The Orchids (27 page)

“But there's no need for this,” Langhof pleaded. “It's over. It's all over! Can't you see that?”

“Nothing's over,” Rausch said. “We have to take it to the bottom this time.” He turned toward the guards and nodded. They began positioning their weapons. Langhof could hear a groan rising from the ditch.

“Rausch, please,” he said, “think about what you're doing. For the rest — I don't know — for you there may have been reasons for everything. But no more. It's over. There's no reason for this.”

“Only cowards take just one step, Langhof,” Rausch said.

“Do you think it takes courage to kill this way?”

“Under these conditions — knowing what's to come — absolutely.”

“Please, Rausch, don't do this.”

Rausch readied his pistol. “You have to take it through to the end, Langhof. Otherwise, you fail.”

“But this makes no sense, Rausch,” Langhof said.

Rausch smiled. “None of it ever did.”

“Please. Rausch, you must listen to me. You must —”

“Draw your pistol, Doctor,” Rausch said evenly.

“Me?” Langhof said, astonished.

“Yes, you. Draw your pistol.”

“No,” Langhof said.

Rausch raised his pistol and pointed it steadily at Langhof's head. “Draw your pistol,” he said quietly. “You can aim it at the vermin, or you can put it in your mouth, but draw your pistol.”

“No,” Langhof whispered.

Rausch clicked the chamber into place. “If you think this is some joke, you're wrong. I will kill you right now, Langhof. I will kill you right here.”

Langhof stood rigidly in place.

Rausch smiled. “They are groaning in the ditch, Doctor. Imagine the hell they're going through. You can end it for them by drawing your pistol. I don't care where you put it.”

Langhof listened to the wailing. It was growing louder and louder, clinging to the trees like rotting corpses. But over the wail he could hear something much stronger, the beating of his heart. He wanted to live.

“Draw your pistol,” Rausch said.

Langhof unsnapped his holster and slowly drew his pistol from it.

“Good,” Rausch said. “Now step forward.”

Langhof stepped to the brow of the ditch, his eyes instantly searching out Ginzburg. He saw him lying down with his hands crossed behind his head, his legs stretched out and crossed, the heel of one foot resting casually on the toes of the other. His eyes were staring off into the sky, as if he were thinking of what he might like to do later in the afternoon. He was whistling, but Langhof could see that his body was trembling too.

Rausch stepped forward next to Langhof. “Fire!” he shouted.

The guards opened fire, and the prisoners began to twitch and fall as the bullets raked them. Langhof held his pistol toward the ditch, but he did not pull the trigger.

Rausch watched the pistol shaking in Langhof's hand. He smiled. “Good enough,” he said, “I wouldn't want to demand too much.”

Langhof kept his pistol in place. He could see Ginzburg's body still lying in place. Dead.

“All right, Langhof,” Rausch said, “let's go get another batch, shall we?”

Langhof whirled around to face him. “What?”

“You heard me.”

“You've proved your point, Rausch,” Langhof said.

“Do as I order.”

“No.”

Rausch stared evenly at Langhof. “Let's not go through this again. It's getting tedious.”

“No,” Langhof repeated.

“Come now, my dear doctor,” Rausch said. “The New Order has only a few more minutes to bequeath whatever gifts it can to mankind.”

Langhof felt the pistol jerk forward instantly. He did not feel the pressure of the trigger as he squeezed it. The bullet struck Rausch in the throat, and he fell backward into the snow. The last gasp of air rushing through the hole in his neck sounded like the gurgling of a child.

I
T IS
MORNING NOW.
I can smell the food my servants are preparing for El Presidente. Tomorrow the feast will be set on the tables beneath the striped tent, and should El Presidente come in Casamira's guise he will taste a bit of everything. While the rest of us stand at our seats, he will circle the table, dipping his spoon into every bowl, turning the fruits and vegetables over his tongue, nipping at the spiced meats, sipping a single swallow of each juice and wine. Then, when he is satisfied, he will generously bid all to join him and the feast of his assumption can begin. When the meal is over, El Presidente will have the remaining food thrown to his dogs. They have been trained to fight for it, and for the next few minutes El Presidente will laugh and slap his belly while the dogs tear at each other's throats.

In the world that calls itself developed, those born between clean sheets find beauty in portraits of naked women reclining drowsily on great burgundy pillows. They find beauty in misty lakes reflecting pastel skies. They find beauty in stern, immobile faces bordered by neatly trimmed Vandykes. In the deep placidity of the developed world, beauty finds expression in that sense of delicacy and restraint which is meant to pluck the chords of quiet contemplation.

But here in the Republic, the principles of aesthetics take on a more robust character. Here El Presidente, the arbiter of art, finds beauty in the frenzy of his dogs, finds something uplifting and sublime in the simplicity of their appetites and the purity of their violence.

On the day I fled the Camp, I did not expect to discover a new aesthetic principle. Under the illusion that by killing him I could kill the things for which he stood, I had shot Rausch in the throat. The guards around the ditch watched me in a state of profound confusion, but they did not move. I thrust the pistol in my coat pocket and quickly walked away. I went back to the Camp, much of which was burning by then, clambered up the stairs of the medical compound, and took the box of diamonds from the shelf in my room. I tucked them under my coat and ran outside. I saw Ludtz whimpering in the muddy snow and pulled him up by the arm and took him with me. I did not know where I intended us to go. We ran on and on, and as the Camp disappeared behind us, as the sound of the guns and the smell of the smoke dissolved with distance, we entered a field of inexpressible beauty. It was as if the Camp had fallen behind the curvature of the earth and we were left alone in the forest. The trees were etched black against the sky, leafless, their raw branches outlined with small, rounded banks of snow. It was a world of simple colors, a bleak, wintry landscape that might have been drawn by some dour Norwegian melancholic. I fell to the ground, dragging Ludtz with me, my boots plowing up two gullies in the snow. I remember that the barrel of my pistol still seemed warm, although it could not have been, and the crunch of the diamonds as they slid to the opposite side of the metal box sounded like a single shake of the maracas. To the moralistic imagination, these two figures, Ludtz and myself, might compose a perfect representation of the devastated soul: Here they sat, Joseph K., bereft even of his castle, and his partner, the absurd Dr. Ludtz, a panting Punch slouching against a tree, the bill of his torn cap dangling ludicrously at his ear. Here, then, the New Order in its ruin.

And yet, something in that moment was richer than anything I had ever known. During those few moments while we sat in the snow, I came as close as I have ever come to an epiphany. It was, I think now, the extreme silence of the place coming suddenly after such tumult, and its stark, relentless clarity coming after so many years of smoke and ash. For a moment I believed that it was in such a place that solemnity was born. And although this nonsensical and romantic notion could be quickly cast off, something still remained and rose within the midst of it: a reverence for the deeply serious. If there are moments in a life that may alter the categories by which we perceive life itself, then perhaps it is best that they be born out of this reverence; not a sudden revelation, nor a flash of insight, but only the weary working toward a precious value of grave and abiding seriousness, and a respect for the endless labor that is both its origin and its legacy, and that leads finally to the simple conviction that it is a moral responsibility to be wise.

I
SEE
J
UAN
moving through the rippling heat toward the verandah. From the bottom of the stairs he looks up at me worriedly.

“El Doctor Ludtz está muy mal,” he says.

“Sí.”

“Muy mal, Don Pedro,” Juan adds with gentle insistence.

I rise from my chair and start down the stairs. Juan offers his hand, and I allow him to ease me down to the ground. In Spanish, I tell him that I will look in on Dr. Ludtz. He nods his appreciation.

At the cottage, I tap lightly at Ludtz's door and it opens before me. Dr. Ludtz is lying on his back, breathing in short, painful gasps.

“How are you, Dr. Ludtz?” I ask.

He does not respond. His eyes are closed. The sheet draped over him is damp. For a while he kept two canaries in the empty cage that stands near his bed. One morning he awoke to find that both had died. “Look at that,” he said to me worriedly. “Just like that.” He was frightened, even a little mystified that death could come so quickly, and, old man that he was, he saw in every death the shadow of his own.

I shake his body lightly. “Dr. Ludtz?”

His eyes dart about under the closed lids, and his lips part slightly, but he says nothing. The lips close.

“Dr. Ludtz?” I repeat.

His head shifts. A part of the pillow case clings to the moisture at the back of his neck. There was a time when I believed that he might one day wake up to find his mind tattooed, though not his hand.

“Do you need anything, Dr. Ludtz?” I ask.

“Ich kann nicht …” Dr. Ludtz breathes, but the sentence trails off and is covered by a rattling wheeze.

I pour a glass of water and put it to his lips. They tremble slightly but do not open to receive it. In El Caliz it is the custom to take the dying from their fetid, steamy cottages and lay them out under the Spanish moss, so that when it moves in the breeze, the flies will be driven from the face.

I pull a chair up to the bedside and sit down. It is, I think, one of our more kindly customs to insist that no one die alone.

Dr. Ludtz opens his lips, and I put the rim of the glass to them. He flinches away from the glass, as if slapped.

I lean back in my seat and notice that Juan has taken it upon himself to open the shutters. The light that falls through them is very harsh and bright. I rise and close them once again. In this place, if Dr. Ludtz should suddenly open his eyes and see light, he would think himself in heaven.

“Ich …” Dr. Ludtz mumbles. “Ich …”

I lean toward him. “Was, mein Freund?”

“Ich …”

“Ich bin hier, mein Freund,” I tell him.

Dr. Ludtz's hands close and open, close and open, as if he were reaching for ropes to pull him back to earth.

“Ich bin hier,” I tell him. “Was kann ich tun?”

Dr. Ludtz does not respond. His lips close tightly and begin to turn bluish. Blue, as I recall, was his favorite color. He used to say it was the shade that eased his nerves, the shade of peace.

I turn and see Esperanza standing in the doorway. She says nothing but lifts a severed chicken's head in my direction, the blood dripping on the floor.

I wave her away.

“Para el doctor,” she says.

“No,” I tell her.

“Para el doctor,” Esperanza repeats. She does not move from the doorway.

I rise threateningly. “No!”

Esperanza frowns resentfully, steps back slowly, and disappears behind the door. If I were to leave Dr. Ludtz unattended, she would slip back into the cottage once again, open his mouth, and place the chicken's head in it.

“Ich bin nicht …” Dr. Ludtz mutters. He does not finish the sentence.

During our first days at El Caliz, Dr. Ludtz sat sullenly, squatting behind a tree, raking his bald head with trembling fingers. Later he gave his grief expression in an art as unadorned as the tumblings of his brain. On canvas after worthless canvas he drew figures with his brush. Sometimes they stood before hazy swashes of green, which represented trees, sometimes before squares with crude windows, which represented houses or churches or schools. Always three figures with long hair. His wife and two daughters.

“Ich kann nicht …” Dr. Ludtz whispers.

I met her once, his wife. She was a large-boned woman with a curiously delicate face. It was clear that Dr. Ludtz thought her immensely beautiful, though she was rather plain except for two lambent blue eyes. We all sat together and drank a few steins of beer in a rathskeller a few blocks from the Institute. It was a trivial conversation, but as Ludtz began to feel the affects of the alcohol, he grew somewhat suggestive in the gestures he made toward her. Soon they rushed off to their apartment, tottering toward the door, comically bumping against the tables of other patrons. It was never Ludtz's way to court a reluctant lover.

I lean forward and ask if he would like some water.

He does not hear me.

I take a handkerchief from my pocket, dunk it in the water basin on his table, and wipe his forehead. His eyes seem to steady for a moment under the closed lids.

“Ich kann nicht …” Ludtz begins again. I cannot.

But what is it that he cannot do? If suddenly he were to open his eyes and say, “Ich kann mich nicht verzeihen,” I cannot forgive myself, it strikes me that I would love him until I died. But this he will not do, because his mind is too woolly to understand its own monstrosity. In this, he is like so many of the others. The Minister of Air sneers from the witness stand, batting away the prosecutor's insistent questions with a cynical flippancy as damnable as himself. The Commandant of the Camp stands in the shadow of the gallows and declares himself a kindly family man who never personally harmed anyone. And in the bowels of Jerusalem, among the tortured survivors whose specificity engendered all his enterprise, the Obersturmbannführer and former traveling salesman for the Vacuum Oil Company declares himself the product of Kantian philosophy. Dead to thought when they began, they remain dead to thought in their squalid termination.