adequate, actually. Considering the surroundings.”

Langhof turned and watched the last of the prisoners as they moved away from the train in two ragged columns.

Rausch stretched his arm across Ludtz's chest and touched Langhof's shoulder. “How did you happen to be assigned here, Doctor?” he asked.

“I don't know,” Langhof said.

Rausch smiled pointedly. “Curious, isn't it?” He turned to the driver. “Enter the Camp, Corporal,” he said.

The corporal bent forward and started the engine.

“Drive carefully,” Rausch said, his eyes returning to Langhof. “The roads are treacherous here.”

The automobile moved forward. Langhof raised his hand and pulled his cap down lower upon his head. The shadow of the bill fell across his eyes.

“To some extent, you will be treating the prisoners,” Rausch said. “But only partly. You will mainly be doing medical research.”

Ludtz smiled brightly and jabbed Langhof softly. “Good, that's what we wanted,” he said.

Rausch's voice held to the same bleak monotone. “The research is varied. And you should be aware that the facilities for it are rather primitive. This is not the Institute, after all. And of course, there's this little business of the war. We can't expect the government to spend enormous amounts on laboratories and supplies. And even those supplies we requisition often never get to us. Sabotage. There's a good deal of that.”

Langhof glanced at Rausch, and for a moment lost himself in studying the terrible correctness of his face. It was somewhat pale and very smooth, with a proper, angular nose and deep-set eyes — a face not at all like the vulpine exemplars of the New Order who strutted about the capital.

“Where are you from, Rausch?” Langhof asked cautiously.

“Where am I from?”

“Yes. Are you from the capital?”

“No.”

“Where, then?”

Rausch looked at Langhof sternly. “I am from here. Nowhere else.”

The car suddenly skidded on the ice, the rear end sliding to the left. The corporal frantically struggled to right it.

“Careful, now,” Rausch said to him.

The corporal glanced around and Langhof could see a blush rising in his face. Rausch saw it too and tried to ease the boy. “Just be careful, Corporal. No harm done.”

“Sorry, sir,” the corporal sputtered helplessly.

“No harm done at all,” Rausch replied gently. He turned to Langhof. “We try to make things run smoothly here,” he said.

I
F WE KNEW
where things began, we would know where to end them. Now, from my verandah, I can see the jungle in all its misery and splendor. I have, during these long years, learned the many cries of the monkey and can distinguish panic from ecstasy. But it has not always been so.

Langhof, rubbing his gloved hands together as the Camp approached slowly like Birnam Wood, knew nothing of how he had come to this moment in his life. And perhaps such moments are themselves nothing more than those points in our lives that we most deeply misperceive. Surely Langhof, as he watched the Camp loom in the distance, wooden barracks enclosed by rusty stretches of barbed wire, felt nothing of the climactic, but only dread rising in him once again. For he was no more than a ball set rolling on an uneven tabletop, dipping this way and that with the contours of circumstance. In his state of profound consternation, he could find the will to ask only one trifling question.

“Have you a handkerchief, Dr. Ludtz?”

Ludtz, ever accommodating, fumbled through his overcoat pockets. “Yes, here.”

Langhof took the handkerchief and quietly blew his nose into it. Then he lifted his collar against the wind.

Beside him, the oblivious Dr. Ludtz turned to Rausch with a look of dismay. “Are we actually going to be
living
in the Camp?” he asked.

“Yes,” Rausch said. “You seem surprised by that fact.”

“But aren't staff quarters usually outside the prison?”

“Prison? This is not a prison. This is a different matter altogether, Doctor. And you will be living inside the Camp.”

The car pulled up to the gate. Two guards stood before it, holding machine guns loosely in their hands.

“Open the gate,” Rausch said.

The guards did as they were commanded. The iron gate opened and Langhof passed through it. As he did so, a light snow began to fall. The snow was wholly without symbolic importance, but not to a romantic; for it is part of the blindness of romance to see life, and finally history, as a series of telling moments properly adorned by the imagery of fall or redemption, and to neglect all that lies in between, all that generates, debases, or inspires.

And so the car passed through the gate, the corporal guiding it carefully. A little farther along, he turned the car to the left toward a group of prisoners huddled in the mud. He honked the horn. “Get out of the way, you shit!” he screamed and glanced back at Rausch for approval.

“Just keep a steady pace,” Rausch said.

The car proceeded through the Camp and finally stopped in front of a freshly painted building.

“These are your quarters,” Rausch said. He stepped out of the car. “Come.”

Langhof and Ludtz got out of the car and followed Rausch up a short flight of stairs that led to the entrance.

“This is where you will be living from now on,” Rausch said. “You will each have your own room.” He opened the door and paused, allowing Langhof and Ludtz to pass in front of him.

“It's like a barracks,” Ludtz said.

“More or less,” Rausch said. “Are you disappointed, my dear doctor?”

“Oh, no,” Ludtz said quickly. “Not in the least, I assure you. One cannot expect luxurious accommodations in a war zone.”

“Precisely,” Rausch said evenly. He nodded toward the hallway. “Down there.”

Langhof and Ludtz walked down the hall until Rausch stopped them at a particular door. “This is your room, Dr. Ludtz,” he said.

“Excellent,” Ludtz said.

“You haven't seen it yet,” Rausch said.

“I'm sure it will be fine.”

Rausch swung the door open and Ludtz looked inside. It was a small, tidy room with a single metal-framed bed with a drooping mattress covered with military blankets.

“Very nice,” Ludtz said. “Warm.”

“Your bags will be brought to you shortly,” Rausch said.

Ludtz stepped into the room. “Thank you. Yes, very nice. Very nice, indeed”

Rausch closed the door and turned to Langhof. “Your room is farther down the hall,” he said.

Langhof followed Rausch a few paces, then stopped when Rausch did.

“This is it,” Rausch said. He opened the door onto a room almost identical to that of Dr. Ludtz. “Not exactly the capital, is it?”

“It is satisfactory,” Langhof said. He stepped into the room, looked around, glanced at the window, started to move toward it, then suddenly stopped himself.

“You may look out the window,” Rausch said with a little, mocking laugh.

Langhof spun around. “What is your function here, Rausch?”

“I'm in charge of discipline,” Rausch replied coolly. “You might say I am a student of control.”

“I have no wish to be one of your subjects,” Langhof said sharply.

Rausch smiled. “Subject? What an odd idea.”

Langhof turned away. “Please, leave me alone.”

“Subject?” Rausch said. “What do you think this is, Doctor? Let me assure you that we are very serious here. You cannot begin to know just how serious.”

“I've heard rumors,” Langhof said. He was still staring at the bed.

“They're all true,” Rausch said. He paused a moment, studying Langhof's figure as it was silhouetted by the window. “You are an interesting man, Doctor. The vermin — I know all I need to know about the vermin. But you — now that's a different matter.”

Langhof turned toward Rausch. “How so?”

“You must be filled with questions at this moment,” Rausch said. “And yet you stand there and say nothing.”

“All right,” Langhof said, “I'll ask a question. Those people coming off the train, what becomes of them?”

“They are all killed. Most of them right away. The others die sooner or later.”

Langhof shook his head. “That does not seem possible.”

“The trick, of course, is not to think of them as people,” Rausch said. He smiled. “You must take a lesson from the priests, Doctor. You must learn the value of abstraction.”

“Ridiculous,” Langhof said.

Rausch shrugged. “They really aren't people, you know. They are simply physical material that history is working on.” He smiled. “Besides, you will have very little to do with that. You are a scientist, after all.”