The Orchids

IN CASAMIRA’S Official History it is written that El Presidente did not need sleep, and that, in fact, during the three years it took him to assume the Presidency, he did not sleep at all. Through countless nocturnal hours, his rodent eyes peered into the darkness. He perched in trees and learned the secrets of the owl. He slithered on the river bank and learned the cunning of the crocodile. He watched the moon move through its phases of its orbit and saw the seedling straighten in the sun. During these deep, mahogany hours, El Presidente learned silence the way a stone learns silence, by being singularly itself, by taking absolutely nothing in. And so he was there — as he always will be — to greet the morning with his smile.

Now safe within the securities of office, El Presidente reclines upon his bed, wallowing in the fat of the mythology he has created for himself. Waking, he is served apricots and wine; and after that, a fresh young human delicacy procured for him while he slept. At noon he rises from sheets made wet by his spent strength and strolls down the marble corridors to his office. There, ravenous again, he devours fish and fowl, picking his teeth with a Spanish slaver’s whittled rod. Then he sleeps again, slumped in his great velvet chair, his heavy breath whistling through the medals on his chest. As the afternoon languishes, he rises once again, departs for the state dining room, and there, bellowing commands, instructs his servants on the evening fête. At sunset he dines with his ministers of state. They sit chatting at the great table, their laughter counterpointed by the tinkling of the chandeliers, a tinkling that, in this windless clime, requires the use of special fans implanted in theceiling. During this final orgy of consumption, El Presidente rouses from the bowels of himself something that might be called a personality. His cheeks grow rosy and his eyes fill with tears as he regales his audience with sad tales of orphans abandoned at the palace door.

Such is the El Presidente of Casamira’s song.

But what of Casamira? He, the conscience of the Republic, stands on the balcony of his Manhattan apartment, his hands clenched around the wrought-iron rail as around a chicken’s throat, and lifts an exiled poet’s wail into the smutty air. The darling of the pleasure set, he lives now in a world of black ties and cummerbunds, sips champagne in paneled lecture halls, and, with trembling voice, entrances the chic, adoring crowd with tales of fallen hope.

Of all things easy to become, it is easiest to become ridiculous; and when you have grown so old you cannot see your face behind your face or feel the texture of a feather; when you have grown so old that your voice seems to speak behind your back; when you have grown so old that none remember you in youth, even then you will be a fool. You may languish in a room lined with books and listen with gravity and calm to a cello’s idle lamentation; you may sit surrounded by a circle of worshipful disciples; you may puff on a scholar’s pipe, your white hair gleaming in the firelight — and you will still be a fool rolling in illusion as was Langhof with his tin box.

Langhof took the box and left Ginzburg’s room. He walked down the hallway to his own room and sat down on his bunk. For a time he thought about hiding the diamonds under the floor as Ginzburg had, then about simply keeping them under his pillow. Then a much better solution found its way into Langhof’s mind. He would not attempt to hide the diamonds at all. He would simply lay the box on the shelf next to his bunk and leave it there. Sooner or later the diamonds would be discovered, and he would be shot as a thief. That would be a martyrdom he could accept. And so Langhof, in his romanticism, thought that the greatest martyrs are those who refuse to give their names at the moment of their immolation. Thus, the blaze consumes them entirely. Anonymously burning, they fuse absolutely with their cause, so that they become not this or that martyred person, but martyrdom incarnate. By being shot as a petty, vulgar thief, Langhof sensed that he could utterly fuse with the nameless and unheralded fate of all those whose ashes had drifted over the Camp.

It takes a most extraordinary egotist to perform so extreme an act of self-effacement, but Langhof, in his illusion, saw only the grandeur of his act, not its trifling and insipid vulgarity. He believed that he had grasped at last that will to act selflessly, which we associate with courage and with failure.

But Langhof was denied his auto-da-fé. The box rested on the shelf quite undisturbed, while the muffled sound of distant enemy guns grew steadily closer. Once Ginzburg passed the open door of Langhof’s room and glimpsed the box. He stopped and looked at Langhof with an expression that our hero took at the time to be one of great admiration, but that I know now was one of the deepest disappointment. For Ginzburg, in his sorrow and weariness, was like the worthy, dutiful monk who despises all illuminism.

And so the last days came. Thousands of prisoners had already been driven westward, but thousands still remained, starving in the darkness of the barracks. They ate wood shavings and licked bits of frozen paint from the sides of the buildings. There were no work details, and even the fires of the crematoria had been extinguished. It was as if the machinery of the New Order had simply ground to a halt, the gears finally mired in crushed bone.

During this period, Langhof waited to be shot for theft or, if that did not happen, captured and later shot by enemy troops. He reveled in either fate, and even began to take a little pride in his own indifference toward himself, his heedlessness for his own life. In his own mind, he saw himself quietly waiting for death, and it semed to him an almost beatific state.

Then, on the last day of the Camp’s existence, with the enemy troops only a few kilometers away, everything changed. The torpor that had seemed to occupy the Camp suddenly dissolved and became a welter of noise and frenzy. The Camp personnel who remained began burning their files in a panic of concealment, as if the Camp could be wiped away by destroying the papers that described it. The bombardment began, and the guards started tumbling into the truck that would take them to the west. Some of the stronger prisoners roused themselves, rioting in the yards and ripping at the doors of the empty supply houses.

Through all of this chaos, Langhof moved with saintly detachment. He believed that he was about to die, and this thought filled him with unutterable serenity. While the Camp personnel frantically burned the evidence of their crime and the prisoners scratched at the barracks walls or wallowed in their own filth. Langhof floated about as if transported on a cushion of air. And he might have floated there until a bullet brought him down, had not Rausch grabbed his arm.

“What the hell are you doing?” Rausch demanded.

“Nothing,” Langhof said. “What should I be doing?”

Rausch stared at Langhof angrily. “You are going to stick with this to the last,” he said, “just as I am.” He pulled Langhof forward. “Come on.”

Langhof followed the jerk of Rausch’s arm. “It’s no use putting me on a truck for the west,” he said. “We’re all going to die anyway, just as we deserve.”

“Truck? You’re not going on any truck, Langhof. I have other plans for you.”

“It’s hopeless, Rausch.”

Rausch tugged at Langhof’s arm and led him around one of the barracks to where a group of prisoners stood, surrounded by a few guards.

“All right, march!” Rausch shouted at the prisoners. “Quick time!”

The prisoners began to move between the barracks. Langhof followed behind them, walking beside Rausch.

“Let’s go!” Rausch shouted to the prisoners. “Quick! Quick!”

The prisoners continued to move, their feet sloshing through the snow and mud. The barracks disappeared behind them as they passed the crematoria.

“Go! Go!” Rausch commanded. He lifted his pistol into the air and fired. “Get going! Move! Quick!”

As they continued to run, leaving the crematoria behind them, some of the prisoners lost their footing and tumbled into the snow. Rausch ignored them and pressed the remaining prisoners forward with screams and gunshots.

Langhof continued to follow along, feeling rather smug about what he took to be Rausch’s desperation.

The prisoners ran past the final buildings of the Camp, through a tangled opening of snipped wire, and out of the Camp entirely.

Rausch pulled fiercely at Langhof’s sleeve. “I said double time,” he shouted.

They trudged up a slight incline, moved through a small stand of trees, and then to the edge of a gulley.

“Halt” Rausch shouted.

Langhof stopped beside him and looked down into the ditch. Twenty or thirty prisoners were standing below him, idly watching the guards.

“Get into the ditch,” Rausch commanded the prisoners. “Get in there with the others. Quick!”

Haltingly, the prisoners followed Rausch’s orders, sliding down into the ditch. Some did not get up when they reached the bottom. Others got quickly to their feet.

Rausch glanced at the guards who stood on the other side of the ditch. “That’s all for now,” he said.

The guards straightened themselves and waited.

Langhof felt something harden in his stomach. His eyes moved through the group of prisoners, scanning their faces. He saw Ginzburg squatting to the left, a trickle of blood flowing from his nose. Instantly he stepped back from the bank, so that Ginzburg would not see him.

“What’s the matter, my dear doctor?” Rausch said fiercely.

“What are you going to do?”

Rausch smiled. “What do you think?”

“No,” Langhof said. “You can’t do this.”

“I have to,” Rausch said. “It’s too late to do anything else.”

“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.