In Paradise: A Novel by Matthiessen Peter

Author:Matthiessen, Peter [Matthiessen, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2014-04-08T00:00:00+00:00

OLIN LEAVES THE CIRCLE after the first meditation period and makes his way across the tracks and through the fence into the women’s compound. (By what warped code were the sexes kept strictly separate while awaiting death?) In one of these preserved barracks lived Tadeusz Borowski’s beloved fiancée Maria, arrested with him. In another, Dr. Mengele performed his hideous experiments on twin children. And somewhere here—this haunts him—a wistful child scrawled on the wall: “No butterflies live here.” This river lowland must have breathed mosquito clouds in warmer weather when every last butterfly, beetle, worm, and spider was devoured on sight by the famished prisoners, and the root of the poorest weed. Once the grass was gone and the river rose in rain and flood, mud oozed over these floors; in the dry summer, the prisoners choked on the hot dust, hallucinating in the dream of water.

Each barrack held seven hundred women and a few children in the animal reek of small tight rooms. He locates the fading crayon drawings depicting a schoolhouse and some happy kids pulling a hobbyhorse and a toy dog—the famous “children’s paintings,” so poignant in their effort to be cheerful, whose height above the floor suggests that they were actually the work of mothers desperate to help starving children through those endless hours.

Alone in the last of the bare rooms, he calls out to the missing Ann-Marie. Nobody answers. Fearing the scrape and whisper of thin shoes, he retreats outside to find his breath.

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