“No.”
“It’s really quite adequate. Certainly not as comfortable as an apartment in the capital, but adequate. More than adequate, actually. Considering the surroundings.”
Langhof turned and watched the last of the prisoners as they moved away from the train in two ragged columns.
Rausch stretched his arm across Ludtz’s chest and touched Langhof’s shoulder. “How did you happen to be assigned here, Doctor?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” Langhof said.
Rausch smiled pointedly. “Curious, isn’t it?” He turned to the driver. “Enter the Camp, Corporal,” he said.
The corporal bent forward and started the engine.
“Drive carefully,” Rausch said, his eyes returning to Langhof. “The roads are treacherous here.”
The automobile moved forward. Langhof raised his hand and pulled his cap down lower upon his head. The shadow of the bill fell across his eyes.
“To some extent, you will be treating the prisoners,” Rausch said. “But only partly. You will mainly be doing medical research.”
Ludtz smiled brightly and jabbed Langhof softly. “Good, that’s what we wanted,” he said.
Rausch’s voice held to the same bleak monotone. “The research is varied. And you should be aware that the facilities for it are rather primitive. This is not the Institute, after all. And of course, there’s this little business of the war. We can’t expect the government to spend enormous amounts on laboratories and supplies. And even those supplies we requisition often never get to us. Sabotage. There’s a good deal of that.”
Langhof glanced at Rausch, and for a moment lost himself in studying the terrible correctness of his face. It was somewhat pale and very smooth, with a proper, angular nose and deep-set eyes — a face not at all like the vulpine exemplars of the New Order who strutted about the capital.
“Where are you from, Rausch?” Langhof asked cautiously.
“Where am I from?”
“Yes. Are you from the capital?”
“No.”
“Where, then?”
Rausch looked at Langhof sternly. “I am from here. Nowhere else.”
The car suddenly skidded on the ice, the rear end sliding to the left. The corporal frantically struggled to right it.
“Careful, now,” Rausch said to him.
The corporal glanced around and Langhof could see a blush rising in his face. Rausch saw it too and tried to ease the boy. “Just be careful, Corporal. No harm done.”
“Sorry, sir,” the corporal sputtered helplessly.
“No harm done at all,” Rausch replied gently. He turned to Langhof. “We try to make things run smoothly here,” he said.
IF WE KNEW where things began, we would know where to end them. Now, from my verandah, I can see the jungle in all its misery and splendor. I have, during these long years, learned the many cries of the monkey and can distinguish panic from ecstasy. But it has not always been so.
Langhof, rubbing his gloved hands together as the Camp approached slowly like Birnam Wood, knew nothing of how he had come to this moment in his life. And perhaps such moments are themselves nothing more than those points in our lives that we most deeply misperceive. Surely Langhof, as he watched the Camp loom in the distance, wooden barracks enclosed by rusty stretches of barbed wire, felt nothing of the climactic, but only dread rising in him once again. For he was no more than a ball set rolling on an uneven tabletop, dipping this way and that with the contours of circumstance. In his state of profound consternation, he could find the will to ask only one trifling question.
“Have you a handkerchief, Dr. Ludtz?”
Ludtz, ever accommodating, fumbled through his overcoat pockets. “Yes, here.”
Langhof took the handkerchief and quietly blew his nose into it. Then he lifted his collar against the wind.
Beside him, the oblivious Dr. Ludtz turned to Rausch with a look of dismay. “Are we actually going to be
“Yes,” Rausch said. “You seem surprised by that fact.”
“But aren’t staff quarters usually outside the prison?”
“Prison? This is not a prison. This is a different matter altogether, Doctor. And you will be living inside the Camp.”
The car pulled up to the gate. Two guards stood before it, holding machine guns loosely in their hands.
“Open the gate,” Rausch said.
The guards did as they were commanded. The iron gate opened and Langhof passed through it. As he did so, a light snow began to fall. The snow was wholly without symbolic importance, but not to a romantic; for it is part of the blindness of romance to see life, and finally history, as a series of telling moments properly adorned by the imagery of fall or redemption, and to neglect all that lies in between, all that generates, debases, or inspires.
And so the car passed through the gate, the corporal guiding it carefully. A little farther along, he turned the car to the left toward a group of prisoners huddled in the mud. He honked the horn. “Get out of the way, you shit!” he screamed and glanced back at Rausch for approval.
“Just keep a steady pace,” Rausch said.
The car proceeded through the Camp and finally stopped in front of a freshly painted building.
“These are your quarters,” Rausch said. He stepped out of the car. “Come.”
Langhof and Ludtz got out of the car and followed Rausch up a short flight of stairs that led to the entrance.
“This is where you will be living from now on,” Rausch said. “You will each have your own room.” He opened the door and paused, allowing Langhof and Ludtz to pass in front of him.
“It’s like a barracks,” Ludtz said.
“More or less,” Rausch said. “Are you disappointed, my dear doctor?”
“Oh, no,” Ludtz said quickly. “Not in the least, I assure you. One cannot expect luxurious accommodations in a war zone.”
“Precisely,” Rausch said evenly. He nodded toward the hallway. “Down there.”
Langhof and Ludtz walked down the hall until Rausch stopped them at a particular door. “This is your room, Dr. Ludtz,” he said.
“Excellent,” Ludtz said.
“You haven’t seen it yet,” Rausch said.
“I’m sure it will be fine.”
Rausch swung the door open and Ludtz looked inside. It was a small, tidy room with a single metal-framed bed with a drooping mattress covered with military blankets.
“Very nice,” Ludtz said. “Warm.”
“Your bags will be brought to you shortly,” Rausch said.
Ludtz stepped into the room. “Thank you. Yes, very nice. Very nice, indeed”
Rausch closed the door and turned to Langhof. “Your room is farther down the hall,” he said.
Langhof followed Rausch a few paces, then stopped when Rausch did.
“This is it,” Rausch said. He opened the door onto a room almost identical to that of Dr. Ludtz. “Not exactly the capital, is it?”
“It is satisfactory,” Langhof said. He stepped into the room, looked around, glanced at the window, started to move toward it, then suddenly stopped himself.
“You may look out the window,” Rausch said with a little, mocking laugh.
Langhof spun around. “What is your function here, Rausch?”
