Chapter Seven
 
With rapid steps Doehring walked onto the Bow River Bridge.
Halfway across, he paused. He leaned over the steel safety
railing and gazed on the foam and spray of the gurgling
mountain torrent not far below. Surely whoever committed himself
to these waves would perish in them, he thought to himself as he
contemplated the water's fury, and for a moment he imagined
whether some day he himself might seek so frightful an escape
from his earthly existence. To rid himself of this fantasy,
he pivoted in the direction of town, resumed his hurried pace,
relieved when once again he felt solid ground under his feet.
He brushed past the indecorous pageantry of the assorted luxury stores. 
Their salespeople waiting on him would address him not only in English
or French, but if he wished also in German or even in Japanese, assisting
him in the purchase of jewelry, silverware, porcelain, cut glass, picture
portfolios, paintings and sculptures, woollen blankets, memorabilia
of the Arctic, minerals and gems, topographic maps, postcards,
periodicals, or books, or any of those other items for which tourists
are prepared to deposit their cash, tender their credit cards,
or endorse their travelers' cheques.
 
As Doehring turned away from the opulence of these objectionable offerings,
he suddenly felt hungry, having had nothing more to eat since his last meal
on the plane.  Under no circumstances could he contemplate a dinner in one
of the pretentiously elegant restaurants with which Main Street was lined.
Even the menus offended him, displayed as they were in glass-fronted cases,
where, surrounded with graphics of alpine flowers, businesslike typescript
taunted the hungry tourist with exorbitant prices. He rebelled against the
compulsion of the restauants' protocols.  First, to be assigned a table,
then required to wait, then to be prompted to place his order, then to
wait again, until finally he was confronted with an extravagant meal which
he no longer desired, but to the consumption of which he was now socially
and financially committed.  All the while the sun, suffusing the sky with
a palette of color, would be descending to its berth behind the alpine
glaciers, a once in a lifetime opportunity for meditative communion with
his gods, of which a thoughtless conventionality would have deprived him.
What a foolish expenditure of time and money! He had traveled here, after
all, for a different purpose, not with the intention of enduring the tedium
of interminable waiting in expensive restaurants. For all that, he had as
little desire to be served as himself to become a servant.
 
Passing a brightly lit grocery store, he stopped, then wavered in front of
its open door, finally concluding that he wasn't all that hungry, if only
he could manage to quench his thirst. He entered and found in the display
refrigerator a large bottle of carbonated raspberry lemonade, paid for it,
and after leaving the store, unscrewed the metal cap; then, like a hippie
contemptuous of local authority, he raised the bottle to his lips in an
ungainly manner. In this way inelegantly assuaging his thirst, toggling
the large purple plastic bottle between his lips and his side, he strolled
along the sidewalk of this quaint and tastefully appointed resort, carefully
avoiding collisions with more conventional visitors.  He could afford such
extraordinary behavior only because he was a stranger, and no one here would
recognize him, unless, perchance he encountered the attractive woman who had
occupied the window seat next to him on the plane, and for whom he had
mistakenly and vainly searched at the Glacier Hotel. Presumably she was
preoccupied arming herself for the battle of women's liberation.  He looked
for her, but she was nowhere to be seen.
 
Approaching the spot where he had parked, he recognized, already from some
distance, the car that he had rented, relieved to find it still in its place.
Considering the day's anomalies, he would not have been surprised if the
little Sunbird had disappeared, or if still there, had been damaged by some
irresponsible hit and run driver. On renting the car, he now reminded himself,
he had declined all insurance, and any damage sustained by the car would have
been charged to him.  But nothing of the sort had happened. Not even a
parking ticket from the town constabulary under the windshield wiper.
 
A glance at his wrist watch, that ever-present reminder of his now so
distant past, informed him incongruously that it was already eight o'clock.
Because this resort was located so far north and at the western boundary
of the mountain time zone, at this hour, on a midsummer day the sun was
still far above the mountain peaks.  Considering how long until sunset,
Doehring felt very tired.  The clock of his previous night's sleep would
have registered 10 p.m., and in view of the physical, and above all, the
emotional effort of traveling, the fatigue that threatened to fell him,
seemed natural.  He longed for the night and wished he were asleep,
and there high in the heavens stood the sun, summoning him to celebrate,
and making mockery of his exhaustion.
 
He got into his car and started to drive through the streets of the
unfamiliar resort, even more slowly and deliberately than was his habit,
because particularly now the consequences of an albeit improbable
accident preoccupied his thoughts with incongruous vividness.
In his imagination, timid and almost trembling, he heard a faint distant
echo of the confrontation in the Hotel.  He had been suspected of the
rape of a young girl.  What a ridiculous insinuation! He was harmless to 
women like a well trained animal, like a dog who has been taught to
protect the children rather than to assault them. And yet he could not
deny that all his life he had been aware of a desire which might have
tempted him to commit such a crime, had not so much introspection, so
much meditativeness, so much discipline, decency and culture protected
him like an insurmountable monastery wall from the commission of this
most human of wrongs. Now he had lapsed into melancholy, and could not
decide whether to attribute his sadness to the circumstance that he had
been suspected of so grave a crime, or that the suspicion was so unfounded,
that he had encountered Dorothea, or that he had already lost her,
that Elsbeth was gone, or that he himself, some day, sooner rather
than later, would follow her into the kingdom of death.
 
It was unclear, whether on account of these morbid thoughts, or because
since the time of his last visit, so many of the old buildings had been
demolished, and such a variety of new ones had taken their place,
that even though the town could boast of only three or four thoroughfares,
he lost his way.  His intention had been to spend the evening twilight
on the grassy ski-slopes of Mt. Norquay.  There, after a gentle ascent,
he expected to find a comfortable spot on the lawn, from where he could
observe the changing colors of the evening sky, the darkening city below,
and the shadows of night creeping upwards on opposite-lying mountains,
until when darkness had fallen, he would drive back to Canmore, to his
bed in the modest hut which he had rented.
 
But even as the clouds above him changed to an ever deeper crimson, 
Doehring became aware that the supposed approaches to Mt. Norquay
were nowhere corroborated by the highway signs that he passed,
and finally he had to admit to himself that he had lost his way.
Instead of the northern exit from the town, he had accidentally
taken the southern one, having forgotten that this route led not
to Mt. Norquay but to Lake Minnewanka. He had already passed the
intersection with the Trans-Canada Highway, when he realized that
he had missed his goal. He decided that it was now too late to turn
back. The hour was too far advanced to make it feasible for him to
carry out his original plan in daylight.
 
He stopped to observe a majestic elk grazing close by the edge
of the road.  A magnificent animal, its antlers, a royal crown
with uncountable branches and twigs, inscribed a wide arc of
powerful motion onto the mists of the nocturnal twilight as the
kingly creature plucked batches of grass from a now almost invisible
lawn.  Quite possibly, Doehring thought to himself, inasmuch as the
elk obtains its nourishment solely from vegetation, it deserves
a higher place in the category of animal life than do bears
or even humans, who thrive on the flesh of other living beings.
By now it had gotten so dark, that he wouldn't even get to
Lake Minnewanka. In the bright beams of the Sunbird's headlights,
a sign on the abutting shoulder of the road pointed to an exit for
the Bankhead rest area off to the right. He considered that even
though dusk had become so deep that he could no longer expect a
view of the valley, he might, before total darkness set in, avail
himself of the benefits of a bit of exercise, so as to be able to
sleep more soundly, because it seemed possible that otherwise, on
account of the unaccustomed excitement of the day, he might lie
awake all night.
 
A long, rather steep set of wooden steps, flanked with railings
on either side, led him to an extended plain. Information tablets,
almost unreadable in the evening dusk, instructed him that he
found himself among the ruins of the abandoned town of Bankhead,
a community which had been built eighty-five years ago to
facilitate coal mining in the region. The end of this settlement
proved as arbitrary as its beginnings.  Once the mines were
exhausted and profits disappeared, when tourism made the preservation
of natural scenery the order of the day, the town was dissolved.
An information tablet recited that a number of dwellings had been
transported to Banff; the others were levelled.  The mineshafts were
sealed, the railroad tracks dismantled, warehouses were demolished,
and now there remained only a few foundation walls, concrete slabs
that once were floors, and remnants of various machines and pumps
which had evaded removal. Only a single building had been left
standing, a museum of sorts with a simulated underground mine.
Two workmen, life size wax figures no less, were shown at their labor.
One, with hunched back and on bended knee was seen to avail himself
of a long auger with which he fragmented a seam of black coal.
The other was engaged in chiseling black rocks from the depths of
the earth. Behind them, on a short stretch of railroad track, leading
nowhere, stood a small freight car into which the coal would have been
loaded.
 
A bare incandescent bulb cast its pale glow onto this pathetic scene,
and an antique glazing served as a window through which the sightseer
might peer into this subterranean realm of the departed.
In Doehring's eyes the scene was ghastly and pitiful,
a Counter-Requiem in which the curious tourist was invited to
participate. Doehring felt for the dead, who while still alive
were forced to spend their days in subterranean darkness. That
such labor was fatal to the spirit, and that it devastated the
body in a similar manner, was a conclusion which to his understanding
at least required neither proof nor confirmation. And now the sufferings
and the deaths of these men were mocked, no less than those of the
stuffed grizzly in the Natural History Museum in town, who had been
killed by a different method.
 
When Doehring turned from this ghastly scene to let his eyes
adapt themselves to the darkness of night, he thought he heard
a distant song, and for that matter, a melody that was intimately
familiar. He was unable to understand the words, initially uncertain
whether they were English or German. A breeze had begin to stir, and
for momements on end the rustling in the blackness of the treetops 
drowned out the text; but nonetheless he was able to follow the familiar
melody. In an interval when the wind had momentarily subsided, he
heard that it was a solo baritone, and now he also understood the
words, "Der Friedensschluss ist nun mit Gott gemacht", and although
the German was familiar and infinitely congenial to him, he felt,
since he was in anglophone Canada, the need of an English version, 
and he said to himself solemnly, as if to test his powers of translation,
The covenant of peace with God is made. He listened. The lovely
modulation of the arioso he knew so well inspired him, especially
now, with the awareness of peaceful gratitude and resignation.
At the same time he knew that what he heard was impossible, because
there was no one hereabouts conversant with this music; and in
consequence he understood that he was the victim of a sensory delusion.
Nevertheless he listened all the more attentively to the aging voice,
which as it sang this evensong, at times seemed at the point of breaking.
He found it a fault that the string accompaniment was missing;
yet he had to admit that the notes were not at all off key.
His exhilaration at hearing the beloved melody was scarcely impaired
by the certainty that the source of his happiness was a delusion.
The impossibility of the lyrics that resounded in his ears was
beyond doubt, yet he was at a loss to explain the source of the
deception. Whether it was merely a matter of excessive stimulation,
or of exhaustion at the end of a very exciting day, or whether
more serious causes were involved, he could not tell. How badly
he needed Elsbeth, just at this moment. If she stood next to
him now, he would ask her, whether she also perceived the melody.
He was a realist. He admitted to himself, that most likely Elsbeth
would not have corroborated his hearing, but then she would have
shared his distress and taken care of him in his illness. The
answer to the imputed inquiry of Elsbeth was clear:
he could no longer deny that he was suffering from
acoustic hallucinations, that he was ill, and probably gravely ill,
and that his disorder, whatever its origin might be, had
precipitated a seizure in the parietal cortex of his brain.
Enthralled by this self-diagnostic observation, he listened
all the more intently to the song, and was once more surprised
that although he heard the voice with lifelike clarity, the
violin obbligato was missing. Instead he heard as accompaniment
the rustling of leaves in the evening breeze, and he marveled at
the magic of illness which enabled his tired brain to invest
imagination with such deceptive similarity to real life.
 
When the recitative had reached its end, Doehring himself
launched into the ensuing aria and began to sing with a somewhat
unsteady voice: "Mache dich, mein Herze, rein." which means in English,
Make thee pure my heart from sin. He did this in a childish intent
to prove to the unknown vocalist his own familiarity with the
monumental music, and thereby to establish a longed for community
of spirit, banishing the loneliness in which he found himself.
And now it was Doehring's voice that penetrated the darkness of
the incipient night.  However he would have been at a loss to
explain the real meaning of his song.  Yet before he had finished,
he was badly frightened by a noise just behind him. Inspite of his
conviction that this music should serve to protect him against all
dangers, he lost the thread of the melody. He trembled, because he
was convinced that it was a bear about to attack him. Wasn't this
terrain exactly where one would expect to encounter them, and the
season in which the animals were thought to be most dangerous? He
froze and was motionless, unable to decide whether on account of
helplessness, of fear, or of calculation that if he didn't move,
the bear would divert her aggression elsewhere. He had vowed
to banish all fear of death, and if he trembled nonetheless,
this was the case because his emotions would not comply with
his will. His pulse pounded in his throat, and his hands were
wet with icy perspiration. He was ashamed of his fear, which
for all his determination he could not banish. He said to himself
that he was ready to die, but what he feared was the manner of death.
He prepared his mind for all events. He listened, and his hearing
was more acute than ever. Above on the highway that slabbed
the mountain, he saw the headlights of a passing automobile,
and from beyond the firs he heard the distant fading noise of 
its engine. Then once more, all was quiet. Again, the noise, 
the cracking sound in the underbrush. He froze anew, then turned
very slowly and saw a large black object moving toward him. As
his gaze succeeded in penetrating the darkness, he recognized
a man-sized figure, obviously a bear, already reared on her
hind legs, about to attack and to tear him apart.
 
Into the beam of light which shone through the window of the little
mining museum and illuminated a narrow strip of the night, there
had stepped a man of medium build. Doehring supposed that the
man had deliberately positioned himself in the luminous aisle 
to make himself visible. He might have been of Doehring's
age or somewhat older. His head was enveloped in a thick
blanket of curly hair which in the artificial twilight,
was of indeterminate color.  A long thick and broad beard
concealed his chin and his chest.
As a few moments ago, Doehring had doubted his ears,
so now he doubted his eyes; it seemed that the acoustic
hallucination was augmented by a visual one,
and Doehring was certain that his end had come.
The stranger looked friendly enough,
but wore a most extraordinary uniform,
such that the morbidness of Doehring's vision was confirmed if
only by the man's costume. On the lapel of his coat Doehring
could recognize the jagged insignia of the Waffen-SS,
giving the lie to his apparent good nature.
 
"You have a very good voice," the man said, "Your German is
excellent," as if Doehring had just passed a musical audition
at the stranger's behest. In consequence of the revelation of
Doehring's linguistic facility, the man now proceeded to speak
in German. "I have never dared to intone the aria which you
performed for me," he said, "I have seen too much in my life,
and what I have seen makes it impossible for me ever again
to seek to lay claim to purity of heart." "I think I know
what you mean," Doehring said. He found himself now in the
familiar environment of rational, scientific academic discussion,
and even if this conversation with an officer of the SS here
in a midsummer night in the Canadian Rocky Mountains should
serve to certify his dementia, he would not forgo the opportunity
to engage in a discussion about the baroque lyrics of one
Christian Friedrich Henrici. Nonetheless
there intervened a pause while Doehing reflected on the
extraordinary character of this conversation. "I think I know
what you mean," he began anew, "I also have lost faith in the 
purity of heart." Again silence ensued, which confirmed for
Doehring that he was victim of a delusion. But now the
Sturmbannfuehrer raised his head and asked: "But how then
are you able to sing this aria? How can you pray to be made
pure if you have lost faith in the purity of heart? Was it
in fact your purpose to deceive yourself?" Doehring was prepared
for this objection. He said, "It is in the nature of literature,
you know, to speculate on the human imagination. I am an
historian of literature by profession, and it is my task to
present many ideas that are not my own, and to describe many
feelings by which I myself have never been moved." This
confession rendered Doehring both embarrassed and angry.
"But you, considering the uniform that you are wearing,"
he demanded, "how can you presume to discourse about purity 
of heart?""I thought it was the other way around," the bearded
man said,  and although Doehring could not see his expression,
he was perplexed by the gentleness of a voice that did not
match the uniform at all. "I would have thought," the stranger
added, "that only someone who has worn this uniform might be
permitted to talk about purity of heart." A tempest of protest
surged in Doehrings breast. What desecration of the suffering
and the memory of the millions of human beings which this man
and his comrades had tortured and murdered. Here and now, in
the night of Canada's Northwest, Doehring deemed himself the
representative of all who had been crucified and martyred,
and this SS Sturmbannfuehrer seemed like the incarnation of
all the torturers and murderers in the world. How many lives
had not this man and the likes of him extinguished, how
many human beings had they not pushed over the precipice
into misery and suffering and death. It was indeed the first
time that Doehring had ever confronted a war criminal, and
he noted with surprise, that although just now he had experienced
such paralyzing fear of bears, this monster inspired in him
only disgust, but no fear at all. Wiesenthal, Simon Wiesenthal,
wasn't that the name of the man who saw to it that this murderer
and the likes of him should not escpae punishment? The Canadian
authorities would surely extradite him without delay to the
proper authorities, and for a moment, Doehring considered whether
he should not immediately drive to the nearest office of the
Royal Canadian Mounted Police to report this unrepentant criminal.
 
But the man seemed to have read Doehring's thoughts. "In your
profession," he said, "I should think it's a commonplace, that
the outside and the inside are not the same.""But there's no
way to discover the inside except from the outside," Doehring
protested. "What is inside is not discoverable at all," said
the man in the SS uniform. "For all that, I don't wear this
uniform as an exhibit; I wear this uniform only to remind me
who I am.""But then, who are you?" Doehring asked, relieved
that the man had himself broached the issue of his identity,
and grateful that he had not yet turned him in. "I am a human
being," the man answered. Doehring waited, but nothing more
was said. "Yes, but why do you wear this terrible uniform?"
Doehring demanded. "Because I feel within myself, that I also
might have been such a one," the man answered. "So you've never
worn this uniform in the course of duty?""Never," said the man.
"Well why then do you wear it now?" Doehring repeated his
question. "Because I feel within myself, that I also might have
been such a one," the man answered a second time. "There, truly,
you're not the only one," Doehring affirmed, "Only that the others
are too cowardly to admit it." But you are brave. He now felt
no doubt at all about the validity of his judgment. This is a
good human being, Doehring said to himself, and was relieved
not to have done him an injustice. And having recognized the
man's goodness, Doehring was overcome with the wish to converse
with him, and to explain himself, that, for his part, he might
in the other man's estimation also appear as a good human being.
"Isn't there any place here where one can sit down?" Doehring asked.
It was an rhetorical question, because the air had turned cold,
much too cold to sit around in the open, and the darkness had
deepened. Doehring was unsure whether he he would even be
successful in finding his way back to his car. "My hut is close
by, said the man in the SS uniform. If you trust me notwithstanding
my appearance, follow me, and by the light of a lamp we can make
a bit of conversation. This place is too dark."
 
Doehring trailed his new buddy in the black uniform, who guided him
over a narrow level path through the meadow alongside the stream.
The alternating purling and roaring of the rushing water was
reminiscent a organ fantasy.  They walked a few hundert yards
upstream to a hut, whose illuminated windows Doehring had already
espied from the distance. They entered, and in the pale glow of
a kerosene lamp, Doehring could see a wood stove, a bed, and a
table with two chairs. Against the side wall, stood an old piano,
its lid covered with numerous musical scores.  The man in the
black uniform told Doehring to sit down on a chair at the small
low dining table. He himself placed a kettle of water on the
glowing stove and took a seat on the chair opposite to his guest.
Now in the light and warmth of his hut, he became loquacious.
"My name is Albert," he said. "I've been living here for thirty
years. When I first came to these parts, I acquired this hut and
a few acres of land. Now the Parks Administration wants to buy it
from me, but I won't sell, because this is where I want to live
and this is where I want to die. But I've left this property
to Parks Canada at my death, because I have no heirs, and the
Parks Administration sympathizes with my existence, and is even
willing to shut an eye, - if you can imagine a Parks Administration
doing that - when I feed the animals or make friends with them in
other ways. Otherwise, as you know, feeding the animals is prohibited."
"The bears as well?" Doehring asked, for inspite of the circumstance
or perhaps precisely because Albert had proved to be the cause of
the noises that had so frightened him, Doehring wished to make the
most of this opportunity to be instructed by Albert about the bears.
Albert was the only human whom he had met who might conceivably
mediate between himself and the bears. "Even the bears," Albert
assured him. "When they are hungry early in the spring, I set out
food for them in the rear of my garden. They come and get it, and
they're grateful. It would never occur to a one of them to attack me.
It's the same with the other animals. We live in harmony together
in a common world."
 
"But the uniform, Albert, the uniform, it doesn't suit you at all,"
Doehring objected. He was eager now once and for all to unravel
the incongruity of this unusual apparel. "But it does, it does,"
Albert insisted. "This uniform is also a part of my life; it's
part of me. My home was in Thueringen. My father was a landowner.
Our farm was located at the foot of the Greater Ettersberg near
Buchenwald, you know, just northwest of Weimar. That hill, with
the infamous concentration camp, loomed just outside my bedroom
window. I am a witness to everything that transpired there.
God knows I didn't do it. God knows I didn't want it.
"But then you don't have any reason to consider yourself guilty,"
Doehring said, and at this moment he felt very sorry for Albert
and wished he could have exchanged his suit for Albert's uniform.
But Doehring immediately understood that this would not be possible,
in that the suit that Doehring had on was much too small for his new friend,
because Albert was much taller and thicker than he. "I didn't try
to stop or to prevent what went on there. How gladly I would have
done so, but it was absolutely impossible. If I had tried, they
would have killed me. It was just as impossible for me, as it
would be for you, incidentally, what's your name?" he interrupted
himself. "My name is Jakob," Doehring said, and for reasons unclear
to him he refrained from giving his last name. Albert continued without
interruption, "Just as impossible as it is for you, Jakob, to remove
one of the glaciers that cap these mountains. In our case we weren't
even permitted to move away, because one anticipated, and rightly so, 
that we would not keep silent. They forced us to stay there and to
witness everything until the redeeming conclusion. Just before the
Americans arrived, the guards and the SS donned the rags of the
inmates that they had murdered. It is a deep secret that you must
reveal to no one, but even today there are people parading on the
public stage in the garb of concentration camp inmates, who treat
their fellow human beings as if it was the heart of an SS guard
that was beating in their breast. They brought their uniforms into
our houses and forced us to wear them in order to distract from themselves
and from their guilt. I myself spent three years in prison, because 
I was caught in one of these uniforms, the same one in fact, in which
you encountered me today.""But why, Albert, didn't you just give that
explanation to the American judges," Doehring said, "It's not you that
they wanted to punish.""No," Albert said, "No, you see, that's where you're
mistaken. The judges have only one purpose. They need a scapegoat on
whom to foist the guilt of us all. You're doubly mistaken. In the
first place you're mistaken because you think that I'm not guilty.
I am guilty, and I want to be guilty. In the second place you're
mistaken in that you think it possible to expiate guilt with punishment.
You see, Jakob, there is no guilt. Guilt doesn't exist.  If guilt existed,
it might be possible with punishment and penance, with remorse and
repentance, to become pure of heart. But because there is no guilt,
it is impossible for such as us to become pure of heart. That is why
I objected to your aria.""How can you say, that you yourself are
guilty, and in the next breath tell me that there is no guilt?
Don't you understand that you're contradictiing yourself?" Doehring
demanded. Albert took a while to answer. Then he said: "Contradiction,
it seems to me, is your problem, because you insist, if I understand
you correctly, that guilt exists, but that you are not guilty. What
can you know about guilt, if you have never experienced it?"
 
Doehring was far too exhausted to reply. "You will pardon me,"
Albert continued, "for my lengthy and detailed disquisition,
but the fact is that I've been thinking about this for thirty,
or is it forty years, and tonight is  my first opportunity to talk
to someone about what has been on my mind all these years.
Doehring was almost asleep. It had been a long, a very long day
for him, the beginning of which he could now barely remember. On the
drive to the airport, the sun had broken through the clouds. Once
in the plane he had left the window seat empty for Elsbeth, but
the airline had assigned it to Dorothea. That's how he had met
her, only to lose her shortly thereafter. What happened
next Doehring was now too tired to contemplate. All he
wanted was to rest and to sleep. But Albert himself had
explained how he had waited for Doehring thirty, or was it forty 
years, leaving Doehring no choice but to stay, to keep the honest
old man company and to listen to his story. For all that, it
wasn't necessary for Doehring to take part in the conversation,
because Albert seemed ready to manage it on his own.
In his thread-bare black uniform with the SS emblem on its lapel,
with the profusion of red hair, its color now very apparent in
the light of the lamp, and with his red beard, Albert had moved away
from the table. Now he stood, a parson in his black robe about to
begin his sermon, under the pendant kerosene lamp in the little
cabin, as if the thoughts he was about to express were too weighty
or too sacred to be promulgated from a seated position. Doehring
sat at the table with folded hands, and gazed exhausted and
motionless into the cup of tea which Albert had set before him.
 
"It is a grave error," Albert began, "to presuppose that even in the
absence of human failings our world would be perfect.  It's
unreasonable to ascribe the obvious imperfection of the world to
the mistaken, to the bad or wrongful action of the individual, and
to claim that everything would be all right, if only men obeyed their
priests, that it is only sin or criminality, however you wish to
denominate it, that is responsible for calamity. You see, Jakob,
the world is imperfect even without the failings of mankind, and 
that it should be perfect, or should become perfect through man's
efforts, is idealization with which the world has been decorated,
is ethical-esthetic fantasy which man has invented." Albert was
silent and waited for Doehring's response. After a pause he added
the explanation: "I believe humans convince themselves that the
world might be perfect only
to conceal the limitations of their own nature
and to console themselves.
The assumed perfection of a world free of sin is altogether
comparable with the hypothesis of justice, which is also an
illusion. But most bizarre is the notion of man's having a place
outside of nature and being superior to it." Albert paused again,
waiting for an answer, but  Doehring persisted gazing steadily
into his cup of tea, whose tenuous and now barely visible vapors
had filled the small space with their fragrant aroma. "You see,
Jakob," he began anew, "I am of the conviction that those humans
who tortured and killed their fellow human beings, were not 'evil'
human beings, but merely humans who acted pursuant to their natures,
no different from bears, when they fell a deer, or birds of prey
when they kill a squirrel or a rabbit.
 
The murderer who is arrested and punished is only a scapegoat,
assigned by the public to expiate the common guilt. Having crucified him,
they not only deem themselves secure from his murderous intentions,
but they also feel purified of the murderous propensities of their
own souls. Because they feel compelled to assure themselves of
their own purity, they feel constrained to segregate what seems
filthy, evil, wicked, outside of themselves in some sacrificial 
victim. Whom other than the common criminal do you think Isaiah
had in mind when he wrote:
.br
.sp
.in +5
"He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows,
and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him;
he was despised, and we esteemed him not."
.br
.sp
.in -5
You see, Isaiah discovered the hidden relationship between
the criminal and the saint, between the god and the devil.
How else would he have known to write:
"But he was wounded for our transgressions,
he was bruised for our iniquities?"
Albert lapsed silent, as if his voice had been crushed
by the weight of his own words. Suddenly Albert's lips twitched,
as if struck with an epileptic fit:
.sp
.ce
            "Paideia eirenes hemon ep auton," *)
.FS
*) the chastisement of our peace was upon him;
                                 Isaiah 53:5
.FE
.sp
he blurted, then sobbing
stifled his voice.
 
Doehring now deemed himself to be awake. The presentation,
which notwithstanding his somnolence had penetrated his consciousness,
the hut, with its sparse furnishings, and above all
the parson in his black uniform who was moved to tears at the
words of the Greek Septuagint, all this was a scene so exotic,
that the distinction between waking and dreaming 
seemed to Doehring superfluous luxury. In any event,
awake or in a dream,
there arose in Doehring's mind the need to reestablish reason and
order in his conceptual world.
 
"You are a noble human being, Albert," he began ingratiatingly,
but you've gone astray in your analyses of intellectual history.
That may well be the case because for so many years you have struggled
with these difficult and painful ideas in isolation, and have had
no opportunity to discuss them with anyone else. Paideia," he said
with determined inflection, the while hoisting this concept like
a pennant of culture and reason into the cross-winds of the argument,
a watchword to orient Albert and himself and to conduct them to
mutual understanding, "Paideia is the specifically Greek interpretation
of all those pedagogical efforts with which an intellectual and spiritual
culture of a people is propagated from generation to generation.
Paideia has nothing to do with punishment or violence.
 
Albert seemed not to have heard this objection. His face reflected
a kaleidoscopic sequence of emotions. "The public opprobium that
afflicts the murderer," he began anew, "is not that the murderer has 
killed, - because murder is the favorite activity of the human race.
We do it with great fanfare, remember the recent War for Oil with the
states in the Persian Gulf. The fault for which the murderer is
prosecuted is not that he has killed, but that he has killed the
wrong people at the wrong time in perhaps the wrong numbers. The
murderer is to be distinguished from the hero solely in his choice
of victim. The Gulf War should have taught you, in case you've forgotten,
with how much style and elegance, with what hypocritical piety, with
what inhuman brutality one celebrates the slaughter of a hundred fifty
thousand humans, and this at the behest of a man who promised the
voters who elected him, a milder, more gentle and more peaceful nation.
Reflect on the circumstance, and dare not deny it, that the history
of humanity of the chronicle of death and destruction, that it has its
fullfillment in genocide and the extirpation of nations.
Don't forget the good
Christians of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries who abducted
the nations of Africa into slavery; nor the pious Europeans who
extirpated the American Indians. What atrocities were not committed
by "good" people with contempt for the lives and disdain for
the sufferings of their fellow humans.
Their fault was to consider their "neighbor" alien to
them, to consider him as their enemy, and from this purported enmity
they derived justification to torture and to kill him.
It is an error, Jakob, it is
the greatest error of all to presume to ascertain from history,
what is right and what is wrong, what is just and what is unjust.
It is the frightful characteristic of history that it makes him
who contemplates the past appear infinitely virtuous in comparison.
Can you imagine but a single Christian who understands and
acknowledges that he himself, living in the present after two
thousand years of Kyrie Eleison and two hundred fifty years of
Saint Matthew Passion is more eager than ever to witness the
crucifixion of him who grew up 'before him as a tender plant,
and as a root out of a dry ground.' There's hardly a one not
in favor of the death penalty, and no one recognizes that he
whom they persecute and crucify has been the same in all eternity
and always will be.
 
"Deceiving ourselves and lying to ourselves, deceiving ourselves
and lying to ouselves," Albert repeated, "Those are the frightful
errors we must seek to avoid. You see, Jakob, the core and kernel
of our existence is ones self. Each one of us, as Lessing said, 
loves himself most of all. Conceivably one might love ones wife,
ones friend, ones children, ones parents, ones 'neighbor' in a
manner akin to that in which one loves oneself, that means to
protect their lives, to assuage their pain, to promote their
happiness as if it were ones own. At the same time there arises
competition between individual human beings, who are separate
one from the other, competition which is the cause of strife.
I remind you of Cain and Abel. Competition is incompatible
with neighborly love, and is nonetheless unavoidable, for it
also is an expression of human nature. Even more terrible than
enmity between individuals is hostility between peoples, between
nations and races. The state has turned human beings into soldiers
whom it permits, nay whom it requires to take the enemy prisoner,
to torture and to kill him. Man is by nature cruel and brutal. We
don't want it to be true, but it is so. He may succeed in concealing
his cruelty, but only transiently. He is forever unable to divest
himself of it.
 
Doehring had tried to follow Albert's presentation, and found that
there was something wrong with it, that it didn't quite make sense,
that it was not consistent. But Doehring was tired to a degree that
he did not trust his judgment and refrained from criticism. Finally
he could not longer resist his fatigue, and fell asleep. Either
Albert failed to notice or he proceeded nonetheless. "If you wish
to fathom the cruelty of the National Socialists you must first
understand the cruelty of human nature in general. That cruelty
is always the cruelty of the individual. To understand the cruelty
of the individual, consider how he treats the beasts. If you really
want to know what a human being is, consider his relationship to
the animals. You cannot avoid in this context to reevaluate that
most problematic topic of human existence, his carnivorous nature.
You may not limit your consideration to the carnality of man alone,
but you will be obliged to contemplate the carnality of animals
in general. If you are honest you will admit that man is only one
of many animals, and by no means the highest, for that distinction
belongs to the eagle. The flesh of humans and of animals is
indistinguishable one from the other. The difference between man
and animal, to the extent that it is valid, if at all, consists
in the supposed spirituality of man, in his haughty, arrogant
and almost surely mistaken denial of an equivalent disposition
among the animals."
 
"So far as the flesh itself is concerned, the carnality of man
is indistinguishable from the carnality of animals. It's conceivable
that a physiologist or a biochemist might presume to discover
objective differences between the constituents of the body of
the human and of the animal. But even if this were the case, such
differences could hardly serve as evidence for a corresponding
spiritual distinction. So far as the flesh is concerned, man
as a carnal creature must necessarily consider himself their kin."
 
Robed in priestly black attire Albert had pressed the slumbering
Doehring with solemn and insistent arguments. For years he had
pondered the ideas which he now expressed, and as he himself
heard them in their initial articulation, he was overcome with
shame. What unorthodox and perhaps unseemly notions now struck
his ears, and from his own mouth. He stopped. What he was about
to say was even more improper, eccentric and outlandish. To
present such notions to a stranger, however cordial
and sympathetic the encounter with him might have been,
was a hazard with which he risked that his hearer, though
amicable and well disposed, whose assent was of such inordinate
value in Albert's loneliness, would reject him as extravagant,
if not indeed perverse and confused. He looked into the face
of his visitor to ascertain the effect of his words, and
realized that Doehring was fast asleep. A hint of disappointment
and chagrin was quickly displaced by relief, for Albert was now
certain that Doehring had not taken offense at his explanation,
and this relief encouraged Albert to articulate ever more
adventurous notions.
 
"Don't you see," Albert accosted his sleeping friend, "the extent
to which a human being shares with the animals the fateful
susceptibility of the flesh to pain and suffering, to desire and
lust, to disease and death? Man's experience of his own carnality
consists on the one hand in the sense of well-being, repletion,
satiety, the satisfaction of emotional and sexual desires,
in warmth and comfort, and on the other hand, in pain, hunger,
thirst, cold, suffering and fear in anticipation of death and
decay. Should the experience of men in these regards differ
in any way from the experiences of animals? Alas, the man
and the woman both refuse to accept their bodies with its
fleshly natures. Throughout life they conceal themselves in
cloth and cosmetics and self-flattery; in death they conceal
each others decay with embalming agents and perfumes and 
artful casketry, forever incapable of contemplating their
fleshly natures."
 
"Of the carnality of the animal, man has a very different
experience. This he apprehends boiled, or braised, roasted
or fried; the suckling pig obscenely displayed on his 
banquet table, mocked with the apple that protrudes from
its snout. Or the boiled fish on the serving plate, a pale
reflection of its former beauty; the duck or the goose
which his gunshot has caused to plunge from the heights, 
now plucked and roasted to grace his feast, and even more
loathsome than the wild animals in flight which he slays 
to supply his meals, are those which he fattens in his
stables until he deems them ready to butcher. From time
immemorial it's been a matter of concern when the farmer
ropes the calf or the kid to drag it into the barn from its mothers' udder,
the animal with which his own children
have already begun an incipient friendship,
and cuts its carotid
with the point of his sharp knife,
catching its blood in 
pail to feed the pigs,
until it dies exsanguinated at his feet,
and he can flay it undistracted by its moans or
struggles, rip out its entrails, slice its limbs to dainty
cutlets which he then sells for a good price,
or hands to his wife to prepare a feast for their table.
Isn't it precisely the flesh of animals which they devour
that gives human beings the strength and the courage to murder
each other with the same callousness with which they have
killed the animal? Does it surprise you, that at one time
they were persuaded also to butcher and to consume one another,
a demonstration most vivid that men are no different from other animals,
until some undocumented metamorphosis of their awareness
persuaded them this was an exercise to be abandoned.
Nonetheless they cling to the possibility of perhance devouring
one another. Indeed they remind themselves of presuming to do so,
when at the holiest of their religious rituals, they indulge in
the ceremonial consumption of the flesh and the blood of their
anthropomorphic deity."
 
The circumstance that Doehring had started to snore seemed if
anything to reinforce Albert's exposition. "Humans are familiar
with the euphoria of satiation after the festive repast. They 
prize the physical strength and the mental acumen that empowers
them to build streets and cities and palaces, to write books,
to compile encyclopedias, to devise sciences, to design machines,
automobiles, airplanes, computers, lasers and even to penetrate
into cosmic space. But a human being is aware what else becomes
of the flesh that he consumes; for he transmutes it into feces,
that most repellent product of the human body, the ultimate
denial and negation of his being. And this precisely
is significant for man's relationship to the flesh, namely the
unqualified repugnance of his excrement, which he conceals,
which he buries, which he flushes unseen into subterranean
repositories, all in a ritual concealment of his ultimate being."
 
"You don't eat meat at all?" Doehring asked. He had just awakened
from fitful slumber, and it had escaped him that Albert's most
recent explanations referred to feces, a context in which his
inquiries about a vegetarian diet were uniquely in appropriate.
Albert paid no attention to the question. "Consider for a moment,"
he continued, "how human beings project their own, most personal
concerns, their quest for happiness and life onto society as a
whole, indeed onto nature itself, and presume that all earthly
events should be appraised with reference to their personal
welfare. To me it seems worthwhile, from time to time to
contemplate the world from an impersonal perspective, mindful
that it comprises uncounted and uncountable foci of consciousness
each of which has a claim to existence comparable to my own.
 
The compulsive assertion of ones own individuality has misled us
to that most fateful error: the belief that there should be a
qualitative absolute difference between the consciousness, the
soul of man and the consciousness of animals, that humanity and
animality should be totally separate. Such, apparently, is the 
implication of the Biblical account of creation. Not the
presumption to be godlike, but the denial of our kinship with
other living beings is the Hybris from which our misery never
ceases to flow. My brother, who once wore this uniform in the
performance of his "duty", was capable of torturing, of gunning
down the Communists, the Homosexuals, the Socialists, the Jews,
the Gypsies, the Poles, the Russians; as if they were animals,
because he would not, or could not recognize them as creatures
like himself, - as if they were animals. The scientist who
mutilates the experimental animal, the hunter who shoots the
deer, the butcher who kills the beef with a blow to the head,
all of them are capable of their deadly pursuit only on the
presumption that their victims are animals, basically different
from themselves, from their wives and from their parents and
from their children. You
can see these circumstances most clearly when you study the
persecution of the blacks and the Indians who were treated like
animals because of the disparities in color and culture, until
one finally became convinced that they were not humans, but
beasts and felt justified in treating them accordingly. Verily
I say unto you, you cannot set a barrier between yourself and
other life without forfeitting your soul."
 
"I have no fear of any animal," Albert continued, and paid no
attention to the fact that Doehring was asleep. "I should consider
it the evenhanded judgment of nature if someday I should perish in
a bear attack. I've often enough imagined how an animal must feel
surprised and overwhelmed by a grizzly, its neck asundered by the
grizzly's teeth; or worse yet, disemboweled while yet conscious by
the grizzly's claws, until awareness is lost from merciful
exsanguination. Whereupon the bear, like any other animal, uses
both claws and teeth to tear it apart, devours its victims flesh
for its own nourishment, until the protein not absorbed to
satisfy her hunger, to give her strength and courage, to provide
her with milk for her cubs, and for whatever other ends the bears
use nourishment, the rest, mixed with the residue of other kills,
is finally expelled into the underbrush from her behind, or
perhaps deposited on a path whence the advantaged
tourist contemplates the grandeur of the scenery. But if it
were a human fated to such a death, his might have been the
ultimate sacrifice to serve in such abject disfigurement as
warning to his follows to escape his fate, a sacrifice as well
to nature to signify the kinship of everything that thrives
under the sun."
 
Albert had finished.  His oration, which he had prepared
for thirty years was at an end. Doehring had long been
dozing and was now enthralled in deepest sleep. Albert
moved to the piano and in the heaps of booklets scattered on
its lid, he searched for a certain musical score, an aria with
thirty variations. It was the most demanding music he had ever
tried to play, and he wanted to present his friend with this
accomplishment of three decades as well. He opened the score
to the first page. No sooner had he begun to play than the 
forceful intonation of the somewhat decrepit instrument, much
louder than Albert's sonorous voice, pierced Doehring's
sleeping consciousness and aroused him. As soon as Albert
noticed that Doehring was awake and was starting to move,
he said, "Forgive me, Jakob, that I woke you up. This music
was written to lull the insomniac to sleep. I'm guilty to
have presented it too loudly.""You assume more than your
share of guilt." Doehring said, "On the contrary, it's my
apologies that are in order, for having fallen asleep while
you spoke. I wish I might have heard all that you have to say,
but I'm too tired, and the flesh is weak. Do me the favor
please, and light my way to where I've parked, so that I get
to my own hut in Canmore before it's much too late.
 
Albert sat motionless at the piano. He was disappointed not
to be permitted to continue his performance.
For many years he had lovingly practiced especially the thirteenth variation,
whose melody he thought each time he played it,
flows like a purling brook through the meadows of paradise.
This especially he wanted to perform for his guest.
Just now he had gotten no further than the second.
It was not the first disappointment in his life,
nor would it be the last, but the majority
of disappointments lay behind him,
of that he was certain.
The last note of the piano had long since faded.
Silently, unable to speak another word,
Albert arose.
He took his lamp and lighted the way across the meadow for his guest.
It had become so dark that even the edges of the path were unrecognizable.
It was an effort to climb the step stairs.
Doehring unlocked his car and took his seat behind the wheel.
"I thank you for your hospitality," he said to his friend
through the open window.
"I would like to come back, to learn from you,
and to listen to your explanations
when I am less tired."
Albert's right hand clutched the lantern.
With the other, the unencumbered hand,
he stroked his thick beard.
"Do come back," he said,
"Any time. I will go nowhere.
You can find me here until the end."
Albert's voice was gloomy with loneliness.
Doehring surmised that Albert had no expectation
of ever seeing him again.
In this moment Doehring sensed the profound isolation 
that enveloped his friend,
and he was ashamed knowing
that he would be unfaithful to him.
But the while Doehring waited, 
hesitant to precipitate their separation
by starting the engine,
Albert had left already.
Doehring managed to follow the gleam of the lantern
to the head of the stairs,
then suddenly, Albert and his light had disappeared,
and Doehring was once more alone,
enveloped in the black darkness of night.
 
He latched the doors of the little Sunbird,
started the engine and switched on he headlights.
Now at last he was safe from the bears,
and for Albert, who was friends with them,
they represented no threat.
What lay ahead of Doehring was anybody's guess.
The stuffed she-bear, the uniformed hotel guard,
the flaxen-haired policewoman with her pistol,
the dead workmen in the artificial mine,
and above all, Albert, with his gentle eyes and
his full red beard in his fearful SS uniform,
who had considered it his task,
as Doehring now understood,
to take up the burden of humanity's guilt:
all had become memories that lay behind him
on his life's journey.
 
He now drove slowly through the dark and empty night.
It has been a day filled with unexpected events.
He had been distracted from his intentions
by the persons he had met.
And yet he would have been hard put to articulate what
those intentions might have been.
He had encountered Dorothea and he had encountered Albert,
and both of them he had lost already. In this respect he was
more lonely than before.
His exhaustion had lifted,
and now he sang to himself his evensong, the same which
Albert had sung on the meadow below,
the song which celebrates
in so unforgetful a manner
resignation and peace at the end of the day. 
Darkness revealed the Fall of Adam,
the Fall of man, and his own fall as well.
The girl with the flaxen
hair was correct for her suspicion of him,
for the primary sin was that of lustfulness,
and of that he was guilty, even though
he had violated no public ordinances. Such is the fate of man.
The covenant of peace with God becomes possible once man
acknowledges the physical and spiritual limitations
of his existence, with sin and with death. The dove returns
with the olive branch as a sign of peace and reconciliation.
When Doehring remembered how much Elsbeth had loved just these
measures of the music, his eyes became moist, and he resolved
to pay more attention to the road, lest he have an accident.