Roots of Evil(111)

Alraune was watching these preparations with faint curiosity, but he did not seem especially afraid. He has never known the ordinary world, thought Alice, only this dark hopeless place. So he may see nothing horrific in whatever they are about to do, and he may be unaffected by it. And then, far down in her mind, she thought: but I don’t want him to be unaffected! I want him to be capable of pity and compassion – to be able to put himself in another’s place – to feel hurt when a friend hurts.

When Mengele himself entered the room he did so quietly and unobtrusively, and it was difficult to connect him with the monster of the legend. But it’s in the eyes, thought Alice. There’s a coldness, an emptiness behind his eyes. As if he has no soul.

She was just trying to attract Alraune’s attention, thinking that the sight of her might reassure him, thinking that she might somehow signal to him not to be frightened, when the door opened again, and Leo Dreyer came in. At once the menace in the room escalated; icy sweat slid between Alice’s shoulder blades, and the palms of her hands were slippery. This is it, she thought. It’s about to begin.

Without knowing she was going to do it, she banged hard on the glass partition with her fist, and when the men on the other side of it looked round, she cried out to Leo Dreyer. ‘Leo! Let the child go! Keep me, but take him back to the hut – please!’

Dreyer turned his head and smiled. He shook his head.

‘He could be your son!’ cried Alice, hating having to say it, but doing so. ‘There were six of you that night, remember? That’s a one in six chance.’

‘He’s not my son,’ said Leo Dreyer at once. ‘I am unable to father a child. I was rendered sterile from an illness in my youth. But,’ he said, with a sudden glitter in his eyes, ‘I am not impotent, baroness, as you very well know.’

Somewhere beneath the jagged panic, a tiny curl of gratitude unfurled at that. Not Dreyer’s son. Not the son of this cold cruel implacable monster. Thank God for that at least, thought Alice.

The men imprisoned in the two chairs were aware of the sudden ratcheting up of the atmosphere, as well. Whether or not they knew what was to happen was not clear, but they certainly knew the stories about Mengele and they renewed their struggles to get free, their eyes bolting from their heads like frightened hares. But the gyves and the dreadful head braces held firm, and neither Mengele nor his assistants paid their weak flailing any attention. Mengele merely pointed to one of them and said, in a harsh voice, that this would be the first subject.

At once the assistants by the chairs bent to the machines, and Leo Dreyer moved quietly to a chair in one corner, his expression impassive. Alraune had not moved; he still had the look of faint, unafraid curiosity, and several times he studied Dreyer as if he found him puzzling.

Josef Mengele moved to a small trolley of instruments, and selected a syringe with an extremely large needle.

‘You are all ready?’ he said to the room in general, and the assistants nodded. ‘And in the observation room?’

‘We are ready also, Herr Doctor.’

‘Herr Colonel?’

‘Yes. Begin,’ said Dreyer, and Mengele said, ‘So,’ and there was a split-second of flashing silver as the needle’s sharpness caught the light.

Mengele adjusted the chair’s headrest so that the man was tilted slightly back, and then took his upper face in a firm grip with his own left hand, the heel of his hand on the man’s chin, the fingers and thumb prising the man’s eyelids wide. With his right hand he drove the glinting needle directly into the man’s eye.



Alice heard her own gasp, and she heard the gasp of the other man at the same time. Mengele was standing directly between her and his victim, but when he moved, she saw that the whole right-hand side of the man’s face was covered in a dreadful thick fluid, faintly streaked with blood. He was sobbing with harsh dry sobs and flailing at the air as if to fight off further attack.

Mengele looked at the man consideringly, and then, turning to his assistants, said, ‘You observe that I have entered the eye through the cornea, avoiding the zygomatic bone. The aqueous chamber is punctured of course, but—’

Alice’s German was not up to the medical terms that Mengele was using now, but it did not need complete fluency to understand that he was saying the needle was not going sufficiently deeply into the victim’s brain to kill him.

The second man was staring in utter horror at what had been done, his own escape struggles momentarily suspended. Had they been friends, these two men? If not friends, they would certainly be allies in this place, just as Alice and the women in her hut were allies. The assistants were still clustered around the machines attached to both men, noting down figures and comparing them, and adjusting settings. Alice glanced at Alraune again, hoping he would look round and see her, and that she might somehow send a message of love or comfort to him, but he was watching the machines. Alice did not know if he realized she was still there.

The attendants were busy with the machines, scribbling down figures, adjusting settings, and Mengele waited patiently until they stepped back, nodding to him. Then he bent over the first man again, and the needle glinted as it came down a second time.



From out of the tangled confusion of pain and horror and disgust, two things emerged with terrible clarity in Alice’s mind.

One of these was the reactions of the still-untouched victim. As Mengele drove the needle into the first man’s remaining eye he began to scream. He’s realized what’s ahead of him, thought Alice, appalled. He’s seen his friend cold-bloodedly blinded, and he’s guessed that he’s about to suffer the same fate.