The Orchids

  “I don’t know,” Langhof said weakly.

  “Don’t you think that should bother you?”

  “Yes,” Langhof said.

  “Tell me something, Langhof,” Ginzburg said. “When you’re doing your dissections, what are you thinking?”

  “Thinking?” Langhof asked, puzzled.

  “Yes. Thinking. What is on your mind?”

  “Nothing,” Langhof said. “I don’t think about anything during the laboratory work.”

  “Really? Nothing at all?”

  “I just go through the motions,” Langhof said.

  “And so it doesn’t offend you, the absurdity of these experiments? I’m not talking about the people on the table. They’re dead. And there are so many. I’m not talking about moral offense. I mean the experiments themselves.”

  “They are ridiculous,” Langhof said. “In three years we have learned absolutely nothing.”

  “And yet you do them studiously? Meticulously?”

  “What choice do I have?”

  “None whatever, I imagine,” Ginzburg said. “I’m just curious about your mind, Langhof, about what you’re thinking when you’re standing over the table with somebody’s guts in your hands.”

  Langhof flinched.

  “Do the words bother you?” Ginzburg asked. “Would you prefer me to call them intestines?”

  Langhof said nothing.

  “I don’t mean to taunt you, Langhof,” Ginzburg said.

  Langhof shrugged. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “So what is on your mind during the experiments?” Ginzburg asked.

  “I told you. Nothing.”

  “Amazing,” Ginzburg said. He stood up and walked to the window. “When all of this is over, the air will be filled with explanations. Every sort of mind will wallow in this pit. Then they will proceed to vaporize it. They will turn it into mist. I’ve read enough to know what they will do. They will wrap it in the rhetoric of evil. Or they’ll explain it through some crude formula of economic determinism. They’ll bury it under ridiculous notions of Man’s Inhumanity To Man. Ridiculous.” He turned toward Langhof. “But where does it all come from, Langhof? Where does the responsibility begin?”

  “If I had not taken this reassignment …” Langhof began.

  “What reassignment?”

  “To the Camp.”

  Ginzburg turned back toward the window. “Do you think that’s where it began for you, by taking a reassignment?”

  “I don’t know,” Langhof said. “But if I had not taken it, then I would not be here now.”

  “Your being here or not being here is the least of our misfortunes, Langhof,” Ginzburg said.

  “I didn’t mean to suggest —”

  Ginzburg drew a Star of David in the mist on the window. “My father was a rabbi,” he said. “He was a very studious man, scholarly. I spent my youth going through his library. He was very proud of me for a while.” He turned to Langhof and smiled. “Then things changed. You see, Langhof, it was not my father’s intent for a nightclub comic to spring from his loins.”

  “No, I don’t imagine it was,” Langhof said quietly.

  Ginzburg watched the mist reclaim the window. “One day a few boys came into the synagogue. They hauled my father out of his study and made him take the Talmud from the cabinet. They spread it out and told him to spit on it. He did. They told him to keep spitting. He did that too. He spat until his mouth was dry. He told them he couldn’t spit anymore, that he had no more saliva. They laughed and said they had plenty of saliva and told him to open his mouth. Then they spat into his mouth so that he could keep spitting on the Talmud.”

  “You saw this?” Langhof asked.

  “No,” Ginzburg said, “he had kicked me out of the house by then. But even if I had been there, what could I have done?” He nodded toward the window. “This place is a circle, Langhof, and it revolves around one point. Survival.” He shrugged. “That much will be understood later, that people will do anything to survive. But so what? I sold my ass to Kessler. You conduct absurd medical experiments. We both do it to survive. So what?”

  “We have no choice,” Langhof said.

  “Quite right,” Ginzburg said. “Once we’re here, we have no choice. But responsibility must begin somewhere, Langhof. It must all begin somewhere.”

  “But how can we see it?” Langhof asked.

  Ginzburg said nothing.

  Langhof reached into his pocket and withdrew a small, black notebook. “It’s all in here,” he said.

  Ginzburg glanced at the notebook. “What?”

  “Everything,” Langhof said. “Everything that’s happened here for the last three years. I have it all down in the greatest detail.”

  Ginzburg’s eyes drifted from the notebook to Langhof’s eyes. “That’s your ticket out, then,” he said softly.

  Langhof stared at Ginzburg, puzzled. “Out of what?”

  “Out of responsibility.”

  Langhof held the book toward Ginzburg. “Read it. You’ll see what I’ve been trying to do.”

  “We don’t need compilers, Langhof,” Ginzburg said. He rubbed his eyes with his fists and suddenly seemed very weary. He slumped down upon the bunk. “If you have nothing more, Doctor,” he said, “I’d like to sleep for a while.”

  Langhof continued to hold the book toward Ginzburg. “Please, read it.”

  Ginzburg shook his head. “No.”

  “But why not?” Langhof asked.

  “Let’s just say that my eyes are tired.”

  Langhof pressed the book into Ginzburg’s hands. “Please,” he said quietly. Then he stood up and left the room.

  Langhof did not see Ginzburg again for two days, and when he did something odd happened. Langhof was in the dissecting room with Ludtz and Kessler. He was standing over one of the metal tables, the body of a young woman spread out in front of him. His coat was red with blood, and little slivers of the woman’s spleen dangled from the tip of his scalpel. Suddenly Ginzburg entered the room, carrying a box of supplies. As he walked toward Kessler, he glanced at Langhof, and at that moment Langhof’s hand began to tremble. He was mortified, utterly mortified, not because of the absurdity of what he was doing, but because someone he thought as intelligent as himself had observed him doing it.

  THE BOW of the canoe gently skirts the bank, bumping it slightly, and I take the rope and tie it to the tree beside the water. Across the river I can see the first hint of dawn, a soft, bluish light that fades into blackness above the mountain ridges. Far to the south, El Presidente squirms beneath his silken sheets, his mind tumbling through kingdoms of moist thighs. And only a few meters distant, Dr. Ludtz wheezes into the white light of his room, his eyes squeezed shut, his lips muttering softly in the forbidden tongue.

  The clay gives slightly under my feet as I make my way up the embankment from the water’s edge. All day the river seeps indifferently into the surrounding earth, licking at it, eating it away. A thousand years from now, the hill upon which my compound rests will be nothing more than a million pebbles whirling in the waves where the river meets the sea.

  At the stairs to my verandah, I pause and draw in a long, slow breath. Someday I will climb them for a final time. I will look out from the heights, my hands squeezing the railing, and watch the thunderclouds tumble over the ridges or the flamingoes glide over the green, reedy plain. And I will say, “Enough,” and close my eyes.

  During all his years in the Camp, Langhof thought that he would find that point where men would say, “Enough.” He saw them inject blue dye into the irises of children’s eyes, and he thought: This is the limit. Beyond this, they will not go. Then he saw them time castrations with a stopwatch, madly ripping at the testicles with scalpels and surgical scissors, and he thought: This is the limit. They will not do more than this. Then he saw them tie the ankles of pregnant women together and watch them go into the agony of labor, writhing on the floor until they died. And so he came to know that there was no limit a
nd that that was why Ginzburg did not willingly take his little book of recorded horrors. The little comedian knew that everything he had recorded there was little more than introduction to man’s possibilities.

  And yet Langhof continued to believe that something had to be said about the Camp and that perhaps the accumulation of detail was the best way of saying it. In his little black book there would be no editorialization. The prose would be simple and direct, an empiricist’s worksheet. In his foolishness he hoped that Ginzburg would be able to understand what he was attempting to do, and he was insanely curious as to how the little comedian had received his work. Consequently, when he was instructed to go to the railway station to pick up a package of incoming medical supplies, he chose Ginzburg to go along. The gates of the Camp opened for them and they passed through, riding together in a battered jeep.

  Ginzburg twisted himself around and looked back at the closing gate, then straightened himself in the seat. “How did you manage to arrange this?” he asked.

  Langhof watched the road, the fingers of his hands drumming lightly on the steering wheel. “I told Kessler I might need some help in case we ran into partisans on the road.”

  Ginzburg smiled. “I have acted my part brilliantly,” he said. “Kessler thinks that if we ran into partisans I would fight for you.”

  “Yes,” Langhof said. He took his cap from his head and placed it on the seat between them. “That book I gave you,” he asked nervously, “did you read it?”

  “Yes,” Ginzburg replied. He kept his eyes on the road.

  Langhof waited a moment, but Ginzburg added nothing. “Well, what did you think?” he asked finally.

  Ginzburg turned to look at Langhof. “You are a curious man, Langhof,” he said. “What could you possibly expect me to think?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, what do you expect to accomplish by jotting down all these details about the Camp?”

  “Someone has to do it,” Langhof said defensively.

  “Why?”

  “The world has to know what happened,” Langhof said. “All the details, I mean.”

  Ginzburg laughed. “The world will know the details, my dear doctor,” he said. “You may be sure of that. I think you have another idea in mind.”

  Langhof looked at Ginzburg curiously. “Other idea?”

  “You are trying to redeem yourself,” Ginzburg said. “It’s quite clear. You want the world to know that you suffered great agonies of conscience, and that these agonies were every bit as horrible as the physical suffering in the Camp.”

  “I don’t think that’s entirely it,” Langhof said weakly.

  “Perhaps not,” Ginzburg said. “But just in case, let me tell you something about the agonies of conscience, Langhof. They are a joke. No one would trade the worst of them for a toothache.” He ran his fingers through his hair. “Do you think I don’t have these so-called agonies? I do. Every time Kessler slips his cock up my ass, my conscience recoils. But as much as he revolts me, as much as I revolt myself, I wouldn’t trade my place with anyone in the general Camp population.” He leaned forward, his eyes burning into Langhof. “Would you, Doctor?”

  “No,” Langhof said quietly.

  “So let’s just drop the nobility, if you please,” Ginzburg said. He leaned back in his seat. “I’d rather just enjoy the day, if you don’t mind.”

  Farther down the road, Langhof brought the jeep to a halt and waited while a farmer herded a group of cows across their path. He turned to Ginzburg. “There’s something I want to tell you.”

  Ginzburg watched as the farmer slapped the cattle with a long rod.

  “For a long time I lost touch with everything,” Langhof began. “I mean everything in the Camp. It was as though it didn’t exist for me. I was there, but I wasn’t there. Do you know what I mean?”

  “I envy you,” Ginzburg said lightly.

  “Please listen,” Langhof said. “It’s important to me.”

  “I’m sorry,” Ginzburg said, turning to Langhof. “Go ahead.”

  “Some months ago Kessler came into my room and said there was something he wanted me to see,” Langhof began again. “I followed him outside to the courtyard behind the medical compound. There were a lot of people, naked people, sitting in the snow, freezing. It was a freezing experiment.”

  Ginzburg casually returned his eyes to the cattle. “People freeze all the time.”

  “It wasn’t that,” Langhof added quickly. “I really don’t know what it was. I may never know. But something broke through to me. The Camp broke through, somehow. So I started walking around, taking notes, recording everything in that little notebook you seem to find so ridiculous.”

  “I don’t find the notebook ridiculous,” Ginzburg said. “Only useless.”

  The last cow made its way across the road, and Langhof leaned forward and started the engine. The farmer smiled gently and waved to them as the jeep passed.

  “Friendly fellow,” Ginzburg said, watching the farmer’s face. “The sturdy peasant, the backbone of Europe.” He turned to Langhof. “How far to the railway station?”

  “Only a few kilometers,” Langhof said. “But what I was saying. You know, about the Camp, about watching those people. I don’t know what to make of it.”

  “Perhaps a nice soufflé,” Ginzburg said with a wink.

  “Please don’t joke,” Langhof pleaded.

  Ginzburg turned back to face the road. “So serious, Doctor,” he said. “It’s not good for the heart.” He looked at Langhof. “Have you ever been to London?”

  “No,” Langhof said dully.

  “Beautiful city. Lots of nightclubs, that sort of thing. Plenty of places for a comedian to try out new material.”

  Langhof pressed the accelerator. “I’m trying to learn something,” he said, “about this place.”

  “Perhaps there’s nothing to learn. Have you ever thought of that?” Ginzburg asked. He took a deep breath. “It happened. It’s still happening. No need to chase your tail endlessly about it.”

  Langhof shook his head despairingly. “I don’t believe you mean that.”

  “I’m tired of talk,” Ginzburg said. “By the time you talk about something, it has already happened, so what’s the point?”

  Langhof pulled a packet of cigarettes from his coat and offered them to Ginzburg.

  Ginzburg withdrew a single cigarette and put it in his mouth.

  “Take the pack,” Langhof said.

  Ginzburg laughed. “The pack? Don’t be so charitable, Doctor. I probably have more cigarettes in my room than you do.”

  Langhof returned the pack to his pocket.

  “Don’t treat me like your personal object of guilt, Langhof,” Ginzburg said. “I don’t like that. In fact, I loathe it. Your problem is with yourself, not me.” He lit the cigarette and took in a long draw. “What are we picking up in the village, anyway?”

  “General medical supplies,” Langhof replied.

  “Do you know what kind?”

  Langhof shrugged. “Antibiotics. Aspirin.”

  Ginzburg grinned. “Phenol?”

  Langhof’s lips tightened. “Yes.”

  Ginzburg blew a shaft of white smoke into the rushing air. “You’re depending upon the Allies, aren’t you?”

  Langhof looked at him. “For what?”

  “To get you out of the Camp.”

  Langhof nodded. “Of course. Aren’t you?”

  Ginzburg flicked the cigarette from his fingers. “The Camp is a rumor mill. We hear that Paris is in flames, that there is nothing still standing in London. What is left of Europe, I wonder?”

  Langhof swerved to avoid a large puddle of icy water. “How long did you live in London?”

  “Only a few months. A brief engagement at a small club in South Kensington.”

  “Did you like it there?”

  “The audiences are dull,” Ginzburg said. “Too much warm beer and tasteless food. They have the worst food in the world. E
verything tastes like gruel.”

  “You prefer Paris?” Langhof asked.

  Ginzburg smiled. “I was almost married in Paris.” He turned to Langhof and winked again. “I may have relatives there.”

  “Really?” Langhof asked. “Uncles, aunts?”

  The corners of Ginzburg’s mouth crinkled mischievously. “No,” he said, “but perhaps a little boy or girl with a rather odd sense of humor.”

  They arrived in the village a few moments later. The train was puffing at the station, white steam billowing from the engine.

  “You won’t try to escape, will you?” Langhof asked almost playfully, as he stepped from the jeep.

  “To where, Doctor?”

  Langhof nodded and walked into the station. He returned with a large package and dropped it behind the front seat.

  Ginzburg glanced at the box. “Well, I suppose we’ve done our assignment for the day,” he said.

  Langhof shrugged and pulled himself in behind the wheel. “I wish it could have taken longer.”

  “It was a pleasant excursion,” Ginzburg said.

  Langhof started the engine, backed the jeep slowly into the road, and began to drive back toward the Camp.

  After they had left the village, Ginzburg shifted around and looked back at it in the distance. “Pretty in the snow,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  Ginzburg continued to watch the village. “I’ve played a few little towns like that,” he said. He turned to face the road. “The worst ones are in Switzerland. The Swiss always make a bad audience for a comedian.”

  Langhof continued to watch the road. “No sense of humor?”

  Ginzburg glanced at Langhof. “None whatever. There’s a saying in the trade. ‘The Swiss only laugh for comedians who hand out money.’”

  Langhof smiled slightly. “Well, I’m not much better. I never had much of a sense of humor.”

  “It’s something you’re born with,” Ginzburg said. “You either have it or you don’t.”

  “Were you always … well … a comic?”

  “It’s the only thing I ever wanted to be,” Ginzburg said. “It’s quite an honored profession, you know, being a fool. Shakespeare loved us, of course, and Chaucer was a comic to the bone.”