Psalm 44

“. . no one is asking you if you consider it reasonable or useful or whatever else you want to call it. You have simply been handed an order — a command—to conduct certain experiments on people, even though they might seem mad or absurd to you. It’s the same as when a noncommissioned officer is issued some order (and in our case it is in fact an instance of an order of a military nature) and he is not allowed to consider and does not need to understand why he and his squad have to defend the approaches to a certain bridge. He will perish defending those approaches, along with his entire squad, without considering the context or any potential personal doubts about the appropriateness of the mission or this tactical maneuver. — It’s the same in a doctor’s case when he’s been ordered to carry out (let us say) the complete sterilization of a certain group or even a race or to put into effect a program of euthanasia or of tests with vaccines or low temperatures: when that doctor refuses to execute the trials as ordered by the official institution in command it is assured that he will be called to account for this disobedience. In such a case — and here one must also consider the authoritarian character of our state — an individual’s adherence to the ethical code of a given profession has to yield to the total nature of this war”; and from out of his meaty, round palm, squeezed into a jagged fist that was banging gingerly on the table, flew a stupid jack of spades in a green corporal’s tunic.

Jakob cast his experienced gambler’s eye over that card, over the Prussian figure in its tunic, with its two symmetrical bodies and two symmetrical swords as in a mirror and suddenly that mirror-doubled figure struck him as simultaneously dangerous and ludicrous; although she couldn’t see the expression on his face, or his legs under the table, or even hear his breathing or anything else by which she could gain an insight into Jakob’s condition, she was a priori convinced that he would not take any more risks now, if for no other reason than because of her, for he had to be thinking of her the entire time, Marija trembling in the cabinet, on the verge of unconsciousness, participating in this dangerous game not only as a kibitzer behind Jakob’s back but also as an unseen fellow player, a silent partner, a camouflaged prompter who wouldn’t permit him to get in over his head and who reined in the passion of the game in the name of weakness and in the name of a fear that Jakob must have sensed when he added unconvincingly (to her, anyway) and placatingly (to Dr. Nietzsche):

“I don’t know. It’s hard to understand all this, to make sense of everything,” and Marija remembered having asked Jakob to do something for Marija Beljanska, her namesake, who was at one time bunking in the same barracks as her: she had been summoned, along with a group of ten other women, and told to report to Dr. Nietzsche, and he had given them some injections that caused their legs to swell up; several times Marija underwent an operation in which she couldn’t see what they were doing with her leg, which hurt terribly and was wrapped up and put in a cast. Later they took off the bandages and plaster, and pus came trickling out of the wound. She was unable to stand on that leg. And then, immediately thereafter, they led her away to the gas chamber; but before that she had asked Jakob for help, right at the start: and she still remembered the look on his face and his voice:

Those are Dr. Nietzsche’s experiments.

What’s that supposed to mean, Jakob?

Someone should slip her some morphine. Or something like that. Do you see?

So that she’ll die?

Yes. So she’ll go to sleep; then she understood everything and she recalled Marija’s mood when she had been summoned the first time: she believed that after the examination she would be packed off home. So she told Jakob once more:

Do that for her. Try to do it for her. I implore you, Jakob.

I’ll try, Jakob said. But it should have been done earlier. I worry that it’s already too late.