Psalm 44

“Have you ever considered, my dear colleague, trying it out yourself? Having a look at all this from the inside?” Dr. Nietzsche asked. “Maybe it would interest you to inquire personally about the degree to which the gas chamber is more humane than, let’s say, the guillotine. Or the hangman’s rope. Don’t forget: there is still time for everything.”

“I know,” Jakob replied. “Whenever I’m about to forget that, even for a moment—” (but he didn’t finish, and she was certain that she would now give herself away with some desperate movement meaning “No, Jakob, don’t go on!” or that she would collapse unconscious or otherwise announce her presence from the cabinet against her will like a broken wall clock when all of a sudden it begins to clang before one of the mechanisms snaps and it finally falls silent. . but nothing happened. Even Dr. Nietzsche didn’t demand that Jakob finish what he had started but instead, as if he were saving him, he brought down the blade of his axe before Jakob’s head could reach the chopping block):

“Let us imagine,” said Dr. Nietzsche, interrupting, “that someone orders you to carry out a certain experiment on a group of prisoners who, you have been told or have found out some other way, are going to be killed anyway,” after which there was a slight pause, “would you not feel that there was a certain professional, scientific gain in that? Being able to conduct observations of living beings, of human beings, actually? At any rate, you’d have to admit that every experiment has human testing as its ultimate goal.”

“Perhaps,” Jakob said, “assuming I had their agreement. Perhaps then. . under certain circumstances.”

“What do you mean?” Dr. Nietzsche asked.

Jakob didn’t answer right away. Then he said:

“Let us say that I consider these experiments. . reasonable. Not merely useful from a professional, scientific point of view. Let’s assume. . ”

“But,” Dr. Nietzsche interrupted again, and Marija managed to tear herself away from the conversation long enough to reflect that she now understood almost nothing of this situation and that she couldn’t fathom where this whole discussion was leading, although from the fear that was constricting her throat she sensed that Jakob wanted to add something to his “Let’s assume” that would be dangerous for him in the extreme, and therefore dangerous for her — but at the moment she heard Dr. Nietzsche’s voice interrupting Jakob’s she could only think how she understood nothing of what their two voices were saying, and she imagined the two of them facing off against each other in the darkness that was for her impenetrable and blotted out all distinctions and she perceived them only as half-whispers painting the invisible speakers with expressions of tense, concealed attentiveness; now Nietzsche’s tense and rushed whisper had the floor once more, and now the two of them — in their unseen combat — more readily resembled conspirators hatching some plan than what she knew them to be: enemies, separated by opposing convictions and prejudices about race and ideology and power and every other possible and impossible difference, but who for a moment were accepting (illusorily at least) points of view that were in essence the opposites of their own so that in this way, by means of that ostensible identification, they could each prove to the other that their adversarial standpoints were in fact shared; even though they were both likewise convinced that such duplicity was in fact one of the easiest ways to allow their own convictions to come into view. Of course, that ostensible identification was doomed: this was a game of poker between a king and one of his subjects, in which the king would allow himself to lose only by virtue of his mercy so long as he found some form of satisfaction in competing on an equal footing with his people: ultimately he must emerge as the winner because he’s holding three kings in his hand; the subject displays his hand with a triumphant smile and starts to slide the whole of the state exchequer toward himself when the king gives a sign to his armed guards: Stop. Here are three kings, and I make — four. And smiling bitterly the subject gives back the money to which he had added everything he still possessed and he laughs along with the others at the king’s deceit and applauds his wit, and then he steps out and fires a bullet into his own mouth in front of the palace gates as a symbol of protest: that is as much as Marija comprehended of the proceedings when Dr. Nietzsche resumed playing and she heard the continuation of that word “But”: