Langhof walked down the hall. He could hear someone whistling softly in the distance and toward the rear of the compound he found Ginzburg lying on a bunk, his hands behind his head, the door of his room swung wide open.
“Don’t you think you should close the door?” Langhof asked.
Ginzburg turned over on his side and propped his head up in one hand. “Why?”
“For privacy,” Langhof said.
Ginzburg stared evenly at Langhof. “What are you doing here, may I ask?”
The question sounded like an accusation. To counter it, Langhof asserted his authority. “These quarters. Very nice. May I ask how you rate them?”
Ginzburg smiled. “Easy. I’m Kessler’s boy. His court jester. His fool.” His eyes seemed to grow cold. “And his whore.”
“Really? And what were you doing outside just now?”
“Burying something,” Ginzburg said airily.
“What?” Langhof demanded.
“Drugs, mostly. Morphine. Aspirin. A little food, too.”
Langhof stepped into the room and closed the door behind him. “You could be shot for that.”
“Not as long as Kessler has anything to do with it,” Ginzburg said confidently.
“These things you bury — what are they for?”
“For some of the prisoners, of course,” Ginzburg said casually.
“You risk your life for them?”
Ginzburg laughed. “My life? No. Kessler will protect me; I told you that.” He paused, watching Langhof’s face. “Oh, I get it now. You want me to be doing this at the risk of my life. You want me to be a brave man risking my life for my fellow suffering creatures. Such a possibility would give you … I don’t know … hope?”
“I’m asking, that’s all,” Langhof said.
Ginzburg tilted his head playfully. “Well, if you’re looking for some surviving heroism in me, then go look somewhere else. You’ve been here a long time, Langhof. You’ve seen some courage. You know that there are people in the Camp — and people outside it — who really do risk their lives for others.”
“Of course,” Langhof said.
“Then why would one more make any difference?”
“I don’t know. Maybe because you’re the only one I could talk to.”
“Well, you lost out again, Doctor, because I’m no hero. Kessler looks out for me. He’s in love with me.”
“You must be joking.”
“I’m a handsome boy,” Ginzburg said lightly. “And personable. I have an excellent sense of humor.”
“Enough of this,” Langhof said irritably.
“A hero,” Ginzburg said mockingly. “How ridiculous. A hero to talk to. Nonsense.” He smiled. “No. I know what you want. All those people out there doing their heroic deeds, they don’t interest you. That’s it, isn’t it? They don’t interest you because their heroism is so natural, so thoughtless. No, what you’re looking for is the intelligent hero, the one who knows all the consequences but wills himself to heroic acts.”
“What difference would that make?” Langhof asked.
“All the difference in the world, to you,” Ginzburg said.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Ginzburg sat up in his bunk. “Don’t I? You just can’t imagine yourself in the situation you’ve been in for years, can you? You’re still wondering.”
“Wondering what?”
“You’re still wondering how you got here.”
“I know how I got here,” Langhof said. “It was an accident, a stupid fluke.”
Ginzburg shook his head. “There may be petty accidents in this world, Langhof, but there are no great ones. Think. If you got here by accident, then so did everybody else. That would mean the Camp itself is just an accident. Let me tell you something, Langhof, that thought, that possibility is the only thing on earth more horrible than the Camp itself.”
“I was reassigned,” Langhof said. “I was a scientist pursuing my research in the capital.”
“And that’s the end of it?”
“How did you get here, then?” Langhof asked.
“Don’t be stupid, Doctor,” Ginzburg said. “The way I got here and the way you did have nothing whatsoever in common.”
“Of course,” Langhof said. “I’m sorry. That was stupid.”
“And you’re not stupid, right, Langhof?”
“I like to think that I am not.”
Ginzburg chuckled. “You are carved out of clouds,” he said contemptuously.
“Please,” Langhof said, almost pleadingly. “I’m trying to … trying to …”
“What?”
“Talk to you.”
“About what?”
“I don’t know, exactly.”
“Talk. Talk. There’s going to be a lot of talk about this place in the future.”
“Yes,” Langhof said, “I imagine there will be.”
“What are you going to say, Langhof?”
“Me? I have nothing to say.”
“Nothing? Nothing at all?”
“I don’t know,” Langhof said softly. “Maybe that it was just so very evil here.”
Ginzburg laughed. “Evil? Dear God, how ridiculous. Evil, my ass.” He smiled and stroked his backside. “Or should I say, Kessler’s ass. It belongs to him. Sweet little commodity, don’t you think?”
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.