Rausch stared at Ludtz without pity. “Never lie to me, Doctor,” he said. “You were assigned here.”
“Yes, but —” Ludtz stammered.
“What exactly will our duties be?” Langhof asked.
“To take orders. From your superiors,” Rausch replied. He uttered the word
“But surely you have some definite plans for us,” Langhof said.
“Plans?”
“Assignments. Research.”
“Oh, yes,” Rausch said. “We do.”
Langhof attempted to break through Rausch’s reserve. “Look, this is all very new to us — to Ludtz and myself. Perhaps you could give us some advice for getting along well in the Camp.”
Rausch turned to Langhof, his face expressionless. “Always keep your pistol close by. Then, if something tragic happens, you can use it to blow your head off.”
As the car moved forward through the brilliantly white fields, Langhof — despite Rausch’s dark eccentricities — felt another surge of anticipation. Beside him, Ludtz sat nervously, clearly alarmed. But Langhof could only remember the aridity of the Institute, and compared to that, anything that gave the slightest sign of intellectual fecundity was cause for jubilation. He could sense again the dispensation of the stars.
Farther on, Rausch ordered the driver to pull the car over beside a large wooden ramp. A train puffed and smoked beside the ramp, and Langhof could hear people shouting inside the cattle cars.
“This is how your patients arrive, Doctors,” Rausch said.
Armed soldiers were scurrying back and forth about the train like ants over a carcass. At the far end of the ramp a band was playing a sprightly melody.
Ludtz, who only now seemed to have noticed that the car had stopped, leaned forward. “What’s that?” he asked.
“A piece from
“No,” Ludtz said. “I mean these people in the train.”
“Prisoners,” Rausch said casually. He took a cigarette from his overcoat pocket and lit it.
Langhof sat rigidly in place, watching.
The soldiers had now assembled themselves in a kind of rough order. Some stood, legs spread apart, on top of the train, their machine guns pointing down toward the locked doors. Others had formed a cordon around the train. Some held their guns rigidly forward, others let the barrels droop slightly toward the ground.
“So many prisoners?” Langhof asked.
“Yes,” Rausch said. “Many prisoners.”
At a signal several soldiers stepped forward and began unlocking the doors of the train. The people seemed to explode onto the ground as if vomited from the cars.
“Many prisoners,” Rausch whispered.
As the prisoners dropped from the cars, the soldiers began shouting at them: “Line up by fives! By fives! Quick now! Warm meals are waiting!”
The people continued pouring out of the cars: old men in suits, women with their heads covered by thick shawls, a group of children all dressed in their school uniforms of little red berets and short blue jackets, a man hobbling forward on a crutch. The air filled with the bustle of their disembarkation, their cries and moans and indiscriminate yells. Some scurried about looking for lost relatives, lovers, friends. Others merely stood with their arms folded, staring into the blinding white light.
All around them the soldiers continued their shouts: “By fives! Line up by fives!”
Some of the people began to assemble themselves as the soldiers instructed. But the general confusion seemed to paralyze the rest. Then the soldiers fell upon them, marching into the stunned crowd, beating them with truncheons. Some fell to the ground. Others merely staggered to the side. Some began to shout frantic questions at the assaulting guards. Others instantly fell to the ground and began to weave and wail. An old rabbi dropped to his knees and began digging a hole with his hands. Above him, a guard stood laughing. A woman spread a large quilt on the snow, laid her baby on it, and began to diaper the child. A soldier rushed forward and pulled her to her feet. “No time for that now!” he shouted. Then he pushed her into the moving crowd. The baby continued to lie on its back, watching the dark figures pass above it. It seemed amused, and for a moment it smiled.
Langhof turned to Rausch. “Who are these people?”
Rausch peered at the smoke rising from his cigarette. “A little of this. A little of that.”
Langhof turned his eyes back toward the crowd. Some of the people were still straggling out of the cars, stunned by the harsh light, rubbing their eyes. The dead were pushed out a little way from the tracks and stacked in piles, like cords of wood. From the top of one of the cars a guard shouted: “Quick now! There’s warm soup waiting! Don’t delay! It’ll get cold!”
In fives the people began to file past a man who watched them closely and signaled left and right with a conductor’s baton. From the caduceus on his cap, Langhof could tell that he was a doctor. He watched as the people moved under the doctor’s gaze, following the signal of his baton, one column moving to the left, one to the right, as he directed.
Langhof could feel his eyes pulling the whole scene nearer to him. And after a moment the people seemed to march through a dark tunnel, the pupil of his eye. Marching, their heads bent forward, they seemed to move through him, staring downward at the stars.
HERE IN THE REPUBLIC it is difficult to be wise. For the face of the Republic is like the face of El Presidente in Casamira’s portrayal — Goyaesque, with bloated cheeks, bulbous nose, bulging eyes set out from the cheeks like marbles on a board of Chinese checkers. This is the paradise of Dorian Gray, a perfect landscape of green shade where orchids spread their petals in the crystal air. And underneath, far underneath, below those upper layers of black soil where the worms seek cool and moisture, below the tarantula’s crusty mortuary and the rocky shades of the iguana, below this is the pit dug for our madness. If it were not bottomless, we might sound it. If it were not a labyrinth, we might trace its pattern. But ours is a feeble labor against the relentless mystery of crime.
Dr. Ludtz, as he watched the vermin descend from the train, suppressed a little yawn. It had, after all, been a long journey. Langhof, on the other hand, sensed that his journey was just beginning.
“Is something amiss, Dr. Langhof?” Rausch asked.
Langhof shook his head quickly.
“Your face. It’s pale.”
Langhof leaned back in the automobile seat and tried to adjust his body to its irregular contours.
“Are you sure you’re all right, Doctor?” Rausch persisted.
“Yes.”
Rausch removed his cigarette and exhaled into the frigid air. Watching him, Langhof could not tell where the smoke ended and where his breath began.
“What were you told at the Institute?” Rausch asked.
“Very little,” Ludtz replied, although the question had not been directed at him.
“Is that so?” Rausch asked softly. He looked at Ludtz for a moment. “Well?” he said, turning his eyes toward Langhof. “Do you have any questions?”
Langhof folded his arms over his chest and said nothing.
“I have a question,” Ludtz said.
Rausch did not turn his eyes from Langhof. “No questions, Dr. Langhof?” he said.
Langhof did not move. He shifted slightly, then turned his lips inward, as if sealing a compartment.
Rausch smiled and turned to face Ludtz. “What is your question, Doctor?”
“Where will we be staying?” Ludtz asked.
“In the medical compound,” Rausch replied dully.
“I see.”
“Do you have any objection, Dr. Ludtz?”
