The Orchids

by Thomas H. Cook

  “How is your tomb progressing, Dr. Ludtz?” I ask.

  “What’s that? My tomb? Oh, yes. Very well, of course I don’t really think of it as a tomb.”

  “The liana vines seem determined to obscure it.”

  Dr. Ludtz does not hear me. He has turned back toward the river. “So calm,” he says to himself, “wonderful for rowing.”

  “Yes, quite wonderful.”

  He turns to face me. “If I may be excused, Dr. Langhof, I think that I might take advantage of this fine day.”

  “By all means, Doctor.”

  “Are you sure you would not wish to join me?”

  “Yes, I’m sure. I must make these preparations.”

  “I understand, believe me,” Dr. Ludtz says. “El Presidente must have everything as he likes it.”

  “If we are to continue to have everything as we like it,” I add.

  “Yes. Absolutely,” Dr. Ludtz says quickly. “Absolutely correct in that.”

  “Good day, Dr. Ludtz.”

  Dr. Ludtz rises. “Good day to you. And please, not so much time in this office.”

  “Thank you for your concern.”

  He vanishes behind the door of my study, the little bulge of the automatic pistol clearly visible in the large back pocket of his flannel trousers. He sleeps with it on his nightstand, the barrel toward his coiled rosary. In all his life he has spoken one memorable sentence. As we stood watching the smoke billow up from one of the great brick funnels of the Camp, he turned to me and said in a voice of almost wistful repudiation, “One cannot imagine waltzing after this.”

  He is outside now. I can see him through the window, his body neatly dissected by the blades of a large green fern. He is calling Alberto and Tomás, Juan’s teenage sons. For a moment they do not see him, caught up as they often are in a kind of manic play, an endless, banal chase from which no clear victor ever emerges.

  He has caught their attention, and I see him motioning toward the small boat that bobs lightly on the river, a length of braided rope holding it to the bank. He is right. The river is very calm, a perfect day for rowing. And I can see him years before, sailing in a sleek white skiff, a blue European river rolling beneath him and crashing up against the sides of the boat, covering his face with spray.

  Alberto and Tomás secure the boat. They smile at each other mockingly as they watch Dr. Ludtz lumber toward the boat and then heave himself awkwardly into it, causing it to groan and sway. To them this Teutonic Falstaff is no more than a mound of blubber who by some incomprehensible twist of circumstance employs and therefore commands them. Their bodies are tawny and sleek; his, ruddy and gelatinous. They are the trim young bulls; he, the imprisoned Minotaur. They cavort mindlessly in the humid forest, far beyond history’s mortmain; he is history’s dilapidated product.

  With Dr. Ludtz securely seated, Alberto and Tomás leap agilely into the boat and take up positions fore and aft. Then they paddle slowly from the bank, the boat sliding across the surface of the river as effortlessly as a knife through air. Dr. Ludtz grabs each side of the boat and steadies himself. He does not trust the depths. Though the river is for rowing, it also has the terrible ability to swallow him up entirely. For him, the crocodiles that drift indifferently beneath the boat are wily demons from the underworld. His is the anxiety of the paranoid who has come to fear even his paranoia.

  As the boat moves toward the center of the river, a large red bloom drifts slowly toward it. Dr. Ludtz watches as it nears him. When finally it has come close enough, he leans forward to scoop it up but, as he does so, jostles the boat. He quickly renews his grip. Holding to the edge of the boat, he watches the bloom float past him, his face slightly drawn and disappointed, a famished Tantalus from whose grasp all good things recede.

  THE YEARS immediately following my father’s suicide were difficult but not altogether unpleasant. Scrupulous in all matters, he left my mother and me quite enough to get by without undue hardship. But he also left us with a stigma, one my mother was hardly aware of, but which I used to the utmost. The child of a suicide has about him something of the radiance of celebrity. His peers presume that such a person is in touch with occult circumstances, that he has seen behind the locked door and gained some dreadful knowledge that has so far been denied them. It is a dreary notoriety, not unalloyed to pity, but for such a one as I, it was not an altogether unfavorable condition. As I felt no real love for my father, or even very much respect, his loss was no great matter. I tried to grieve, but the cold solitude of his life, his inability to touch without awkwardness, to speak without formality, so distanced him from me that his absence seemed little different from his presence. As a consequence, I was granted the special privileges of my condition without having to experience the pain. Indeed, the only real sorrow I felt at my father’s death was my mother’s survival, and that from now on I would be under her authority exclusively.

  As the months passed, my mother grew increasingly worthless and embarrassing in my eyes. I continued to attend school and gained some small acclaim in swimming and academics. I met Anna. These were happy circumstances, so I cannot really excuse my life by an unhappy childhood, as so many others habitually do. For whatever discomfort attended my coming of age, it was discomfort only, not torture. What discomfort there was originated almost entirely with my mother. She was much as my father understood her — altogether beyond reflection on matters that did not immediately attend to the domestic. Ignorant of literature or art, heedless of the political turmoil that increasingly swept around us, beyond concern for any of the issues that enlivened public debate, utterly at home within the confines of her own grotesque physicality, and smelling always of raw fish, my mother came to epitomize everything I wanted to escape.

  To the people of the village she was simply the unfortunate Frau Langhof, whose crazy husband had taken a pistol to himself. But to me she was a large, dull mop of a woman, unkempt and frowsy, her oily, matted hair forever licking at her eyes. Perhaps it could be said that it was her slovenliness that inspired my later commitment to the study of hygiene. And yet if it were that easy to explain ourselves, we would know a good deal more of what we are.

  I do know this: that beside my mother, Anna, my fourteen-year-old infatuation, appeared as a creature out of myth, the very image of perfect maidenhood with her pale blue eyes and elaborately braided hair. She radiated health and vigor, while my mother lumbered forth in a cloud of putrescence. Anna was lithe and agile, a body glinting in the sun as it sliced through the waters of the public pool. My mother was squat and unwholesome, with small milky eyes that stared mindlessly over my proudly squared shoulders.

  “What are you reading there, my dear Peter?”

  I was sitting in the half-light of the dining room when she came in. I shut the book immediately. “Nothing, Mother.”

  “In a dull light, it hurts the eyes.”

  I looked up at her. A thin line of milk glistened over her upper lip. “What do you want?” I asked.

  “That you should go to the butcher. For veal.”

  I could see her gnawing the raw meat like a scavenger. “I’ll go tomorrow,” I said.

  “It’s for tonight. For dinner. I want you to go now.”

  She handed me a piece of folded paper. “And give this note to Kreisler in the butcher shop. Here’s some money, too.”

  I stood up. “All right then,” I said, taking the note and wrapping the crumpled bills around it. She stared at the book suspiciously. “Not good to read without light, Peter.”

  I snatched the book from the table and deposited it on the umbrella stand as I left. From behind the closed door I could hear her calling for me to hurry and get back, not to linger on the corner.

  I rushed down the stairs as if her breath were chasing me from the house, filling it with contamination. Some of the village services had fallen off and I could see bits of paper lying in the gutter. In the Camp there was no such litter problem. Any scraps of paper were quickly snatched up by the p
risoners and dropped into their watery gray soup to give it bulk.

  The butcher, Kreisler, was a large, big-boned man, vain of his huge black handlebar mustache, which curled upward on either side of his mouth. He looked at me from behind the counter. “So, Peter, what for you?”

  “Veal,” I said, and handed him the note and the money.

  He quickly read the note, and I could see a little smile playing on his lips. When he had finished, he placed the note in his apron pouch and retrieved two choice cutlets. He held them up for me to see. “How about these two?”

  “Fine.”

  He wrapped the veal quickly and handed it to me with the change. “Tell me, Peter,” he said, “how is your mother?”

  “Fine,” I said indifferently.

  Kreisler gave me a penetrating stare. “Is she seeing anyone?”

  I could not believe his words. “Seeing anyone?”

  “Is she going out, I mean. That sort of thing. With a man, my boy. Surely you’re old enough to understand.”

  I could not imagine such a thing. “She certainly is not,” I said.

  Kreisler scratched his face, then rolled one point of his mustache between his thumb and forefinger. “It’s been a long time since your father’s death,” he said. “It’s not good for a strong woman to live alone.”

  So that was it. Kreisler had his eye on my mother. I could imagine them rolling like two pink pigs in the grimy disarray of my mother’s bed. And what was that note? Suddenly it took on a hideous aspect. Had I been reduced to the role of go-between for these two creatures? “My mother does not intend to remarry,” I announced.

  Kreisler grinned. “Who said anything about marriage, Peter?” There was nothing but insult in his eyes.

  “Well, then, she does not intend to see anyone,” I said haughtily.

  Kreisler winked as if he knew better. “Is that so?”

  “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 g
reat 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 VI, secluded himself in a single chamber at Avignon and sat between two huge blazing fires, muttering to an emerald said to have mystic powers. For his talisman Dr. Ludtz depends upon the small automatic pistol that snuggles against his right buttock. He worships the power of technology, particularly the calculus of force, even though against any serious assault his puny weaponry would be of no more use to him than a garland of garlic or a bay leaf dipped in rabbit blood.