The Orchids

AT THE END of day here in the Republic, the sun drops slowly through a cloud of heat like a ruby through a tube of oil. Across the river, the wind begins its ghost waltz with the trees, pressing against them like a proud but subtle lover. There is never snow here, except, they say, in the northern provinces, where it comes only at the most telling moment, when lovers part or old men die by the window. At such times, it is said to come in huge flakes, drifting as languorously as goose down and remaining, unmeltable, until the symbol has run its course. But in El Caliz, heat is the only metaphor we have.

Juan passes below me, stooped, weary. For him, all metaphorical embellishment is reduced to the thick, dark humus of his impregnable superstitiousness. He lives utterly without benefit of subtlety, responding only to gods and demons who are wholly visible to him. They drown the fields, bake the stream beds, humiliate the orchids. They dispense blessings or maliciously withhold them. Walking through the jungle toward his home, Juan seems to merge with the engulfing brush, a perfect natural man, Rousseau’s boyish dream, a simple, humble peasant who could only be accused of crime in some distant, dreamed-of world where men are expected to despise all manner of delusion.

In the Special Section, they taught us to sink all of our petty, personal illusions in the smudgy, boiling cauldron of a great one.

“Allow me to extend my personal congratulations,” Dr. Trottman said. He smiled heartily. “A very distinguished record, Herr Langhof. But wait. I suppose I must address you as Dr. Langhof from now on.”

The distinguished graduate allowed himself a moment of harmless banter. “That would be appropriate, I think,” he said with mock haughtiness.

Dr. Trottman seized Langhof’s hand and shook it vigorously. “You will bring great credit to yourself, Doctor,” he said, his speech still retaining the arch formality of the professorial classes.

“That is my hope, Dr. Trottman,” our hero said.

And so Peter Langhof became a doctor. Langhof, the little boy who watched impassively as the blood trickled from his father’s temple, who could not stand his mother’s strudel, who spoke harshly to the butcher who later became his stepfather. Langhof, who found Anna and then lost her, who stood in the park and felt the first blessing of the stars, who wished to clean himself in the study of hygiene, who loved science and distinguished himself in gymnasium, university, and medical school. Our hero Langhof, who came to manhood in the Special Section, who was given an appointment at the Institute of Hygiene and then later reassigned to a place he calls the Camp. He, the catastrophic I, who later escaped as the cannons neared, who found his way to Switzerland and then to the southern provinces of the Republic by way of boat and burro and a battered little box of diamonds. He, Langhof, our beneficent Don Pedro, who sits white-haired in the sunset of El Caliz and who speaks with admirable detachment of the unspeakable.

He, Langhof, I, who on a certain day at his new job in the Institute of Hygiene found something curious as he stared at the medical journal on his desk.

“Dietrich,” he said, looking up from the open book, “come here for a moment. I want you to look at this.”

The lab assistant stepped over.

Langhof pointed to a line he had underscored. “Read that.”

Dietrich read the line aloud. “The livers of eighty women who had died suddenly were extracted and examined within ten minutes of their deaths. Findings may be somewhat impugned, since items were in a state of intense excitement at the moment of their deaths.”

Langhof watched Dietrich’s eyes. “What do you make of this?” he asked.

Dietrich looked at Langhof emptily. “What do you mean, Dr. Langhof?”

“My dear Dietrich, how do eighty women die suddenly?”

Dietrich shrugged. “How do I know? We are at war. People die suddenly. Lots of people.”

“Yes. But eighty women?”

“It could happen.”

“All right,” Langhof said, “perhaps it could. But how is it that their livers were extracted within such a short time after their deaths?”

Dietrich shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“Think, Dietrich. One can hardly imagine eighty women dying suddenly in a state of intense excitement directly outside the doors of a medical laboratory.”

Dietrich laughed lightly. “True, Dr. Langhof.”

“Well, what would you gather from this, then?”

“That they were executed, of course,” Dietrich said casually. “It’s no secret that executions are taking place. My God, we’re at war, after all!”

“But this is an odd thing to crop up in the medical literature, don’t you think?”

“No,” Dietrich said. “I’d be surprised if such studies were not being made. It’s nothing new, as you know, Doctor. Medicine has always used certain circumstances to carry on research that would be impossible in peacetime.”

“I suppose so,” Langhof said. He motioned for Dietrich to go on about his business and then sunk his head again into the open journal.

What was he thinking? Could it have been the unthinkable? Emphatically, no. And when such references began to be sprinkled throughout the medical literature, and when the heads began to arrive upstairs at the museum, each in its own little hermetically sealed tin can, what then? Perhaps for a moment a question entered the intrepid scientist’s inquiring mind. But it was not one that could be easily framed. Nor was it one that could be answered under a surgical lamp.

If you had been there, you would know that there are certain things that can only be approached indirectly, through flippancy. And so, confronted by the growing evidence of impropriety in the medical community, Langhof developed that characteristic which had so far eluded him: a sense of humor. He became the master of the quip. Seeing Dr. Friedheim marching up the hall one afternoon with one of those ubiquitous tin cans held securely under his arm, Langhof smiled. “What do you have there, Doctor,” he said airily, “a new head for your totem pole?” Dr. Friedheim rushed by, aghast. On another occasion, he met Dr. Ludtz in the lavatory. He folded his arm over Ludtz’s shoulder. “They say human blood cannot be washed from the skin,” he whispered conspiratorially, “but I have found a lye compound that will do it.” Dr. Ludtz stared at Langhof for a moment, not knowing what to say. Then he simply smiled and walked away.

For a time, as you might imagine, Langhof’s sardonic remarks were regarded with great concern by the other doctors in the Institute. There was talk of his name being mentioned to those authorities whose task it was to handle such matters. But the smile on Langhof’s face, the jaunty carriage of his body, and the wink that invariably accompanied his remarks assured the nervous staff that he was quite a good fellow, an excellent fellow, in fact; one who had a far better attitude about the situation than certain other colleagues who seemed to carry themselves in a perpetual crouch. God only knew what was on their minds. But Langhof was sufficiently assured of the value of his work to dismiss its less pleasant aspects with a wink and a laugh.

And so the catastrophic I moved through the Institute of Hygiene as if at one with all that surrounded him — with the vials of acid, the skeleton displays, the books and journals, the shelves of chemicals, the reams of paper, the stacks of tin cans smelling vaguely acrid that seemed to pile up by the hundreds in the rear alleyway. At one, humorously at one, with all of this, the good doctor joked and japed, learning the rhythm of his routine like a standup comic in some cheap nightclub: “It’s cold. How cold is it? Cold enough for a freezing experiment.” “It’s hot. How hot is it? Hot enough to incinerate — what?” A socialist, a gypsy, a Jew, a homosexual, a communist, or any of a million other designated vermin. For the rhythm of the line, for the best laugh, what would be the funniest reply?

By this process, Langhof held to his moorings. He wrapped himself in the armor of ridicule, his old staple, but which was given added charm now by what passed in those sullen corridors for wit.

And yet, there were times when he felt a sudden, awesome dread, the sense of being propelled into the volcano’s mouth on a wave of gasoline. And there were moments, later, when he wondered what might have happened to him if he had pursued these dark intimations rather than dismissing them with a mocking smile. Long after those first weeks in the Institute, Langhof walked with Ginzburg as they made their way from the main camp to the factory works. Ginzburg was chewing on a sliver of rubber band and his almost jaunty step made Langhof remember his own days at the Institute. For a moment he stopped, gently turned Ginzburg toward him, and asked: “Would it be better, do you think, if we — I mean as a species — if we had never evolved the capacity to laugh?”