The Orchids

PICTURE EL PRESIDENTE standing on one of the majestic turrets that rise above the palace. Picture him peering out into the night as his soul fills with that peculiar afflatus which comes when one identifies himself with the creative forces of history. If he does not look to the north — which he never does, because he cannot bear melancholy — he will see the lights twinkling in his impoverished suburbs. Out there, in the comforting distance, his subjects carry on the twin responsibilities of good citizenship: to work and to adore.

But what is the nature of the night he sees? Because he is a simpleton, he cannot be moved by its symbolism. Because he is a wastrel, he cannot see it as a time for rest. Because he is a debaucher, he does not need its darkness to inspire his loins. What is left, then, for El Presidente in regard to night? Nothing. Neither peace nor mystery, but only dread of the sleep it inevitably brings, that brief loss of consciousness which El Presidente abhors. Night ends each day with a terrible intimation of oblivion, suggesting, as it must to all great egotists, that nature is forever out of tune with their desire.

After the first day of work in the Camp, Langhof longed for sleep. For him the loss of consciousness became something wholly to be desired, a treasure beyond price. He lay on his bed, twisting, turning, his eyes clamped shut. But the little engine of his mind refused to close down. He tried to read, but the book seemed to dissolve before his eyes. He paced, tramping back and forth across the narrow room, the naked bulb swinging above his head like a pendulum.

“I heard you walking about,” Rausch said as he opened the door.

Langhof spun around. “Don’t you ever knock?”

Rausch smiled. “Don’t you need your sleep, Doctor?”

Langhof noticed that even at this late hour, Rausch remained in his immaculate black uniform. “I might ask you the same question,” he said.

Rausch walked past Langhof and stood by the window watching the distant pillar of smoke rise from the orange glow of chimneys. “What did you learn about creation today, Doctor?” he asked.

Langhof turned toward Rausch. “This attitude of yours — this —”

Rausch slowly eased himself back from the window. “What attitude is that, Doctor?”

“This scoffing,” Langhof said, “it could get you into a lot of trouble one day.”

Rausch smiled. “Trouble? Could it indeed get me into trouble, do you think?” he asked softly. Illuminated by the bulb, his face seemed almost to glow. “What kind of trouble?”

“You know what I’m talking about,” Langhof said. “What’s to keep me from reporting you?”

Rausch laughed lightly and turned back toward the window. “A lovely light, this corona that edges the chimney-tops. Almost a halo.”

Langhof sat down on the bunk. “What’s to keep me from turning you in, Rausch?”

Rausch did not turn from the window. “For what? I do my duty, as do you.” He shifted to face Langhof. “How many women did you slice up today, Doctor? Five?”

Langhof turned away from Rausch’s gaze.

“Ten? More than that? Twenty?”

Langhof stepped to the door, his back to Rausch.

Rausch allowed his eyes to drift back toward the window. “Well, the numbers are unimportant in any case,” he said. “The facts are the same. You stood at a table and sliced up a few women. Then you took their babies out of their wombs. You examined these unfortunate children. You scrutinized them under the light. You probably even jotted down a few inane and useless notes just to be on the safe side. Am I right, Doctor?”

Langhof whirled around angrily. “And what did you do, Rausch?”

Rausch’s eyes did not leave the window. “I killed perhaps a thousand people,” he said casually, “then incinerated them like so much rubbish. That smoke, the smoke here in the room, that’s them.”

Langhof shook his head. “Unbelievable that this could be happening.”

“Not in the least,” Rausch said quietly.

Langhof stepped over to him. “Why do you keep looking out that window?” he asked.

Rausch turned to face Langhof. “Do you know what happens when a star collapses, Doctor? It implodes. Everything falls into the pit of itself. That is what we are doing, imploding. This is the whole journey of civilization at the moment when it passes through its own rectum.”

“Ridiculous,” Langhof said. “This place has nothing to do with civilization.”

“We went as far as we could, and now we are racing back,” Rausch said. “This is the bottom, the suicide of culture.”

Langhof stepped back and sat down on his bunk. “This is just the Camp,” he said. “It is not the whole world.”

Rausch smiled. “Really? Do you think so? Do you think this is just some vile spot on Europe? Do you think that we are isolated in what we do here, that we are alone?”

Langhof stared evenly at Rausch. He could feel his hands clench the army blanket beneath him. “Yes, I do.”

Rausch laughed. “I’m afraid you are quite wrong, Doctor.” He paused, glanced toward the window, then back to Langhof. “The people, the vermin, how do you think they get here? Do you think they simply show up with their baggage at the Camp gate?” He shook his head. “They come by train, my dear doctor, and there are lots of little men who run the trains. They know what’s on them, but they make them run anyway. They give the proper railway signals. Then there are those who mend the tracks. And others who build the platforms.”

Langhof could feel his fingers eating into the blanket. “Perhaps, but …”

Rausch touched the collar of his uniform. “Very nice, isn’t it? Sleek. A beautiful attire. It was made by someone else who knew — at least partly — what it stood for. They may have agreed, they may not have. In the end, you see, it didn’t matter.” He walked over to the bunk and stood over Langhof. “Then there are the people who make the flags and the bugles and the boots. The people who carry the mails and make the mail pouches. The people who make rubber and steel, who censor the books and dismiss the intransigent faculty members.” He sat down slowly beside Langhof, took his cap from his head, and dropped it into his lap. His hair shimmered in the light. “All the little people who do the million tasks that allow the New Order to reproduce itself each day. They are here with us. Not soldiers. Certainly not Special Section. And yet they are out there, doing their work, drawing their pay, swilling down their beer in the rathskellers, fornicating in their tiny rooms, breeding the next generation of themselves.” Rausch looked at Langhof. A small, bitter smile played on his lips. “Civilization. No, Langhof, the Camp is not a cancer that can be surgically removed. It is the center of a spider’s web and its strands stretch everywhere, to everyone.”

Langhof stood up and walked to the window without looking out. Then he turned to face Rausch. “And what about you, Rausch?” he said. “You’re different. You’re not like the rest.”

“Different? Oh yes. Haven’t you noticed? We all are. None of us is like ‘the rest.’ But we do the same things, don’t we? You and Kessler and Ludtz. All of you did precisely the same thing today.”

Langhof lowered his head.

“We are at the bottom,” Rausch said, “and we have to see it through. We have to touch the very bottom this time, so that we will always know where the bottom is.” He paused, watching Langhof. “Do you understand?”

Langhof said nothing.

Rausch stood up and watched Langhof sternly. “Do you know how you got here?”

“I was reassigned.”

Rausch laughed. “Reassigned? All right, we’ll start there if you want. Why were you reassigned?”

“I don’t know.”

“I do.”

Langhof raised his head and faced Rausch. “Why then? Why was I reassigned?”

“Because you were noticed at the Institute. A jokester, that’s what they said, a person who could be counted on to make light of things. Just the right attitude for a place like this.”

“Ridiculous.”

“You were reassigned because you had such a wonderful sense of humor.”

Langhof’s eyes narrowed. “I’m goddamn tired of being mocked by you,” he said.

“It’s true.”

“Ridiculous.”

“Never underestimate the power of good humor, Doctor,” Rausch said coldly. He stared at Langhof for a moment, then put on his cap and carefully straightened it. “I despise you, Langhof,” he said softly. “You are nothing but a stage I passed through long ago. This self-righteousness of yours, this despicable pose of wounded humanity. It makes the air stink more than the smoke from the pits.”

“Get out of here,” Langhof said.

Rausch did not move. “We have to carry it through this time, Doctor. We have to reach the bottom. It is our mission, the great task of our age.”

“Get out,” Langhof repeated.

Rausch smiled, but his eyes remained fixed brutally on Langhof’s face. “When I was a little boy, I watched my grandfather kill a litter of puppies by swinging their heads against a wall. What effect do you suppose that had on me?”

“I could not care less,” Langhof said grimly.

“I remember the effect,” Rausch said. “My grandfather was a wizened old man. He looked like God with that white hair and beard. He swung the puppies by their tails, bashed them once, then threw them into the river.” Rausch’s eyes seemed to sparkle. “It was a thrilling sight.”

“I don’t want you ever to come in here again,” Langhof said.

“You are like the rest. You prefer sentimental tales of loyal dogs pulling drowning children from the raging current. Is that right, Doctor?”

Langhof stepped to the door and opened it. “Go,” he said.

“The real story is quite different from what you imagine, Langhof,” Rausch said.

Watching the gleaming buttons on Rausch’s uniform, Langhof felt an almost physical revulsion. “I prefer my mind to yours,” he said.

Rausch laughed mockingly. “Do you? Well, let me tell you something, my friend. If we do not complete the task this time while we have the will to do so, and the machinery, then it will simply start again fifty, a hundred, two hundred years from now, with all the accompanying agony. We must clean the cesspool entirely this time. We must let it all collapse totally. Only then can the reconstruction begin.”

Langhof felt as if all his energy had been drained from him. “No more, Rausch,” he said.

Rausch stepped into the door, then turned back. “You are an interesting man, Langhof,” he said, “but weak, pitifully weak.” He stepped into the hallway and closed the door gently behind him.

Langhof turned from the door, walked to the window, and looked out.

Staring out into the thick, humid night of El Caliz, it is easy to understand what Langhof felt at that moment in his history. It was harder then, because he was in the midst of the swirl. The great gift of the survivor is his capacity to rethink horror from the vantage point of distance. Langhof, as he stared toward the raging furnace, watching flames shoot fifteen feet from the mouth of the chimney, could not imagine either himself or his circumstance. If some wily partisan had put a bullet through his head as he stood at the window, his life would have been better than it became, but his mind would have died, and his capacity to tumble through time, back and forth through time, like an eel caught in an eternal undertow, would have been lost.

Even this obvious fact, however, was far too elusive for our hero to grasp. Standing by the window, he could not even imagine a future for himself. No doubt certain escapes offered themselves. He could consult a religious text or write a poem or take morphine or blame his parents. He could perhaps in the future marry a pretty girl who understood him. But Langhof, by his very nature, was immune from these seductions. He did not have the final option of perfect blindness. And so he took the only option he actually had. He fell in love with nothingness. Nullity became his only pleasure. He applied an airbrush to his senses, and although he could not avoid the hideous data they brought to him through nose and ear and eye and hand, still he could elude the feelings that might otherwise have overwhelmed him. But in this he could not be selective. He had to avoid all feeling. He had to reduce the herds to a roiling, featureless mass. Because he could not bear one scream, he must shut out them all. In doing this, in allowing himself to be encased in a glass booth that separated him from both joy and suffering and that gave all life and history the lifeless quality of a photograph, he lost some of his illusions. He never again believed that timidity could suddenly be made courage or intent be made act. But at the same time, he embraced a larger and more debased illusion. He took upon himself the revery of the void, the romance of nihilism and absolute estrangement. And so, in the rapture of oblivion, Langhof acted his part within the Camp, held, as he was, within the grasp of his greatest illusion: that while we are, we can cease to be.