The Orchids by Thomas H. Cook

Author:Thomas H. Cook
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: MysteriousPress.com / Open Road

IF WE KNEW where things began, we would know where to end them. Now, from my verandah, I can see the jungle in all its misery and splendor. I have, during these long years, learned the many cries of the monkey and can distinguish panic from ecstasy. But it has not always been so.

Langhof, rubbing his gloved hands together as the Camp approached slowly like Birnam Wood, knew nothing of how he had come to this moment in his life. And perhaps such moments are themselves nothing more than those points in our lives that we most deeply misperceive. Surely Langhof, as he watched the Camp loom in the distance, wooden barracks enclosed by rusty stretches of barbed wire, felt nothing of the climactic, but only dread rising in him once again. For he was no more than a ball set rolling on an uneven tabletop, dipping this way and that with the contours of circumstance. In his state of profound consternation, he could find the will to ask only one trifling question.

“Have you a handkerchief, Dr. Ludtz?”

Ludtz, ever accommodating, fumbled through his overcoat pockets. “Yes, here.”

Langhof took the handkerchief and quietly blew his nose into it. Then he lifted his collar against the wind.

Beside him, the oblivious Dr. Ludtz turned to Rausch with a look of dismay. “Are we actually going to be living in the Camp?” he asked.

“Yes,” Rausch said. “You seem surprised by that fact.”

“But aren’t staff quarters usually outside the prison?”

“Prison? This is not a prison. This is a different matter altogether, Doctor. And you will be living inside the Camp.”

The car pulled up to the gate. Two guards stood before it, holding machine guns loosely in their hands.

“Open the gate,” Rausch said.

The guards did as they were commanded. The iron gate opened and Langhof passed through it. As he did so, a light snow began to fall. The snow was wholly without symbolic importance, but not to a romantic; for it is part of the blindness of romance to see life, and finally history, as a series of telling moments properly adorned by the imagery of fall or redemption, and to neglect all that lies in between, all that generates, debases, or inspires.

And so the car passed through the gate, the corporal guiding it carefully. A little farther along, he turned the car to the left toward a group of prisoners huddled in the mud. He honked the horn. “Get out of the way, you shit!” he screamed and glanced back at Rausch for approval.

“Just keep a steady pace,” Rausch said.

The car proceeded through the Camp and finally stopped in front of a freshly painted building.

“These are your quarters,” Rausch said. He stepped out of the car. “Come.”

Langhof and Ludtz got out of the car and followed Rausch up a short flight of stairs that led to the entrance.

“This is where you will be living from now on,” Rausch said. “You will each have your own room.” He opened the door and paused, allowing Langhof and Ludtz to pass in front of him.

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