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stop working. But destiny would not be so denied.
~ 87 ~
Fourteen
lost the baby. Sophie sobbed as she
 I tightly gripped the telephone receiver, as if
it could substitute for a child.
 What? I ll be there in a moment, I replied, at a
loss for words. How could she have lost the child
for which we had prepared only three months? I
was terrified of going home, of seeing her in our
living room. Sure enough, I entered and found her
on the floor by the couch. I helped her up and led
her to the chair by the table with our small frame. A
photo of our vacation to the Rhineland the previous
month stared back at me. We had been so happy
then, I had to avert my gaze, and she caught it. Our
eyes met, perhaps for the first time since our
~ 88 ~
Escape From Myself
marriage.
 I want a divorce.
I wasn t entirely sure who said it, and to this
day, I m still questioning it, but I wouldn t be
surprised if it was me.
 Okay, let s get our things in order here, and
we ll find someone to handle the papers.
I left her to find the number for my attorney, her
grip on me tightening until it reluctantly released. I
strode into the bedroom and closed the door.
Perhaps I slammed it, or otherwise the moment
imbued the frame with energy. As I left the room,
the picture tilted and fell face down on the table. A
small crack of glass broke the silence of the house,
but the silence returned until I left to return to work.
With no home to live for, all thoughts left me. I
wanted to run, but I couldn t move my feet. All I
could hear was the utter silence of the house, the
crack of glass, and maybe sobbing. I drove up to the
gates of the camp and parked the car.
 What s wrong? You look beat, Eisele cried
out when I walked near him in the lot.
 I m not sure I haven t been beaten. I m getting
a divorce and I ve lost the baby.
Eisele leaned closer, whispering to avoid a
scene.  What happened? I thought you had
everything taken care of.
 No, I hadn t any control. No control at all. It s
all been a terrible mess.
I returned to my office, papers scattered wildly
on the floor and desk. My memory rushed to my
~ 89 ~
Chris Valentin
first entrance there, papers similarly tossed about. I
gathered them in a neat pile and gently planted them
on the top of a filing cabinet, chuckling a bit to
myself. I found myself thinking aloud.  So much
time has passed and yet the place still looks the
same. It did look the same; it was all a terrible
mess. I sighed a little, tossed my head onto the desk,
and I napped.
I had a dream when I closed my eyes. I was in a
whirlwind of sand and dirt, floating up with the
strong breeze. I couldn t see anything but grains of
debris in the air but I felt (if one can feel such things
in a dream) that I was headed toward a town. What
would happen if this tornado entered the city? What
wreckage could it cause? In fearing and panicking, I
somehow left the wind, falling hard to the ground.
To my astonishment, the cyclone shrank smaller
and smaller when it entered the city limits. It was a
mere cool breeze once it reached the first houses.
 Get up! Sleeping, eh?
I awoke to find a barrage of guards standing
over me with Commander Koch s face square in the
middle. He had the look of fury.
 What are you doing asleep? Get up! he
repeated loudly.
I got up and saluted him, apologizing for resting my
eyes. He took me aside and mumbled something.
 Listen, you must be on your best behavior.
Officials are coming to see how efficient we are,
and I don t want to look like a weakling. Ironic
that people tend not to look like what they really
~ 90 ~
Escape From Myself
are. I knew no amount of proper behavior would
make Koch look any better, but I saluted anyway to
get him away. With his entourage he left me and
went out the door.
I returned to the filing cabinet with the jumbled
papers and re-sorted them. The files, I noticed
immediately, were of the experiments previously
undertaken. Heading each paper was a huge red-
stamped  Failure. Had I really tried so hard for
such dismal results? This typhus cure would be
different, I thought. I d find an answer or else. A
package, some vials of Rickettsia prowazekii I had
ordered, lay beside the notes. With the vials of the
disease, the millions of homegrown lice, and the
hundreds of inmates, I would surely find my cure.
I had several inmates brought to me to have
checked for lice and received many more examples
than I expected. Each inmate had the parasites, so I
had the bugs removed one by one and put in small
Petri dishes in the hopes that they would copulate. I
fed them human blood from the original hosts, and
the lice grew until they were able to be injected with
the contents of the vials.
With the injections, the lice now had typhus,
and since I continued to feed them from prisoners,
the prisoners developed it as well. No care was
taken for the inmates who were donating
blood after all, I could cure them eventually,
couldn t I? But after the injections had taken place
and the lice were properly grown, I stumbled onto
my first roadblock; what to do next. The lice
~ 91 ~
Chris Valentin
couldn t survive for long, and the typhus-infected
inmates were forced into sequestering for so long
before their use would be valid. I decided to
monitor the lice and humans together to see how the
typhus affected both in a small lab.
The lab work took many days, with the lice
dying before the infected people. The project was
renewed. This time the lice would be infected and
killed to see how the bacteria affected the body. The
trial was completed in a week.
During all of this heavy work, I made certain
not to return home. Sophie called me only once to
notify me that the papers for divorce had come in. I
returned home that night, signed them, and went
quietly back to work.
 Why are you leaving so soon?
 I have to return to the camp. I have found a
wonderful route for the cure for typhus. I think it
can be accomplished within a year.
Her face became blank and then became
unusually happy.  Really? A cure? Amazing. I
never thought I d live to see the day when we d find
a cure for typhus. I can t believe it, how d you do
it?
I stood dumbfounded at her renewed interest,
explaining the situation of the lice and the vials
injected into them. She sat in wonder, listening to
every word with careful attention. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]