* * *
Over the years since he’d confessed his ideas to his brother in the garret of the Brown Widow’s villa, the seed of Waldemar’s theory of rotary time — the notion that chronology is an illusion, if not a deliberate lie; that the steady, one-way current we seem to be suspended in is actually a jumble of spherical “chronocosms” that can be moved through in any direction, if some great force manages to knock one’s consciousness out of its preconditioned circuit — had grown progressively more elaborate, attaching itself to random scraps of knowledge in the course of its creator’s wanderings, like a peach pit rolled across a dirty floor. The eugenic theories of Sir Francis Galton were among these bits of litter, as were The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and, of course, Mein Kampf; but the single largest and most ponderous addition was the evolutionary theory of Charles Darwin’s great Gallic rival, the chevalier Jean-Baptiste Lamarck.
Lamarck, a pioneer in the fields of zoology and genetics, is now best remembered — if he’s remembered at all — for his concept of “soft inheritance,” which was famously exploited (and rapidly eclipsed) by Darwin’s theory of natural selection. Lamarck believed that the traits an animal acquires in the course of its life can be transmitted to the next generation, the most notorious example being the neck of the giraffe. His hypothesis — that giraffes strain their necks to reach leaves, stretching them in the process, and that each generation is therefore born with slightly longer necks than the one preceding — sounds like something out of Kipling’s Just So Stories now, and science instructors the world over (my own eighth grade biology teacher, Leon J. Forehand, included) know that the chevalier’s theory can always be relied on for a chuckle. My great-uncle, however, saw nothing funny about Lamarck’s ideas at all — and Äschenwald-Czas itself stands as the proof.
Here are the final four entries in Waldemar’s log, as reproduced in Höhne’s ghoulish survey:
12 MARCH 1943, 07:57:07—
Having been dogged & delayed by a legion of Trifles I now finally set forth on the Course proposed in my entry of 23 February. This gap of 19 days (automatically, I find myself doing the arithmetic: 456 wasted hours!) has reduced me to a condition of nervous exhaustion. Such is the vicious Wheel of Circumstance, the cercle diabolique the Chevalier describes in his monograph “Trials of the Researcher,” adding that those of a visionary bent, in particular, are liable to be plagued by les intrusions banales.
It is tempting, considering the Breach — half my earthly duration! — between my original Breakthrough & this long-awaited chance to put my Theory to the test, to suspect that the same super-national Cabal of Semites that perpetrates & maintains the Illusion of Chronology has been using Time Itself as a weapon against me; but I have no such exalted notions of my importance to the Cause. The indignities I have suffered at the hands of mono-directional Time are shared by every mortal Soul on Earth. Sic Gloriam Orbes.
In the four thousand Years since the Jew slithered forth from the turgid Cunt of necrophilic Asia, the human Species has subsided into Decadence. What are Moses & Christ Jesus & Constantine & Pius XII & Martin Luther & even Kaiser Friedrich himself but Iterations of the same Passion play of Self-Aggrandizement & Miscarriage & Degradation, played out ceaselessly across the most corrupt of Stages? The Age of Epics — of Freya & Odin, of Yggdrasil the World-Tree, & of the pale-eyed Saints & Warriors who defend it — lies not, as any Child knows, in our purported Future, but entirely in our Past. The Cardinal Sin of Science is precisely that for which Science is most slaveringly praised: its dread & unrelenting Forward Motion.
What great good Fortune, then! that this infamous Forward Motion is a myth.
In the 17 years since my eyes became Opened I have been nurturing my Vision patiently — sheltering it, fattening it, developing it into a unified & coherent Theory, a foundation for future Research; & as a result I feel, despite a lack of Evidence, a new man entirely. More in fact than a man, because my New Self encompasses both the male & the female. I am the mother, after all, of an Idea.
12 MARCH 1943, 09:57:07—
Three things are required, the Chevalier writes, to conduct an Experiment successfully:
1 * A Laboratory (or some equivalently controlled Environment) whose conditions can be altered to suit the Needs of the Experiment.
2 * An isolated Population of potential Subjects. &, finally
3 * Clarity of Purpose: a hypothesis whose proof (or disproof) is the stated Goal of the experimental Trials.
I address these three points in ascending Order. My purpose, in initio, is to demonstrate the Kinship between the Chevalier’s principles of “soft” Inheritance — the heritability of acquired Characteristics—& my own Ideas concerning spontaneous adaptation — or Evolution — under extremes of environmental Stress.
This, however, is only the preliminary phase of my Research. The second phase, the Culmination of 17 years of arse-sniffing & subterfuge, the Reason I’ve allowed myself to be deported by my rivals to this godforsaken Polish abattoir (as if I myself were an Israelite) is neither more nor less than This:
The Demonstration, under controlled conditions, of the Composite & Rotary nature of Time.
The chronosphere is everywhere, as fundamental (& intangible) as Light; but its shape & Drift remain obscure to me. I have seen it in Dreams, more in fact than I can number; but never when my Eyes were clear & open. I Myself have been subjected to stressors, God knows, since my twentieth year — but perhaps Despair alone is insufficient. I know that Transcendence is possible: my own Father gazed upon the face of Time & paid the Toll required. I myself would be more than willing to take this crowning Step, if there were someone — some colleague — to carry on the Work that I’ve begun. But I have no colleagues. No confederates. No Peers.
Since I cannot go myself, I have no Recourse but to send Others before me. My study & control groups will be made up of the Prison population under my supervision. (How fitting, how profound, that said Population should be culled from the Semitic race, the very Wellspring of Resistance to the Cause!) The Laboratory will be Äschenwald itself.
If I cannot isolate & study the Accidents my Father wrote of — if I can’t see Them, can’t verify Them empirically, though I sense Them around me every waking Instant — I’ll simply have to generate my own. Exposed to the the correct type of Stressor, I propose that my subjects will perforce obtain Emancipation from the Present, which Ability shall pass on to their offspring, in keeping with established Lamarckian principles. My Theory & that of the Chevalier shall achieve vindication in concert, in a single set of Trials. The sub-Species Achrono sapiens—“wandering Jews” in the most literal of senses, free of the constraints of both Chronology & Stigma, liberated at long Last from the yoke of History — shall in due Time — C*F*P willing! — be brought forth.