to everyone.”
Langhof stood up and walked to the window without looking out. Then he turned to face Rausch. “And what about you, Rausch?” he said. “You’re different. You’re not like the rest.”
“Different? Oh yes. Haven’t you noticed? We all are. None of us is like ‘the rest.’ But we do the same things, don’t we? You and Kessler and Ludtz. All of you did precisely the same thing today.”
Langhof lowered his head.
“We are at the bottom,” Rausch said, “and we have to see it through. We have to touch the very bottom this time, so that we will always know where the bottom is.” He paused, watching Langhof. “Do you understand?”
Langhof said nothing.
Rausch stood up and watched Langhof sternly. “Do you know how you got here?”
“I was reassigned.”
Rausch laughed. “Reassigned? All right, we’ll start there if you want. Why were you reassigned?”
“I don’t know.”
“I do.”
Langhof raised his head and faced Rausch. “Why then? Why was I reassigned?”
“Because you were noticed at the Institute. A jokester, that’s what they said, a person who could be counted on to make light of things. Just the right attitude for a place like this.”
“Ridiculous.”
“You were reassigned because you had such a wonderful sense of humor.”
Langhof’s eyes narrowed. “I’m goddamn tired of being mocked by you,” he said.
“It’s true.”
“Ridiculous.”
“Never underestimate the power of good humor, Doctor,” Rausch said coldly. He stared at Langhof for a moment, then put on his cap and carefully straightened it. “I despise you, Langhof,” he said softly. “You are nothing but a stage I passed through long ago. This self-righteousness of yours, this despicable pose of wounded humanity. It makes the air stink more than the smoke from the pits.”
“Get out of here,” Langhof said.
Rausch did not move. “We have to carry it through this time, Doctor. We have to reach the bottom. It is our mission, the great task of our age.”
“Get out,” Langhof repeated.
Rausch smiled, but his eyes remained fixed brutally on Langhof’s face. “When I was a little boy, I watched my grandfather kill a litter of puppies by swinging their heads against a wall. What effect do you suppose that had on me?”
“I could not care less,” Langhof said grimly.
“I remember the effect,” Rausch said. “My grandfather was a wizened old man. He looked like God with that white hair and beard. He swung the puppies by their tails, bashed them once, then threw them into the river.” Rausch’s eyes seemed to sparkle. “It was a thrilling sight.”
“I don’t want you ever to come in here again,” Langhof said.
“You are like the rest. You prefer sentimental tales of loyal dogs pulling drowning children from the raging current. Is that right, Doctor?”
Langhof stepped to the door and opened it. “Go,” he said.
“The real story is quite different from what you imagine, Langhof,” Rausch said.
Watching the gleaming buttons on Rausch’s uniform, Langhof felt an almost physical revulsion. “I prefer my mind to yours,” he said.
Rausch laughed mockingly. “Do you? Well, let me tell you something, my friend. If we do not complete the task this time while we have the will to do so, and the machinery, then it will simply start again fifty, a hundred, two hundred years from now, with all the accompanying agony. We must clean the cesspool entirely this time. We must let it all collapse totally. Only then can the reconstruction begin.”
Langhof felt as if all his energy had been drained from him. “No more, Rausch,” he said.
Rausch stepped into the door, then turned back. “You are an interesting man, Langhof,” he said, “but weak, pitifully weak.” He stepped into the hallway and closed the door gently behind him.
Langhof turned from the door, walked to the window, and looked out.
Staring out into the thick, humid night of El Caliz, it is easy to understand what Langhof felt at that moment in his history. It was harder then, because he was in the midst of the swirl. The great gift of the survivor is his capacity to rethink horror from the vantage point of distance. Langhof, as he stared toward the raging furnace, watching flames shoot fifteen feet from the mouth of the chimney, could not imagine either himself or his circumstance. If some wily partisan had put a bullet through his head as he stood at the window, his life would have been better than it became, but his mind would have died, and his capacity to tumble through time, back and forth through time, like an eel caught in an eternal undertow, would have been lost.
Even this obvious fact, however, was far too elusive for our hero to grasp. Standing by the window, he could not even imagine a future for himself. No doubt certain escapes offered themselves. He could consult a religious text or write a poem or take morphine or blame his parents. He could perhaps in the future marry a pretty girl who understood him. But Langhof, by his very nature, was immune from these seductions. He did not have the final option of perfect blindness. And so he took the only option he actually had. He fell in love with nothingness. Nullity became his only pleasure. He applied an airbrush to his senses, and although he could not avoid the hideous data they brought to him through nose and ear and eye and hand, still he could elude the feelings that might otherwise have overwhelmed him. But in this he could not be selective. He had to avoid all feeling. He had to reduce the herds to a roiling, featureless mass. Because he could not bear one scream, he must shut out them all. In doing this, in allowing himself to be encased in a glass booth that separated him from both joy and suffering and that gave all life and history the lifeless quality of a photograph, he lost some of his illusions. He never again believed that timidity could suddenly be made courage or intent be made act. But at the same time, he embraced a larger and more debased illusion. He took upon himself the revery of the void, the romance of nihilism and absolute estrangement. And so, in the rapture of oblivion, Langhof acted his part within the Camp, held, as he was, within the grasp of his greatest illusion: that while we are, we can cease to be.
Part IV
GOOD TO SEE you again, Don Pedro.”
I had seen the tail of dust wind down the mountainside, soiling the morning air, as Don Camillo’s limousine moved toward my compound.
“I was not expecting another visit,” I tell him.
Don Camillo smiles. “No, I suppose not.”
“Would you care for refreshment?”
“No, not for me.”
I glance at the two bodyguards who stand beside his chair. They shake their heads. No refreshment, then.
“I hope nothing is wrong, Don Camillo.”
“Nothing serious,” Don Camillo says. He roots himself deeply into the chair. “So, I suppose you are wondering what brings me here so quickly after my last visit.”
“Yes.”
Don Camillo glances off the verandah toward the large tent that is spread across the ground. “Very nice, the national colors.”
“Dr. Ludtz’s idea, Don Camillo,” I tell him.
“Very apt. You Europeans are always so conscious of just the right touch.”
“We have planned fireworks …”
“No, no,” Don Camillo says quickly. “No fireworks, Don Pedro. It is too distracting for the guards.”
