The Orchids (6 page)

“Yes, that's true,” I said quickly. The smell of the veal wafted up into my face, churning my stomach. “Well, I'd better get home now.”

Anna turned toward me. “Aren't you going to stay for the parade?”

“My mother is waiting,” I told her, lifting the package. “For dinner.”

“But you must stay, Peter,” Anna said excitedly. “It's no fun to watch parades alone.”

I felt as though the sun had suddenly broken upon my face. “You really want me to?”

“Oh, yes. Please, Peter. Just stay for the parade. It's almost here!”

I turned and saw the band marching briskly toward us, the drum beating loudly, the horns echoing over the brick street, the flutes filling the air with their happy tones.

“It's a fine band,” I said.

“A wonderful band,” Anna said. She bobbed lightly on her feet.

I returned my eyes to the street. Several pedestrians had stopped to watch the parade move by. Some of them lifted their arms and held them rigidly at an angle above their heads.

I laughed. “What are they doing?”

“Saluting the flag,” Anna said matter-of-factly.

I looked at the banner, which was held high by the booted mascot of the band. It showed a design of broken black lines on a field of red.

“That's not our flag,” I said.

“It's my father's flag,” Anna said. Her eyes held firmly to the marchers in the street.

“But that's not our national flag,” I said.

“My father doesn't salute the national flag any longer,” Anna said. “He salutes this one.”

The banner bobbed left and right as the mascot thrust his legs stiffly out, coming closer to us with each step.

“Quick,” Anna said, “help me salute.”

I looked at her. “What?”

“The cast,” Anna said, “it's hard for me to hold my arm up. Help me lift it.”

For a moment I did not move. The idea of touching Anna was so delicious that it frightened me, but I also hesitated because the gesture itself, the outstretched arm and stiffly pointing fingers, seemed ridiculous.

“Hurry,” Anna cried. “Help me, Peter.”

I tucked my left hand just beneath Anna's elbow and raised her arm, lifting my right arm along with hers, saluting as she did, and holding both our arms high in the air as the banner joggled past us — comically, it seemed, and yet with an arrogant confidence in its own future.

A
H THEN,
so that's the fateful nexus: a man may be seduced, may be led to great misfortune by the wiles — innocent though they are — of a little girl. Our young hero, Langhof, lifts his hand in salute because he does not wish to go against his first adolescent love. That is the beginning of all that follows. During the last months in the Camp, when it became clear to everyone that ultimately some answer would have to be made for all the things that had taken place there, during those final days a few men searched their minds for reasons that might serve as excuse, if not precisely justification. These few — for most did nothing — lolled on the steps of the administration building or slogged through the mud and snow muttering questions to themselves: What happened here? How did I get here? How was I led astray?

Their answers, if compiled, would form a pathetic epic of self-pity and self-delusion. Schuster blamed the doctrinaire socialism of his father; Nagel proposed his puny physical stature; Luftmann claimed Catholicism had brought him to his ruin, while Kloppman recalled his readings from Martin Luther. In the end, it all came to the same thing. For denser than the smoke that enveloped the Camp and more powerful than the odors carried within it was our compulsion to dismiss our role as something over which we had no control. Here in the last days crime became mere misfortune, and in the final analysis most of those who even bothered to review their actions during the preceding years came to blame the vermin for their fate: if they had not existed, we would not have had to kill them.

I see Dr. Ludtz's boat sailing back toward shore. It was a short excursion, as they all are. He is afraid to roam very far downriver, suspecting, as he does, commandos skulking in the brush, the thin crosshairs of their rifle sights intersecting on his head. During the great plague of the fourteenth century, the Prince of the Church, Clement VI, secluded himself in a single chamber at Avignon and sat between two huge blazing fires, muttering to an emerald said to have mystic powers. For his talisman Dr. Ludtz depends upon the small automatic pistol that snuggles against his right buttock. He worships the power of technology, particularly the calculus of force, even though against any serious assault his puny weaponry would be of no more use to him than a garland of garlic or a bay leaf dipped in rabbit blood.

I take my pipe from its rack and tamp in a small portion of tobacco. The boat washes up to shore. Alberto and Tomás leap out and steady it for Dr. Ludtz's ponderous disembarkation. His body evinces great disproportion, a gargantuan tuber surmounted by a small, round head filled with the banal ecstasies of Eckhart and inane anecdotes from the literary life.

He moves up toward his unfinished tomb, dismissing Alberto and Tomás with a quick, ungracious flick of his right hand. They nod to him and turn away, free now to cavort with each other like the monkeys across the river, free to discover the rudiments of earth and the energies of youth, free to dream of humid nights with some village Jezebel, their fingers prying at her body, exploring with untutored glee the limits of their empiricism.

Here the body is supreme. It is the temple of all the people's fortune and misery. Here, the heat melts the tortured dualism of Descartes, merging body and mind into one pulsing vessel of succulence or dearth. In temperate climates, men may inhabit some lofty empire of the word, engaging their minds in endless litigations between the spirit and the flesh. But here, amid the swelter that brings the orchids to extravagant command, all is subservient to the tyranny of matter. In the Camp, man and matter became one, fused together in the furnace and the pyre.

Alberto has begun his run. I watch his body twist gracefully through the vines, the great leaves slapping against his bare chest like the spread fans of adoring ladies. Running, he is all speed and muscle, his long black hair fluttering behind him like a stallion's mane. He rushes through the foliage in pursuit of absolutely nothing save the fire and tremor of the run itself.

In the Republic, there is much to be fiery and tremulous about. It is a nation of extremes. What does not reinforce order serves chaos; what does not subdue, enflames. In the cumbersome workings of his brain El Presidente knows at least this much. At the base of all his farcical display lies the remote but obdurate recognition that all that does not uphold the Republic undermines it. And so within the scheme of El Presidente's order the Church rallies the belabored spirit with tales of coming paradise; the schools flounder in a welter of mindless texts and patriotic zeal; the publishers churn out witless and beguiling episodes of upper-class romance; the theaters dapple the night with flickering reels of cowboy vengeance and requited love. And in response, Alberto chases shadows in the bush with a beauty that is innocent and lame.

He reaches the river and plunges in, splitting the surface like a bronze knife. Rising, he waves his arms wildly in the air, as if signaling to something concealed in the jungle. He heaves forward, curling his body downward, and disappears head first into the water, then rises from it again, shaking his head, sending a glittering spray left and right.

Out there, somewhere in the jungle framed by Alberto's uplifted arms, it is said a small contingent of rebels huddle by their fires, picking briars from their mud-caked feet and lice from their matted beards. From time to time, along remote, twisting roads, they make chaotic war on the armed agents of El Presidente's rule. They fire from the brush, which the imported defoliants cannot conquer, and then disappear into the mountain caverns. El Presidente is said to be concerned that their power is growing like a tumor in that body politic which is inseparable from himself. Monday reveals a provincial delegado slumped over the steering wheel of his jeep, a bullet in his brain; Tuesday a remote arsenal is successfully pillaged; Wednesday finds the gowned body of a garroted priest floating face down in the shallow pool of the papal garrison; Thursday the wastrel son of the Minister of Agriculture is thrown from a bridge, bursting the water like a large, flat stone; Friday we are told that a local chief of police was bitten fourteen times by a viper slipped beneath his sheets; Saturday a foreign industrialist is machine-gunned while sipping brandy in a fashionable street café; an army officer is neatly decapitated on Sunday by a thin metal wire strung neck-high across the road. These are the minor but recurring themes in the fugue of the Republic.

Atop this feeble structure, El Presidente sits like a watchful mastodon. Beneath his stolid, immobile figure, all things writhe with impatience or despair. The Church abhors his stable of ravished maids and sodomized young boys. The fledgling intelligentsia cringes at his risible pomp. The lords of moderate but acquisitive estate seethe under the levies he imposes on their greed. The engineers of high technique groan at the clutter of his style. The metropolitan herd withers under the shortages engendered by his squandered wealth, while the rural masses bake in the heat of his indifference. Over all this flammable mass, El Presidente squats, a yellow-eyed Caligula, smothering the fuse.

And in the midst of all of this, Alberto emerges from the water to resume his run. He moves with all the strength at his command, the air beating against him like invisible curtains. He turns suddenly and stops. His head arches back proudly, and he prances in place for a moment, his knees almost touching his chest, his feet thudding forcefully against the ground. Slowly, he brings his head down and turns to face the river. He takes a deep breath, as if gathering all the force of wind into his lungs. Then he explodes forward, his feet ripping at the ground and yet barely touching earth. He runs with all the power of his youth and the speed of his ignorance, runs under the whip of a mindless dynamo through all the engulfing splendor of his years.

Watching him, I sometimes think that if Alberto could be saved, then so might all the world.

D
R.
L
UDTZ
is moving up the stairs toward me. His face is almost soothing in its blankness, a pink and hairless mass, featureless as a wad of gum. For years we toiled together in the Camp, effacing our disparity of thought with an identity of act.

At the top of the stairs he taps at my door, then eases himself in. “Still in the office, Doctor?” he says. “It would be good for you to get out once in a while, you know.”

A wall of heat enters with the open door. “Perhaps.”

“The day is first rate.”

“I can see that. Did you enjoy your excursion on the river?”

“It was wonderful. You should have joined me.”

“Perhaps next time, Dr. Ludtz.”

Dr. Ludtz eyes me suspiciously. “I also noticed — I didn't mention it earlier — but I also noticed that you were up quite late last night.”

“Was I?”

“I could see the lights burning here in your office. I was somewhat worried, you know.”

I can imagine him sitting by his window, peeping through a slit in the shutters at the lights burning in my office, wondering if at that very moment I might be in the hands of some commando unit Arnstein has sent to snatch us both.

“I don't sleep as well as I once did,” I tell him. “Age, I suppose. The arthritis.”

“Very uncomfortable, I imagine.”

“Yes, sometimes. Would you like for me to have Esper-anza prepare something for you?”

“No, thank you, Dr. Langhof,” Dr. Ludtz says. He leans back in his chair. It cracks softly under the pressure of his weight. “Tell me, what do you have in mind for El Presidente?”

“In mind?”

“Festivities. What sort of festivities?”

“The usual arrangements.”

“Nothing special?”

“Everything will be prepared,” I tell him. “You need not concern yourself.”

Dr. Ludtz looks slightly rebuked. “Concern myself? No. Entirely your affair, Doctor. I assure you I have no wish to interfere. Just curious, that's all.”

“Well, as it stands, there will be a dinner, of course. And I intend to invite the entire village for his visit. As you know, El Presidente enjoys large welcoming crowds for his arrival.”

Dr. Ludtz nods enthusiastically. “Yes. Large crowds. A necessity. Anything else?”

“Perhaps some fireworks after the evening meal to light up the sky in celebration. He would no doubt enjoy such a thing.”

Dr. Ludtz grins conspiratorially. “He would probably prefer a comet, don't you think?”

“I cannot provide a comet, I'm afraid.”

Dr. Ludtz laughs rather stiffly. “No, of course not. More's the pity.” He pauses, looking at me cautiously. “Would you mind a suggestion, Dr. Langhof?”

“Not at all.”

Dr. Ludtz smiles happily. “Well, in terms of the actual display, I think it should be done with a concentration upon bright oranges and reds — the national colors.”

In the Camp, Dr. Ludtz was nothing if not meticulous. He had a jeweler's eye for the significant detail. Once I saw him carefully measuring the toenails of three sets of twins who had been provided him. They had been shot in the back of the neck so as not to mar any important physical characteristics. They rested on their backs, naked, their faces perfectly serene, while he examined them tirelessly, making measurements and recording his findings in the spattered data book that lay beside the bodies.

“Well, what do you think of my suggestion?” Dr. Ludtz asks.

“Orange and red. Yes, I think that would be best.”

“Excellent,” Dr. Ludtz says excitedly. He claps his hands.