Langhof turned away, stepped toward the door, then turned back toward Ginzburg.
“What? You’re not leaving?” Ginzburg asked.
“Not yet.”
“Why not, my good doctor?”
“I don’t know,” Langhof said.
“You want to learn something from all this, don’t you?” Ginzburg said softly.
Langhof nodded. “Yes, I suppose I do.”
“Do you really think there’s anything to be learned?”
“I don’t know.”
“I mean, something that makes sense?”
Langhof shook his head. “I don’t know.”
Ginzburg smiled. “Do you expect to survive?”
“I don’t know that either,” Langhof said. “Do you?”
“I doubt it.”
“But won’t Kessler protect you?”
“When all this crumbles, Kessler will be the one who needs protection,” Ginzburg said. He smiled. “Sometimes I have this dream of being on the stand in some courtroom after the war. I imagine that I am a witness for Kessler, that I’ve been brought to say something in his defense.” He chuckled. “I’ve already thought of what I’m going to say. I’m going to stand in the witness box and say just one line: Kessler was a gentle lover.”
“Seriously,” Langhof said, “that business about the eastern front — what I told you in the yard — it’s true.”
“I know.”
“I don’t know what will be done if the front gets much closer,” Langhof said.
Ginzburg smiled. “Time will tell,” he said.
“I’d better go now,” Langhof said.
“All right.”
“We’ll talk again.”
“Up to you.”
Langhof stepped toward the door. “Good luck, Ginzburg,” he said.
Ginzburg smiled and flipped the collar of his striped suit. “I’d like it better in peppermint,” he said.
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
“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.”
