He, Langhof, I, who on a certain day at his new job in the Institute of Hygiene found something curious as he stared at the medical journal on his desk.
“Dietrich,” he said, looking up from the open book, “come here for a moment. I want you to look at this.”
The lab assistant stepped over.
Langhof pointed to a line he had underscored. “Read that.”
Dietrich read the line aloud. “The livers of eighty women who had died suddenly were extracted and examined within ten minutes of their deaths. Findings may be somewhat impugned, since items were in a state of intense excitement at the moment of their deaths.”
Langhof watched Dietrich’s eyes. “What do you make of this?” he asked.
Dietrich looked at Langhof emptily. “What do you mean, Dr. Langhof?”
“My dear Dietrich, how do eighty women die suddenly?”
Dietrich shrugged. “How do I know? We are at war. People die suddenly. Lots of people.”
“Yes. But eighty women?”
“It could happen.”
“All right,” Langhof said, “perhaps it could. But how is it that their livers were extracted within such a short time after their deaths?”
Dietrich shook his head. “I don’t know.”
“Think, Dietrich. One can hardly imagine eighty women dying suddenly in a state of intense excitement directly outside the doors of a medical laboratory.”
Dietrich laughed lightly. “True, Dr. Langhof.”
“Well, what would you gather from this, then?”
“That they were executed, of course,” Dietrich said casually. “It’s no secret that executions are taking place. My God, we’re at war, after all!”
“But this is an odd thing to crop up in the medical literature, don’t you think?”
“No,” Dietrich said. “I’d be surprised if such studies were not being made. It’s nothing new, as you know, Doctor. Medicine has always used certain circumstances to carry on research that would be impossible in peacetime.”
“I suppose so,” Langhof said. He motioned for Dietrich to go on about his business and then sunk his head again into the open journal.
What was he thinking? Could it have been the unthinkable? Emphatically, no. And when such references began to be sprinkled throughout the medical literature, and when the heads began to arrive upstairs at the museum, each in its own little hermetically sealed tin can, what then? Perhaps for a moment a question entered the intrepid scientist’s inquiring mind. But it was not one that could be easily framed. Nor was it one that could be answered under a surgical lamp.
If you had been there, you would know that there are certain things that can only be approached indirectly, through flippancy. And so, confronted by the growing evidence of impropriety in the medical community, Langhof developed that characteristic which had so far eluded him: a sense of humor. He became the master of the quip. Seeing Dr. Friedheim marching up the hall one afternoon with one of those ubiquitous tin cans held securely under his arm, Langhof smiled. “What do you have there, Doctor,” he said airily, “a new head for your totem pole?” Dr. Friedheim rushed by, aghast. On another occasion, he met Dr. Ludtz in the lavatory. He folded his arm over Ludtz’s shoulder. “They say human blood cannot be washed from the skin,” he whispered conspiratorially, “but I have found a lye compound that will do it.” Dr. Ludtz stared at Langhof for a moment, not knowing what to say. Then he simply smiled and walked away.
For a time, as you might imagine, Langhof’s sardonic remarks were regarded with great concern by the other doctors in the Institute. There was talk of his name being mentioned to those authorities whose task it was to handle such matters. But the smile on Langhof’s face, the jaunty carriage of his body, and the wink that invariably accompanied his remarks assured the nervous staff that he was quite a good fellow, an excellent fellow, in fact; one who had a far better attitude about the situation than certain other colleagues who seemed to carry themselves in a perpetual crouch. God only knew what was on their minds. But Langhof was sufficiently assured of the value of his work to dismiss its less pleasant aspects with a wink and a laugh.
And so the catastrophic I moved through the Institute of Hygiene as if at one with all that surrounded him — with the vials of acid, the skeleton displays, the books and journals, the shelves of chemicals, the reams of paper, the stacks of tin cans smelling vaguely acrid that seemed to pile up by the hundreds in the rear alleyway. At one, humorously at one, with all of this, the good doctor joked and japed, learning the rhythm of his routine like a standup comic in some cheap nightclub: “It’s cold. How cold is it? Cold enough for a freezing experiment.” “It’s hot. How hot is it? Hot enough to incinerate — what?” A socialist, a gypsy, a Jew, a homosexual, a communist, or any of a million other designated vermin. For the rhythm of the line, for the best laugh, what would be the funniest reply?
By this process, Langhof held to his moorings. He wrapped himself in the armor of ridicule, his old staple, but which was given added charm now by what passed in those sullen corridors for wit.
And yet, there were times when he felt a sudden, awesome dread, the sense of being propelled into the volcano’s mouth on a wave of gasoline. And there were moments, later, when he wondered what might have happened to him if he had pursued these dark intimations rather than dismissing them with a mocking smile. Long after those first weeks in the Institute, Langhof walked with Ginzburg as they made their way from the main camp to the factory works. Ginzburg was chewing on a sliver of rubber band and his almost jaunty step made Langhof remember his own days at the Institute. For a moment he stopped, gently turned Ginzburg toward him, and asked: “Would it be better, do you think, if we — I mean as a species — if we had never evolved the capacity to laugh?”
HERE IN THE REPUBLIC, night falls like the collapsing of a tunnel. From my verandah I can see lights in Dr. Ludtz’s cottage. It is time for my visit. I rise and as I make my way down the stairs, I can feel the bones in my joints grind against each other, sticks of dried wood making fire. At the bottom of the stairs, I hear the night birds in their revelry and I feel — I can still feel — the richness of the natural world, its miraculous abundance. In the Camp — I am coming to the Camp — this plenitude passed through a terrible crucible: greenery reduced to mud and shit; animal to louse and rat and man. And it will always seem odd to the benevolent spirit that while the smoke tumbled from the chimneytops in that near world, here in El Caliz the parrots sang above the flowers, the great kingfishers sliced the water, and the night birds flew in a world carved out of moonlight.
I tap lightly at Dr. Ludtz’s door. I hear the sound of the bedsprings beneath him.
“Come in, please.”
I open the door slowly. Dr. Ludtz is sitting on the bed, propped up by three pillows. His hands are under the covers.
“Good evening, Dr. Ludtz.”
Dr. Ludtz smiles faintly, then takes the pistol from beneath the covers. He lays it on the nightstand. “Sorry,” he says, slightly embarrassed.
“How are you? Feeling better, I hope.”
Dr. Ludtz shakes his head. A ring of sweat glistens on his bald pate. “The fever has worsened, I’m afraid,” he says softly.