The Economy of Light

by Jack Dann

  “Why?”

  He smiled. “I suppose old habits die hard. I still believe in saving humanity.”

  “But I am still a Jew.” That meant to incite.

  Mengele looked over at me, then back at Báquiro. “It is only a slight shift in definition, Stephen. You have what we used to call hardness. You have always been a good soldier, or have you forgotten what you did to my old comrade Rudolf Heninger?”

  I took a deep breath. Yes, I remembered. I had bludgeoned the executioner of Riga to death.

  “You did what you did, and now he lives within you, doesn’t he? Just as those poor unfortunates I have killed live within me.” He smiled. “And just as I live within you.”

  “Doutor,” Báquiro said, and his voice seemed to shatter the atmosphere; I felt as if someone had awakened me from painful dream-blasted sleep. “Do you and your aprendiz wish to help me, or to leave?”

  Mengele glanced at me, and I nodded.

  “What do you wish us to do,” he asked Báquiro.

  “You must help her to sit up,” Báquiro said, “and you”—he pointed to me by raising his head—“you will please stand by the doorway in case the mother returns. She is of a strong mind, and my Maquichemi will not be able to keep her away.”

  I assumed Maquichemi was the woman we met outside the hut.

  And so I stood by the doorway, waited and watched. I could hear Maquichemi shuffling around outside, talking and singing to herself, could hear the distant roaring of water and the machine cawing of birds. Inside, it was close and humid and had become stiflingly, impossibly hot. My shirt was plastered to my wet skin, my eyes burned, yet Báquiro stoked the fire, as if he needed more and more heat to melt the imaginary darts inside his dying patient. I considered pulling the canvass away from the hut’s opening and taking a breath of fresh air. The smoke in the hut was palpable; I could taste it, dry and acrid on the tongue; but there was something else in the air, something besides burning wood and sweat and the whiff of turpentine, something sweet that reminded me of rancid meat and roses.

  I had smelled it all too often before. It was the sick smell of death.

  Báquiro chanted and prayed, and then gave directions to Mengele.

  “Now you will blow some darts into me, Doutor, and then I will blow them into the mouth of the woman.” He directed himself to his patient. “Senhora Bonpland, can you hear me?” The woman sat on the floor, her back braced against a post, her eyes glazed; she nodded. “Good. I am going to give you veneno, good poison to chase away the bad poison inside you. And my good friend will give me the poison. Are you prepared?”

  She did not respond.

  Báquiro unbuttoned her blouse and daubed and smeared red onoto seed dye on her forehead, temples, stomach, breasts, and the area of her liver and kidneys.

  “Each spot indicates darts, indicates veneno, disease....”

  Then he walked to the end of the hut, removed two open-work baskets from a pole stuck high in the thatch, and pulled the pole free. The pole was a two foot long reed cane pipe. He examined its tarry black nozzle and picked through the contents of one of the baskets until he found a coffee jar filled with brown powder, which he carefully poured into the nozzle. After tapping the pipe to distribute the drug, he walked over to his patient, kneeled beside her, and motioned to Mengele to do the same. He offered one end of the pipe to Mengele and said, “Now you must blow the poison into me. You must take a deep breath and blow very hard. After that, you must not help me or the woman.”

  Mengele nodded.

  “And you, Meester Aprendiz,” he said, looking at me with his hard face and deeply set dark eyes, “you must guard the door. But you will see everything as if you too have the poison.” He grinned at me, then at Mengele, and put the end of the reed pipe into his left nostril. “Agora,” he said to Mengele.

  And Mengele blew the contents of the tube into Báquiro’s nose, a terrific blast.

  I felt that blast and staggered backward; for an instant, it seemed that the hut was suddenly filled with burning, coruscating light.

  Báquiro coughed and spat, and then instructed Mengele to insert one end of the pipe into Senhora Bonpland’s nose. Mengele did so; and when Báquiro blew into the tube, Senhora Bonpland jerked backward as if she had been kicked in the face. She banged her head on the pole, and her nose began to bleed. She looked directly at me, terrified, her head jerking as she strained for breath that would not come.

  “Spit out the darts,” Báquiro shouted; he clapped his hands. “Spit them out.” But the woman could only make gagging sounds. Her skin color began to change. Báquiro pulled her to her feet and holding her from behind, he squeezed her sternum, as if he were performing the Heimlich maneuver. She coughed, then took a wheezing deep breath and, her gaze still locked on mine—although I had no idea if she could actually see me—she exhaled, coughing up the poison.

  Surely I was dreaming because I could see the darts, ethereal as ectoplasm, leave her mouth and eyes, the darts discharged, coming toward me as if shot from a bow, the darts poisonous and compact, slivers of hate and despair and grief, crystal hard shards of Mengele’s Nazi hardness.

  My mind, like a stop motion camera, recording.

  Báquiro grinning.

  Mengele now helping Báquiro hold Senhora Bonpland upright.

  Senhora Bonpland gazing at me. Her face slack. Her eyes wide with recognition. Perhaps I am the brujo....

  The darts the radiant crystal whiteness flying, piercing, piercing, then fading....

  Transforming me.

  Waking me once again to nightmare.

  * * * *

  “So that was your idea of taking me to a place where I could rest,” I said to Mengele as we walked back through the rainforest, through the twilight corridors and rooms defined by great boles of trees.

  Mengele smiled, obviously enjoying the sarcasm.

  “Well, Stephen, are you not rested?”

  “I am in pain...and I am still dreaming,” I said, looking around at a pair of orange winged parrots that seemed to fluoresce and glitter like jewels caught in bright light. My chest ached and burned, as if indeed I had been struck by darts. My lungs felt constricted, phlegmy; my breathing was ragged. I could hear thunder, resounding rolling thunder, but the pelting rain of the storm above could not pierce the tangled canopy of the forest, which also radiated its own crystalline light, as if some impossible ice storm had turned every bole and branch, every fern and palm into shimmering, living glass. “You are doing this.”

  Mengele laughed. “You believe that I am creating all that you see around you?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Are you going to tell me it is real?”

  “Of course it is real,” Mengele said.

  “You don’t believe it is a dream?”

  “Why should it matter what I believe? But, yes, it is a dream and, yes, it is real. Actually it is two dreams, probably more. Didn’t your servant tell you that dreams talk to each other?”

  I didn’t respond, but, indeed, Genaro’s fleshy wife Onca had told me that.

  We walked through the demarcation that separated rain forest from Mengele’s estate, walked through pouring rain along his expansive, manicured lawns to the shelter of his Ionic temple. The grass was steaming; we were soaked.

  “You said you were in pain from the darts,” Mengele said.

  “Yes.”

  “So am I....”

  And with that everything but the rain disappeared.

  * * * *

  My head ached, my ears were ringing from the cacophony all around me, and I found myself standing on the selection ramp in Auschwitz. I needed a drink. It was dark and cold, slushy rain flew through the air, and the sky was blacked out as if by a velvet curtain. But there were miles of lights, glittering Christmas lights strung in geometric patterns. To my right in the distance was the only star in the sky, a stinking, flesh-melting beacon of light: the flame of the crematorium. Auschwitz’s own eternal lamp. Directly ahead of me, a fre
ight train steamed on the track. The doors of the boxcars were being slid open by S. S. guards directed by Ernst Jäckel, the Arbeitsführer, who stood beside me on the platform.

  But I was in charge.

  Or rather Mengele was in charge.

  I tried to wake myself from his dream his memory his past his life, but I couldn’t. I was in Mengele’s dream, and in that dream I was Mengele. Mengele dressed in a freshly laundered black SS uniform: black jodhpurs, spit-shined riding boots. His face was recently shaved; he smelled of soap and perfume; he was the epitome of scoured cleanliness, and I remembered the aphorism cleanliness is next to godliness, but was that Mengele’s memory or my own? I couldn’t tell. He stood ramrod straight and tall, the picture of dignified military bearing, and inhaled the familiar odors of unclean flesh, urine, and feces wafting around him. Not even the rain could cleanse the stink, which was augmented by the foul sick sweet exhalations of the crematorium.

  But I was used to it...hardened to it.

  I shouted at Jäckel’s men to hurry up, to get the damn Jews out of the trains and into order, to line them up into columns of five; and the guards, in turn, shouted “Raus, raus, raus.” They shot those prisoners who could not disembark from the boxcars quickly enough; and the rest of the Jews rushed out of the cars, fell and slipped in the mud, looked around frantically for means of escape, but there was none: Only walls and high barb-wire fences. Alsatian guard dogs barked and snapped, biting hard into flesh and bone. SS guards rounded up the skeletal old men in filthy jackets, the elderly women wearing scheitel wigs, the children with their mothers, the young men and women, the fathers, mothers, cousins, neighbors...the doctors, lawyers, and rabbis, the accountants and artists, the carpenters, butchers, and plumbers, all wearing their defining yellow Juden stars.

  It occurred to me that the guards hurrying in constant awkward skittering jarring motion were dogs themselves; but they did their work, and I began selecting those prisoners who would be saved to work and those who would be transported to the gas chambers in the Red Cross trucks idling nearby. I would save those I could, but what matter if the poor wretches croaked in shit or ascended to Heaven in a cloud of gas?

  I slapped my riding crop against my gloved right hand and paced back and forth...selecting. So many faces, a sea of faces. But to me they were nothing more than shadows, wraiths; and I was but an actor in a shadow box play. I was efficient, however. I was proud of the speed and efficiency of my selections. There was no need for two doctors when I stood on the ramp.

  I said “links”—“left”—and the guards removed a family to the waiting trucks. I said “rechts”—“right”—and the guards directed a young beautiful Jewess to wait with the other Jews who would live for a little while longer.

  “Links.”

  “Rechts.”

  Ten people, twenty people, thirty people selected. I was a metronome, setting the time for a sort of monstrous, mythic music.

  Forty, fifty, sixty, one hundred.

  “Links.” “Rechts.” “Links.” “Rechts.”

  Two hundred.

  When his turn came, a malingerer with a bulging forehead and suppurating sores on his face pleaded for light work. I directed him to the left and told him that indeed he’ll get light work where he’s going. A woman who didn’t want to be separated from her mother and sister tried to force her way past a guard. The guard was distracted and let her pass, but I stopped her myself. When she tried to scratch me, I struck her hard in the face and directed her back to her own group. Selection was a precise procedure. This woman had been chosen to live and work. Her mother was too old to work; her sister too young. They would only succumb to illness and die. Better the gas.

  One of the Jäckel’s guards fired into the horde.

  A woman wearing so many ragged clothes that one couldn’t discern her figure screamed “Hershel” and fell on top of the dead man.

  “Stop the noise,” I shouted at the guard. “You will not shoot unless I so order...or unless your Arbeitsführer so orders.” I glanced at Ernst Jäckel, who bowed his head slightly in respect: My relations with all the camp staff were always based on mutual respect. But as the woman continued to scream, I ordered her shot to maintain order in the ranks. I leaned toward Ernst and reminded him that his men needed to be looking for twins. He instructed his men, and the shout went up—

  “Zwillinge raus!”

  “Twins out!”

  “Zwillinge heraustreten!”

  “Twins step forward!”

  “Twins will receive special treatment!”

  “Twins will be safe!”

  “Step forward now and identify yourselves!”

  And thus I received a miracle: a set of light-skinned, blond twin boys. I picked them up, gave them each a squeeze and a cuddle. One of the little boys cried for his mother. I cuddled him again and whispered in his ear.

  “Wilst du die Schnauze halten?”

  “Why don’t you shut your mouth?”

  Understanding that I would take care of him, the little angel stopped crying. As I passed the boy over to one of the striped suited prisoner workers for safekeeping, the twin’s mother looked up at me. She begged and pleaded with me to allow her to remain with her children. She was nothing but a brittle, shivering, brown-haired phantom. Rags and bones.

  I nodded, encouraged her not to worry, and off to the left she went.

  It was the humane option. Sooner or later they must all go to the gas. So if it were to be done, best it were done now with speed and mercy. Selections would always be difficult, for the selection of life unworthy of life was the consummate battlefield test of will, temper, sacrifice, and hardness.

  Now that I had found my twins, I relaxed. The test of selection became comfortably pro forma. A monotony of links rechts links rechts. The cold settled in, numbing, and I was the metronome ticking off life and death, the true metronome measuring and regulating the truest, purest, most wrathful and mathematically elegant music ever composed.

  “Links Rechts Links Rechts.”

  I was Moses parting this sea of corrupted souls.

  A prisoner came forward and with great hesitation told me that he was a doctor. Once I ascertained that he was properly credentialed—he was an ophthalmologist; and I was very pleased, as I had specific research in mind with which he could assist me—I welcomed the reticent Dr. Erich Bostroem. I explained to him that the prisoner physicians who work in my research facilities receive better rations and lodging than all other prisoners and are engaged in important medical work, cutting-edge experimentation and research. I invited him to keep me company while I continued my selections, and I asked the Arbeitsführer to make sure that all doctors were singled out so that Dr. Bostroem and I could decide if they would be selected to work with me in the hospital.

  As I made my selections, my new colleague shivered beside me.

  The hours passed slowly, even with the companionship of another doctor. I didn’t hate him because he was a Jew, because he was as dirty and ill-smelling as the others I was selecting. I was in a life and death struggle to purify the blood, a life and death struggle with the Jewish race. Jews were a formidable foe and highly gifted. Nevertheless they were a lower race, and the only cure for the world was their annihilation. But for this short time on this cold, rainy morning, Dr. Bostroem and I constructed a truce. For these few moments or hours, I would accord him the professional respect that was his due, and he would regail me with his ophthalmologic expertise. Indeed, we selected a number of prisoner doctors, saving them for the time being; and Dr. Bostroem stood in place and shivered as I made general selections.

  “How can you make these...determinations so quickly?” he asked.

  I had no intention of validating such a question. Nor did he slow me down. I continued to select, even as I explained some of the work I was doing that might be within his professional purview. I told him I was conducting research on the heredity factors of heterochromia. “In six of eight Gypsy twins, we found
the occurrence of heterochromia. Each had one blue eye and one brown eye.”

  Dr. Bostroem nodded, obviously interested.

  “I’ve had the eyes transported to Berlin for further study,” I continued.

  Dr. Bostroem disapproved. He started to shake his head, but regained control over himself. He would soon learn that his place was not to approve...or disapprove.

  “No, no,” I shouted at a guard who was directing a family into the wrong line.

  As I continued selecting, I explained a project I had in mind for Dr. Bostroem. “I have several prisoners, Jews and Gypsies, that have heterochromia. They also have syphilis and tuberculosis, which is not optimal. I have theorized that by injecting methylene blue into their eyes, we might change the color. I would like you to direct the project. I will provide you with proper facilities tomorrow morning. You can then prepare a list of anything else you might need.”

  “But why would you wish to do such a thing?” he asked.

  Without thought, I lifted the scheitel wig from an old woman’s head with my riding crop; it was like picking a scab. It was the fascination of the abominable, the ugly, and reprehensible. Dr. Bostroem made a noise deep in his throat, and perhaps it was the cold and the hour—first light—that caught me because I, too, lost control for an instant and asked, Would you like to take over the selections, Doctor?”

  “Dr. Bostroem apologized.

  I nodded, and then asked him to make a selection.

  “To the right or to the left, which will it be Dr. Bostroem?”

  Faltering. “To the right.”

  I nodded again, and waved the old woman off to be sent to the camp where she would surely expire in a matter of days.

  “And my husband,” she cried. “He, too....”

  A watery-eyed, skinny old man held onto her hand as if he were drowning.”

  “Well?” I asked the doctor.