Unforgiving Years (33 page)

Discreetly accompanied by the confidential papers that drew this rather accurate portrait of her, Nurse (First Class) Erna Laub, usually well provided with money, looked for jobs just behind the front lines — the sort of posting her colleagues did their best to evade with the help of their connections (in violation of a draconian rule) and even of their amorous liaisons. Laub’s only known liaison occurred in Breslau, with a twenty-six-year-old flying ace who was distinguishing himself on the eastern front. After his sorties over the Red Army munitions depots, this handsome Siegfried, an occasional drug-taker, easily obtained a twenty-four-hour leave from his chiefs in order to attend a concert with Erna and end the night in the arms of this yielding statue. He only tore himself away, still ravished by that embrace, to meet a somewhat unaccountable bullet during a nighttime rumpus in the city itself. Suspicion fell on some Polish workers, who were executed without fuss. A few days later, the deceased’s elite squadron was destroyed in its magnificently camouflaged and isolated hangars by Russian bombs of breathtaking precision. Placing fatherland above friendship, Nurse Erna Laub wrote to denounce the careless talk of a certain officer who drank too much, slept with the first women who came along, and talked about his exploits to all and sundry, neglecting, in short, the most elementary precautions. In view of his service record, the culprit was merely demoted and transferred from the air force to a disciplinary infantry unit, where the soldiers lasted an average of forty-five days. Such a courageous show of patriotism on the part of Erna Laub further bolstered the trust in which she was held, and soon after she was appointed head nurse to Army General von G, recovering from a serious fracture to the skull. This task she fulfilled with “matchless devotion,” though the patient died from rampant septicemia four days after beginning his convalescence … It happened at the spa town of Bad Schanden, in Erzgebirge. The view of lofty ranges and white mists framed by the window was so restful, so invigorating, that General von G felt he was coming back to life. The nurses offered him the first cup of some hot, delicious coffee — a gift from the field marshal — while he talked to them innocently about his mountain-climbing youth, his explorations in Anatolia, his fallen sons, and the execution of a pack of Jews at Tarnopol, carried out by those nasty little bandits of the Reprisals Brigade, the worst soldiers in the world! He explained that the Slavs’ very name had derived in ancient times from the Latin
slavus
, slave — proof of the immemorially servile nature of these tribes from the Asian steppes. Leavening erudition with wit, the general went on to discuss the alternative etymologies peddled by philosophers with more imagination than sense. These would have “Slav” derive from
slovo
, the Slavonic for verb; or
slava
, glory, also in Slavonic — for to cap it all, the slaves aspire to the word, they lay claim to glory! Erna Laub implored him several times not to overtax himself by talking; as dusk fell, she injected him with a sedative. “He is saved,” she repeated, “this great man of war! And such a dazzling conversation-alist!” The fever attacked the next morning. The head nurse offered herself for a transfusion, but she was not of the same blood group … The bereaved family sent a miserly one hundred marks to the nursing staff.

Two American parachutists isolated at the top of the Fourth Field Hospital developed a hatred of Erna Laub, marching in and out of their garret several times a day. Privately they called her Old Lace, after the play
Arsenic and Old Lace
. Torn between hope and fear, they listened to the throb of battle beyond the horizon. The abrupt silence of the guns plunged them into such despondency that Old Lace, noting the rise in their temperatures, fixed them with a gimlet eye straight out of the Last Judgment. She was standing by the door, thin in starchy white, and to them she looked like a Prussian death’s-head. The latch clicked into place behind her. “Our number is up,” said the young man from Arkansas to the young man from Illinois, without specifying whether he meant them personally, the nearby fighting, or global war. “See that poison look on her face?” Old Lace returned to administer some tablets. Bending toward the ear of the young man from Arkansas, she asked, in English, “Speak French?” The parachutist bit back an expletive, and said, “I understand a bit,
un peu
.” Old Poison Lace was whispering, unbelievably, “
Courage
, you have won,
gagné la bataille
. Elite division
kaput
,
comprenez
?” “
Ja
,” stammered the prisoner, he thought he was dreaming, and gaped admiringly at the austere visage that now looked nothing like a death’s-head. The nurse put a finger to her lips.

“Not possible,” protested the young man from Illinois, “you must be nuts …” But he’d seen the finger on the lips. “She’s great, amazing, what a woman! What chumps we’ve been!” Their temperatures returned to normal. Meanwhile, in the mess, Captain Gerhard Koppel and Heiderman the medical officer were debating the prisoners’ fate with Erna Laub. “I vote we get rid of them quietly,” said Dr. Heiderman. “There’s a circular that gives us the right … You know that if Altstadt falls, there’s not enough transport for all of our wounded …” Captain Koppel objected that the circular had been overruled by a subsequent order from the divisional chief, in the interests of intelligence. Erna Laub proved to have some political acumen after all: “Besides, precisely if the town falls, such captives will indirectly serve to protect the population …” She backed this up, tactfully, with: “Anyway, you can always decide at the last moment. It’ll only take two minutes.” If there is a last moment, even lasting two minutes, and anyone around to decide anything at all …

The thought of the last moment passed through their three minds, stirring up unconfessable anxieties and expectations. Koppel admitted that the local situation was getting worse, but that the general situation would improve, despite appearances. You never knew with this model officer whether he believed what he was saying or if he said what must be believed. “Berlin stands fast, and the enemy’s plans will be foiled in time; the outlying bits of territory we are losing are as insignificant as the bomb damage, which is really a golden opportunity to rebuild … Between ourselves, let’s face it, many of our venerable old piles were crying out to be demolished long ago. The justifiable respect in which they were held were a brake on modern urban development … And what we shall erect in their place will be equally historic …” He gave the final tug to his glove with a little laugh. Straight and supple, agreeably blond, he might have been a life-sized cutout, soul included, from a military fashion magazine. Was he as genuinely steeped in high official stupidity as he appeared? Or did he put on his stupidity in the morning after his cold shower, along with his uniform, well brushed by an orderly? Was it part and parcel of his contempt for others, did it afford him a secret pleasure in deriding the cowardly? Koppel continued: “We only need a few weeks more to perfect a new technology of warfare … England will be destroyed when she least expects it. In future the real war will be a war of scientific inventions …”

The nervous, anemic Dr. Heiderman nodded eagerly in approval, having no other course. But he was sick with foreboding, and it showed; Koppel’s gaze slid over him with polite disdain. “Erna will address herself to me concerning the two parachutists as soon as the evacuation order has been given.” “And if you should be absent, Captain?” The nurse put just enough stress on the word absent to imbue it with the notion of death. A good officer never knows when he may be putting on his gloves for the last time. If you happen to be killed tonight, Captain? Koppel deemed it a reasonable, if distasteful, query; he affected to ignore the doctor. “In that case you yourself will be the judge, Erna, do whatever you think best.” Dr. Heiderman’s trim mustache quivered pitifully, and Koppel saw chaos begin. What connection is there between the muffled buzz of a bell, a cravenly quivering upper lip, and the immense disorder closing over one’s head? The futility of it all was blinding, especially the futility of refusing to look things squarely in the face. Koppel, old chap, you’ll be killed one of these evenings, sooner rather than later, and it’ll be for nothing. Your resolve not to be taken alive serves no purpose whatsoever. The scientific inventions will come afterward, if at all; too late for you, too late for everything. As he was leaving, Koppel turned once, intending to say, “Execute the prisoners!” — and let a few more of those who will kill me meet their end before I do! But the disorder was already taking effect. Koppel shrank from letting a woman perceive the clouding he felt at the back of his own eyes. He did not say the words he wanted to say. Dr. Heiderman let out a sigh. “Asthmatic, are we?” the captain said insultingly, with the unspoken thought: “You’ll be killed too, you repulsive coward!” That’s defeat all over: you feel it as the tooth feels the cavity, it poisons your very breath. The monstrous disorder was rising, drowning out the sounds of water faucets, bells, motors in the courtyard, injured men groaning, and ideas as sonorous as the smash of a boxer’s fist. Koppel pulled off his gloves, just for the sake of pulling off his gloves, made the nurse and the doctor sit down again, and listened to himself speak.

“I’m waiting on the miracle of our technical genius. We may shortly be in a position to blow up half the planet. From what I hear, the tests are proceeding with considerable success …”

A door banged, a furious voice shouted, “Erna! For God’s sake get over here, are you deaf? You too, Doctor, on the double.” The bell was still vibrating. When all is lost, a mindless bell will keep on ringing through whitewashed basements, and glasses will stand empty on tables long after our mouths have rotted … Quick march! Tonight Koppel was expected to lead a special unit, reduced to a third of its strength, into the breach opened by the sacrifice of the elite division. Away he strode like a energetic sleepwalker. Under the arch at the entrance of the former tourist hotel, he saluted the last batch of mangled bodies from the division. Blood-soaked men were stretched out against the embankment of the road as if it were a litter. Repulsive stretchers moved hurriedly back and forth carried by medics with dark rings under their eyes. The workers of the last day! In the center of the courtyard, like a hatless white-maned puppet stuffed with the sawdust of dignity, the chief medical officer was directing the traffic in person. “Immediate surgery, I’ll be there in five minutes, this one to the barn, nothing doing, this one simple: amputation — don’t give me a hard time; this one’s a problem, check him later, get a move on Loschek, no not him, the other one! You there, phone the auxiliary hospital and say I refuse — I refuse — to take the sixty they want to send! No! What are you saying? Idiot! To the cemetery, that’s right. Short of bandages, are you? Anesthetics? I don’t give a … Tell Herr Brückmeister from me, if he hasn’t supplied them by six o’clock, I’ll have him court-martialed … Watch out, gently. Immediate double amputation, Yes, Doctor … Blithering idiots! Can’t you see he’s dead! Not my line of business!” With sarcasm: “Forgotten the difference between fainting and death, have you, young man? What do you mean, no Herr Brückmeister? He’s deserted? The dog, the stinking dog!”

This was neither the place nor the job for a chief medical officer, and he was courting reproof from his superiors. To the colonel approaching through the crush of stretchers and bearers, he addressed a lugubrious salute and looked away. The colonel’s crimson head, squat on his shoulders, suggested the onset of apoplexy. If you want to establish order here, honorable Colonel, try not to burst like a skin full of beer and shit. As for your reproofs, your dressing-downs, your orders, I wipe my a … with them. The colonel was speaking to him confidentially; the doctor caught sight of a gaping, mud-smeared thigh, a pearly gleam of femur deep inside … “No. I’m the boss here. A written order, in writing please! Bring on the badly wounded ones, over there! Idiots! Wake up, man, keep ’em moving … I’ll see you in the operating room …” The red-faced colonel was gazing glassily at another, green-faced colonel being stretchered past. “What’s wrong with him?” “The colonel has been eviscerated, Colonel …” “Quite so, quite so. Keep up the good work.” Above the milling of vertical and horizontal bodies stood huge white clouds. The chief medic ran to the courtyard entrance and with one glance took in the clouds, the banks of the road lined with pale beeches, and the multitude of the wounded emitting what sounded like a harmonious chorus of pain. The white coat and white mane were seen to charge, flailing, at a truck: “Go to blazes! You can’t unload them here! No more! Full up!” A hum was floating on the air: Planes, planes! Hurry up!

Nurse Erna contemplated the chaos from an upstairs window in the officers’ wing. There was Koppel disappearing around the corner with small reluctant steps, on the way to his destruction, no doubt about it! The red-faced colonel was climbing back into his tiny green car, with a boa constrictor painted in yellowish gray on it; swallowed by a boa. A truck blocked his path, the colonel emerged from the boa’s stomach waving a stubby arm: no one saw or heard him. The muffled noise of the alert continued to crackle obstinately through the halls because a plane suddenly appeared, skimming the treetops. Erna picked up the internal telephone: “Turn off that stupid racket, you morons! It’s useless.” She recognized the enemy insignia on the monster’s underwing. It ground sinisterly over their heads, ignoring the Fourth Hospital, but seconds later a slow explosion made the remaining windowpanes vibrate loudly (the less glass there is, the more noise it makes). The heavenly thunderbolt had scored a bull’s-eye on the motor fleet reserved for their evacuation. She looked at her watch. It was time for the kid’s dressing.

The blinded boy endured his darkness fairly well, but he still had a suppurating wound in the groin, threaded with catheters which were torture to replace. “Is that you, Erna?” he asked in an imposingly quiet voice. “It’s not just for show out there, right? Talk to me. I can hear all the sounds. I feel so much better, you know. I was thinking about you. What’s going on?” “Nothing new, Tony … Here, drink this.” The scarred and voided sockets no longer tortured him. Without the bandage, his head was hideously alluring: thick chestnut locks swept the domed forehead, the nose was straight, the mouth full and serious, but the outsize hollows of the eyes, pale as gold in places, devastated a face condemned to the night. “If only I could believe in God!” she thought. She would give the blind boy a final, pacifying injection, as soon as she could arrange it. “Let Tony sleep, let him sleep for good.” If she still loved anyone in this world it was him, this big kid lost in the dark between nothingness and the bitter drink of life to come … His file, penned by someone with a twisted sense of humor, read: “twenty-two years old … draftsman … outstanding performance in the field.”