His Master's Voice by Stanislaw Lem Page A

faces hideous, inhuman, and in this way—I am quoting Rappaport—there did not appear, in what was done, a gap through which horror might peer, or compassion.
    But the young deity in the silver-braided uniform required neither these nor any other contrivances to act perfectly. He stood in a slightly elevated place, the white handkerchief applied to his nose with a movement that had something in it of the refined duelist. He was the master of the house and the commander, in one person. In the air floated flakes of ash, driven by the heat that pulsed from the fire; behind the thick walls, through the grated windows without panes, flames roared, but not a single ash fell on the officer or on his white handkerchief.
    In the presence of such perfection, Rappaport managed to forget about himself, when suddenly the gate opened and in drove a film crew. Various orders were given in German, and the gunshots immediately ceased. Rappaport did not know then—or later, when he told me this—what had happened. Perhaps the Germans intended to film a pile of corpses, to use the footage in a newsreel depicting the enemy's actions (this took place near the Eastern Front). The slain Jews would be shown as the victims of the Bolsheviks. That may have been the case; Rappaport, however, offered no interpretation; he only related what he saw.
    Immediately afterward came his failure. Those still alive were put in a row and filmed, whereupon the officer with the handkerchief asked for one volunteer. Rappaport understood at once that he should step forward. He did not know exactly why he should, but felt that if he did not, it would be terrible for him. The moment arrived in which the whole force of his will was exerted to make that one step—but he did not budge. The officer then gave them fifteen seconds to think and, turning his back on them, spoke quietly, casually, to some younger soldier.
    Rappaport, as a doctor of philosophy, having earned his university degree with a brilliant dissertation on logic, hardly needed the entire apparatus of syllogisms to realize that if no one stepped forward, all would die: hence whoever now came forth from the line really would be risking nothing. It was simple, clear, and certain. He renewed his effort—this time, true, without conviction—and again did not budge. A few seconds before the time was up, someone presented himself, however, and disappeared with two soldiers behind a broken wall. Several revolver shots rang out. The young volunteer, smeared with blood, his own or not his own, then returned to the group.
    It was dusk when the large gate was set ajar and, staggering in the cold evening air, the group of those left alive ran out into the empty street.
    They dared not flee at first, but no one showed any interest in them. Why, Rappaport could not say. He did not attempt to analyze what the Germans did; they were like fate, which one did not have to explain.
    The volunteer—need it be said?—had moved the bodies of the executed, and those still alive were finished off with the revolver. As if to see whether he was right that I really had not understood a thing about his story, Rappaport then asked me why the officer requested a volunteer and had been prepared, in the absence of one, to kill the lot of them, though that would have been "unnecessary"—on that particular day, at any rate—and why, moreover, he did not even consider announcing that nothing would happen to the volunteer. I did not, I confess, pass this test: I replied that perhaps the German had acted thus from contempt, scorning to enter into conversation with the victims. Rappaport shook his birdlike head.
    "I understood it later," he said, "thanks to other things. Although he spoke to us, you see, we were not people. He knew that we comprehended human speech but that nevertheless we were not human; he knew this quite well. Therefore, even if he had wanted to explain things to us, he could not have. The man could do with us what