“Yes.”
Kreisler’s little smile broadened. “We’ll see about that, my boy.”
In my short life I had never felt such outrage. I snapped the package under my arm and marched toward the door.
“What are you, a little Red?” Kreisler called loudly after me. “You don’t believe in marriage?”
So he did have marriage on his mind, marriage to my mother. I spun around to face him, but my tongue seemed to draw back in my mouth. He was big, after all, and the huge mustache gave his face a terrible malevolence. I turned around and stepped out onto the street.
Anna, a fellow student for whom I longed, was standing quietly in front of the confectionary across the way. She wore a dark blue coat with large white buttons, and a long braid of blonde hair hung over each shoulder. A cast on her arm reached from her wrist to just above her elbow. I felt my stomach squeeze together. That such a beautiful girl could be damaged seemed monstrous at that moment. I wanted to heal her miraculously in an instant. Years later Ginzburg sat in his striped suit, glanced at the medical bag on my bunk, and asked if I had ever used the instruments in it to mend a wound.
I walked over to Anna. “What happened to you?”
“I broke my arm,” she said. She smiled. “It’ll be well soon, though.”
“How did it happen?”
Anna glanced down the street. A band was playing marching tunes in the distance.
“How did you hurt your arm?” I asked again.
“In gym class. I was doing a tumble and missed the mat. My arm twisted as I fell. I don’t know how it happened exactly.” She looked at the cast. “Isn’t it silly?”
“I hope it doesn’t hurt too much.”
Anna waved her other hand dismissingly. “No. Not much at all.” She lifted the cast slightly. “It’s just a nuisance, that’s all.”
I lifted my package. “I just came from the butcher.” Kreisler’s face rose in my mind and I felt something stiffen in my neck.
Anna nodded. “Yes, I saw you in the shop. What did you get?”
“Veal cutlets,” I said. I wanted to ask her to come home for dinner, but I knew that to her perfect eyes my mother would appear as a bedraggled old Grendel heaving scorched strudel into her plate.
“We have veal on Thursdays,” Anna said, peering down the street again.
“Are you waiting for someone?” I asked. I pictured him tall and powerfully built, her mighty Lohengrin.
“Only the parade,” Anna said lightly. She smiled. “Do you like parades?”
“Very much,” I said with relief. It was a lie — one of my first. For I did not like parades at all and was even mildly offended by their noisiness and dazzle.
“They have wonderful parades during Oktoberfest,” Anna said happily. She tossed one of her braids lightly over her shoulder. “I see as many as I can.”
“So do I. You know, I would love to play in a large orchestra someday.”
Anna’s eyes brightened. “An orchestra! How wonderful. Do you play any instrument?”
“The piano,” I said, then felt myself grow horrified at the thought she might ask to hear me play. “Only slightly,” I added.
“Do you practice much?”
“As much as I can.”
“Do you like to practice?”
“Yes,” I said, “Someday I’d like to play the organ in a great cathedral.”
Anna raised herself on tiptoe and looked down the street. The band music was growing closer. “I prefer the piano,” she said. “The organ is too loud.”
“Yes, that’s true,” I said quickly. The smell of the veal wafted up into my face, churning my stomach. “Well, I’d better get home now.”
Anna turned toward me. “Aren’t you going to stay for the parade?”
“My mother is waiting,” I told her, lifting the package. “For dinner.”
“But you must stay, Peter,” Anna said excitedly. “It’s no fun to watch parades alone.”
I felt as though the sun had suddenly broken upon my face. “You really want me to?”
“Oh, yes. Please, Peter. Just stay for the parade. It’s almost here!”
I turned and saw the band marching briskly toward us, the drum beating loudly, the horns echoing over the brick street, the flutes filling the air with their happy tones.
“It’s a fine band,” I said.
“A wonderful band,” Anna said. She bobbed lightly on her feet.
I returned my eyes to the street. Several pedestrians had stopped to watch the parade move by. Some of them lifted their arms and held them rigidly at an angle above their heads.
I laughed. “What are they doing?”
“Saluting the flag,” Anna said matter-of-factly.
I looked at the banner, which was held high by the booted mascot of the band. It showed a design of broken black lines on a field of red.
“That’s not our flag,” I said.
“It’s my father’s flag,” Anna said. Her eyes held firmly to the marchers in the street.
“But that’s not our national flag,” I said.
“My father doesn’t salute the national flag any longer,” Anna said. “He salutes this one.”
The banner bobbed left and right as the mascot thrust his legs stiffly out, coming closer to us with each step.
“Quick,” Anna said, “help me salute.”
I looked at her. “What?”
“The cast,” Anna said, “it’s hard for me to hold my arm up. Help me lift it.”
For a moment I did not move. The idea of touching Anna was so delicious that it frightened me, but I also hesitated because the gesture itself, the outstretched arm and stiffly pointing fingers, seemed ridiculous.
“Hurry,” Anna cried. “Help me, Peter.”
I tucked my left hand just beneath Anna’s elbow and raised her arm, lifting my right arm along with hers, saluting as she did, and holding both our arms high in the air as the banner joggled past us — comically, it seemed, and yet with an arrogant confidence in its own future.
AH THEN, so that’s the fateful nexus: a man may be seduced, may be led to great misfortune by the wiles — innocent though they are — of a little girl. Our young hero, Langhof, lifts his hand in salute because he does not wish to go against his first adolescent love. That is the beginning of all that follows. During the last months in the Camp, when it became clear to everyone that ultimately some answer would have to be made for all the things that had taken place there, during those final days a few men searched their minds for reasons that might serve as excuse, if not precisely justification. These few — for most did nothing — lolled on the steps of the administration building or slogged through the mud and snow muttering questions to themselves: What happened here? How did I get here? How was I led astray?
Their answers, if compiled, would form a pathetic epic of self-pity and self-delusion. Schuster blamed the doctrinaire socialism of his father; Nagel proposed his puny physical stature; Luftmann claimed Catholicism had brought him to his ruin, while Kloppman recalled his readings from Martin Luther. In the end, it all came to the same thing. For denser than the smoke that enveloped the Camp and more powerful than the odors carried within it was our compulsion to dismiss our role as something over which we had no control. Here in the last days crime became mere misfortune, and in the final analysis most of those who even bothered to review their actions during the preceding years came to blame the vermin for their fate: if they had not existed, we would not have had to kill them.
I see Dr. Ludtz’s boat sailing back toward shore. It was a short excursion, as they all are. He is afraid to roam very far downriver, suspecting, as he does, commandos skulking in the brush, the thin crosshairs of their rifle sights intersecting on his head. During the great plague of the fourteenth century, the Prince of the Church, Clement
