Parallel Stories: A Novel (141 page)

Anthropologically, the most interesting part of the story was that the second group of these communist beasts ran off into the depth of the forest with the same inner conviction as the first group had—run, damn commies—even though in the fog everybody had heard the dull reports of bullets whizzing among the trees just minutes earlier.

There could have been no one who did not know what that meant.

Run, damn communists, run.

Think about it, Countess, if one has a chance to do something good and noble for the sake of one’s grandchildren or one’s entire nation, will a man with the right sensibilities pass up such an opportunity, no matter what the price.

It seems that one’s instinct to escape proves to be stronger than one’s reason, he said to himself at the same time, the animal in one has the advantage, and the human in a person comes afterward, ready to weigh things.

He did not answer his own rhetorical question because he did not wish to carry his pathetic tone too far.

Individually what we are doing here are scientific odd jobs, nothing else. But the work we do together on the national scale is indeed something big.

His fellow soldiers enjoyed it, he was thinking, and they couldn’t have been less educated or cultured than I, because this wasn’t a question of culture. To share their enjoyment after their first shots, that was wonderful. We live together or we die together. And the damn communists can always be destroyed, down to the last one, and that’s what makes the manhunt enjoyable. Which is not without etiological interest. Why does one enjoy something done in a group that one does not enjoy doing alone precisely because the group forbids it.

Who disconnects the inhibitions.

Or perhaps it should be asked the other way around. Why should he condemn it if he enjoys it so much.

Countess, perhaps you won’t be distressed by this, because no matter how highfalutin it may sound, we must say it aloud, he said aloud. Together we have lifted ourselves out of the lamentable march of world history. With the racial laws in place, the grand work is ready. About this neither American nor Norwegian, not even French researchers have major doubts. They envy not our achievements, they too have come close to such achievements, but our situation and our laws.

They were brigands, communist beasts, he said to himself, as if with his own emotions he were defending himself against his own aggressiveness.

We consider the nation as a single spiritual and biological unit, and therefore have seen that it was beneficial to reverse the order of things in medicine as well, he continued, sounding most self-assured. He had so much practice in public speaking that it was easy for him to let his attention run on parallel tracks or to divide his thinking. Schuer was appreciated at the university because he never said anything surprising; he did not do his thinking publicly. He knew well that people liked to hear only the kind of speeches they have heard before. And because he did not like to be bored, he busied himself with different subjects while composing his speeches.

We consider our primary task to be not the curing of the individual but genetic prevention, he explained, the treatment of the nation’s body, which means filtering out and annihilating the sick or flawed inherited stock, because we are working for the benefit of a healthy and racially pure genetic stock. It is for this purpose that we have established our network of race-nurturing physicians. One can only regret that the Hungarians cannot come along with us in this great work. For the first time, we have raised the latest racial-biological findings to the level of state interest, and you will believe me, Countess, when I say that this is an unshakable edifice.

We have in our hands a key with which we can daily open nature’s jealously guarded strongboxes.

Genetics has penetrated closed areas that only the gods could view, until now.

And there are only organizational obstacles to sharing this knowledge of ours with the Hungarians. From a racial standpoint I personally see no problem at all. We are familiar with the biological laws of our people’s life and therefore it is no secret with which races we see it advantageous to renew the inherited stock of our own.

At this moment, Karla Baroness von Thum zu Wolkenstein fell silent, alarmed, because not even her amplified inner monologue could stop her from realizing where her boss was headed.

She thought every claim that they had reliable knowledge about anything was ridiculous.

But just this once she managed not to get involved in the discussion.

For a few moments she ruminated over the question whether Schuer’s new ideas might thwart her Roman plans.

Health and illness, talent and madness, the rise and disappearance of entire families, nations, and peoples occur not only under environmental influences, explained Schuer to the countess, as inveterate individualists or Bolsheviks would like us to believe, but also under the influence of internal hereditary laws or, if you wish, Countess, of closed hereditary chains. One might say they are the results of independently inherited narratives. Which means, put simply, that
we
is a more important unit of nature than
I
, and any nation unwilling today to accept this hard rule will not be here tomorrow. Hereditary stock determines in advance the mode of the mutual effect occurring between a living organism and its environment. And this, Countess, no one can change throughout an entire lifetime. That is how you should look at it. In the best case, one would consider this peculiarity one’s personality. Or, because of one’s upbringing, for example, one might consider oneself a woman even though half of one’s inherited stock is a man’s.

Involuntarily they glanced at Siegfried.

The countess appeared to follow the man’s eyes, which absentmindedly looked at but probably did not see his only son. The boy remained an uncertain outline, a blurry blond spot with a concomitant, constant bitter feeling. No matter what he did, this boy would not realize the hopes he had for him. For a short while they both looked at him, looked at him with indulgence, as if he were their shared child, and there was something moving and reassuring in this for both of them. But the little boy did not notice their glances, because with angelically closed eyes he was waiting for his kid sister’s kick.

If not now, then in the next second it would come; he wanted to force the kick out of his little sister, he wanted it.

Or the other way around: the other half of one’s inherited stock may belong to a woman, but because of one’s upbringing one will consider oneself a man. Nevertheless, one is not a hermaphroditic mechanism—I say this to allay your fears, Countess—though every human being is close to being one.

If I’m not embarrassing you with this frivolous claim, I must say that one has a bisexual potential.

Racial purity is not a purpose in itself, let there be no misunderstanding between us about that, it is not an obsession but rather the biological prerequisite of the survival of the races.

He did not want to mention his proposal just yet; perhaps after he had finished his business with Karla, when the guests were leaving.

But he was on guard, observing the effect of his words, and he sensed boring into his side the destructive power, seething with jealousy and professional objections, of Baroness Thum’s tense silence. He was grateful to her for not expressing her hostility out loud, for not spewing out her venom. The reason he continued to speak so professorially, nicely cutting off and eliminating any possible questions and doubts, or veering off in different directions, was to keep the countess, who was very receptive to his ideas, from developing any misgivings about their future cooperation.

However, this game of playing it safe had little to do with professional reality.

To make the available data useful for purposes of national health and to use it to establish, at least retroactively, a new system of racial screening backed by the law, they needed as large a collection of data as it was possible to gather. We would need God’s data, he sometimes thought, annoyed at his own unpardonable way of thinking. And he had his doubts, because they had been operating a huge, expensive system on the strength of presuppositions—neither during their research nor retroactively could they justify the system on their meager available data—and since he believed their method of data gathering was inadequate, he had to consider the existing data irrelevant too.

We are confirmed materialists, this is what he thought, who try to grasp creation’s data in some material form. That is to say, his concern was that they conceived of human attributes as mere matter or as material manifestations.

This is nonsense; among sane people, this should be nothing but an object of ridicule.

The most important, strictly confidential sources of the palpable data were handled by Assistant Professor Mengele. Everything they regarded as so-called mixed or Jewish material. From Rome, however, they received data with which they could confirm African and south European sources of their comparisons, while from their colleagues in Oslo and Stockholm, where they had no independent institutions, they obtained data relating to Nordic peoples who had remained racially relatively pure. In his desperate hours, he saw clearly that not even another ten institutions and another ten generations would be enough to gather the necessary amount of data with which to confirm or reject a presupposition of any kind.

Budapest should long ago have been the center of research on Slavic and Balkan interbreeding. But he did not dare entrust his otherwise ready and willing Hungarian colleagues with the most confidential data, the research relating to the penis, vagina, and sperm stock.

Under the patronage of this woman, however, it might be possible to establish a German institute in Budapest paid for with Hungarian money, where he could quietly exile the baroness, and then he would not have to maintain an ongoing work relationship with Professor Orsós either.

But at the moment he feared not only the baroness’s professional judgment—her silence was hovering in the air—but also his wife’s rancor. He was guided by no inner conviction of any kind when he tried to do everything the way his wife wished.

Heredity and environment, these ancient movers of evolution and progress, he was saying, beaming with obligatory professional enthusiasm, are clearly separable. We must separate them.

There was no stopping now. He could no longer anticipate or comply with his wife’s wishes, which he did not understand himself.

I must stick with this pathetic little tone, this overly professorial little tone, he told himself, and he commanded himself to be patient.

It can be done nowhere but in the people’s state of Germany. The inherited stock and the conditions of a healthy environment must be guaranteed by nothing but the people’s state, which therefore must place the individual too under strict scientific supervision.

He burst into laughter. Except for Baroness Thum, nobody understood his expansive good mood, swollen with brutality and violence.

Yet Baroness Thum was busy with something else at the moment; taking advantage of the opportunity, she took a quick good look at Schuer’s teeth. She did not want to miss the chance. From this angle, she saw hardly any fillings. Although with such a brief glance she couldn’t catch every irregularity.

Of course, by now she’d had time to conclude that all three of Schuer’s offspring were idiots.

And anybody could see that the boy would be a pederast.

Maybe she should try to have a more thorough look at the roof of his mouth.

Today, the future of peoples can no longer be settled with conventional weapons, Countess, and if in the future, as part of your high office, you will be dealing with questions like this, you must keep this always in mind, that everything will be decided by the level and quality of the knowledge of genetics.

The maids had taken away the soup bowls and with great show and ceremony carried in, through the rooms, two large gravy bowls and on two great platters the elegantly sliced sauerbraten, garnished with steamed cabbage and gigantic potato dumplings, which at the Schuers was prepared according to the recipe of the famous clergyman’s daughter, with all the attention and love due to national foods. They had to keep it a secret from the master of the house that first the uncooked meat had been marinated for a week in a broth made with water, red wine, thinly sliced onion rings, and vinegar, spiced with bay leaves, pepper, and clove, and poured in the stone dish so as just to cover the meat. Several times a day, with ritual seriousness, they had turned the beef over in its bath.

Schuer laughed happily because to this day he could not help being happy about the circumstances he had just described. He could not get used to the wonderful thought that he’d a part in it; he was proud of it. He lived in a state that had adopted the findings of his science.

Think about it, Countess, he cried with rapturous boyish enthusiasm. The Führer is the first statesman in the history of the world who not only acknowledges and understands the achievements of research in racial purity and genetics, but has raised them to be the guiding principle in the administration of justice. For him, nothing is more important than a healthy nation.

Countess, please, perhaps a bit more gravy.

Which was a warning to the maids not to stand around staring but to make another round with the gravy bowls, and mainly a signal for her husband that it was high time to find another topic for table talk.

Oh, yes, Baroness, yes, please, you’re very kind.

Karla, dear, wouldn’t you like a bit more of this tasty sauce. Pass this to the baroness, will you. Our cook makes this exceptionally well. We’ll let the ladies have the recipe, unless of course you are already familiar with it.

Would love to have it, who could refuse such a generous offer.

Isn’t this the natural way, Countess. I can’t bear secret recipes.

Why should a recipe be kept secret.

Baroness Thum, however, rudely motioned to the maid that she could go, should not even come close with the disgustingly thick gravy.