The Well, Chapter 10

(Dr. Polk eavesdrops on Howse and Mater, but looks at Diane. He tells her her admires her ability to see evil without being seduced by it.)

How, I ask myself, is this possible? How can Dr. Polk just up and disappear? These huts have no backdoors, and he did not pass me on his way to the exit at the front — at least I did not notice him do so.

And the bell on the door did not ring.

I look back to where I last saw him and see nothing — until I see a finger rising slowly. Dr. Polk has raised an index finger to his lips and pursed them in the universal “sssh” sign.

Chameleon-like, he has, in his white lab coat, blended into the white linens and blankets on the bed and the white of the Infirmary Hut’s walls. He looks like a person who has done this all his life.

He is listening to Howse converse with Mater. They seem to have forgotten about him, if they even cared at all that they might be heard.

I hear my mother, again, sometime in my childhood, tell me, again, that it is impolite to listen to the conversations of others, but I think, tell her in my mind, that her dictum does not, somehow, apply in this case.

Dr. Polk has, in my mind, the authority to listen.

When the doctor tells me of this conversation later, he begins by saying “Major Mater is, of all the Germans I have known, the one who looks the most like the Kaiser from the previous war. Slightly taller, even though I think he thinks that combing that thick dark blonde hair back and up will cover that he is only of medium height. That he has that thick moustache, and that he has trained it to look like a looping double-u, shows he is both hiding something and displaying something. Like he wants you to notice him but that he is laughing at his joke of hiding in plain sight. The fact that he thinks he can have people notice him and not notice him at the same time indicates both his inflated opinion of himself and his low opinion of those around him.”

I nod my agreement, but tell Dr. Polk, “I have never really thought about the man.”

Even though I have, Davina. Especially since his death.

I want to tell Dr. Polk that most of the men in the Camp find Major Mater scary. The mustache, with its great and broad ends, reminds them, some have told me, of bear claws. They grip his high cheek bones, which are the shore of the bluest pool of eyes you are likely to ever see. At these pools I can see the bear the men speak of, a Grizzly, sitting calmly at the edge of a lake, lazily catching fish. Holding them under the water until they drown or scooping them out. Devouring them alive till he has his fill. No rushing. No worrying. An apex predator. A top feeder who knows the domain is his.

Dr. Polk looks at me and says, “Nothing around here escapes you, does it?”

I ask him what he means.

“You are the innocent,” he continues, “the fresh-faced youth, the beautiful young woman who knows more than she tells.”

I am shocked.

“I,” I stammer, “I don’t mean to be. I am just observant.”

It is his turn to be apologetic.

“No, no,” he says, “I do not mean to imply that you are doing anything wrong. On the contrary. I just mean that you have an amazing ability to observe evil without falling prey to it. That you see the world for what it is without allowing it to corrupt you.”

I am confused, and the look on my face must show it.

“I consider myself, Dr. Polk,” I say, “quite naïve, in fact. I do not yet know the ways of the world or the ways of Man, as the bible says.”

He nods knowingly. “I don’t doubt it,” he says.

But then he adds, “I just mean that you have the insightful ability of looking at someone and sizing him up immediately. Take the Major, for instance. Correct me if I am wrong, but you have not considered him because he is, in my estimation and, I think, yours, not a good man. And you have learned, I think, to seek goodness first, in yourself and others. Am I correct?”

I shrug. I am not sure I know what he means. Any sense I can make of it does not, I am sure, apply to me. I prefer good over evil and say so.

“Exactly,” he says. “That is precisely what I mean. You seem to have an innate sense of who you should avoid. Of who you should seek.”

He is quiet, but expectant, thinking, I think, that I should say something.

When I don’t, he continues.

“Take, for instance,” Dr. Polk says, “the Kaiser. Throw in a monocle, a spiked helmet, and a rail car and you would swear you were on your way to sign the Treaty of Versailles.”

We both smile and are quiet for a moment.

Then he adds, “And what is that about entering here without making the bell on the door ring? ‘Sneaky,’ I think the new word for that is. Untrustworthy.”

Dr. Polk cannot see into the Office, but he tells me that he knows Superintendent Howse is sitting in Dr. Curtis’s chair with his feet up on the desk because the chair makes a certain high-pitched squeak only when it is tilted back and up.

“I can hear him,” he says, “puffing on his cigar. I suspect Kaiser Mater hates the smoke and smell as much as the rest of us sane people do, so I wonder if Howse is going to smoke him like a side of beef if their meeting does not go as planned. Or if it does. What are these two up to?”

I had no clue then, Davina, but I learned years afterward in a conversation with Howse. He actually thought it was safe to tell me.