PARIS LETTER
493
his collar bespattered with blood, and took possession of my last bottle
of scotch. Trickles of blood from three cuts in his cheek joined at his
chin and ran thickly down his neck. I gav.e him my handkerchief and
begged him to wipe his face.
"Now we shall go to the surprise party of that female 3"rapho–
maniac. You will introduce me as Da Costa, the Portuguese consul."
"You forget," I told him with dignity, "that I am an ex-embassy
type. Da Costa is not the name of the Portuguese consul."
"A matter of no importance. We shall speak Spanish, through the
nose, and nobody will know the difference."
«Perfectamente."
I was drinking scotch on an empty stomacn, and
beginnin~
to
fpt"}
a trifle rocky myself. But on we went to Claude-Edmonde Magny's sur–
prise party. The surprise would be for her. All this year, I told Patrick,
I had been reading books, brochures, and articles about concentration
camps. In French alone, there were several hundred titles; and in
German there were probably many more, including the invaluable .:ol–
lection,
Konzentrationslager Buchenwald,
and the
S. S. Universe)
the
recent work of Eugen Kogon (who plays a curious role in Rousset's
novel). A Polish journalist with whom I had had a long talk on the
system of Auschwitz (where his son was murdered before his eyes)
toJd me that he knew at least sixty "serious" titles in Polish. (Desidera–
tum: a humorous study of Auschwitz.) The population of the camps,
after 1940, was always predominantly Polish aud Russian (Auschwitz
alone, at one point, contained more than 200,000 prisoners!), so that
it would hardly be surprising if my friend's projected bibliography of
Slavic works turned out to be more interesting than my list of titles
available here.
"Please," said Patrick, annoyed, "will you kindly get off my ear?"
We were walking along the Rue Delambre, with a vague idea of get–
ting something to eat before going to our party. No doubt, all you
Freudian janitors in New York will immediately assume that I have
been reading these works-only a few of which are distinguished by
the slightest ray of insight-out of a submerged and bottomless sadism,
gobbling them up ever more fiendishly in accordance with the law of
diminishing returns. Or out of a sense of guilt, for not having perished
in a gas-chamber. And no doubt you will be right, on both counts. Pat–
rick, however, who is anything but vulgar, assumed nothing at all; in
fact, he seemed not even interested. Nevertheless, I reminded him of
the camps we had come across in North Africa, where people had con–
tinued to rot and die for months after our armies controlled the coun–
try; and how hard some of his friends (among whom, I believe, was
Percy Winner) had worked to get the diplomats and brass-hats at Al–
lied Force Headquarters to take these pastoral institutions out of the
