That night, in the mess, I realized that Pyatigorsk truly was a place of reunions: sitting at a table with some other officers, I saw Dr. Hohenegg, the good-natured, cynical pathologist I had met in the train between Kharkov and Simferopol. I went up to greet him: “I see, Herr Oberstarzt, that General von Kleist surrounds himself only with the best people.” He got up to shake my hand: “Oh, but I’m not with Generaloberst von Kleist: I’m still attached to the Sixth Army, with General Paulus.”—“What are you doing here, then?”—“The OKH decided to take advantage of the KMV infrastructures to organize an interarmy medical conference. A very useful exchange of information. Everyone competes to describe the most atrocious case.”—“I’m sure that honor will fall to you.”—“Listen, I’m dining with my colleagues; but if you like, come by afterward, have a brandy in my room.” I went to dine with the officers from the Abwehr. They were realistic, sympathetic men, but almost as critical as the officer in Mozdok. Some stated openly that if we didn’t take Stalingrad soon, the war was lost; von Gilsa was drinking French wine and didn’t contradict them. Afterward I went out to walk by myself in Tsvetnik Park, behind the Lermontov gallery, a curious pavilion of pale blue wood, in a medieval style, with pointed turrets and Art Deco windows tinted pink, red, and white: an utterly disparate effect, but wholly in keeping here. I smoked, absent-mindedly contemplating the faded tulips, then climbed back up the hill to the sanatorium and went to knock on Hohenegg’s door. He welcomed me lying on his sofa, his feet bare, his hands crossed on his large round belly. “Excuse me for not getting up.” He made a sign with his head toward an end table. “The brandy is over there. Pour me one too, will you?” I poured two measures into the glasses and held one out to him; then I settled into a chair and crossed my legs. “So what’s the most atrocious thing you’ve seen?” He waved his hand: “Man, of course!”—“I meant medically.”—“Medically, atrocious things don’t interest me in the least. On the other hand one does see extraordinary curiosities, which completely revise our notions of what our poor bodies can endure.”—“What, for example?”—“Well, a man will catch a tiny piece of shrapnel in the calf that will slice through the peroneal artery and he’ll die in two minutes, still standing, his blood emptied into his boot without his noticing. Yet another man might take a bullet through the head, from one temple to the other, and will get up on his own to walk to the first-aid post.”—“What an insignificant thing we are,” I commented.—“Precisely.” I tasted Hohenegg’s brandy: it was Armenian, a little sweet but drinkable. “You’ll excuse my brandy,” he said without turning his head, “but I couldn’t find any Rémy-Martin in this town of barbarians. To go back to what I was saying, almost all of my colleagues have stories like that. And it’s not new: I once read the memoirs of a military doctor in Napoleon’s army, and he talked about the same things. Of course, we’re still losing far too many men. Military medicine has come a long way since 1812, but so have the methods of butchery. We’re still lagging behind. But, little by little, we’re getting better, and it’s true that Gatling has done more for modern surgery than Dupuytren.”—“But still you perform real wonders.” He sighed: “Maybe. The fact is I can no longer bear to see a pregnant woman. It depresses me too much to think about what’s in store for her fetus.”—“Nothing ever dies except what is born,” I recited. “Birth is indebted to death.” He let out a short cry, got up suddenly, and swallowed his brandy in one gulp. “That’s what I like about you, Hauptsturmführer. A member of the Sicherheitsdienst who quotes Tertullian instead of Rosenberg or Hans Frank is always a pleasure. But I could criticize your translation: Mutuum debitum est nativitati cum mortalitate, I’d say rather: ‘Birth has a mutual debt with death,’ or ‘Birth and death are mutually indebted to each other.’”—“You’re probably right. I was always better in Greek. I have a linguist friend here, I’ll ask him.” He held out his glass for me to fill. “Speaking of mortality,” he asked me pleasantly, “are you still murdering poor defenseless people?” I handed him his glass coolly. “Coming from you, Doktor, I won’t take that the wrong way. But in any case, I’m nothing but a liaison officer, which suits me fine. I observe and do nothing, that’s my favorite position.”—“You would have made a very poor physician, then. Observation without practice isn’t worth much.”—“That’s why I’m a jurist.” I got up and went to open the French window. Outside, the air was sweet, but you couldn’t see the stars and I could feel rain coming. A light wind was rustling through the trees. I went back to the sofa where Hohenegg had stretched out again after unfastening his tunic. “What I can tell you,” I said, standing in front of him, “is that some of my dear colleagues here are absolute bastards.”—“I don’t doubt it for an instant. It’s a common defect in people who practice without observing. It even occurs among doctors.” I rolled my glass between my fingers. I suddenly felt hollow, heavy. I finished my glass and asked him: “Are you here for long?”—“There are two sessions: now we’re going over the wounds, then we’ll come back at the end of the month for diseases. One day for venereal diseases, and two whole days devoted to lice and scabies.”—“We’ll see each other again, then. Good night, Doktor.” He held out his hand and I shook it. “You’ll excuse me if I don’t get up,” he said.

Hohenegg’s brandy turned out to be a poor choice of after-dinner drink: back in my room, I vomited up my dinner. The retchings caught me so quickly I barely had the time to reach the bathtub. Since I had already digested, it was easy to rinse out; but it had a bitter, acidic, revolting taste; I preferred to vomit my meals right away, it came up more painfully and with more difficulty, but at least it didn’t have any taste, or else it tasted like food. I thought about returning to have another drink with Hohenegg, to ask his advice; but finally I just washed out my mouth with water, smoked a cigarette, and went to bed. The next day, I had to go to the Kommando to pay a courtesy visit; they were also expecting Oberführer Bierkamp. I went there around eleven o’clock. From the lower part of town, on the boulevard, you could clearly see, in the distance, the jagged peaks of the Beshtau, rising like a guardian idol; it hadn’t rained, but the air was still fresh. At the Kommando, they told me that Müller was busy with Bierkamp. I waited on the steps of the little courtyard, watching one of the drivers wash the mud off the bumpers and wheels of the Saurer truck. The rear door was open: out of curiosity, I went over to it to look inside, since I hadn’t yet seen what it looked like; I recoiled and immediately began coughing; it was foul, a stinking pool of vomit, excrement, urine. The driver noticed my reaction and said a few words to me in Russian: “Griaznyi, kazhdi raz,” but I didn’t understand the words. An Orpo, probably a Volksdeutscher, came over and translated: “He says that it’s always like that, Hauptsturmführer, very dirty, but they’re going to modify the interior, have the floor slope down, and put a little trapdoor in the middle. That will make it easier to clean out.”—“Is he a Russian?”—“Who, Zaitsev? He’s a Cossack, Hauptsturmführer, we have several of them.” I went back to the steps and lit a cigarette; just at that instant I was summoned, and had to throw it away. Müller received me together with Bierkamp. I saluted him and introduced my mission in Pyatigorsk. “Yes, yes,” Müller said, “the Oberführer explained it to me.” They asked me some questions and I talked about the feeling of pessimism that seemed to be reigning among the army officers. Bierkamp shrugged: “The soldiers have always been pessimists. Already, when it came to the Rhineland and the Sudetenland, they were wailing like sissies. They have never understood the strength of the Führer’s will and of National Socialism.—Tell me something else, have you heard this story about a military government?”—“No, Oberführer. What is it?”—“A rumor is circulating to the effect that the Führer has approved of a military government for the Caucasus, instead of a civilian administration. But we can’t manage to get any official confirmation. At the OKHG they’re very evasive.”—“I’ll try to find out more at the AOK, Oberführer.” We exchanged a few more remarks and I took my leave. In the hallway, I met Turek. He gave me a sardonic, angry look and said with incredible rudeness: “Ah, the Papiersoldat. Don’t worry, your turn will come.” Bierkamp must have talked to him. I answered him amiably, with a little smile: “Hauptsturmführer, I’m at your service.” He stared at me for an instant with a furious look, then disappeared into an office. There, I said to myself, you’ve made yourself an enemy; that’s not so hard.