134
PARTISAN
Ri EVIEW
an operation-it is the same thing over and over again . The mental
casualties in their guarded ward are no different from ours. Some
in straightjackets, strapped to their beds, some screaming, some color–
less, lifeless, forever immobile. Here and there a dead body, not yet
removed. I lift the sheet; the face is already puffed up. The shock
of it is gone, and I can no longer remember what it actually used
to be like. I poke a finger into a puffy cheek, leaving a depression
which takes a long time to fill up again. It is the same death as our
own.
I go to the hospitals, though I learn nothing there, and I go
to the prison camps, also in vain. Once I had myself incarcerated,
disguised as an enemy soldier. I slept with the men in their barracks,
ate with them, studied them, was soon infested with the same lice. I
was involved in a plan to escape, of which I informed our guards.
No one saw through my disguise, and I, in turn, failed to see through
the undisguised men and learned nothing. In fact, the few weeks I
spent in prison camp were extremely discouraging, for if the gap
between the enemy and ourselves is so small that I can pose, unde–
tected, as one of his men, why is it that I can't cross over to him?
I have even suspected my project of a subtle treason. By "cross
over to him," I mean of course, "cross the gulf that separates us from
knowledge of his true nature." Now I know where I stand in this
regard and it no longer troubles me; but at one time I feared that
the second expression really meant nothing more than the first and
I thought surely that my whole ambition was only to desert to the
enemy. Perhaps he fascinated me in the precise sense of attraction,
drawing me, through my desire to know, closer and closer to his side.
My conscience drove me to my
supe~ior,
Major General Box. He
believes in my project and follows my reports with interest. The
General reassured me; it is his opinion that we are all drawn to the
enemy, particularly in such a long war, and that the enemy is drawn
to us. In certain respects we even begin to resemble each other. But
this is only natural, and has nothing to do with my project, which,
far from being treason, remains the most important of the war.
I was reassured, but was soon taken with a fresh disquietude.
A suggestion that the general had made, without meaning to do so,
set me on a new course of activity. The general had said that in
certain respects we come to resemble the enemy. What are these
respects? Perhaps the knowledge that I was seeking really lay in
myself? The resemblance to the enemy might have grown so strong
in my case, that it was my own nature I would have to know in order
