HOME AT LAST. I crawled into bed without my usual pre-sleep routine, not even bothering to remove my clothes. I shut my eyes and waited for sleep, thinking it would come swiftly. Instead, my waiting generated a noise. A waiting noise. A buzzing anticipation of sleep. I listened to the tinnitus and tried to remember what had interested me in architecture in the first place. My old school, Sizenko Gymnasium, brand new when I entered as a fourteen-year-old. They’d built it from an old blast-furnace equipment factory. A block of steel and metal and concrete. The classrooms were boxes arranged in a circle around a common area and had glass walls so I could see other students in other boxes, doing workshops or learning music or calculus; or I could look outside, at the so-called moat and one of its wooden bridges and the forest beyond. The glass had transparent maps and tables and inspirational quotes etched onto it to prevent your mind from wandering or from watching the other students too much. But you could still see. That was the point. There was no way to approach the building without being seen by guards and teachers and administrators and students. It was a gorgeous school. Completely modern. A scholastic panopticon. The moat had two bridges, one on each side of the building. The water was deep and breathing, full of algae, Japanese koi, the gentle drifting of green lake life. This was the building that had made me fall in love with architecture. It was the first time I’d seen what a building could do for people, how form followed function, putting organizing principles to work—not in the name of money, but in service to humanity.
I wished I could remember the unit we were studying at Sizenko on the day of the guns. It was Mr. Radzinski’s class, that I knew, which was biology. Dear Uncle, you would have remembered the shirt I wore that day. It was one of Dad’s. You hated when I wore it, the purple tailor-made shirt with flared cuffs. You told me it made a fool of me to wear it, which only made me want to wear it more.
It was early in the day. Eight in the morning, ten minutes into first period.
Were we studying molecules? I could make out symbols on the blackboard. But I could also picture the ligature “Æ.”
They came out of the forest. In my mind there were twelve of them, but who knows how many there really were. Bandanas tied around their heads—I could see them from my desk. Red and black bandanas that covered their mouths and noses. Camouflage, flak jackets, fatigues, army-issue boots, and rifles slung over their shoulders.
The principal’s panicked voice through the PA. I can’t remember his name. Isn’t that funny? It wasn’t even that big of a school. Maybe three hundred of us. We had done drills, countless drills. He cut the lights to the building and we hid under our desks as instructed. The locks engaged in the doors, a thick metal thunk. They couldn’t get in.
Why don’t I remember how it felt?
The principal’s voice was a running chatter in the background. He had called the police. He reassured us. They couldn’t get in. Remember your training. Nobody move. Nobody do anything provocative.
They came down the hill and stopped at the moat. The bridges had already been pulled. There was no way across the moat without swimming and it was a considerable span. They stopped at the edge of the water in formation. In unison they took the rifles from their shoulders and pointed them at our window. It was our window in particular. We were unlucky in that way, to be in the classroom facing the forest.
Then they just stood there, rifles trained at us. They didn’t shoot. The glass was bulletproof, of course. Our school was built with exactly this in mind. All the money, the architectural and environmental principles that formed the basis of its design. Did it matter?
They stood there for a few minutes. I don’t know how I could see them while I was under the desk. I must not have been hiding under it. I must have been watching. Through the glass, through the etching of the map of the world: the brown and black of the rifles, the barrels of their guns little black holes in the cloudy contours of the map. Why didn’t they shoot? Was it only a demonstration? A reminder that they could kill us all, if they really wanted to?
They scattered, running back into the forest and disappearing. The police arrived shortly afterwards.
Do you remember what happened next, Uncle? We got the rest of the day off. They released us into the city. I was terrified to leave the school. Why would we leave? The school was the safest place for us. But they made us. They spent all that money and used all those minds to build a safe school and then they didn’t let us stay in it. They sent us into the wild. I took the bus home. I didn’t know where you were. Home by myself for hours, I got into bed and cried. When you came home and I told you what happened, you said it was a healthy experience. That’s how you described it: healthy. Later, you let slip that you had heard about it from the news shortly after it happened. You knew I would have come straight home. You knew I was there by myself.
I wish I had said these things to you years ago instead of now saying them—practicing saying them—in my head. Maybe when we find each other in Duma I will tell you the rest.
I felt myself falling into sleep, but again something shook me. I had a sudden urge to see about something. I switched on my lamp, reached into my nightstand, and took out the photograph I had found in the credenza of the room with the piano and the rolls of carpet along the walls. This time I looked at the carpet in the photograph. It was a black and white photograph, but I had a terrible, uncanny sensation: I knew, without proof, that the carpet was yellow. The same carpet I’d seen through the shaft. In the room beneath the ground. I don’t know how I knew it, but I was sure of it. It was a fact that stood. A fact that mattered.
The next morning, I got to 7A early and made sure to stop by the front desk in the factory atrium to get a uniform. I was pointed in the direction of the inventory hallway and found the room for apparel. It wasn’t difficult to find a jumpsuit my size, and in fact I felt that it rather flattered me, flattening my belly while emphasizing whatever muscular terrain I had left over from my Barnova sporting days, before my participation was disallowed. It was a khaki-green polyester suit with a zipper that ran from neckline to waist. The color brought out the brown in my hair. I ran my hands over my abdomen and felt attractive. It itched terribly.
It took a few wrong turns to find my way back to the factory floor, but when I did, I was among the first to arrive. I took some pleasure in this. The conveyor belt wasn’t running yet; the overhead lights were still warming up. I found my stool and looked around to see if the ripped half of my uncle’s jacket was still there. It wasn’t. This saddened me, but I had work to do, so I started on the day’s list of assemblages. I made it through a dozen or so before the wind left my sails. What was the point of this? What were these configurations for? By then my row had filled up with the same workers from yesterday. The older man was clearly senile. I didn’t want to think about how long he had been sitting at this particular stool doing this particular work. A machine himself, he had been compiling assemblages for years and years, knuckles engorging, bones eroding. I pictured popping his knuckles with a sewing needle. I leaned over toward the woman in front of me with the white bandana. She was working intently, and at first I thought better of breaking her concentration. But what difference would it make? This was work that required no concentration, only stamina.
“Excuse me,” I whispered. I said it a few times before she looked up. When our eyes met, she jumped.
“Hi?”
“Do you know what these are for?” I glanced down the table to make sure no one was listening, but it occurred to me that I had no good reason to be paranoid. Just because people didn’t make conversation while they worked didn’t mean that I couldn’t. I hadn’t been given any rulebook.
“Not a clue,” she said. Her hands were working, compiling, locking. Still, she was looking at me.
“How long have you been here for?”
“The factory? Two or three years, I would think. It’s pointless to keep track of it, so I don’t.”
“Why is it pointless?”
“It’s not about time.” She smiled, and her lips rose like a curtain to reveal small and crooked denticulation. “At least, I don’t think it is.”
“You’ve been assembling these parts for two years and you don’t know what they’re for?”
“We’ve got our theories,” she said. “Jan thinks the work is the product and the product is the byproduct.” She looked pointedly over at the old man, who was oblivious to our conversation. “Personally, I think they’re all plumbing bits. For sinks and showers.” I picked up a couple of parts—an elbow piece and a bracket—and idly played with them while she spoke. Water could travel through these parts. It seemed plausible. “Really, though,” she said, “nobody knows for certain.” She smiled like she was in on a secret. “Jan says it’s all part of an elaborate piece of art. I think he’s off his rocker.”
I looked at Jan, who was already falling asleep on his assemblage.
“Thanks for the information,” I said. I felt old-fashioned. The work was the product and the product was the byproduct? Was it too much to expect to understand the purpose behind their work? I looked around the factory and saw all the workers hunched over their tables, diligently assembling. There were worse ways to spend your time, I guessed. I couldn’t pretend to know what compelled these people to care about their jobs.
While I knew it would be fruitless, I couldn’t help but ask her if she had seen my uncle. I described him to her, and she made a show, maybe for my benefit, of racking her brain. She seemed to drift off into her mind. I was about to return to my own assembling when she spoke up.
“I’m sure I know him.” Her expression took on a mystical configuration. A seer’s face. “I’m sure I’ve seen him at the café.”
“The café? Where is the café?”
“There’s one in every plaza.”
“Which one did you see him in?”
“This one, perhaps.” She pointed to the window. I followed her finger to the plaza where the bus stop was located. “Sometimes I wander, though. When I’m on my break.”
I didn’t remember seeing anyone take a break yesterday.
I worked for a while longer, making slow progress down my daily assembly list. Mostly, I watched the other workers in the room with me, hunched at their tables, hands moving automatically, chasing salvation. The clangs of metal echoed off the concrete factory ceiling, making a kind of pleasant cacophony. I liked the music of the pipes. But the more I worked, the less I cared. I thought back to the indoctrination I’d been given on my first morning in Duma, that woman’s passionate manifesto of Dumanian ideology. What ideology? The word belied the dead faces I saw surrounding me.
The sun had crested the factory across the street, and the room was now sweltering. I still hadn’t seen anyone break for lunch, but I decided to brave it. What would be more humiliating? Being the first to leave for lunch—or losing consciousness again?
I rose timidly from my stool and wandered back through the factory and into the main atrium, looking around for a drink. There were no water fountains in sight, so I left the factory and walked into the central plaza, which was empty except for a few workers sitting on the concrete slabs in the shade of palm trees, tossing rocks at the scorpions in the courtyard. I walked along the perimeter, gazing into the shop windows: factory-appropriate apparel; tailor and seamstress; stool cushions; first aid; hanging crescents of cured sausages. Meat—that’s what I wanted. I opened the shop window and a little bell chimed pleasantly. There were a few people enjoying sausages with mustard and sauerkraut, but they were eating alone at their own tables and I didn’t feel like disturbing them for lunchtime small talk. My uncle was not there. I ordered a sausage, then took my platter to the window counter and ate greedily while I watched the sun bake the plaza. I cleaned my plate, sopping up the remains of the sauerkraut and mustard with my heel of black bread and savoring the juices from the wet and pillowy insides before washing the bread down with several cups of water. When I finished, I went to pay the young clerk behind the counter, a woman in a butcher’s apron smeared with blood, but when I got there, I realized I didn’t have any money. Henry had taken my wallet.
“How do I pay?” I asked.
“Sooner or later,” said the clerk.
“I mean, I’d like to settle up.”
“I thought you wanted a joke,” she said. She looked up from her notepad and we locked eyes; her expression changed. “Have you been here long?”
“It’s my second day at work.”
“Lunch is free to the workers.” She scribbled something down, ripped the sheet from the pad, and handed it to me. The little paper simply said sausage.
“What do I do with this?”
“Whatever you want,” said the clerk. “Eat it for all I care.” She turned to the counter behind her where loose meat needed casing. It looked more like the synthetic meat in my fridge than I’d realized. I glanced over my shoulder; the other diners were staring at me.
I asked her if she knew my uncle. I described him for her. She didn’t have any tips on how I could find him.
“It’s possible he comes here to eat,” I said.
“A man eats in a restaurant. Congratulations.”
The bell rang at my exit.
I stood in the sunshine and took a deep breath, thinking about the protein flowing through my blood. The sun bore down on me from overhead, but a bank of clouds was sailing along the plain. Soon it would blot out the sun, bring a breeze through the factory windows, maybe even rain.
I wasn’t ready to go back inside. I wanted to look around a bit more and see if I could get lucky running into Uncle. At the very least, I felt the need to stretch my legs, get a bit of exercise. If this was going to be my routine from now on—sleep, eat, bus, factory, bus, eat, sleep—then I would need to be conscious of my health. I didn’t want to become misshapen. A lap or two would do me good—raise my heart rate, bring a prickle of healthy sweat to my brow. I could explore one of the other plazas, maybe peek into the other cafes. I looked both ways down the avenue. The factories were like massive steel anvils. I walked east.
At the next avenue there was only more of the same: another broad and dusty street lined with factories, another plaza. Same shops, too. Same tailor and seamstress, same sausages hanging in the window. I cupped my hands against the glass and looked in; similar haggard workers looked out. None of them was my uncle. I walked into the center of the plaza and pictured myself from above: a black speck plotted in the grid of industry. I was reminded of an old memorial I once saw in my city, a gridded arrangement of marble rectangles of varying heights and elevations. But it wasn’t a memorial when I saw it—it had been de-memorialized. The group for whom it had been built objected to their representation, to the vagueness, and commissioned the city to open the intention of the memorial up to the Universal Tragedy. They stripped it of its vague semi-specificity, buffing out the group’s name and refinishing the onyx slabs. The group was pleased. It’s not that they didn’t want a memorial for their tragedy; they just wanted a good one. By the time I saw it, its name had been changed. It was no longer the city’s Memorial to the Group, but an archetype of public art.
I looked at the sundial in the middle of the plaza. Over an hour had passed since I’d left for lunch. I needed to get back to my assemblages. But as I turned to the west, a wave of lethargy overtook me, and I stumbled over to one of the concrete slabs and sat. I felt suddenly exhausted—drained by the prospect of returning to that work. That was no mystery; it wasn’t a stretch to imagine why I might not be motivated to fit pipes into bigger pipes. What I was surprised by was the apathy I felt, too, creeping through my mind like a parasite through an insect. The apathy was a true force, a heroic sensibility. I was deathly unafraid of consequence. Why? I didn’t know. I didn’t want to know. To know was to negate the metamorphosis. To return to fear.
There was a spirit in my exhaustion. I was sleepy and full of protein—and I didn’t care about a thing.
I decided to keep walking east. The avenues kept appearing, one after the next, unnamed, with unnamed plazas at the intersections and unnamed workers taking breaks on sunny blocks of concrete. After the fourth or fifth plaza, I made a goal of reaching the end of the factory area. I wanted to gaze into the surrounding desert, feel a little alone. So I hoofed it. At some juncture, I stopped a fellow who was pacing back and forth in front of his factory. I asked him how much farther it was till I’d hit the desert. He pointed down the road in the direction I was walking. Then he took a map out of his pocket and gave it to me. I glanced at it to see if the city had changed and it seemed to have changed considerably, though I knew that wasn’t likely.
Finally, the town stopped. I stepped into the sand beyond the end of the road, my brown leather shoes already dusty. The cuffs of my uniform, too. I opened my mouth and dust flitted around my teeth. It coated my tongue. I squinted into the distance and saw a black house—the same one I’d seen from the window of the bus. I couldn’t stop now. I was getting exercise. Exploring some obsolete, retired civilization—the ruins of a bygone world. Ancient Roman or Greek or Chinese or Indian.
I arrived at the black house after a half hour of walking across a shadowless stretch of rocky, barren terrain, waves of heat roiling in the air beneath an enormous sky of washed-out blue. The colors of everything were red, black, and blue, and the blue was shimmering. The house was made of wood, its wooden-slat siding running vertically from the dusty ground up to the dormer window above the door. I touched the scalding wood with my hands. A small house. I circled it. Only one window; only one door. The door was open.
A soft electric light dangled from the water-stained ceiling. There was a dirty twin cot on a brass frame in the corner. An old wooden wardrobe and an old wooden desk. A black telephone and a red telephone and papers on the old wooden desk. Black-framed glasses resting on an open scheduling book. A lamp with a flesh-colored shade. A forest-green officer’s jacket draped on the chairback. Behind it, on the wall, a complex organizing system: a 12x14 grid, each column labeled Zelle 1, Zelle 2, Zelle 3, Zelle 4, Zelle 5, and so on. Paper cards were tacked on each square, with names written on them, and numbers. More filing cabinets behind the desk. A ring of iron keys hanging from a protruding nail.
An old radio stood on a rickety stool. I flicked it on. Big band swing. I sat down at the desk and pulled out the drawer. Odds and ends. Paperclips, stamps, envelopes, a knot of twine, rusted hardware, a Luger pistol, swastika cufflinks. I picked up the cufflinks and bounced them around in my palm, then placed them back in the drawer and closed it. They almost seemed real. The papers on the desk were elaborate architectural blueprints in laminated plastic. They smelled like cologne. Written on them were designs for hatches, chambers, cells, columns. After the song ended, the same song started up again, running in a loop. A bopping number: I could imagine the bandleader’s swaying shoulder, his back hunched over his drum kit, his eyes closed, sweat on his forehead, a faint red ring around his neck from his too-tight collar. I swiveled in the chair and looked again at the organizing system. I couldn’t read the names; they had been intentionally blurred to avoid specificity. I dragged the chair over to the front door and stood on it to look out of the window. Decals had been stuck on the glass to make it seem like there were other constructions out there—one was of a faraway gallows and the ground beneath them, rendered in a distancing perspective. Beyond that, across the desert, was the real factory town, housing my own Factory 7A.
I spun around on the chair and focused on my feelings. I was seriously discomfited by the…piece? Fabrication? Memorial? My inability to identify just what this was, that was precisely the thing that made me so uncomfortable with it. Nazi symbology was painful to see, as it always was when I discovered swastikas sprayed on park benches and bus stops at home. And the infinite iterations of SS insignia—too many to keep track of or even identify as such. It gave me chills. My ears pricked. The energy was bad. I didn’t know how else to describe it. I focused on the energy. It was perfect—and wrong. It was the singular achievement of art: the transmission of feeling from artist to observer. It felt terrible to be in there, which was how I knew the piece succeeded, and how I knew it was artwork. The elements were fabricated; the feeling was uncanny. By reproducing whatever this was out in a contextless desert, it took on an ontological dimension, questioning its existence and by extension my own—and my complicity in the illusion.
I left the room and circled the property again. On the north-facing wall I spotted a square of text made faint by dust. I cleared it off with my cuff.
Block Elf Aufseher Büro
Miriana Grannoff
Wood, glass, fiberglass, resin, paint, rubber, PVC pipe Reproduction
A kommandant’s office, as I suspected. This was a dazzling discovery. And unsurprisingly the work of Grannoff. I had such an urge to talk to her about it. This was architecture! I’d had no idea that Grannoff had this skill set, that she could fabricate a structure so authentic, so sophisticated. And now that I knew the piece was Grannoff’s, I could push my analysis farther. It was clear now that Block Elf Aufseher Büro was a memorial, a resonant callback to a time of horror. Isolate the terror in the desert where it can’t hurt anyone, but where it can be visited—as a reminder.
There was more language on the plaque, detailed plans for future expansion:
Visitors will be able to examine the full-scale replica of a gas chamber door, built with hinges on the outside and a cage around its peephole to prevent victims from easily breaking it down. Also on view will be the gas column built to introduce Zyklon-B pellets.
I was excited by Grannoff’s vision. She wanted to aestheticize the banality of evil, to take something so ruthlessly bureaucratic and bronze it in memory—to resituate it in a violent context (the desert), to recreate it molecule by molecule (the knot of twine), and to show it in light (the isolation). Art becoming operative.
If I wasn’t careful, I’d be in love with Grannoff by nightfall.
I dragged my foot through the sand next to the house. It parted under my shoe. The sun was beginning to set, and I realized that I had no way to tell the time. The thought of trudging back across the sand to reach the factory was unbearable. Besides, work was probably just about done for the day. And I didn’t want to leave. I scanned the horizon—I was alone out here. It was glorious to be alone. To the west was where I’d come from. To the east, south, north—the steppe, nothing but rocks and sand. It was peaceful here.
I went around to the east side of the house and ran my hand along the wall, then knocked. The wood was sturdy. I couldn’t see through to the interior through the slats. I could spend the night here, I thought; it wouldn’t be too crazy. I’d be the first one back at work in the morning. If I got in trouble for abandoning my post, then being the first in would be the beginning of forgiveness. I wasn’t hungry or thirsty. The more I thought about it, the more the thought appealed to me. I never did things like this back home. I’d never gone camping. I’d never spent the night beneath the stars. Some people would say that spending the night beneath the stars was a privilege. Camping seemed like a bourgeois luxury, a kind of simulated homelessness. “Roughing it” was what the working class did every day of their lives. This was a good way to show my solidarity.
I sat down on the floor inside, my back against the far wall. I rested my elbows on my knees and listened to the wind gently blowing outside. I was right: I couldn’t feel a draft through the wood. The night would pass fine. I decided I’d help it pass with a little music. I liked that big band number from the radio. I went over to the radio and switched it on. It played through the swing number again, which I enjoyed, but instead of starting back up again, it started to purr static. Then a voice that I hadn’t noticed before came on. It was a deep masculine voice, with a German accent. “The rotten bones are trembling,” it said in English, followed by the sound of a needle scratching into a record groove. A children’s choir began to sing in German. A marching song. I hated the sound of children’s choirs, but I let them sing for the sake of stimulation, until the loop began again: “The rotten bones are trembling,” the needle scratch, the choir. Probably a marching anthem for a youth movement. A clever gimmick from Grannoff. I switched off the radio and waited for the tube to cool down and the ruby light to fade to dark. Instead, the choir started up again. I wondered how old the recording was. No—I wondered why it was still playing after I had killed the power. I lifted the radio off the stool and turned it around in my hands, a National Socialist Doppler Effect. There was no obvious place to get at its guts—no panel concealing batteries, no technical off switch. I sighed, then took the jacket off the chair and draped it over the radio. It muffled the children, which only made them sound ghostlier—not quiet.
Then I had an idea.
I rummaged through the desk drawer and pulled out the Luger. I passed the gun from one hand to the other, feeling its weight. I’d never held one before. The metal was freezing. These things were the end of everything. Nevertheless, I slid the chanting radio under my armpit and walked outside into the night desert and didn’t stop walking until I was well away from the house. Stars blinked in the sky. It was clear enough to see swirling gold. I placed the radio down on a smooth rock and walked backwards several paces. I lifted the Luger and looked down the barrel at the radio. Victim becoming oppressor. “The rotten bones are trembling,” it said. The kids began to sing their German.
I took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. Then I pulled the trigger.
A small blast jerked my arm into my chest and a piece of something sharp ripped my cheek. My ears rang. The radio smoldered on the rock. The German children warbled into silence. I touched my cheek and saw my blood by the light of the stars. A piece of the radio had grazed my skin, but it was only a surface wound.
Peace fell upon the kommandant’s office. I resumed my place on the floor and covered my body with the officer’s jacket. I shivered, my eyelids drooping. I doubted I could sleep that way, but I managed. I woke up some hours later with my head between my knees. It was still dark. I got up and stretched, walked around the office. The moon had risen and now hung a few inches above the horizon. It was waxing gibbous and the color of watery mustard. I walked over to the wall behind the desk and examined the organizing system, seeing if I could make out any of the names on the cards. The names were all blurred, but the shapes seemed specific: blurry shapes that took up the space of four or five-letter names, six or seven-letter surnames. I ran my finger down the cards, looking for two shapes that corresponded in size to my name. Why wouldn’t my name be listed on a catalogue of prisoners in a Nazi jail? Some things just seemed inevitable. When I found one, I ran my fingers over the shapes, and they seemed to come into focus, as if I were wiping dust away from the letters. S— Zelnik. I tried to clarify the names on the other cards, but it seemed it was only mine that would resolve into focus. My eyes were deceiving me, I knew they were, but it was too difficult to convince myself that what I was seeing wasn’t there. I slapped my cheek, forgetting the cut, and yelped in pain. I touched the cards on the board. I had what I could only call an intuition. A premonition. A whisper in the wind told me I would find the secret behind all things. I pressed each card until one of them clunked back into the wall, as if falling into place. Behind me, on the floor, a square of wood shot open, releasing a cloud of dust. I laughed. Somewhere in my subconscious I must have remembered that Grannoff liked these sorts of tricks, artworks doubling as adventure narratives.
I peered through the trap door. Darkness. A sound. A buzzing sound. It engulfed the kommandant’s office and sent my hands to my ears. I longed for the German children instead. I stared deeper into the hole and, as my eyes adjusted to the darkness, began to detect a faint fluorescent yellow. It looked familiar to me. It felt familiar to me. It had the smell of a paperback exposed too long to the sun. Leaning closer, I placed a hand wrong and began to fall into the hole but was able to redirect my body at the last moment. I toppled awkwardly, jerking clear of the opening like a marionette. I rolled onto my stomach and looked down into the darkness, where the buzzing and the yellow were foulest. My pupils dilated. When yellow carpeting came into focus, I realized where I knew the sound and smell from—Grannoff’s earlier work in the factory basement. There were carpeted tunnels beneath the artworks.
I could go down there, I thought.
I pulled myself into the fetal position and shut my eyes. I felt clouds in my mind. Stuffing in my mind. The buzzing was a hacksaw in the kommandant’s office. The hacksaw said I should go down there. I put my back against the trapdoor and dug my heels into the wood. They kept slipping. Finally, I found traction, and pushed until the door closed. The buzzing stopped. I was supine over the trapdoor; I could feel it vibrating.