The Quarry Read online

  The old man was not embarrassed. “It reads like a detective story,” he said. “You try to widen your horizon when you’re sick and look for new fields.”

  Lutz wanted to know how long, in the doctors’ opinion, Barlach would be bedridden.

  “Two months,” the Commissioner answered, “I’m supposed to stay put for two months.”

  Whether he wanted to or not, the boss had to tackle it now. “The age limit,” he stuttered. “The age limit, Commissioner. You understand. We can’t get around it, you know, we have to obey the laws.”

  “I understand,” answered the sick man. His face was expressionless.

  “What has to be done, has to be done,” said Lutz. “You will have to take it easy, Commissioner, and that’s another reason.”

  “And my attitude about ‘modern scientific criminology,’ where one finds the criminal as if he were a jar of name-brand marmalade—that has nothing to do with it?” said Barlach, correcting Lutz. Who was to be his successor, he wanted to know.

  “Rothlisberger,” answered the boss. “He’s substituting for you now.”

  Barlach nodded. “Rothlisberger. Well, with his five children, he’ll be glad of the higher salary,” he said. “Starting at the New Year?”

  “Starting at the New Year,” acknowledged Lutz.

  “Till Friday then,” said Barlach. “And from then on I’ll be the ex-Police Commissioner.” He was glad to be through with serving the state. Not because he would have more time now to read Moliere and Balzac, though that would be wonderful. No, the main reason remained the fact that something was wrong with the nice, simple, homely order of the world. He knew, he had found out. People were always the same, whether they went to the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul or the Cathedral in Bern on Sundays. The big criminals were running free while the small ones were stuck in jails. And anyway, there were all kinds of crimes nobody paid any attention to, only because they were more aesthetic than some sensational murder which gets into the headlines. But actually they were both the same, provided you looked at the facts and had the imagination.

  Imagination, there was the crux of the matter, imagination! Out of sheer lack of imagination a good, upstanding businessman will—between his aperitif and lunch—commit a crime by closing some shrewd deal. A crime of which nobody has a notion, least of all the businessman, because nobody has the imagination to see all its consequences. The world was bad out of slovenliness, and well on the way to going to the devil out of slovenliness. This was a danger bigger than Stalin and all the other Joes taken together. The civil service was no longer the place for an old hunting dog like him. Too much petty stuff, too much snooping. But the worth-while game, the game that should be hunted, the really big beasts, were under the protection of the state, like beasts in a zoological garden.

  Dr. Lutz looked angry when he heard this sermon.

  He found it most objectionable, and actually he thought it improper not to protest against such immoral attitudes. But after all, the old man was sick and would very soon retire. Thank God. Unfortunately, he had to go now, he said, swallowing his anger, he was due at a meeting of the Public Welfare Office at eleven-thirty.

  The Public Welfare Office was another place that had more to do with the police than the Finance Department, commented the Commissioner. A lot was wrong there, too. Lutz prepared himself for the worst, but to his relief Barlach switched to something else. “You can do me a favor now that I’m sick and no longer useful.”

  “Gladly,” promised Lutz.

  “You see, I’d like some information. I’m curious by nature, and I’m amusing myself in my bed here with criminological combinations. An old cat just cannot give up chasing mice. In this issue of Life I found a picture of an SS camp doctor in Stutthof by the name of Nehle. Try to find out whether he is still in jail or what became of him. We have the international service for these cases, and it won’t cost us anything since the SS has been declared a criminal organization.”

  Lutz wrote everything down. He would inquire, he promised, surprised at the old man’s request. Then he said good-by.

  “Good luck, and get well,” he said, shaking the Commissioner’s hand. “I’ll have the information for you by tonight. Then you can speculate to your heart’s delight. By the way, Blatter’s here, and would like to say hello. I’ll wait in the car.”

  So the big fat Blatter came in and Lutz disappeared.

  “Greetings, Blatter,” said Barlach to the policeman who had so often been his chauffeur. “I’m Had to see you.”

  “So am I, so am I,” said Blatter. “We miss you, Commissioner. We miss you very much.”

  “Well, Blatter, now Rothlisberger will take my place and change the tune, I suppose,” answered the old man.

  “Pity,” said the policeman. “Well, I don’t mean him any harm, and I guess he’ll do. If only you get well again.”

  Barlach asked whether Blatter knew the old bookstore in the Matte, the one that was owned by the Jew with the white beard, Feitelbach?

  Blatter nodded. “The one with the display of stamps that never changes in the window.”

  “Please drop by there this afternoon and tell Feitelbach to send me Gulliver's Travels. It’s the last service I’ll ask of you.”

  “The book about the dwarfs and the grants?” wondered the policeman.

  Barlach laughed, “Well, you see, Blatter, I adore fairy tales.”

  Something in this laugh struck the policeman as sinister, but he dared not ask questions.

  THE HUT

  By evening Lutz had already called. Hungertobel had just sat down beside his friend’s bed. He had ordered a cup of coffee, for he had to operate later and he wanted to take this opportunity of having his friend “for himself.” Now the phone rang and interrupted their conversation.

  Barlach picked it up and listened intently. After a while he said, “That’s good enough, send me the material,” and hung up. “Nehle’s dead,” he explained.

  “Thank God!” Hungertobel exclaimed. “Come on, let’s celebrate,” and he lit a “Little Rose of Sumatra.”

  “I hope the nurse won’t come just now.”

  “She certainly didn’t like it at noon,” Barlach said. “I had to say you gave me permission to smoke, and she said that sounded just like you.”

  “When did Nehle die?” asked the doctor.

  “In forty-five, on the tenth of August. He committed suicide in a hotel in Hamburg, with poison.”

  “You see”—Hungertobel nodded—“now the rest of your suspicion has gone up in smoke.”

  Barlach blinked at the smoke clouds which Hungertobel delightedly puffed in rings and spirals. Nothing was as resistant to going up in smoke as suspicion, because nothing kept materializing again as quickly, he answered finally.

  “You’re incorrigible.” Hungertobel laughed; he now looked on the whole affair as a harmless joke.

  “The first virtue of a criminologist,” replied the old man. And then he asked, “Samuel, were you a friend of Emmenberger’s?”

  “No,” answered Hungertobel, “I wasn’t, and as far as I remember, none of us who studied with him was. I’ve thought about this whole thing—the picture in Life and so on—again and again, Hans. I’ll tell you how it happened that I thought this monster of an SS doctor might be Emmenberger—undoubtedly you’ve wondered. After all, one can’t tell much from the picture, and my mistake must stem from something different besides a mere resemblance, even though that exists. I hadn’t thought about the story for a long time, not only because it lies far back, but even more because it was horrible. And we all like to forget experiences that frightened us. I was present once, Hans, when Emmenberger performed an operation without anesthesia, and for me it was a scene from hell, if there is such a place.”

  “There is,” Barlach answered quietly. “In other words, Emmenberger did do something like this once—something like what we suspected him of?”

  “You see,” said the doctor, “there was no alternative at the time. The poor devil who was operated on is still alive. If you ask him about it, he’ll swear by all that’s holy that Emmenberger is a devil. And that’s unjust, for without Emmenberger he’d be dead. But to tell you the truth, I can understand him. It was horrible.”

  “How did it happen?” Barlach asked.

  Hungertobel drank the last drop from his cup and lit his “Little Rose” again. “Frankly, it was no magic. There’s no room for magic in medicine. It didn’t take more than a pocketknife and courage, and, of course, knowledge of anatomy. But who of us young students had the necessary presence of mind?

  “Five of us, all medical students, had climbed from Kienvalley into the Blumlisalp region. I don’t remember where we were going. I’ve never been a great mountain climber, and I’m an even worse geographer. I suppose it was some time in nineteen eight, probably July. And it was a hot summer, that I recall. We stayed overnight in a hut on one of the Alps. It’s strange that I should recall that hut so vividly. Sometimes I dream of it, and I wake up, bathed in perspiration. Yet it was probably no different from any other such hut, and the horror attached to it for me exists only in my fantasy. That this must be so, I realize when I remember that I always visualize it covered with damp moss, and in reality you don’t find moss on mountain huts. I’ve sometimes read of knackers’ huts without really knowing what was meant. Well, when I see the words ‘a knacker’s hut,’ I imagine something like this one. It was surrounded by fir trees and had a well not far from the door. It was of wood, not black, but white and rotten—but that, too, I may have imagined afterward. So many years lie between today and this occurrence that dream and reality are inseparably woven together.

  “But I recall very clearly the nebulous fear that struck me when we approached the hut, crossing a stony meadow. I’m convinced this fear gripped all of us, except Emmenberger, perhaps. Our talk died down. The evening sun, which sank before we reached the hut, made the scene all the more frightful, since a strange deep-red light settled for an almost unbearable length of time on this empty world of ice and stone. It was a deathly illumination, tinting our faces and hands, an illumination appropriate for a planet that revolves around the sun at a far greater distance than ours.

  “Like hunted animals we stormed into the hut. Its door was unlocked. The inside was poor and bare, furnished with nothing more than a few bunks. But in the faint light we saw some straw under the roof. A black crooked ladder, covered with a year’s dirt, led up to it. Emmenberger fetched water from the well with a strange haste, as if he knew what was going to happen. Needless to say, that’s impossible. We started a fire on the primitive stove; there was even a kettle. And then, in this weird atmosphere of fear and fatigue which had overcome us, one of us met with an accident. It was a fat boy from Lucerne, the son of an innkeeper—nobody really knew why he was studying medicine. A year later he took over his father’s hotel. He was an awkward fellow. He had climbed the ladder to reach the straw under the roof. When the ladder suddenly collapsed, he fell clumsily, hitting his neck against a protruding beam, and lay moaning on the floor. It was a bad fall! At first we thought he’d broken something, but soon he started to gasp for breath. We had carried him outside to a bench, and he lay there in the strange light of the sinking sun which shone down from towering cloud banks. The sight of the hurt boy was frightening. His throat bore bloody scratches and was swollen, he held his head back, while the larynx seemed to convulse. Horrified, we noticed his face turn darker and darker, almost black in the infernal shimmer from the horizon, and his wide-open eyes gleamed like two wet white pebbles.

  “We struggled desperately with cold compresses. In vain. His throat swelled more and more internally, and he threatened to choke. At first he had been filled with a feverish tension, but now he was apathetic. His breath hissed, he could no longer speak. We knew that his life was in extreme danger; we were helpless. We lacked experience and probably knowledge. We knew that there was an emergency operation which would help but nobody dared to think about it. Only Emmenberger understood and did not hesitate to act. He examined the Lucerner, disinfected his pocketknife in the boiling water on the stove, and then performed a cut we call a tracheotomy, which in emergencies sometimes has to be performed; it involves making a cut above the larynx in order to get an air passage. The operation wasn’t what was so terrifying, Hans—it had to be done with a pocketknife. No, the horror was in something different—something that took place between those two, in their faces. Though the injured boy was almost unconscious from lack of air, his eyes were open, very wide open, and so he had to observe all that happened, even though maybe as if in a dream. And when Emmenberger made that cut, my God, Hans, his eyes were wide open, too, and his face distorted. All of a sudden it seemed as if something satanic broke out of those eyes, a kind of overwhelming joy of torture—or whatever you want to call it. For a second I felt a paralyzing fright, but only for a second—then it was over. But I believe I was the only one to feel it—the others did not dare to watch. I believe, too, that part of what I experienced is in my imagination only, that the sinister hut and the uncanny light contributed to the illusion.

  “The strange thing about the incident is, though, that the Lucerner whose life Emmenberger had saved never spoke to him again. He hardly thanked him, which a lot of people resented. Emmenberger, on the other hand, became quite a celebrity. His career was strange. We had all thought he would make a name for himself, but fame did not attract him. He studied a lot and in a wild fashion. Physics, mathematics—nothing seemed to satisfy him. He was even seen in lectures on philosophy and theology. He passed his examinations brilliantly, but never practiced. He worked as a substitute—for me, among others—and I must admit, patients were enthusiastic about him—with the exception of a few who did not like him. He led a restless and lonely life, until he finally emigrated. He published strange articles, for instance one about the justification for astrology, one of the most sophistical things I ever read. As far as I know, he hardly ever saw anybody and became a cynical, unreliable character, all the more unpleasant because nobody felt capable of handling his sarcasm. What surprised us was the great change in Chile, that he did such sober and scientific work—it must have been the climate or the surroundings. Of course, once he returned to Switzerland, he became exactly what he had been before.”

  “I hope you saved the article on astrology,” said Barlach when Hungertobel had finished.

  The doctor answered that he could bring it to him tomorrow.

  “So this is the story,” the Commissioner went on thoughtfully.

  “As you can see,” said Hungertobel, “maybe I did spend too much of my life dreaming after all.”

  “Dreams don’t lie,” replied Barlach.

  “Dreams lie most of all,” said Hungertobel. “But you’ll have to excuse me, I have to operate.” And he rose from his chair.

  Barlach gave him his hand. “Not a tracheotomy, I hope, or whatever you call it.”

  Hungertobel laughed. “A ruptured groin, Hans. I like that better even though it is more difficult. But you must rest now. What you need most is twelve hours of sleep.”

  GULLIVER

  But around midnight the old man awakened when a soft noise came from the window and the cold night air rushed in.

  The Commissioner did not turn on the lights at once. Instead, he pondered what was happening. He guessed that the shutters were slowly being pushed up. The darkness that surrounded him lifted; phantomlike, the curtains fluttered in the uncertain light. Then he heard the shutters being cautiously pulled down. Again the impenetrable darkness of midnight surrounded him, but he sensed that a figure was moving toward him from the window.

  Finally Barlach said, “There you are, Gulliver,” and turned on his night lamp.

  In the room stood a gigantic Jew in an old spotty and torn caftan, the red glow of the lamp falling on him.

  The old man settled down again in his pillows. “I half expected you to come tonight. I had an idea that you were an accomplished second-story man.”

  “You are my friend,” said the intruder, “so I came.” His head was bold and huge, his hands, noble, but everything was covered with terrible scars, bearing witness to inhuman tortures. Yet nothing had succeeded in destroying the majesty of this face and this human being. The giant stood motionless in the room, slightly bent, his hands on his thighs. His shadow played, ghostlike, on the walls and the curtains, his brilliant eyes rested with imperturbable clarity on the old man.

  “How could you know that I found to be present in Bern necessary?” It came out of the beaten, almost lipless mouth, in an awkward, too careful mode of expression, as if from one at home in so many languages that he now does not immediately find his way around in German. However, his speech was without accent. “Gulliver leaves no trace,” he said after a short silence. “I work invisibly.”

  “Everybody leaves a trace,” replied the Commissioner. “I’ll tell you yours: Whenever you’re in Bern, Feitelbach, who hides you, puts an advertisement in the Gazette that he is selling old books and stamps. At such times Feitelbach has some money, I think.”

  The Jew laughed. “The great art of Commissar Barlach lies in discovering the obvious.”

  “Now you know your trace,” said the old man. “And there is nothing worse than a criminologist who tells his secrets.”

  “I shall not cover my tracks for Commissar Barlach. Feitelbach is a poor Jew. He will never understand how to make money in business.”

  With these words the huge ghost sat down next to the bed. He reached into his caftan and pulled out a big dusty bottle and two little glasses. “Vodka,” said the giant. “We shall drink together, Commissar; we have always drunk together.”

  Barlach sniffed the glass. He liked to drink at times, but he had a bad conscience. He thought to himself that Dr. Hungertobel would be rather taken aback were he to see all this: the liquor, the Jew, and the midnight, in which one should be asleep. “A fine patient!” Hungertobel would thunder and make a big fuss.