The Orchids

BACK IN MY OFFICE, I sweep the shards of glass from my desk into the wastebasket at my feet. I sit down and think of the nature of my imagined confession:

Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.

How long has it been since your last confession?

There has never been a last confession.

What have you to confess, my son?

I confess that I have made myself a vessel of the will. I confess that I have taken up the metaphor of stars.

Yes, the metaphor of stars. For if the Leader had depended only upon himself, then his success would have been as limited as his person, and his person was supremely limited. I remember that when I saw him the first time in a small street café, I could not see this stooped, slight form hunched rather piggishly over his stein of lager as emblematic of the future. He had rounded shoulders that drooped pathetically under the weight of his military jacket; slick, black hair that poured across his smooth, undistinguished forehead like spilled ink; strange, Moorish eyes that protruded slightly from their oval sockets; a long broad nose, blunted at the end and set within flat, featureless cheeks that curved downward to form a small, trembling double chin; thin lips that arched neither up nor down but rested upon each other in a straight, severe slit, as if sliced by a straight razor; a close-cropped, squared, Chaplinesque mustache whose oddity seemed to blur the surrounding face.

And so it could not have been the Leader. Not for me. By the millions, others trembled at his voice. By the millions, women wept at the sight of him. But not me, not Langhof, the stalwart boy. For me he was never more than a crude parody of what he thought himself to be, a posturing little hysteric who somehow managed to vitalize the inert mind-lessness that surrounded him. Never for a single moment did I think him to be anything but what he was.

For me, it was the stars.

The boy stood in the park, watching his blue-eyed inamorata rush from him with something of himself still dangling in her hand. For a moment he felt the wind blow through him, stirring leaves and ashes. Then he began to gather himself together. He was unwilling to go home, unwilling to eat his mother’s charred strudel or smell the raw meat on his recently acquired stepfather’s soiled shirt. So he began to walk, and the village that was his neighborhood began to appear to him as the city it really was — a swell of grime and noise, a raw carcinoma growing beside a slow, pestilential river. As he walked, his eyes widened in a detestation so intense he could feel its naked energy in his blood. He conceived a larval hatred for everything that surrounded him: for gaudy lights blinking in hideous pinks and blues as the crackling traffic prowled the streets like huge, iron insects; for the numberless whores with rings of kohl about their eyes flirting with the French foreigners; for the jazz bands hurling strident tones and the colored singers wailing through cigar smoke in darkened cabarets; for the fat, smiling provincials and legless beggars, and the gay blades sporting wrinkled spats; for spike-heeled shoes and lacquered fingernails; for the redbrick burlesque palaces that squatted along the boulevard; for the men who danced with men, and the laughter in that knotted crowd; for the old women snoring in their windows and the drunken soldiers pissing in the alleyways; for the aroma of champagne mixed with sludge; for all the books that fanned the flames of all about him; and for all the politicians who soar above the fumes.

It is difficult to imagine a repulsion more pure than that of our hero as he walked the streets alone. It is difficult to imagine how he came to associate all that he saw with filth and grime.

Ah, so that’s the meaning of our tale: No one can guess what winds may blow within a devastated boy. Our little teenage hero, bereft of his first love, sees the sordidness of life, as all artists must eventually see it, and from that awareness he quite innocently surmises that a great purification must take place; this, in turn, leads him to accept those deranged notions that fluttered about the Leader’s mind. Hence, many years later, the Camp. Ah yes, it’s all quite clear now.

But it is not.

For although the realities of man’s befuddled life repelled our hero, the eccentricities of the Leader’s ideology did not attract him. He stood between a broken world and the maniacal schemes that claimed authority and competence to rebuild it. He could not accept the one any more than he could the other. And at that moment — at least figuratively — he looked up, and saw the stars.

• • •

“Was that Don Camillo?”

I look up from my desk. It is Dr. Ludtz who, in his anxiety, failed to knock at my door.

“Yes, it was.”

“What did he want?”

“The usual. He always comes before one of El Presidente’s visits. You know that, Dr. Ludtz. He merely wants to make sure that proper arrangements have been made.”

The tension in Dr. Ludtz’s face dissolves. “And was he satisfied?”

“Quite satisfied.”

“Did you tell him about the red and orange motif?”

“I’m sorry, no. He inquired about you.”

“Inquired? What do you mean, inquired?”

“As to your health.”

“What about my health?”

I smile. “Really, Dr. Ludtz, everything is quite at ease. You don’t need to disturb yourself.”

“All right,” Dr. Ludtz stammers breathlessly. “If you say so.”

“Everything is quite all right.”

“Good, good,” Dr. Ludtz says. He does not move. For a moment he seems in a trance.

“Are you all right, Dr. Ludtz?”

Dr. Ludtz shakes his head. “No. No, I’m not. I think I have a slight fever. It seems to have come upon me rather suddenly.”

“Have you checked it?”

Dr. Ludtz looks slightly embarrassed. “I tried. But — I don’t know how it happened — I broke the thermometer. I dropped it. I’m a little shaky, I suppose.”

He is sweating more profusely than usual. His shirt looks as if it has been dipped in drool. “Let me check it,” I tell him.

Dr. Ludtz steps over to me. I take a thermometer from the black bag that sits beside my desk. “Here, put it in your mouth.”

He takes the thermometer and places it under his tongue. In the Camp, I once saw him holding the brain of a three-year-old boy in his hands, lifting it toward the light. On the table, the boy’s eyes had plopped into the hollow of his skull like egg yolks.

I take the thermometer from Dr. Ludtz’s mouth and look at it. “You have a slight fever, Doctor.”

“Do I?” Dr. Ludtz says worriedly. “I thought so.”

“Very slight, that’s all.”

“But why? What do you suppose it is?”

“Perhaps a virus,” I say casually. “I wouldn’t be overly concerned.”

Dr. Ludtz glances apprehensively at his prickly monument. The grasses are gnawing at its base.

“Really, Doctor,” I tell him, “there is no cause to be alarmed. You know how these things come and go.” I smile. “Perhaps it’s the season. Even the orchids are unwell.”

Dr. Ludtz turns to me. “The orchids?”

“A blight has afflicted them.”

“Frankly, it’s not the orchids that concern me, Doctor,” Dr. Ludtz says. He is slightly irritated. “Men are not flowers, you know.”

“True.”

Dr. Ludtz wipes his brow anxiously. “I wouldn’t want to be ill during El Presidente’s visit. He might take it as a slight. You know how he is about things like that. He might become rather offended.”

“If you are ill, I will explain it to him.”

Dr. Ludtz laughs. “He is not a man for explanations, Doctor. He could easily get the wrong idea. He could take it as … I don’t know … as an insult, a personal insult.”

“And do what?”

Dr. Ludtz looks at me knowingly. “You know what. I don’t have to tell you.”

“He will not send you home, Dr. Ludtz.”

“How do you know?”

“Because he wants the diamonds.”

“But it’s you who have the diamonds, not me.”

“I would not give him any if he did any harm to you.”

Dr. Ludtz gazes at me beatifically. “Would you do that for me? Would you really?”

“Yes. Absolutely.”

Dr. Ludtz grabs my hand and squeezes it gratefully. “Much thanks, Dr. Langhof. I can’t tell you what that means to me.”

I ease my hand from his grasp. “Go to bed, Dr. Ludtz. Take care of yourself. What would I do in this place without you?”

Dr. Ludtz stares at me, transfixed. “Dr. Langhof, I had no idea that … that …” He is practically in tears.

“Go now. Get some sleep.”

“Yes, of course,” Dr. Ludtz says. He starts to move toward the door.

“I will be up to check on you this evening,” I tell him.

“Oh, that would be fine, Dr. Langhof. Thank you so very much.”

I watch as Dr. Ludtz walks away. He moves heavily, something infinitely curious washed up out of time like a bone from the sludge-pit, strange in shape and texture, belonging to no known creature, a small particle of mystery floating in a galaxy of crime.