Layman's Report

by Eugene Marten

  “Odds are still better at the tables,” the operations manager said. “But what’s worse: knowing or not?”

  The amber light on the machine was replaced by green. “The call has been made,” Fred said, and he went back to the first black box. The draftsman stayed where he was. The Shoshone slept.

  “The delivery module is armed,” Fred said. “From here everything is automatic.” A slender steel piston hung above each syringe. The draftsman said, “Foxfire one,” and the first piston dropped as if on command.

  Fred cleared his throat. “Fifteen cc’s of ten percent sodium thiopental to induce a state of unconsciousness.” You could hear liquid dribbling somewhere. When the syringe was empty the State of Texas raised his arm.

  “Where I come from we do it by hand,” he said.

  “I’m aware,” Fred said.

  “We have a problem with bolus,” Texas said. “Can your machine give a bolus?”

  Fred explained how his machine could not give a bolus.

  “We see some gasping and choking too.”

  “I recommend ten cc’s of antihistamine,” Fred said. “Before.” Looking at his stopwatch. When he looked up the second piston dropped.

  Foxfire two. The draftsman was late but there hadn’t been much time to rehearse.

  “First two’s the worst two,” someone said. The Shoshone made a sound with his tongue. Fred stood in front of the gurney and demonstrated terminal breathing. Closed his eyes. A showstopper.

  The Shoshone lay still.

  Florida pointed to the EKG machine. “You forget to plug that in?”

  “The electrocardiogram is part of the protocol mandated by the statute,” Fred said. During the actual event it would be wired to the inmate and monitored by a state-appointed physician, or prison staff trained by Fred himself; he was certified for this as well.

  Red, yellow, green, like a traffic light running in reverse. The Shoshone said, “Checkmate” before the draftsman could say anything. The last one dropped. The EKG machine sat still and blank, but Fred had sample printouts on which someone’s heart had inscribed its last moments. He showed them the waveforms, the smooth curves of normal sinus rhythm, then the idioventricular, its fading complexes. Then a straight line.

  For the encore he demonstrated the manual overrides to be used in the event of a system failure.

  They gave three more demonstrations that afternoon, attending the Indian between performances. After the last the State of Missouri approached and said, “How do you like your steak?” and New Jersey invited himself along. The draftsman had trouble waking up the Shoshone. He and Fred unbuckled the restraints, took off the blanket, and when they stood him up saw that he’d wet the mattress.

  That evening they had prime rib at The Golden Steer on Sahara, where Sammy Davis Jr. had dined when they wouldn’t let him eat in the casinos. The Indian had a previous engagement. Then Fred and his draftsman walked the pyrotechnics of the Strip, looked for souvenirs, dropped back into the crowds. There was a full-contact karate tournament at the Sands, but New Jersey had given them tickets to a magic show. They passed the Last Frontier, the Dunes, the Flamingo, the Tropicana, crossed the boulevard in front of taxis and limos edging impatiently forward, the traffic light so short-lived this might have been yet another game fixed in favor of the house.

  In the casino they kept moving, past red felt and green, dealers raking and cutting in bow ties and vests, proving and washing and riffling, standing at empty tables shouting, “Three ways to play, four ways to win;” players standing or hitting, doubling down, splitting pairs, watching wheels, sitting on folding chairs in the keno lounge like revivalists in a prayer tent; men and women of every means and physical description surrounded by the same mountainous dark, a thousand ghost towns, the fossils of shark teeth eighty million years old. The house.

  Cigarette girls and waitresses with trays full of cleavage and free drinks. You had to go through the slots to get to the theater; they still had time before the show. There were penny slots and there were machines in the high-limit lounge that cost a hundred dollars a spin. The draftsman played quarters. Fred left him sitting in front of the reels and went to the men’s room. The guy standing at the urinal next to him was unshaven and red-eyed and looked to have slept in his clothes if at all. He was tapping the tiled wall with his forehead and muttering.

  “All the stacks are in so there’s no turning back. He goes all in and I call. He has sixty-five, flops the straight!” He tapped a little harder and stopped. Looked at Fred.

  “Gimme ten bucks,” he muttered Fred’s way.

  “I’m a little short myself,” Fred said.

  “Gimme five.”

  Fred stood there and shook. “Sorry.”

  “Fuck you.”

  Fred thought. “Same to you.”

  The guy laughed and said, “Gimme a cigarette,” and Fred gave him one and when he left the guy was still standing in the urinal as if caught in its grip, muttering, “Who goes all in with a high pair?”

  The draftsman was still pulling the lever. Fred watched. Circus music, fixed eyes, clatter and jingle of modest payouts. Fred watched and his mind worked. There were progressive jackpots now, they were probably using microprocessors. A guy could use something small and slender, work his way up the payout chute, trip a microswitch…but he was only amusing himself. He was an honest man.

  A great burst of joy at one of the tables.

  The draftsman stayed with the same machine. He won almost two hundred dollars, put it all back in, and probably would have kept going but it was time to see the magician.

  —Wie heissen Sie?

  —Wo sind Sie her?

  —Was wollen Sie?

  —Dart ich das Innere ihrer

  Maschine besichtegen?

  —Was ist ihr Antrieb?

  —Haben Sie eine Nachricht?

  The phone rings. The wind is howling. The phone is ringing and you pick up the line. You hear the wind, speak into the phone. The voice that issues from the darkness at the other end is unfamiliar, but you have waited all your life to hear it. It is old and trembling and speaks with a French accent. It knows your name. You are being called upon to testify—a man is on trial for what may be his life. The charges: corrupting history and defaming the dead. The wind howls. It asks only a moment of your time.

  How did you get this number? you ask back.

  From the warden in Mississippi, the Frenchman says across the lake of ice. But he is not a lawyer, he is a scholar, an expert in ancient texts and documents; he teaches at a small university you could not possibly have heard of. You picture a small, wizened man, perhaps smaller than yourself, wearing a bow tie and perhaps a pince-nez. He is not a lawyer but he is part of the defense team. The defendant’s name begins at the end of the alphabet. You have never heard of him but the Frenchman has questions of his own: he asks about your background, your vocation, your expertise.

  Fred was happy to oblige. He talked for almost an hour, chain-smoking, and he could tell the Frenchman was chain-smoking at the other end, listening. Fred would have kept talking had the Frenchman not interrupted; he would have to cut the call short. He apologized. They were very eager to meet him, he said, but the defendant was not permitted to travel. He invited Fred to Toronto. He said they would pay his airfare and accommodations.

  “I don’t fly,” Fred said, and asked if he could bring his fiancée. A date was agreed upon.

  She insisted on separate rooms.

  They took the Buick, another six-hour drive. They drove into a blizzard so heavy they couldn’t see the taillights in front of them. Fred walked them through it, kept close to the guardrail; they couldn’t see the markings of the road either. Niagara Falls was half frozen, great white beards and tusks of ice hung in a mist as still as themselves. At the border a guard asked them what the purpose of their visit was.

  “We’re practicing for our honeymoon,” she said in her seat.

  “Professional reasons,” Fred said
.

  The guard let them in.

  She liked Toronto. The city was bigger than they’d expected, and cold, but the weather was clear. The people sounded almost American but were slightly nicer. The black people sounded like the white people, unless they tried not to. Distances were measured in meters and kilometers and the paper currency was exotically colored, as if there were nothing it couldn’t buy. She liked it but Fred didn’t; it reminded him of a parallel universe in a science-fiction film. Everything seems identical to where you come from until you begin to notice subtle but sinister discrepancies. They had colour instead of color.

  They had rickshaws.

  “Aboot,” she said, tickled. “There’s just something aboot it.”

  The rooms reserved for them did not adjoin so they had to settle for one with two doubles. She said they could hang a blanket up between them like in what was that movie called? They relaxed for a while, watched Canadian content. She let him sit on the bed with her, on top of the covers. Fred looked at his watch. He put on his coat and they dry-kissed and he took the elevator down into the lobby and went out into the street. He had no luck hailing a cab and climbed into a rickshaw operated by a big, tanned, middle-aged man wearing a headband and shorts and sandals in February. He threw a blanket over Fred and headed off toward the office building where they waited. Fred closed his eyes at the intersections.

  He walked to the end of the long hall he had been walking down all his life.

  “They’re waiting,” a secretary said. A cramped office, stacks of folders on her desk.

  They waited for Fred in a small conference room. Carpeted, a table, no windows. He recognized the Frenchman immediately, who was remarkably close in appearance to the man he had pictured over the phone. He took Fred by the shoulders and kissed his cheeks and whispered something in his own language. The lawyer shook his hand. She was a handsome, severe woman, a headmistress or someone who trained horses, and here she was called a barrister. She introduced him to the defendant. The defendant spoke with a German accent and there was a yellow hardhat resting on his lap.

  “People like to throw things once in a while,” he explained, shaking hands. He was a big man with a large belly and a smooth pink face. A square white bandage was taped to the crown of his head, and he peeled it half back to reveal a patch of discolored flesh. Stitches. “I hope no one throws anything at you.”

  “Me too,” Fred said. “Why would they?” He took a pack of cigarettes from inside his jacket and the barrister asked him politely not to smoke. Fred complied. He believed in the innate goodness of women.

  Her client asked him if he believed in UFOs. Fred asked him to repeat himself. He looked at the barrister, who did not look back.

  “Flying saucers?” Fred said. “Well,” he said. Flying saucers. “Can’t say I’ve seen one myself but I guess anything’s possible.”

  “What if I told you,” the defendant said, “that what we think of as UFOs are in reality highly advanced Nazi aircraft, designed and built near the end of the war but still operational today, flying reconnaissance missions out of secret bases in the Antarctic?”

  “Well,” Fred said. He cleared his throat and spoke carefully. “I guess you could call me a show-me kind of guy.”

  “Then I show you.” The German took a fat old briefcase out from under the table. He opened it, lifted a sheaf of paperwork and fanned it carefully out before Fred.

  Articles. Photographs and drawings of Nazi UFO prototypes. Something that looked like a sombrero with an Iron Cross on the bell. An official UFO Investigator’s Kit complete with a pass, spotting chart, a list of questions to ask the crew upon landing. A working scale model for only four-fifty plus postage. A proposed expedition to Antarctica to find the South Polar Opening (secretly stumbled upon by Admiral Byrd), leaving from Buenos Aires in a chartered jumbo jet. Cost of reservations: nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine dollars.

  “I’m in the mail-order business,” the defendant explained.

  “People buy this?”

  “I can’t keep up.”

  “And you believe it.”

  “As you say,” the defendant said, “anything is possible.”

  “Until proven otherwise,” the barrister said.

  Fred wanted a cigarette. “Where is this going?”

  “You’ve heard of Atlantis?” the defendant said.

  “This is going to Atlantis,” Fred said.

  “Mr. Z,” the barrister said.

  “Atlantis,” the German said. “Evidence now points to the Mediterranean Basin. Underwater ruins, rock core samples that prove the Strait of Gibraltar was once an isthmus, the Basin a fertile river valley like the Po or the Euphrates.” Cave paintings that depicted a great advanced civilization—tall, blonde, blue-eyed—flourishing until some great cataclysm, probably an earthquake, destroyed the Gibraltar land mass and turned the valley into a sea, drowning the great city.

  “What if I told you there were six-foot-tall Aryan mummies found perfectly preserved in Outer Mongolia?”

  “I think maybe I’d rather you didn’t,” Fred said, and briefly grinned his stained grin. The Frenchman’s eyes pleaded with him for patience.

  The Seven Sisters of Eve. Sanskrit manuscripts containing plans for flying machines, automobiles, high-tech weaponry and communications.

  “Mr. Z,” the barrister said.

  The defendant held up a hand and looked at Fred. “Are you with me so far, mein Freund?”

  “I have no idea where you are,” Fred said.

  “You would like hard evidence,” the German said. “Documentation. Photographs, perhaps?”

  “I’d like a Chesterfield,” Fred said. “Evidence of what, exactly?”

  The barrister had a manila folder. A stack of eight-by-ten photographs. She laid them on top of the pile before him. Old, black and white. Aerial reconnaissance. Some sort of compound. A camp.

  “I don’t see any flying saucers,” Fred said.

  “Do you see any gas chambers?” the Frenchman said.

  “You consider yourself a skeptic?” the defendant asked.

  “You could say I’m on the pragmatic side,” Fred said. His glasses needed cleaning.

  “So.” He said it with a z. “What do you think of the six million?”

  “The six million.”

  “Engultige Losung,” the barrister said with a fair accent. “The camps. The gas. The Hollow Cause.”

  “The Holocaust Industry,” the German said.

  “Industry,” Fred said.

  “You name it,” the barrister said.

  “Reparations for one,” the defendant said. “Five thousand Deutsche marks per Jew—you do the math. Not to mention free real estate: a homeland for Israel and half of Europe to the communists. Not to mention entertainment: books, plays, movies, operas, and all of it propaganda. Surely you’ve heard of the diary of Anne Frank?”

  “A fraud,” the Frenchman said. “Written in ballpoint ink. Ballpoint did not come into use until the fifties.”

  “I wasn’t aware,” Fred said.

  “But you believe,” the defendant said. “You accept the official story.”

  “I believe what I was taught, I suppose. Never had reason not to.”

  “But the numbers,” the barrister said. “The six million.”

  Fred looked at her. “Six million is quite a figure.”

  “But you’ve never really thought about it,” the defendant said.

  “You can smoke in the hall if you like,” the barrister said. “Then we’ll talk numbers.”

  “Böse Angewohnheit.” The defendant was something of a health fanatic. “Would you like to borrow my helmet?”

  So they started with the numbers. Arithmetic: between three and four million fled Europe between ’33 and ’45, less than three and a half million remaining in occupied territory. Documented. Not even Einstein could get six out of three and a half. By the end of the war less than four hundred thousand inmates had been registered
to Auschwitz—a synthetic coal and rubber plant.

  “Gutta-percha,” the Frenchman said.

  “Why would you slaughter your own labor force?” the defendant said. “Why would you strain your resources shuffling millions of refugees about Europe in the midst of such desperate military and economic straits, fighting a full-scale war on multiple fronts? It defies logic, and no more logical people have ever lived.” He said something else, in German. The sound of logic.

  They moved on to the names. Not just the big ones, the headliners, but the supporting cast as well: Heydrich, Hoss, Gerstein, Rassinier—the former inmate who debunked claims of gassing at Buchenwald—Fanslau, the S.S. major-general who took a personal interest in the welfare of labor camp prisoners, who once had a guard shot on the spot for slapping a pregnant inmate. Hundreds of letters written on his behalf by former inmates (photocopies on file), never admitted as evidence at Nuremberg just as cross-examinations by defense attorneys were not permitted. So-called confessions of former S.S. officers extracted by beatings and torture (medical records on file), the so-called memoirs of Hoss and Eichmann communist-Jewish fabrications. Fictions of human soap and handbags made of skin. Doctored photographs, burnt corpses from Hamburg and Dresden (the real holocaust!) superimposed on concentration camp negatives. Accounts of Einsatzgruppen and Sonnderkommando but no surviving eyewitnesses, no documentation, and never a single written order to harm a single hair on a single Jewish head. The Madagascar Plan, superseded at the Wannsee Conference by the Final Solution—not extermination but Arbeitseinsatz im Osten—labor assignment in the east.

  It was on file.

  “The only gas you will ever find in the so-called death camps,” the defendant said, and he imitated a fart. Fred felt a fine spray. No facilities ever found at Dachau, Buchenwald, Bergen-Belsen. So all eyes turn to the east, to Auschwitz-Birkenau, Majdanek, Treblinka, Sobibor, where nothing could be disproved because the Soviets did not allow inspections for ten years. Till they’d had time to make some alterations, when they needed to make a case for something worse than themselves—as if anything could be worse than Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, the North Koreans, their countless millions of corpses.