In Paradise: A Novel by Peter Matthiessen Page A

Yesterday Olin saw Ben quake with silent mirth when Earwig, in a mock response to a reproof from a Zen monk, stared in alarm at the monk’s shaved pate, then pushed his palms upward just above his ears like a woman adjusting her hat. “Please, sir,” he whined, “would you mind fluffing that up a little?”
    In the bad silence, Ben Lama tells the audience a story about Master Joshu and his monk, who come to a clearing in the forest only to see all the animals run away. “Why do they flee?” cries the monk. “Don’t they know you are a great Zen master?” And Joshu smiles. “Perhaps. But they also know I am a killer.” And Ben smiles, too.
    Earwig surprises Olin with the lack of edge in his attitude toward the teacher. “This Ben guy,” he says later. “I thought he was soft but he’s really pretty tough. No mushy feel-good New Age jargon, stays real cool about other people’s bullshit. ‘I see,’ he says. And what does he see? He sees what a stupid asshole you can be but leaves you space to see that for yourself.”
    “So you see it for yourself now, right?”
    There it is, the chink: what flickers across his face is less grin than grimace. He can welcome public denunciation, but hard teasing is another matter. Olin regrets having made fun of him, but not much; the man’s own teasing is never well-meant or constructive, it is merely hard.

    O LIN HAPPENED to be watching Sister Catherine when she was approached before the meeting by a man arrived earlier that day—“a defrocked monk,” according to Adina. When the man attempted to draw her aside, she stiffened, wouldn’t be led: the two stood at odds, too far apart, in a sort of wary sideways confrontation. She was expressionless, gaze cast down, and his forced smile was painful. They entered the auditorium and not together.
    Before the testimonies can resume, Sister Catherine rises. She wishes to thank Jewish and German friends who have attended Christian service on the platform at Birkenau and to welcome any who might wish to join them in coming days.
    Looking discomfited, Priest Mikal shifts in his seat. If the priest feels the novice is out of order, as he seems to, why hasn’t he welcomed all these Jews himself?
    The auditorium is still grumbling and restless. Voices rise in complaint and chairs are barged around more noisily than necessary, until finally Rainer bounds onto the stage, shouting harshly for order. Apparently Rainer has been chided about his forceful Kaddish at the Black Wall that first morning, because hearing the resonance of his own shout in the startled room, he shakes his head in disbelief at its officiousness and apologizes sheepishly for “being so Cher-man.” Olin realizes he likes this man very much.
    Relating his experience as a boy in wartime Munich, Rainer describes how his gentle Uncle Werner, in the naive hope he might protect her, confessed his love for a Jewish girl to the authorities; not only did he fail to save her, but found himself immediately conscripted and cynically assigned to the SS here in Auschwitz, where he was bullied, beaten, and eventually castrated for refusing to carry out some sadistic command.
    “I am here to honor him,” Rainer says. Until his death many years after the war, his uncle remained an outcast in the family. “Why? Because in their hearts they had never forgiven him for disgracing the family with his love for a Jew.” Rainer coughs, fighting down his grief all these years later for “that brave good man,” who long after the war was scarcely permitted to slink along the edges of family occasions.
    In his distress, Rainer has reverted to that big voice of his. Like so many Germans, he shouts, his family contracted the disease of that sick fascism in which what formerly would have been condemned as unspeakable cruelty was extolled as patriotic duty. Worse, they clung to their delusion even after three million of their own soldiers and civilians were destroyed. Worse still, he says,