Brodeck (20 page)

“But the captain threatened us. He said we’re supposed to ‘cleanse the village.’”

“So? What do you propose to do? Get a bucket of water and a broom and tidy up the streets?”

“Don’t joke, Brodeck! You think they’re joking? There wasn’t anything innocent about what he said. He wasn’t speaking at random! He chose every word carefully. Like the word
Fremdër
he used to refer to poor Cathor.”

“That’s the word they use to talk about anybody they don’t like. They’re all
Fremdër
, all ‘scumbags.’ I saw that word painted on many a door during
Pürische Nacht.”

“As you well know, it means ‘foreigner,’ too!”

“Cathor wasn’t a foreigner! His family’s as old as the village!”

Diodemus loosened his shirt collar, which seemed to be strangling him. He wiped his sweaty forehead with the back of his hand, gave me a fearful look, turned his eyes to his cup, took a quick sip, looked at me furtively once more, cast his eyes down again, and then said, almost in a murmur, “But you, Brodeck? You?”

XXXI

————

know how fear can transform a man.

I didn’t always know that, but I learned it. In the camp. I saw men scream, beat their heads against stone walls, hurl themselves on wire with barbs as sharp as razors. I saw them vomit, soil their pants, empty their bowels entirely, expel all the liquids, all the humors, all the gases their bodies contained. I saw some pray while others renounced the name of God and covered it with obscene insults. I even saw a man die of it—of fear, I mean. One morning, our guards played their little game and picked him as the next to be hanged, but when one of them stopped in front of him, laughed, and said
“Du!”
the prisoner didn’t move. His face betrayed no emotion, no distress, no thought. And as the guard started to lose his smile and lift his club, the man fell down dead, all at once, before the other even touched him.

The camp taught me this paradox: man is great, but he can never measure up to his full greatness. It’s an impossibility inherent in our nature. When I made my vertiginous journey, when I descended one by one the rungs of the sordid ladder that carried me ever deeper into the
Kazerskwir
, I was not only moving toward the negation of my own person but also, at the same time, proceeding toward full awareness of my tormentors’ motivations and full awareness of the motivations of those who had delivered me into their hands. And thus, somehow, toward a rough outline of forgiveness.

It was the fear others felt, much more than hatred or some other emotion, that had made a victim of me. It was because fear had seized some of them by the throat that I was handed over to torturers and executioners, and it was also fear that had turned those same torturers, formerly men like me, into monsters; fear that had caused the seeds of evil, which we all carry, to germinate inside them.

There’s no doubt that I badly misjudged the consequences of Aloïs Cathor’s execution. I’d grasped its horror, its odious cruelty, but I hadn’t envisioned the inroads it was going to make in people’s minds, nor had I understood how much Captain Buller’s words, examined and sifted through dozens and dozens of brains, would distress them; I hadn’t considered that those words could induce the others to make a decision whose victim would be me. And there was also, of course, Cathor’s remains, his head lying on the ground a couple of meters from his body, with the sun shining down and all the ephemeral insects which in those days of early fall were born in the morning, died at night, and spent the hours of their brief existence zooming around the corpse, reveling in the banquet, whirling, zigzagging, buzzing, driven wild by the great mass of flesh putrefying in the heat.

The nauseating smell permeated the whole village. The wind seemed to be on Buller’s side. It went to the church square, loaded itself with the miasmal exhalations of carrion, and then rushed gusting and swirling down every street, dancing a jig, slipping under doors, penetrating incompletely closed windows and disjointed tiles, and bringing all of us the fetid spoor of Cathor’s death.

Throughout this time, the soldiers behaved with the most perfect propriety, as if everything were normal. There was no thieving, no plundering, no violence, no demands. They paid for whatever they took from the shops. Whenever they encountered women, young or old, they raised their caps. They chopped wood for elderly widows. They joked with the children, who got scared and ran off. They saluted the mayor, the priest, and Diodemus.

Captain Buller, always displaying his tic and flanked by his two lieutenants, took a walk through the village streets every morning and every night, striding along on his short, thin legs. He walked fast, as if someone were waiting for him somewhere, and paid no attention to those he met on his way. Sometimes, wielding his riding crop, he flailed the air or drove off bees.

The inhabitants of the village were all dazed. There was very little in the way of conversation. Communication was kept to a minimum. Heads were bowed. We weltered in our astonishment.

After Diodemus left my house on the night of the execution, I never saw him again. I’ve learned everything I’m about to write from the long letter he left me.

One evening, the third evening of the
Fratergekeime’s
presence in the village, Buller summoned Orschwir and Diodemus. Orschwir was sent for, obviously, because he was the mayor, but Diodemus was a surprising choice. Anticipating a question Diodemus would never have dared to ask, Buller observed that the village teacher must necessarily be less stupid than the other villagers and could even be capable of understanding him.

Buller received the two men in his tent. It contained a camp bed, a desk, a chair, a sort of traveling chest, and a canvas wardrobe like a slipcover under which were hanging what looked like a few articles of clothing. On the desk, there was some paper printed with the regimental letterhead, along with ink, pens, blotting paper, and a framed photograph showing a thickset woman surrounded by six children ranging in age from about two to about fifteen.

Buller was writing a letter at his desk with his back to Orschwir and Diodemus. He took his time finishing the letter, reread it, slipped it into an envelope, sealed the envelope, and placed it on the desk; then, finally, he turned to face his guests, who—it goes without saying—were still on their feet and hadn’t moved a muscle. Buller gazed at them in silence for a long time, obviously trying to divine something about the men he’d be dealing with. Diodemus felt his heart beating as though it would burst, and his palms were clammy with sweat. He wondered what he was doing there and how long the ordeal would last. Buller’s tic made his chin jerk at regular intervals. He picked up his riding crop, which lay handy on the bed beside him, and stroked it slowly, gently, as if it were a pet. At last he said, “Well?”

Orschwir opened his mouth wide, found no reply, and looked at Diodemus, who couldn’t even swallow, much less speak.

“Well?” Buller said again, without indicating any genuine impatience.

Gathering all his courage, Orschwir managed to ask in a strangled voice, “Well what, Captain?”

This question elicited a smile from Buller, who said, “The cleansing, Mr. Mayor! What else would I be talking to you about? How much progress have you made with the cleansing?”

Once again, Orschwir stared at Diodemus, who lowered his head and tried to avoid his companion’s eyes. Then the mayor, who’s ordinarily so sure of himself, whose words sometimes sting like whips, whom nothing impresses, who naturally behaves like the rich, powerful man he is, began to stammer and fall apart in the face of a uniformed creature little more than half his size, a minuscule fellow afflicted with a grotesque tic, who sat there caressing his riding crop like a simpering woman. “The thing is, Captain,” Orschwir said. “The thing is, we … we didn’t entirely … understand. Yes. We didn’t understand … what you … what you meant.”

Orschwir drooped, his shoulders sagging, like a man who’s made too great an effort. Buller laughed softly, stood up, and started walking around inside the tent, pacing back and forth as if deep in thought. Then he came to a stop in front of his two visitors. “Have you ever observed butterflies closely, Mr. Mayor? Or you, Mr. Schoolmaster? Yes, butterflies, any sort of butterflies at all. No? Never? That’s a shame … a great shame! I’ve dedicated my life to butterflies, you see. Some people focus on chemistry, medicine, mineralogy, philosophy, history; in my case, my entire existence has been devoted to butterflies. They fully deserve such devotion, but not many people are able to see that. It’s a sad state of affairs, because one could learn some lessons of extraordinary importance for the human race by contemplating these splendid, fragile creatures. Consider this, for example: the earliest observers of one species of Lepidoptera, known by the name of
Rex flammae
, noted certain behavior that seemed baseless at first; after further observations were made, however, it proved to be perfectly logical. I don’t hesitate to use the word ‘logical’ when speaking about butterflies, which are endowed with remarkable intelligence. The
Rex flammae
live in groups of about twenty individuals. It’s believed that some sort of solidarity exists among them; when one of them finds a quantity of food large enough to nourish the entire group, they all gather for the feast. They frequently tolerate the presence among them of butterflies not of their species, but when a predator suddenly appears, it seems that the
Rex flammae
warn one another, in who knows what form of language, and take cover. The other butterflies that were integrated with the group an instant earlier apparently fail to receive the information, and they’re the ones that get eaten by the bird. By providing their predators with prey the
Rex flammae
guarantee their own survival. When everything’s going well for them, the presence of one or more foreign individuals in their group doesn’t bother them. Perhaps they even profit from it one way or another. But when a danger arises, when it’s a question of the group’s integrity and survival, they don’t hesitate to sacrifice an individual which is none of their own.”

Buller stopped talking and went back to pacing, but he didn’t take his eyes off Orschwir and Diodemus, who were sweating profusely. Then he spoke again: “Narrow-minded persons might find the conduct of these butterflies lacking in morality, but what’s morality, and what’s the use of it? The single prevailing ethic is life. Only the dead are always wrong.”

The captain sat at his desk again and paid no more attention to the mayor and Diodemus, who silently left the tent.

A few hours later, my fate was sealed.

De Erweckens’Bruderschaf-
—
“The Brotherhood of the Awakening” I spoke of earlier—held a meeting in the little room reserved for it in the back of Schloss’s inn. Diodemus was there, too. In his letter, he swears to me that he wasn’t a member of the brotherhood and that this was the first time they’d ever invited him to a meeting. I don’t see why that’s important. First time, last time, what’s the difference? Diodemus doesn’t give the names of those who were present, just their number: six of them, not counting him. He doesn’t say it, but I believe that Orschwir must have been one of the others, and that it was he who reported Adolf Buller’s monologue on butterflies. The group weighed the captain’s words. They understood what there was to understand, or rather, they understood what they were willing to understand. They convinced themselves that they were the
Rex flammae
, the brilliant butterflies the captain had talked about, and that in order to survive, they would have to remove from their community those who didn’t belong to their species. Each of them took a piece of paper and wrote down the names of the alien butterflies. I presume that it was the mayor who gathered up the papers and read them.

All the pieces of paper bore two names: Simon Frippman’s and mine. Diodemus swears he didn’t put down my name, but I don’t believe him. And even if that were true, the others couldn’t have had much difficulty persuading him to include my name in the end.

Frippman and I had many things in common: we hadn’t been born in the village, we didn’t look like the people around here (hair too black, skin too swarthy), and we came from far away, from an obscure past and a painful, wandering, age-old history. I’ve related my arrival in the village, riding in Fedorine’s cart after having made my way amid ruins and corpses, orphaned of my parents and orphaned of my memory. As for Frippman, he’d arrived ten years ago, babbling a few words of the local dialect mixed with the old language Fedorine had taught me. Since many found him impossible to understand, I was asked to serve as interpreter. It seemed likely that Frippman had suffered a severe blow to the head. He kept repeating his last name followed by his first name, but apart from that, he didn’t know a lot about himself. As he appeared to be a gentle sort, people didn’t drive him away. A bed was found for him in a barn attached to Vurtenhau’s farm. Frippman was full of heart. He did day labor for this or that employer—haymaking, plowing, milking, woodcutting—without ever seeming to grow tired and received his wages in food. He didn’t complain. He whistled tunes unknown to us. The village adopted him; he let himself be tamed without difficulty.

Simon Frippman and I were thus
Fremdër—
“scumbags” and “foreigners”—the butterflies that are tolerated for a while when everything’s going well and offered as expiatory victims when everything’s going badly. What was odd was that the men who decided to turn us over to Buller—that is, to send us to our deaths, as they must certainly have known!—agreed to spare Fedorine and Amelia, even though they were alien butterflies, too. I don’t know that one should speak of courage when referring to this omission, to this desire to spare the two women. I think rather that the gesture was like an attempt at expiation. Those who denounced us needed to keep a region of their conscience pure and intact, a portion that would be free from the taint of evil and would therefore allow them to forget what they’d done or at least give them the ability to live with it, in spite of everything.