In the Fall They Leave, page 17
“Papa,” she whispers. “Be calm, s’il vous plaît.”
A tremor has set in at one corner of his mouth.
“Think of the girls. If you must do something, do it when you’re here by yourself.”
Turning his back as a guard approaches, the gardener sets Bishop down on fresh straw. There’s a shout, and guards are suddenly running toward the sliding doors at the opposite end of the hall. Marie-Thérèse lifts Janine and holds her shawl tightly against her right ear. The gardener picks up Bishop, tucks him under his jacket, then takes the bags he’s brought and waves a hand, urging the three out of the aviary. Quickly they walk toward the unguarded door. Others are doing the same. At a burst of shooting, Elli begins crying. “Ma chère petit,” Marie-Thérèse says, “be brave now, for Janine. S’il te plaît.”
There’s shooting somewhere, but the gardener ignores it as they walk fast within a group of others, Marie-Thérèse carrying Janine. Ahead, a waiting tram. As they’re boarding, a guard shouts for them to halt. Glancing back, Marie-Thérèse sees him running toward them; another is aiming his rifle at the sky and shooting. Glancing upward, she sees a bird falling toward the earth, its wings askew.
The operator of the tram is the same one who conveyed them to the Exhibition Hall. Then, he proceeded as if everyone already existed in eternity. Now five people leap onto the tram, one after another, all shouting, “Allez! Avancez!” Just as Marie-Thérèse, the children, and the gardener board, the tram jolts forward and speeds away. Bullets clatter and ping. Before hunching down, Marie-Thérèse saw guards surrounding those who’d been left behind. Several blocks farther, the tram operator abruptly stops, jumps from the tram, and runs into a side street. They have no choice but to do likewise, though the gardener will not let them run to the next tram stop.
For the rest of the way back, Janine’s thumb is in her mouth, her eyes blank. Marie-Thérèse kisses the top of her head and raises her shawl to cover most of the child’s face. Elli closes her eyes and pushes in against Marie-Thérèse’s side. Recalling Madame Depage’s advice, Marie-Thérèse begins talking. “We’ve had a scare, my dear ones, but we’re all right now. You see? All will yet be well, mes chères. Oh, a lovely tower now, I think it’s a bell tower, and here is a garden, and now we are going home to see Jackie and Donnie, what have they been doing, I wonder, what do you think? Sleeping, perhaps? Your loyal pets are resting by the fireplace and waiting for us to come home.” The constriction in her throat blocks other words. She has never before made such an awful mistake, the worst of her life, bringing them there. Marie-Thérèse, don’t give in. Keep talking.
Holding them close, she begins again. The dogs, the day, and how good it is, being with them, even now, especially now, when they’ve all had a terrible fright. Janine lowers her thumb and holds on to Marie-Thérèse with both arms. Elli is burrowed in tight. Marie-Thérèse, whispering on and on, senses some fierce, even wrenching, sensation filling her. And then knows what it is.
“I love you,” she whispers. “I love you both so, so much. And I’m so sorry for what happened. But look! Here we are, my dears, here we are, together.” She gathers them even closer and holds on, her face against their heads.
Across the aisle, the gardener’s expression is composed, his left hand loosely bracing a small bulge under his jacket that might be, for all appearances, some meaningless puff of fabric.
Colors of a Different Season
Snow showers and squalls leave their few wet inches every other day. Bundled in her cloak, Marie-Thérèse leads three more “uncles” to rendezvous points in the city. Café doors are shut against the cold, outdoor tables stored away, and there are no lounging officers observing passersby. Marie-Thérèse is less afraid during these excursions until the day she and her “uncle” step aside to make way for two German officers walking abreast. The officers pause and one asks why the old man isn’t carrying out his duty by cleaning the street. He points to a broom outside a shop entrance. Her companion responds, in poor German, that he has been ill.
“But you have no excuse now.” The officer’s breath smells of onions. He’s a tall ample man, his face fuchsia-colored in the cold. His greatcoat reaches the ankles of his black boots. On his hands, gloves of black leather.
“No, sir, I have no excuse.”
Marie-Thérèse’s knees want to buckle.
“Well then, there is your weapon. The street awaits you.”
“Yes, sir.” The man salutes again and limps forward to take the broom. He carries it to the center of the street and begins sweeping at slush that hardly moves. Drivers of automobiles blare horns. Tires spray him with dirty water and slush. After a while, the officers move on but he keeps sweeping. He must be in pain, she thinks, his arm not fully healed. Slowly, fear is draining from her limbs and cold seeping into its place. After a while, the proprietor emerges, shouting that the man is ruining his broom and must stop. “Chiens!” he adds, under his breath.
No. A dog would never be like that.
After escorting the Allied soldier to his contact, she rides back to the clinic circuitously, staring out at the city under its cap of mottled gray cloud.
The thought comes that one day she might not be so fortunate.
Working with color is restful, the reds and blues, the yellows and greens—colors of a different season, a different time. And seeing those scarves and shawls taking shape row by row is also satisfying. But then there it is again. An image of the matron stopped in the street or on a tram. Or Marie-Thérèse herself apprehended. Or, if not those nightmarish scenarios, there’s Rudi, walking away in the snow and not turning. You will be in my heart. It’s like falling through the net of her crocheting.
“Marie-Thérèse,” Liese says one evening. “You look quite drawn. You must be ill. You probably need a rest. Do you have any relatives still in the city?” The words sound sincere. That’s the trouble with Liese. One never knows.
“If I’m ill, then I’m in the right place, no?” She smiles to make it a joke.
Liese glances toward the sitting room’s open door, then gets up to close it. Seated again, she says, “Have you been seeing anything?”
“Quite a lot, actually.”
Liese pauses in her knitting. “Yes? What?”
“Oh, just the other day, an abscessed carbuncle. I’ve never seen one before, have you? And one of the soldiers in my ward lost several lower teeth. He has no idea how. One minute there, the next not. He thinks he must have swallowed them. He was very distressed.”
“Marie-Thérèse.”
“No, Liese. I haven’t. Have you?”
“Actually, yes. I saw you the other day, walking with some old man quite a distance from here. Who was that? And why were you with him?”
Marie-Thérèse frowns. “An old man? Oh! That was just someone who’d been cleaning the street. He was half-frozen and, I think, senile. He couldn’t remember where he lived. Imagine! He knew the street name but not how to get there. He asked for help.”
“And, of course, you gave it. You, so far from the clinic.”
“I wanted to check on my family’s home. But, yes, I did help him, naturally.”
“You know, I was talking to Charlotte yesterday. She says she’s been seeing things.”
Marie-Thérèse steadies the crochet hook and keeps making her aqua loops.
“That’s not so unusual. She hallucinates.”
“I think it might have been something she heard, though. She was a little contradictory, yet seemed certain it was something odd. Voices…late at night.”
“And you believed her?”
“She seemed coherent enough.”
“It may have been auditory hallucinations.”
“I know.”
“Have you told Doctor Kuhn?”
“Not yet. I want to be certain before talking to him. He’s so exacting. Though it might be a good idea, as I’ve said before, to tell him something. But I wanted to see what you think. Oh, I know you prefer to keep your own counsel, but again, I’m not sure I…well, you know.”
Want to betray her? “Yes.”
“If he should find out something on his own and realize that we’ve been telling him nothing, we’re doomed. You know that, don’t you?”
“I do.”
“We’ll go to prison. At the very least.” Liese pulls at a strand of yarn, redoes it, and then is speeding along again, in red wool. “Have you heard from your family?”
“Just the one letter. Are you going home for Christmas?” she adds to change the topic.
“I want to. And maybe never come back. I hate this place.”
“But why? You said you wanted to stay and finish.”
“I’m afraid she’s up to something, and they’re going to find out. They’re not idiots.”
“She’s not doing anything wrong, Liese. Besides, we’re a Red Cross clinic, an international clinic. It’s in Germany’s interest not to destroy it.”
“It, yes! That doesn’t mean they won’t destroy us, though, does it?”
Marie-Thérèse gives herself time to think before answering. “Nurses are in short supply now.”
“I suppose so. You know those Sunday excursions to Louvain? I went on one.”
“To Louvain? Why would you do that?”
“To see for myself. And I did. It was awful. There’s nothing left of those ancient buildings, and nearly the entire town is gone. People were taking chunks of rock from the cathedral ruins. It was very sad. Someone else was selling postcards. That can happen here. Sometimes I can’t sleep for thinking about it.”
“Why not go home for a while? Spend the holiday if the matron can spare you.”
“I should, not that she can spare anybody now. But look, here we are, talking about home, when you—”
“It’s all right. I believe my family is well…somewhere.”
“I hope so, Marie-Thérèse. I truly do. But I must ask you again, for my own sake but also yours and everyone else’s—you really haven’t heard anything odd, or seen anything strange?”
“No.”
“Ah well. Perhaps before I leave, if I do, I’ll talk with Doctor Kuhn. Then he can judge for himself whether or not to question Charlotte. It might help protect all of you, anyway.”
“I don’t know, Liese,” she hears herself saying. It’s a struggle to maintain a neutral tone. “I do know that last year before Christmas Charlotte was beside herself. You know how she gets around the holidays.”
“All the same.”
Marie-Thérèse pretends to be in thought, hand against chin, eyes directed at some middle distance.
“A good idea, no?” Liese says. “Just to be safe?”
“I’m not sure. To cause him to suspect something when it’s unwarranted, that might work against us too.”
“I don’t see how…if there’s nothing. By the way, you’re doing really well with your crocheting. Good for you! Maybe you can try knitting something next. I can help you.” She stuffs her knitting and needles into a cloth bag. “So! I’m off to the wards. Wish me luck.”
“Bonne chance!” Marie-Thérèse catches the strand of yarn with the tip of her hook and nonchalantly sets off again, making her loops in case Liese has paused in the hall to observe.
That night the woman with the severe ear infection is restless, and Marie-Thérèse convinces Sister Gauthier that the matron really should check Frau Gleffee’s ear herself. “We don’t want the doctor to see some radical setback tomorrow, do we? Worse,” she adds in the nurses’ office, “she could go deaf in that ear.” Gauthier is terrified of the doctor. Well, they all are. But if he questions the staff concerning Frau Gleffee’s condition, Gauthier won’t be a credit to herself. As Marie-Thérèse hopes, Gauthier hurries to find the matron. And then, while Gauthier attends another patient, Marie-Thérèse holds the chart, over which she has clipped a brief note. The matron’s face blanches as she covers the slip with her hand, removing it in the same motion. Then she walks over to Frau Gleffee’s bed in her usual unhurried manner and examines the ear while Marie-Thérèse helps Gauthier bathe another patient. That is where they are when Liese enters the ward.
Glancing up, Marie-Thérèse sees Liese follow the matron into the nurses’ office. Soon Liese is attending Frau Gleffee, holding a warm cloth against the ear, attempting to draw the infection out of its hiding place and to the surface.
That night Charlotte, lightly sedated, sleeps well. Marie-Thérèse does not.
The following afternoon the doctor and two orderlies suspected of being German soldiers in disguise inspect the wards and supply rooms, the nurses’ quarters and lavatories and office, the kitchen and pantries, the cellars, attics, and the matron’s apartment, along with the outbuildings. Marie-Thérèse notices Liese’s expression whenever the doctor is anywhere nearby. There’s glow and amusement. Is she infatuated with him? If so, it explains why she hasn’t left the clinic yet despite all those fears for her own safety.
For the rest of the afternoon, Marie-Thérèse goes about her work hardly knowing what she’s doing, sensing the doctor right there, suddenly alongside her, anticipating him bursting into the ward and shouting for them all to line up. Hours pass slowly. At one point the matron smiles at her, in passing.
After her shift, she’s afraid of finding orderlies in her room, digging through things. She gets her crocheting from the nurses’ sitting room and goes to the gardener’s cottage. The girls are there, but not the pigeon or its box by the hearth. In the warmth from a small wood fire, Elli is reading aloud from a children’s book while Janine plays with a carved horse and cow, moving them into and out of an enclosure made of sticks. The fire in the hearth snaps from time to time. Drizzle streaks mullioned glass.
“The birds,” the gardener says when Elli pauses at the end of a chapter, “have again flown.”
Rocking, he lets his eyes shut. His hands hang limp from each armrest, wrist bones prominent, the first joint of each finger distended. His black trousers are tucked inside polished boots that reflect firelight. She finds the latter details disquieting. But no tasseled saber, in its battered scabbard, rests in its usual place on the two pegs above the mantel. She wonders if it’s been confiscated.
Shaking away concern, she picks up the half-finished shawl in her lap. And while Elli pronounces each French word with flute-like clarity, Marie-Thérèse gives herself over, for the time being, to the colors of summer.
The Lost Children
The door opens and the doctor peers in. Two men are lying in the isolation room, their eyes closed, their faces scarlet. Marie-Thérèse and the matron turn toward the doctor.
“I was told that you would be here,” he says, addressing the matron. “Who are these patients?”
“The one on your right, Herr Doktor, is Herr Henri Lambert, a farmer from Mollem. The other is his brother Michiel. Two days ago, they arrived in the city with a wagonload of potatoes. Yesterday we admitted both.”
As if responding to his name, Michiel opens his eyes and suddenly laughs. The matron shows the doctor a chart which he reads without touching as he stands just within the room. Michiel’s laughter brings on tears and soon he’s weeping in convulsive bursts. The doctor signals both the matron and Marie-Thérèse into the hall and closes the door.
“Maintain absolute cleanliness in that room and let me know at once if anyone, any patient or staff member, comes down with a sore throat.”
“We alone have been attending these patients and will, as always, follow your instructions.”
“Wipe down everything in the room with alcohol twice daily. Any instrument used there must be immediately sterilized. And it goes without saying, bedpans, basins, and linens as well. We cannot have an outbreak of rheumatic fever in the wards, and we will not.”
“Of course not.”
“The incubation period is two to four weeks, but if we can isolate anyone exhibiting symptoms of streptococcal infection, we may be able to halt any threat of an epidemic.”
“Yes.”
“Have all your nurses take their own temperatures twice a day and examine one another’s throats. Do you know what to look for?” he asks Marie-Thérèse.
“Yes, sir. Matron has instructed us.
“I will repeat the lesson,” she says, “just to be certain.”
“And tell everyone to exert particular care regarding personal hygiene.”
“Yes, of course. I will stress that point again.”
“Very good. All the staff must follow these directions, with no exception. This includes the cook, maids, and orderlies. Even your gardener. Have one of your nurses check them at least once a day. And it goes without saying, although I will say it, that we must closely monitor each of our patients.” He looks at the closed door. “We might have done without this. In a way I am sorry they were brought here, but of course we cannot have a run of rheumatic fever in the city or even in one of the larger hospitals, now, can we? So perhaps it is for the best.”
