“You smell bad.”
“Well, this hotel room is missing many modern conveniences.”
“Shall I call housekeeping for you?”
“I don’t have any change for…the tip.”
Sarah approached the Captain with the candle. He was sitting up, but he was rimed in sweat. Little wisps of heat seemed to be leaching away from him in the winter air.
“Well, this is our last sea-view room,” Sarah burbled with faux-jollity.
“You can barely see it at this distance. I’ll report you to the Board of Trade…”
“That’s a very British sounding organization, Herr Haller. Wherever did you hear of such a thing?”
He smiled, but in slow motion. Something was very wrong. The smell wasn’t wet straw. It wasn’t human or horse dung. Not sweat or urine.
“Just leave the tray on the table, please.”
“Some water first, I think.”
He was hot to the touch and gulped down the water.
“Let’s see your wound,” she asked.
“No, let’s not.” His reply was too quick and the effort made him cough.
She lifted his coat lapel and pushed the shirt away from his shoulder. The dressing was stained and wet. This was the source of the smell: a stench like meat starting to rot. She began to unwind the bandage, slowly at first but increasingly quickly as something greenish-white oozed from under the gauze. The last piece slid away. She swallowed hard, gagging.
“It’s infected,” she whispered. She could feel something leaking out of the box and coiling round it.
“Now she’s a doctor, too.”
“We should have taken the bullet out.” The panic took a hold, its tail rattling.
“Hindsight is a wonderful thing.”
The panic slithered up her neck. “What do we do?”
“Oh, Sarah of Elsengrund, not even you can stop an infection.” He said this gently and without malice.
She seized on the loose emotion and squeezed. “We have to do something…I can take you to a doctor…” She was gabbling, not thinking. She looked down at him, prone and pale. “I could bring one here.”
“You don’t think the Sicherheitspolizei haven’t been looking for someone with a hole and an SS round in them?”
“So what if they know? It’s better than dying here!”
“Don’t be naïve,” he snapped. “You’ve seen what these people do.” He sagged and took hold of her hand with his good arm. “What they do to the innocent. What do you think would happen to me, an enemy, a spy? I’d be lucky if they shot me in the face to start with. Besides…” He squeezed her hand. “You need a way out and I have to buy you time.”
Sarah felt the world fracture and fall away in pieces around her. She was the little girl waiting for her father to visit as her mother sobbed. She stood next to her mother’s Mercedes, the only person she loved in the world inside, with a hole where the back of her head should be. She heard the dogs coming for her across the broken glass…
No.
She jumped to her feet, as if doused with a bucket of water.
“No. No, you’re not. I’m not going anywhere.”
“We played the game. We lost. Call this a tactical withdrawal.”
Her head shook slowly from side to side. “No. What do you need? What would a doctor do?” she demanded.
“Sarah…”
“What would he do?” she screamed.
“He’d clean the wound, maybe take out the bullet, but you’d need prontosil or some other kind of sulphonamide to kill the infection.”
“Where will I find sulphonamide?” She seized on this and dug her nails into her palms.
“Jesus, girl, listen to yourself!” he shouted.
“A doctor? An Apotheke? In town? If you don’t tell me I’ll just look for it…”
“You need to get back to Berlin,” he began again more calmly. “Take the money from my coat pocket…”
“No!”
“It’s just enough, as long as you don’t eat…” He kept talking.
“No. Are you not hearing me?”
“Have the concierge let you into the apartment…”
Sarah covered her ears as she left.
There was enough moon to paint everything with a silver brush. The leaves shimmered and the grass was like finely woven silk.
Sarah sat on the fence and watched her breath curl away, wondering how something so beautiful could exist while everything else was rotting, fetid as the Captain’s gunshot wound. She had places to be, things to look for, sleep to catch up on, but she simply couldn’t move. She wasn’t even comfortable there. The wood bit into legs still tender from the stick. She let the pain happen, felt its contours and peaks, holding onto it, controlling it.
The way out was right there, in the barn. All she had to do was walk back and take it. Ahead of her, more danger, more pain, a scenic train ride through a warped and twisted amusement park, all fear and no end. To go back to Rothenstadt, to find the town and steal supplies, all with no guarantee of anything but a corpse at the end? She sat on the fence, doing neither, as if she could sit there for ever.
A distant whinnying carried through the dark. Sarah couldn’t see it, but she knew it was her horse. You didn’t leave me, it seemed to say.
You were a diversion.
No, you waited when you could have run. They’d lost you.
Sarah wondered. Could she have left it? Any more than she could leave the Captain? Or the Mouse? Could she leave something as lost and vulnerable as herself?
The horse whinnied again.
You’re welcome, it said.
The doctor’s office was leather-bound, padded, varnished. Old but expensive. The front door was heavy and the hall smelled of privilege. A well-dressed woman with greying temples shuffled paperwork behind an antique desk under the watchful eye of the Führer on the wall behind her.
“Excuse me, madam. I’ve been sent by NPEA Rothenstadt to pick up some medicines and supplies.” She was flawlessly polite and formal. She had considered borrowing the Ice Queen’s bullying arrogance, but one look at the receptionist dissuaded her.
“That’s rather irregular. Why didn’t they call?” She was stern, organized, irritated.
Yes, why didn’t they call, dumme Schlampe?
Sarah had to make her want rid of this Napola girl by giving her what she wanted.
“Oh, I think they’re in something of a rush. They wanted to make sure they received everything today.”
“Is there an emergency?”
The lie spilled out easily but lay on the floor around her feet, ready to be tripped over. “Well, there’s a girl who scratched her leg up pretty badly a week or so ago. I think it’s gone a bit…schmutzig.” Sarah made a face. “The nurse wanted some…prontosil?” The woman looked blankly at her. “Suph…sulph…sulphano…”
“Sulphonamide.”
“Oh yes, that’s it.” Sarah beamed.
“Expensive.”
“They said to invoice the school and they’ll pay by return.”
“That’s what they always say.” The woman rolled her eyes. “And Frau Klose sent you?”
Trap.
“The nurse? I don’t know her name. She didn’t send me personally. Fräulein Langefeld sent me.”
“You have a list?”
“No, I memorized it.”
The woman seemed to make up her mind. “Come with me… What was your name?”
“Liebrich. Marta Liebrich.” Sarah hoped to be long gone before they asked her dorm leader any questions, but she could feel the deceptions piling up. Maybe she should have just come in through the window?
The woman led Sarah through a windowless corridor and asked her to wait on a bench in a small wood-panelled room. Sarah had the uneasy sensation of being cornered. Were they calling the school right now? Would they find Liebrich safe and sound in the dormitory? Would they call attendance and discover Haller was the one gone? She could talk her way out of anything, but she couldn’t do much in here. She needed to know what was happening on the other side of the door.
Breathe.
They’ve got me. How will I ever explain this? What am I doing?
There was a deep click and the door swung slowly open. In the doorway stood the school’s nurse.
“The girl with bleeding eyes,” she said, blocking the door. “Oh, Frau Klose,” stammered Sarah. “I…”
Say something. Talk your way out of this then.
“You’re not Liebrich. She’s the Schlafsaalführerin in the Third Year, the one that’s getting fat. You’re Haller.”
Cry. Start crying.
Shut up.
“Yes – that’s right – but I came in her place. I didn’t want to get her in trouble.”
Frau Klose made a dismissive noise with her lips. “Gówno prawda – and I asked for sulpha drugs, did I?”
“Fräulein Langefeld told me—”
“That stupid debil wouldn’t know a medicine if she could beat on it with a stick. Stop lying to me,” she snarled.
Cry, cry now.
“I’m not—”
Frau Klose grunted, grabbed Sarah by the wrist and, with an excruciating tug, dragged her down the corridor.
“No, that hurts…stop,” Sarah cried, the desired tears welling up.
The nurse flung open another door and manhandled Sarah into an examination room. In the time it took Sarah to regain her balance, the only door was closed and locked. Frau Klose folded her large arms, her whole stance dripping with distaste. “Talk.”
Sarah let a tear slide down her cheek.
Frau Klose tutted. “That won’t work on me,” she jeered. “You people don’t have feelings.”
She knows. She knows that you’re Jewish. That’s why she gave you a hard time.
So why didn’t she report me?
Think, dumme Schlampe.
The tiled floor was too slippery to run past her. The objects on the shelves were too far away. She felt the couch behind her: bolted to the floor.
No, think.
“Well? Shall I just call the school and let them find out what’s going on?”
“No—” Sarah spluttered. Too fast.
“What are you little dziwki up to?” Her loathing turned into an appalled curiosity. “Stealing drugs now? You don’t have enough of everything?”
Dziwki…
“I need some for a friend,” Sarah said desperately.
“You don’t have friends. You’re parasites.”
She knows! She thinks you’re a Jewish parasite, what else could she mean?
No. Think.
“She’s…”
Dziwki. Debil. Gówno prawda. Klose.
Like sunshine from behind a cloud, she realized where the nurse was from.
“He’s hurt,” Sarah whispered in broken Polish. “Needs sulphonamide. Or going to die.”
After a brief moment of surprise the nurse recovered, but something in her demeanour altered. “Who?”
“A friend,” whispered Sarah firmly. Think now. “He is a…” She switched back into German. “A poacher? Kłusownik? He needed food. They shot him.”
“Poor place, this. Nobody has a full belly all the time.” She was unconvinced. “They don’t all steal.”
“He’s very hungry,” she finished weakly.
“He’s Jewish?”
Sarah couldn’t help reacting and struggled to create the right response. “No,” she began.
The nurse raised a hand. “Fine. Have it your way.”
She walked over to the shelves and began pulling boxes and objects into a leather bag. Sarah was uncertain what had just happened.
“Is the bullet out?” Klose had a knife in her hand.
“No.”
The nurse dropped the scalpel and a bottle of something into the bag.
Sarah couldn’t reconcile the nurse’s mood with her sudden, unexpected victory. The flickers of hope seemed misplaced, but it did look like she was getting help. Then her curiosity got the better of her. “You’re Polish?”
Klose wheeled and for a moment seemed like she would strike Sarah. Then she laughed bitterly. “No, girl, I’m German. Or I was. Now I’m a second-class German, a German that Germany doesn’t want any more, thanks to people like you.” She closed the bag. “Are you ready?”
“Ready for what?”
“To take me to your poacher.”
Everything looked different in daylight. The barn looked fragile and horribly exposed. Treading the same paths seemed reckless. To bring another person, fatal.
“You were lucky to find this place when you did. In spring this barn would be crawling with lambs and farmhands.” Frau Klose didn’t sound impressed. She looked around. “Where exactly would he have been poaching?”
“I don’t know. I found him here,” Sarah evaded, still suspicious.
“And what were you doing here?”
Sarah stopped walking and waited for Frau Klose to turn back, a spark of fire returning to her eyes. “You ask a lot of questions.”
“Because when the Sicherheitspolizei ask me theirs, I’ll have something to tell them.”
She doesn’t hate Jews. She hates me, thought Sarah. Or rather she hates Ursula, the little Nazi.
The enemy of my enemy.
Sarah pushed past her towards the doors.
“Helmut? Helmut? It’s Ursula, I’m coming in.” She pulled the doors apart and peered into the shadows, all at once frightened what she’d find. “I’ve brought a friend to help.”
Sarah stepped towards the straw pile until she could make out the Captain’s form. He looked asleep. Or worse. Kneeling, she held a hand over his mouth and felt for the movement of air from his nostrils.
He’s alive. I am still on the beam.
She wanted to clap her hands and laugh.
His eyes rolled open and he smiled, very slowly. Then he saw the silhouette of the nurse in the doorway. Sarah made a reassuring noise and stroked his brow, which was hot to the touch.
“It’s okay, Helmut. This is Frau Klose. She’s here to help you. She doesn’t care that you’re a poacher.”
“I don’t care that you’re Jewish, is what she means,” called the nurse, shutting the door.
“He’s not Jewish,” complained Sarah.
“Is that what you told her, huh, Israel? How can the master race be so gullible?” The nurse shooed Sarah away and plonked herself down in the straw next to the Captain. She briefly examined his shoulder and then busied herself with her bag.
“Messy, messy, messy. Drink this…” She poured something into his mouth. “Did you dress this wound, girl?”
“Yes.” Sarah was in two minds about surrendering him to her. There was no choice, that was clear, but he was her responsibility. He was all she had.
Sarah batted this thought away.
“It’s atrocious. You’ve nearly cut off the blood in his arm. Did you clean the wound?”
“Yes, of course I did.”
“But you left the bullet in?”
“No, I reached in and pulled it out with my fingers,” Sarah replied acerbically.
Frau Klose laughed. “Come, sit on the other side and help me. Come on.” She handed Sarah a bottle as the girl kneeled in the straw. “Pour a little of this on your hands and rub it in. That’s right. Now when I say, hand it back to me. See? Now you’re a nurse.”
“Is he going to live?” Sarah whispered. He was all she had.
“Your bedside manner needs some work. The patient is still awake. Pass the bottle, now.” The nurse began to clean her hands. “Here, take this and this. Soak the cloth, then hold it over his nose and mouth.” Sarah fumbled with the new bottle. “Go on.”
She eventually unscrewed the lid. The smell was overwhelming, sickly, sweet and sharp, and it hurt her nose. She lowered it onto his face, but he squirmed and moaned.
“Just do it, girl,” urged the nurse. “The alternative is much worse, trust me.”
Sarah pushed down with the cloth. The Captain writhed for a few seconds but soon stopped struggling.
“It’ll dry out, so keep it wet,” Frau Klose instructed. “Then put your fingers there just to the side of the windpipe, there… Feel the pulse? Don’t let that get too slow. If it does, take off the cloth, got it?”
Sarah nodded, the smell beginning to make her nauseous. With the Captain’s heartbeat nuzzling her fingertips and her other hand over his mouth and nose, she couldn’t shake the sensation that she was doing something treacherous.
Frau Klose was injecting something into his arm. “He’s in a bad way. I may not be able to save him. I need to remove the bullet and there’s probably some shirt in there, too. Then I’ll clean the wound out. If he survives that, it’s up to the sulphonamide.”
Sarah nodded but inside her initial optimism, the sense of victory was extinguished.
Just stay upright, use your toes to stay balanced.
The seconds passed. Sarah felt his heart drumming like lazy fingers on a kitchen table. She counted each beat and tried to mark time, but the numbers got lost in her head. The drums sped up as the nurse opened up the wound and began swabbing the pus away with cotton wool. Sarah wasn’t squeamish – she’d seen worse – but she found she couldn’t watch and concentrated on the cloth. He struggled slightly like a dog in sleep, so Sarah trickled on a little more of the liquid. She found his pulse again. It was slower, maybe one beat each second. His fragility in her hands was terrifying – yet thrilling, too. She looked at the intense effort creasing Frau Klose’s face, her tongue busily licking her lower lip in concentration.
“Why are you doing this?” Sarah asked.
“Why are you doing this?”
Sarah shrugged, unable to comfortably lie. The glass web of deceit and misdirection lay underfoot and breakable all round them. After a minute Frau Klose started talking.
“I was a nurse in the Weltkrieg. Just a little girl really, head full of flowers and kittens, suddenly pulling shrapnel out of boys my own age. Boys with missing arms. Missing jaws.” She picked up her forceps and slid them into the wound. “I met a doctor, a surgeon. He was good to me; it didn’t matter that I was a woman, he recognized my skill, taught me, encouraged me. We saved so many men together.”
She pulled the forceps out with a grunt. Glistening between them was a crumpled star of metal, a flattened pine cone of iron. Holding it up, she twisted the forceps to get a clear look at it.
“Military ammunition. Dangerous being a poacher around here, huh?” She dropped the bullet into a tin tray and inserted the forceps again. “We worked together for nearly twenty years. He said I should have become a doctor, but I didn’t want to break up the team.” She drew a long scrap of wet black cloth from the wound. “Ha, there it is. Verflixt, he’s bleeding.” Her fingers began moving quickly, thread and needle, cotton wool and cloth. She worked through the dark red mess, seeing something that Sarah could not.
“Then four years ago—” She cut a thread with her teeth. “Your lot showed up. Threw him out of the hospital. Can’t have a dirty Jew saving Aryan lives, can we? I went with him, of course. Working out of somebody’s office, then someone’s sitting room, without the right equipment or supplies. It was like 1918 all over again.” Sitting back, she ran a bloody forearm across her brow. “Eventually he told me to leave. It was too dangerous. I was scared by then, by the violence, by the broken windows, by the words painted on my front door. So I left.” She looked at Sarah with undisguised hatred. “Last November they came to take him away. No one has seen him since.”
“I’m sorry,” said Sarah after a moment.
“You’re sorry?” Frau Klose snapped, her stare poisonous. “Well, that makes it all better, doesn’t it? The little Nazi is sorry.” For a moment Sarah thought the nurse would attack her. “He was just one of many. I’ve lost count already. Now they’re starting on the Poles. You know no hospital will employ me? I have medals. Who’s next, little Nazi? Who’s next?”
Sarah felt the blame. She felt responsible. The irony was not lost on her. The Captain’s breath, through the cloth, seemed to be laughing.
Klose worked in silence. Swabbing, cleaning, injecting, sewing.
“Will he live?” Sarah asked. He’s all I have.
“Time will tell. The drugs will work, or they won’t. These aren’t exactly sterile conditions. So why are you doing this, little Nazi?”
Sarah told the truth. “For Germany.”
The nurse regarded her curiously, then nodded. “You need to be very careful. You’re a flea on a tiger. You’ll kid yourself that you’re part of the animal, but if you jump around too much, it’ll scratch you off with the rest.”