The Orchids

NOW IS THE TIME for rowing, the few hours before dawn when the air is cool over the river. I lift myself carefully into the skiff and push it out from the bank. Grasping the two oars, I guide the boat toward the center of the river and away from the single light burning in my study. Drifting downstream, I can see Dr. Ludtz’s cabin glaring out of the darkness, the harsh lights freezing it in perpetual day. Farther down, I pass the little hut where Juan lives with his family. If by chance Juan were to see me pass, he would suspect that I am going to my secret rendezvous with Satan. In his imagination, he can see me rowing deep into the jungle to that place where the green river turns thick and red. There I disembark and am embraced by fang-toothed demons who usher me into the fiery cavern. Within the leaping flames I roll and twist among the dancing devils who teem about me, thick as spirochetes on a syphilitic scar.

I lift the oars out of the water and place them in the boat. The river moves slowly beneath me, and I drift like a small bubble on its surface. On either side, the jungle is dense and black and unapproachable. The sounds that arise from it seem to come from a wholly foreign world. In the Camp, there were unworldly sounds, inhuman screams that plunged through the darkness and seemed to settle in the wood and snow. The roar of the furnace sometimes rose to a hissing pitch punctuated by sudden explosive bursts. The ground belched and gurgled with the decaying bodies buried beneath. Blood bubbled up from crevices in the earth. The hordes of flies swarming about the pit created a gentle hum that could be heard long before the pit itself came into view. Langhof was familiar with all these sounds, with the rush of flame, the seeping earth, the frenzy of the flies. But it was a certain series of words from Ginzburg’s mouth that prevented him from returning to his own room after he closed the door. And so he turned around and tapped at the door again.

“Who is it?”

“Dr. Langhof.”

Ginzburg opened the door. “Is there something else you wanted, Doctor?”

“Yes,” Langhof said.

Ginzburg stepped back and let the door swing open. “What is it?”

Langhof entered the room and Ginzburg closed the door. For a moment, Langhof could not speak. He could feel the tension in his hands, the stiffness in his neck. “Something you said,” he said finally, “bothers me.”

“What?” Ginzburg asked.

“About my being carved out of clouds,” Langhof said. “That bothers me.”

Ginzburg sat down on his bunk. “Does it perhaps strike you as curious, Doctor, that after so much time in this place you are only now bothered by something?”

Langhof felt his face grow cold. “I didn’t come here to be insulted,” he said.

“Forgive me if I don’t feel heartbroken about your being offended, Dr. Langhof,” Ginzburg said firmly.

Langhof felt shaken by Ginzburg’s force. “Well, I …”

“And answer my question,” Ginzburg said quickly. “Doesn’t it strike you as odd that only now you are bothered by something?”

“It was just the words you used,” Langhof said. “That phrase.”

“Carved out of clouds.”

“Yes.”

“That bothers you?”

“I am trying to see things,” Langhof stammered.

“There’s plenty to see,” Ginzburg said.

Langhof shook his head. “You don’t understand.”

Ginzburg stared at Langhof fiercely. “Let me ask you something, Doctor. Where has your mind been these last three years?”

“I don’t know,” Langhof said weakly.

“Don’t you think that should bother you?”

“Yes,” Langhof said.

“Tell me something, Langhof,” Ginzburg said. “When you’re doing your dissections, what are you thinking?”

“Thinking?” Langhof asked, puzzled.

“Yes. Thinking. What is on your mind?”

“Nothing,” Langhof said. “I don’t think about anything during the laboratory work.”

“Really? Nothing at all?”

“I just go through the motions,” Langhof said.

“And so it doesn’t offend you, the absurdity of these experiments? I’m not talking about the people on the table. They’re dead. And there are so many. I’m not talking about moral offense. I mean the experiments themselves.”

“They are ridiculous,” Langhof said. “In three years we have learned absolutely nothing.”

“And yet you do them studiously? Meticulously?”

“What choice do I have?”

“None whatever, I imagine,” Ginzburg said. “I’m just curious about your mind, Langhof, about what you’re thinking when you’re standing over the table with somebody’s guts in your hands.”

Langhof flinched.

“Do the words bother you?” Ginzburg asked. “Would you prefer me to call them intestines?”

Langhof said nothing.

“I don’t mean to taunt you, Langhof,” Ginzburg said.

Langhof shrugged. “It doesn’t matter.”

“So what is on your mind during the experiments?” Ginzburg asked.

“I told you. Nothing.”

“Amazing,” Ginzburg said. He stood up and walked to the window. “When all of this is over, the air will be filled with explanations. Every sort of mind will wallow in this pit. Then they will proceed to vaporize it. They will turn it into mist. I’ve read enough to know what they will do. They will wrap it in the rhetoric of evil. Or they’ll explain it through some crude formula of economic determinism. They’ll bury it under ridiculous notions of Man’s Inhumanity To Man. Ridiculous.” He turned toward Langhof. “But where does it all come from, Langhof? Where does the responsibility begin?”

“If I had not taken this reassignment …” Langhof began.

“What reassignment?”

“To the Camp.”

Ginzburg turned back toward the window. “Do you think that’s where it began for you, by taking a reassignment?”

“I don’t know,” Langhof said. “But if I had not taken it, then I would not be here now.”

“Your being here or not being here is the least of our misfortunes, Langhof,” Ginzburg said.

“I didn’t mean to suggest —”

Ginzburg drew a Star of David in the mist on the window. “My father was a rabbi,” he said. “He was a very studious man, scholarly. I spent my youth going through his library. He was very proud of me for a while.” He turned to Langhof and smiled. “Then things changed. You see, Langhof, it was not my father’s intent for a nightclub comic to spring from his loins.”

“No, I don’t imagine it was,” Langhof said quietly.

Ginzburg watched the mist reclaim the window. “One day a few boys came into the synagogue. They hauled my father out of his study and made him take the Talmud from the cabinet. They spread it out and told him to spit on it. He did. They told him to keep spitting. He did that too. He spat until his mouth was dry. He told them he couldn’t spit anymore, that he had no more saliva. They laughed and said they had plenty of saliva and told him to open his mouth. Then they spat into his mouth so that he could keep spitting on the Talmud.”

“You saw this?” Langhof asked.

“No,” Ginzburg said, “he had kicked me out of the house by then. But even if I had been there, what could I have done?” He nodded toward the window. “This place is a circle, Langhof, and it revolves around one point. Survival.” He shrugged. “That much will be understood later, that people will do anything to survive. But so what? I sold my ass to Kessler. You conduct absurd medical experiments. We both do it to survive. So what?”

“We have no choice,” Langhof said.

“Quite right,” Ginzburg said. “Once we’re here, we have no choice. But responsibility must begin somewhere, Langhof. It must all begin somewhere.”

“But how can we see it?” Langhof asked.

Ginzburg said nothing.

Langhof reached into his pocket and withdrew a small, black notebook. “It’s all in here,” he said.

Ginzburg glanced at the notebook. “What?”

“Everything,” Langhof said. “Everything that’s happened here for the last three years. I have it all down in the greatest detail.”

Ginzburg’s eyes drifted from the notebook to Langhof’s eyes. “That’s your ticket out, then,” he said softly.

Langhof stared at Ginzburg, puzzled. “Out of what?”

“Out of responsibility.”

Langhof held the book toward Ginzburg. “Read it. You’ll see what I’ve been trying to do.”

“We don’t need compilers, Langhof,” Ginzburg said. He rubbed his eyes with his fists and suddenly seemed very weary. He slumped down upon the bunk. “If you have nothing more, Doctor,” he said, “I’d like to sleep for a while.”

Langhof continued to hold the book toward Ginzburg. “Please, read it.”

Ginzburg shook his head. “No.”

“But why not?” Langhof asked.

“Let’s just say that my eyes are tired.”

Langhof pressed the book into Ginzburg’s hands. “Please,” he said quietly. Then he stood up and left the room.

Langhof did not see Ginzburg again for two days, and when he did something odd happened. Langhof was in the dissecting room with Ludtz and Kessler. He was standing over one of the metal tables, the body of a young woman spread out in front of him. His coat was red with blood, and little slivers of the woman’s spleen dangled from the tip of his scalpel. Suddenly Ginzburg entered the room, carrying a box of supplies. As he walked toward Kessler, he glanced at Langhof, and at that moment Langhof’s hand began to tremble. He was mortified, utterly mortified, not because of the absurdity of what he was doing, but because someone he thought as intelligent as himself had observed him doing it.