The Sticking Place Theatre and Film productions

I appreciate your interest, said the librarian as he received me in the glacial atmosphere of the main hall; I would almost say I am glad you came, but then that emotion is not much in fashion nowadays. In any case, he added, I am sure I speak for them as well – he moved his body in an expansive gesture toward the vast rows of cabinets.

You see, he continued, the idea behind this library is an extremely simple one. One might even say it is shattering in its simplicity. It is a library dedicated to memory, or rather to avoidance by means of memory. Yet it is entirely unlike customary libraries. Here we deal in absence, in lack and in gaps, and their elimination by logical means. Have a seat, won’t you?

I obliged. The librarian, his eyes flashing behind his glasses, sank into a wooden chair and eyed me curiously.

I believe I can speak for both of us – he hesitated – all of us, perhaps, when I say that our century, more than most, has been a century of murder.

He stopped to observe my reaction. I remained silent.

He smiled weakly. Of course, I am not referring to someone getting killed in a hold-up, or some pathological brute murdering twenty, thirty people. That’s nothing, less that nothing.

He stared at me. I am referring to state murder, he said slowly. I am referring to the Turks killing one million Armenians. The twenty-odd million victims of Stalin’s purges. Hitler’s scientific extermination machine. The half a million Communists murdered in Indonesia. Chile. Vietnam. El Salvador. East Timor. You haven’t heard? South Africa. Argentina.

I mean, he concluded, the killings, shootings, maiming, torture committed throughout the world in this century… Unending, and untold, mind you.

He paused, then continued. You see, when you begin to study the question of memory and – he grimaced – of prevention, you realise that the exiting literature of holocausts and governmental murders though – God knows! – voluminous, is at the same time woefully, totally incomplete. In fact, incomplete by definition. The reason is simple. It is only the survivors who write down their stories.

Now, since we’re speaking of perhaps a hundred and fifty or two hundred million victims in our century, we must realize that the literature we have of their suffering – the evidence – is solely that of a mere handful. A fraction of one percent of the total number of victims.

And here we come to the reason for this library. The librarian stopped and eyed me quizzically. You will have to appreciate that I cannot be too precise, he said without offering any explanation. But I dare say that brave researchers and progressive scientists – bold beyond belief! successful beyond their wildest dreams! – have been able to collect the memoirs, he chuckled, of those who died. Oral history, you understand, gathered at certain supreme moments in the camps, in city houses, at the ovens, the electrified wires, the places of hiding, the icy steppes, the night-lit escapes. Though it is clear that we must have missed some, the total number of sound tapes we have indicates that we have reached upward of ninety percent.

The librarian shifted in his chair. Needless to say, their stories far surpass those of the survivors – he leaned toward me, his finger stabbing into air – in every respect!

What can I say, he continued. Survivors exude an optimism, however guarded, however understandable, that the dead lack. Survivors latch on to tiny memories of altruism and downplay the suffering either because it was that of others or, if their own, because at some point it came to an end. They therefore lack the exquisite horror of suffering that never ceased; of tortures that built and built without ever coming to an end. They lack the ultimate fear, the ultimate resignation, the experience of death. Death not among you beloved, or, say in the anonymity of a hospital – but death inflicted on you by another at a moment of his, not your choosing. In short: the victims who died experienced illuminations mere survivors could not hope to equal.

I must, said the librarian who seemed to have turned paler as he spoke to me, add that even the style of their memoirs is different… their manner of… he smiled weakly… discourse. They lack all lyricism. They have none of the poetry, however black, that can be found in some survivors who, years after the event, sit down in more secure surrounding and assume the ‘position’ of the remembering writer. Those tapes are starkly factual. They ‘stick to the bones’ of the events, if one may say.

You must also appreciate, he continued, that this is the testimony of so-called ‘little people’… those that ‘walk in darkness and are never seen.’ The survivor who writes his memoirs – no matter how small or insignificant he may have been before – becomes a ‘someone’ by the very act of writing and being published. But history, in reality, consists of the sufferings of all these millions of unknown, forever unknown, little people.

How, then, I shyly ventured to say, since we are talking about perhaps ninety million tapes…

…give or take thirty to seventy more, he interjected, smilingly…

…well, how did you manage to even catalogue that many?

Oh, he seemed surprised, our good old Dewey Decimal System covers a multitude of sins… He caught himself, covered his mouth in some confusion and winked at me. There is no problem here whatsoever. Let me show you.

I followed him to the immense computerized data banks and, instructed by him, called up some of the categories at random. The main headings included Death, Torture, Famine, Plague, Chemical Poisoning, Medical Experimentation, all subdivided. What seemed to be hundreds of methods of execution and torture were carefully indexed.

He noticed that I had stopped at torture. You are a man of our time, he said. Note these subsections. First, torture by what instrument. Secondly, applied to what part of the body, then the length and intensity of the torture, tortures combining several tools and methods, tortures involving electricity, poisons and chemicals, tortures better suited for women, children and the infirm, verbal and psychological torture, the presence of family, friends and lovers at the torture. We also have these separate sections on leather-straps, knives, guns, scissors, whips, axes, sticks, cattleprods, knuckle irons, needles, electrodes… and then the more ‘elemental’ ones, he snickered… rocks, air, water, fire. Then come the sections on crushing, beating, injecting, inflating, cutting, burning, icing, drowning, dehydrating, shocking, hanging, stomping, asphyxiating, tearing, submerging, gouging, garroting, invading orifices, guillotining, quartering, extricating organs.

You will note, he continued, that the indexing is by Deed rather than by Individuals. This library is designed to stress the social nature of these events rather than the individual victims. We must get away from subjectivism.

I stopped and viewed him carefully. Then I looked around me. So all this, I finally said, is collected here for the sake of remembering.

Memory, yes, he said. And prevention.

I looked at him/

We want this to be a lesson, he said with great restraint. We want present and future generations to learn something from this.

I looked at him. I was not sure how to frame my question.

How many requests for these tapes have you had in the last… in the last year?

He looked back at me, steadily. Three, he said.

I met his glance.

Let this be four, I said with a weak smile. Let me listen to a particularly representative tape of torture by water.

He took me to a small carrel, silently applied himself to a console, pushed a few buttons and motioned me to put the ear-phones on. I did.

I heard nothing. For the next thirty minutes – the length of the tape – I heard nothing. The librarian was eyeing me.

I turned to face him.

His face was contorted. You didn’t really think it could be done, did you, he said hoarsely.

Look, here is a tape recorder, he continued. Why don’t you tell me your story?

I frowned.

I’m not a victim, I said.

Not yet, he said. Wait. The chances are good.

He looked at me.

And when it happens, you will rest more easily knowing that your story is preserved here for posterity… for prevention.

© Amos Vogel, 1 April 1983
All rights reserved by the original copyright holders