Caravans

  But I was so close to probing Nazrullah’s secret that I protested, selfishly: “I want to talk with Nazrullah… just a little longer.”

  Stiglitz said without expression, “Pritchard wants to talk, too. To an American.”

  “Forgive me,” I said, and when I took my seat; close to the engineer’s fevered head, I started applying towels, but he merely gasped and rolled his eyes at me. He was very close to death.

  Finally he whispered, “I can’t breathe.” Nur was weeping.

  “I can’t breathe either,” I assured the dying man. “This heat.”

  “With you the cause is different,” he replied lucidly. “You don’t carry a leg that’s beating like a drum. I can feel it pumping poison.”

  I bit my tongue to keep from reminding him that he was repeating my words. I said, “We’re better than halfway through the desert.”

  “I want you to give my wife a message,” he said with painful effort. “She lives in Fort Collins. Damned good woman. Tell her …” He winced, as an almost visible pain streaked across his face, driving him to incoherency.

  I soaked his turban and applied wet rags to his leg. The river water was used up and I proposed to Nur, “We’ve got to use some of our drinking water.” Nur looked at me is dismay, studied the desert ahead, then listened to Pritchard moan. I saw tears start down his cheek and dry to salt in the desperate air.

  “If he needs water, give it to him,” he said in Pashto.

  I poured some of the drinking water over Pritchard’s head and he regained consciousness long enough to dictate jumbled phrases to his wife. She was to consult with a Mr. Forgraves in Denver. The kids must graduate from college, both of them. Then, for some reason I didn’t understand, he went into a long discourse about a new kind of paint he had seen described in a technical journal. It would cure their cellar problems once and for all. Be worth two hundred dollars but he thought she might get it for less.

  “Pritchard,” I broke in after the paint monologue, “I think I’d better get Dr. Stiglitz.”

  “Don’t. If I’m gonna die, let me die with my kind, not some goddamned Nazi.” He started shivering. Then a dreadful sweat broke out across his face and little rivulets of perspiration accumulated, to be evaporated instantly in the swirling heat.

  “I’m burning up!” he shouted. Nur Muhammad, who heard the conversation, began to cry openly and finally stopped the jeep.

  “I will not drive a man to meet death,” he sobbed as he stood bareheaded in the sun. “If death wants this man, death must come … here.”

  In a kind of frenzy I saw the jeep ahead pulling away, so I blew the horn repeatedly. “Knock off the noise, you kids,” Pritchard cried.

  Nazrullah caught my signal and whirled about on the blazing dasht. “What the hell’s the matter with you?” he stormed at Nur.

  “I will not drive a man to meet death,” Nur stubbornly repeated. Taking a small rug from his gear, he spread it on the sand and, kneeling westward to Mecca, prayed.

  “He looks awful,” Nazrullah said and Dr. Stiglitz hurried over to check the delirious engineer.

  A strange, desert prayer came to my lips, silently: “Oh, God, spare my countryman.” At the mumbling of these words, John Pritchard died.

  I looked distractedly at Nazrullah, who shrugged his shoulders and said, “It was a chance. Nobody thought it was a good chance.” The callousness of this remark made me want to storm at the incompetents who had permitted this disgraceful suicide, but that obligation was taken from me by Nur Muhammad, who wept, “You’re all criminals. Bringing this doomed man onto the desert.”

  This was too much. I shouted, “If you thought that, why didn’t you say so?”

  “Nobody asked me,” he sobbed, and it occurred to me that if he had once supported my argument, we never would have left Chahar and Pritchard would now be alive. But I knew why he had remained silent: he had been afraid to contradict his social superior, Nazrullah, so now we were on the desert with a dead body to deliver … remorselessly assaulted by the noonday heat.

  Nur Muhammad was quite incapable of driving, so I took charge of the second jeep, the one with the corpse, and we headed for Kandahar, but when we reached about forty miles an hour on the shale I suddenly saw looming ahead a field of gotch, which I swerved sharply to avoid, recalling the soldiers who were dead for not having done so, and I threw the jeep against a series of jolting rocks which snapped the front axle.

  Nur Muhammad went to pieces, berating himself for the fact that he was not at the wheel in this difficult terrain and cursing fate because the corpse had been thrown out of the jeep and now lay in horrible contortion on the dasht. Nazrullah, in contrast, was superb. He quieted Nur, absolved me of blame, and helped Dr. Stiglitz load the corpse into the workable jeep. He then quietly studied his map and informed us, “The Caravanserai of the Tongues must be a little distance to the north. We’ll tow the broken jeep there and decide what to do.”

  But while we were attaching two ropes Dr. Stiglitz said, “Why don’t we drive back and take the front axle from the jeep of the two soldiers?”

  Nazrullah stopped sharp, dropped the ropes and stood in the blazing sun considering the alternatives the German had suggested. Clutching his beard he mumbled, “Why didn’t I think of that? Stupid. Stupid.” He walked away from us, positioning his opened hands as if they were two jeeps. For a long time he strode back and forth across the desert, then returned to us.

  “For three reasons we must go directly to the caravanserai,” he said. “First, I’m not sure we could find the other jeep if we wanted to.”

  “It’s right back there.” I pointed.

  “It’s more than forty miles,” he corrected, “and sometimes you can’t find things a second time in the desert. Second, we don’t have enough water to double back and forth. But most important, suppose the sharif’s scouting party has already been there? Suppose we go back and find that the jeep is gone?”

  Saying no more, he completed tying the ropes, then hauled us up to the Caravanserai of the Tongues, into which we limped at four that afternoon. His note was still fastened to the door.

  We pushed the jeep into one of the honeycomb rooms, then held a council in which Nazrullah explored the alternatives available to us. We decided that two men in the good jeep must try to get back to Qala Bist, taking Pritchard’s body along. It was no use risking four lives. The other two men, with what food could be spared, must remain at the caravanserai with the damaged jeep until such time as a rescue party could return. “There’s only one question,” Nazrullah concluded. “How shall we pair up?”

  Learning from the past, I responded quickly: “I’ll write an order and accept full responsibility. Stiglitz and Nur will stay here. Nazrullah and I will drive to Qala Bist.”

  “Reasonable,” Stiglitz grunted.

  Nur Muhammad, still shaken, wrecked that plan. He sniffed, “It’s my duty to stay with Miller Sahib.”

  “Your duty is discharged,” I replied in Pashto.

  “No! You are in my care,” Nur insisted.

  “The whole argument’s irrelevant,” Nazrullah said. “If anyone must cross the desert it’s got to be the Afghans. Miller and Stiglitz, stay here. Nur, jump in the jeep.” Nur started to voice some new objection, but Nazrullah shouted a phrase remembered from his American education. “For Christ sake, scram!” When Nur was settled, Nazrullah and I hiked with the water jugs to the stagnant pool that provided a meager supply for the caravanserai. “Can you live on this stuff for three or four days?” he asked.

  “You get back here before then,” I joked, but I remembered the terror that Nazrullah felt about being on the desert with only one jeep, so I took all the jugs of sweet water and gave them to him. As I did so I said, “Keep this crate away from the gotch.”

  As he drove off he assured me, “When I come back to get you, Miller, I’ll answer all your questions about Ellen. That’s a promise.” He headed the jeep back toward the desert he dreaded, and I last saw him
speeding eastward, his lone flag whipping in the furnace-like air.

  At dusk Dr. Stiglitz and I ate a frugal meal and drank a little of the brackish water. We could exist on it, but the prospect was not attractive. We then went out to watch the blazing sun sink behind the dunes and sat together in the refreshing coolness until the great stars appeared, and the white moon. We were about to retire when Stiglitz whispered, “What’s that?” And we heard a soft sound, as if a human being were creeping upon us.

  We remained very silent, and then saw moving into the moonlight a small group of gazelles, more graceful now, perhaps, than they had been in sunlight. They had been feeding somewhere to the north and were returning to the safety of the desert, where none of their predators could surprise them. They formed such a contrast to the ugly death we had witnessed, that both Stiglitz and I watched them for many minutes. Then, with an unexpected clap of his hands, he startled the little beasts and they leaped and spun in the moonlight; vanishing at last over the dunes.

  “Exquisite,” Stiglitz whispered, and for the first time I felt some kind of identification with the German. I still wanted to know why he had made the incredible decision of hauling Pritchard onto the desert, and I was about to question him on this when he said, “It’s after nine. Let’s get ready for bed.” We entered the vast caravanserai and lit our Coleman lamp, studiously avoiding the ghostly pillar at the far end of the fort. But it was there.

  I said, “You surprised me at Chahar when you refused to make a medical decision … when the facts were so clear. Once Pritchard carried that leg into the desert … he was doomed. Why didn’t you support me?”

  “Was he doomed?” Stiglitz asked cautiously.

  “Of course he was. Even I saw that.” Something in the way I spoke shattered the empathy we had felt while watching the gazelles. Perhaps Stiglitz suspected that when I returned to Kabul I would use Pritchard as an excuse for not recommending him to our ambassador.

  A darkness came over his face and he asked contemptuously, “So even you could make that diagnosis, eh? Well, let me tell you, my young friend, I couldn’t make it. And I’ve been a doctor damned near as long as you’ve been alive. There are many diagnoses you’re not qualified to make, Herr Miller.”

  Without warning he rose and stamped off to the pillar, taking with him our only carving knife, which he scraped vigorously against the plaster, as if driven by some harsh compulsion.

  “Nazrullah said it’s a national monument,” I warned from the opposite end of the room.

  “It’s a universal monument,” he corrected me, “and I’m going to see what’s inside.” He spoke with determination, then called, “Come here, Miller. It’s a human skull.”

  Against my better judgment I walked slowly down the room, lugging the Coleman lamp, which Dr. Stiglitz grabbed from my hand to hold against the pillar. Behind the inch of plaster I could see a rounded bone. “Is that a skull?” I asked.

  “Yes. How many bodies would you estimate are in this pillar?” Before I could answer he did a most ghoulish thing. He planted the lantern in the middle of an open space and said, “This will be the central pole.” Then he lay flat on the earth, his toes near the lantern, and commanded me: “Mark where my shoulders come.” When the scratches were in the earth, he shifted his body so that I could mark off a new shoulder, and so on around the imaginary pillar.

  “Well,” he concluded with some satisfaction, “that makes thirty bodies jammed into one layer. Now how many layers?” He stepped back to calculate the number of tiers required to reach the roof. “Perhaps forty-five layers.” He paused and a slow look of horror crossed his face. “My God! There’s over thirteen hundred people in that pillar.”

  We sat on the floor, surveying the grisly monument, and I was struck by the grip it had on Stiglitz. Finally I asked, “When Pritchard died, did I see you crossing yourself?”

  “Yes.”

  “You were a Catholic?”

  “In Munich, yes.”

  “Yet you turned apostate?”

  “Of course. Since I’m to live here the rest of my life.”

  “Why?” I asked bluntly.

  “Surely you’ve been told, Herr Miller,” he said with contempt. “That’s why this pillar fascinates me. Gives me hope.”

  “What do you mean by that?” I asked.

  “It proves what I’ve always suspected. The things we did in Germany … the really dreadful things, are what men have always done.” Before I could express my disgust at excusing the civilized man Adolf Hitler by citing the barbarian Genghis Khan, he added, “In each civilization some men run wild. If we’re lucky, we control them early. If not …” He pointed to the pillar.

  We spent the hours before midnight discussing this theory, and he marshaled strong support for his idea that what he had seen in Germany was a recurring sickness which might strike any nation at any time. I argued against this theory of inevitability, but he was adamant in extending it.

  “To be specific,” he said, “I haven’t been to America but I’ve seen your films and read your books. I’m positive that in your country there would be no difficulty in finding S.S. volunteers for the jobs of collecting Negroes and throwing them into concentration camps.”

  “Wait a minute!” I cried, condescendingly.

  “Herr Miller!” he replied, pulling my face close to his. “Don’t you know in your heart that you could do to the Negroes what we did to the Jews?”

  I said quietly, “Don’t judge us by the fact that we have a few sick people.”

  “You have an endless supply,” he assured me. “We turned ours loose on Jews. Some day you’ll turn yours loose on Negroes.”

  “But never Buchenwald,” I resisted.

  “In the beginning, never,” he agreed. “Your sensibilities would not permit it. Your Bill of Rights … But after two or three years of total propaganda … the president, churches, newspapers, cinema, labor unions … don’t you understand that you would find many Americans eager to shoot down Negroes with machine guns?”

  “No,” I announced confidently.

  “Herr Miller, you’re an idiot,” he stormed. To my surprise he leaped to his feet and rushed to the pillar, which he banged with his fist. “Do you think that Genghis Khan started with this pillar? No. He marched step by step until this pillar was nothing. I could find in any American city you care to mention men who would be glad—joyous, shall we say —to be led step by step until they were building this pillar with living bodies. Do you think we Germans started out one day by building pillars? No, Herr Miller, no! Do you think I started with this?” He beat the pillar until I expected his knuckles to come away bleeding.

  Breathing hard, he came and sat beside me. It was now past midnight and we were both worn by the tragic day on the desert, but the pillar kept us awake, and Stiglitz said softly, “Do you really think, Herr Miller, that the reports the Allied governments have on me started with a pillar like that grisly thing? Oh, no! I was a fine, respectable doctor in Munich, married to the daughter of an important businessman … a member of the church. My wife and I saw certain promotions available through the Nazi party and we joined. Many prudent men and women did. It was easy at first. The Jews, whom we all despised”—he told me this in a confidential voice, as if I would appreciate why any reasonable man would despise Jews; indeed, as if our hating them together made us brothers— “were merely to be sequestered. That was all, sequestered.

  “One day they asked me to check the health of the Jews they rounded up, and I did so, very carefully. Believe me, Herr Miller, if I found a Jew who needed an expensive medicine, I said so, and there are many Jews alive today solely because I prescribed expensive medicine for them.” He nodded in confirmation of his own plea, and I judged that he had often conducted this dialogue with himself. There were Jews living today because of what Dr. Stiglitz had done for them, of that I was sure.

  “If I were ever brought to trial,” he assured me with great confidence, “the health records of the
City of Munich would show case after case where I saved the lives of Jews. It’s all there … in the reports.”

  He looked at me beseechingly, a tired, pudgy man with turbaned head, wrinkled brow and worried eyes. I thought, perhaps, that he was perspiring, but he was sitting with his back to the lantern, and all I could see was shadow. Persuasively, cautiously, his words resumed: “Unexpectedly other problems arose. A Jew was to be certified mentally deficient so he could be sterilized. The government wanted me to designate a complete stranger as three-quarters Jewish so his property could be confiscated. I’d never seen him before, but he was obviously Jewish … you can always tell a Jew. So step by step my soul was corrupted.”

  He was driven by some deep hatred back to the pillar, which he hammered with his open hands. “Miller,” he cried in a hoarse shout, ‘’do you suppose that the man who applied this plaster over living, breathing mouths started with this job? Do you believe that you’re immune?”

  “To killing Jews, yes!”

  “Ah, but the Negro is your Jew. Are you immune there?”

  “Of course!” I shouted in disgust.

  “Herr Miller, you’re a liar! You’re a self-deceiving liar!” He beat the pillar again. “This is your pillar, too. This is the pillar of Americans and Englishmen and Germans alike. I couldn’t have built this alone, you know.”

  To my embarrassment his voice began to choke, as if he were going to burst into tears of confession. Then, thank heavens, he gained control of himself and rejoined me on the floor. It was now about two in the morning and in the flickering light of our Coleman lamp I could see his drawn face, weary yet driven to further revelation, and in some strange way he looked as he had that night in the square at Kandahar when he was condemning the dancers. I could hear his voice speaking the words but this time applying them somehow to his own history: They’re cruel little sodomites. When they come to town they create a great evil. What ugly passage in his own life among the Nazis did that repeated phrase illuminate?