In the Fall They Leave, page 19
“What a barbarian I am, though, not even introducing myself. This war has uncivilized me. I am Oberst Otto Bruning, from Cologne, not so far away in actual miles but a world apart all the same. And you, Fräulein?” She introduces herself and reaches into her valise to take out identity and travel papers. “I have no need for your papers, no need! Put those away. I am not some border guard, as those two well know.” The sleepy one opens his eyes and laughs with the other.
She wishes the colonel were drowsy too. When everyone seems to settle, she takes out a textbook and opens it.
“Ah! What are you reading there, Fräulein? I thought you seemed a little bookish and, you see, I was right. Beware of bookishness! It ruins the eyes! Right, Hans?”
Hans, in eyeglasses, agrees.
“It is a medical textbook, sir, about germs.”
“Ho! Are you a medical student? Will you become a doctor, then? Fräulein Doktor!”
The other two pretend they find this humorous as well.
“I am a student of nursing, sir.”
“And you study about germs. You know, my family has a brewery in Cologne, so I can tell you anything you wish to know about yeast, which is a bacterium, no?”
He treats her to a lengthy disquisition on yeast and brewing and seems happy and far away in the remembering. Hans is looking down at his hands again; the other one has resumed his dozing. Marie-Thérèse asks question after question, probably annoying those two, but it’s better, she thinks, than if the colonel questions her.
Finally he urges her to visit the brewery. Her whole family should come when things settle. And then she can see for herself how good beer is made. Is her family in Antwerp? He would be most pleased to meet them and extend the invitation himself.
Hans opens his eyes at that and gives the colonel a dark look.
She explains about her father’s illness and how she’s traveling to the Netherlands to help care for him.
“The Netherlands! Then you are an escapee!”
“Ja.” She laughs, hoping it sounds authentic.
“What about your studies? Are you giving them up?”
“I will resume my studies when my father recovers, as I hope he will.”
“Ah. Very good. And where is it you study?”
She tells him.
Colonel Bruning frowns, his sparse eyebrows coming together. Hans is scrutinizing her. The other dozes on.
“You know, I think I have heard of that place, Fräulein. Have you, Hans?” He grinds out the cigarette with his boot. Hans nods, still studying her.
“What I would advise, Fräulein, is to think about the benefits of a lengthy visit rather than a short one. Am I right, Hans?”
“You are, sir.”
“Ja. It will be in the best interest of your family as well.”
She arranges her expression to suggest confusion and diffidence. “Danke, sir.”
He can’t tell me anything more because it would be treasonous? Does he even know anything at all? Is he playing at importance?
Over fields, groves of trees, farm buildings, and waterways now, a flat winter light, the sun a platinum disk behind thin cloud cover. And here and there in fields, pigs, the survivors of devastated farms, rooting in snow.
As they approach Antwerp, he asks how she is traveling to Brabant.
“Friends of my family have arranged transportation.”
“Very good. Then I wish you well, Fräulein. Don’t forget my invitation.” He hands her his card. “And don’t forget what else I said.”
She assures him she will not.
She’s afraid he might insist on escorting her to these “friends of her family,” but the three of them stride away and soon are absorbed within the gray mass of soldiers and stretcher bearers.
Farmhouses
Just outside the station’s entrance, a peasant woman is sitting on a stool alongside a cart heaped with sugar beets. Approaching, Marie-Thérèse says, in a low voice, “Bon
après-midi, Madame Blanche.”
“Bon après-midi, mademoiselle.” The woman stands and places her stool in the cart, then pulls the cart toward a horse and wagon waiting a short distance away. Seeing them, a man says something to the horse, pats its neck, and removes its blanket. Then he loads handcart, stool, and folded blanket while Marie-Thérèse climbs into the wagon’s second seat. It all takes less than a minute. Soon they’re passing through Antwerp, much of it piles of rubble. In a square, children in thick leggings and jackets are skipping around a lifeless fountain. The sky is low, the air cold, and as they leave the city, heading north, the wind picks up. Marie-Thérèse can’t stop shivering.
Some forty minutes later they reach a small farmstead set on the snow-covered plain. After a meal of bread, cheese, and warmed milk, Marie-Thérèse is given a tiny room behind the kitchen. They ask no questions, not even her name. Nor does she ask them anything. The woman’s face is creased, with thicker grooves across her forehead. She smiles often and darts quick glances at Marie-Thérèse, who senses her curiosity. The farmer’s face is also creased and windburned. He keeps his eyes lowered most of the time. She admires the courage of this couple but is afraid for them. After all, they have a farm, however small, and there must be a cow, at least, in addition to the horse. And probably chickens. Much to lose, if not their lives as well.
She lies awake half the night while wind slams the farmhouse in waves. The wall alongside the bed feels icy to the touch. Sometime later she hears someone opening the stove door and throwing in logs. An image of the matron working in the cellar comes. I am familiar with that place, Fräulein. When she hears movement in the kitchen, she gets up and washes her face after breaking a film of ice in the bowl on the washstand.
Decide.
But her will, too, seems frozen and she allows herself to be carried from one thing to the next—another small meal, this time bread and milk, a boiled egg and a small piece of ham—then climbing up into the wagon again. The wind has died, and the air is brittle. Clouds along the horizon are black mountain ranges against a sky just beginning to lighten. After about an hour, the farmer stops at a crossroads where a wagon loaded with firewood is waiting. The farmer indicates that she is to go on that one. He transfers her valise and wishes her a safe journey. The two men nod at one another, and in the next minute she’s traveling north again while the first farmer turns back. The perfect orchestration of it all astonishes her. How often do they do this?
As the sun rises above the horizon, clouds in the east turn pink for a few moments before becoming gray. She balls up her fingers in her gloves. Her breath sends plumes out into the frigid air. The driver’s nose is dripping, and he swipes at it from time to time with a blue handkerchief that reminds her of the gardener. She’s sitting alongside the woodcutter, in the wagon’s only seat, and the advised silence feels awkward. It also allows for too much thought. Keep going? Return? But my papers will be wrong. In either case, she will hurt someone no matter what choice she makes. The shaggy horse clops on, giving a snort every so often, its breath pluming. They pass farmhouses much like the one where she stayed, small but sturdy on their open expanses. Exhausted by her poor night’s sleep and the unproductive thoughts, she finally nods off until nudged awake by the woodcutter.
Ahead, a small guardhouse made of unpainted planks. White smoke from a tin chimney curls upward in the still air. Just beyond the guardhouse, barbed wire fencing. The woodcutter reins in the horse and waits. A guard in helmet and greatcoat emerges from the hut a few minutes later. A rifle is slung over his right shoulder. The farmer salutes.
“Ah! Herman! Thank God. We’re down to nothing in this damn cold.”
The woodcutter jumps from the wagon and begins stacking wood along the hut’s south wall.
“Who’s the pretty young lady? Your daughter?”
“No, just someone who wants to go to Breda.”
“She better have the right papers or she’ll have to stay here.”
The horse shakes its head and paws the frozen road.
The farmer laughs with the guard. By now Marie-Thérèse has her papers in hand and is praying that the trembling won’t be noticeable. The guard is young, really just a boy, his forehead and jawline dotted with sore-looking eruptions. One makes his chin appear inflamed. She supposes he’s trying to sound adult. His rifle looks adult enough. Anger simmers up through fear at the stupidity of it all, the terrible waste.
The air smells of wood smoke. The fields all around are white. As the guard takes their papers inside, she glimpses fried eggs on a plate.
An older guard steps outside and comes around to her side of the wagon. He looks from her to the photograph and then at the papers again. Finally he regards her again.
“So, you want to stay there for how long, Fräulein?” His left eyelid goes into a spasm.
“Until my father recovers, sir. I will be traveling back to Brussels, however, at some indefinite time.”
“I see. Yes. It says that. Are you sure you want to go back? I hear it’s dull there now.”
“Yes, but I have work there, sir.” Once more she regrets saying too much.
“Work! Why do you want to work? Why don’t you find someone and get married?”
The younger guard, who has come outside again, sputters.
“I hope to, one day.”
“That’s better! You speak good German. Are you German?”
“Yes. I and my family.”
“Why are they in Brabant?”
“They needed to leave Brussels.”
“Why?”
“My father’s office was vandalized, sir. Many of his patients left him.”
“And so he chose a pigsty of a village?”
“It is only temporary until he recovers.”
“Why should I believe you? Pretty girls lie.” The eyelid twitches.
“You may know of a Colonel Otto Bruning. He is a family friend. I have his card. Would you care to see it?”
“Let me see.”
She finds the card and hands it to him. He takes off his gloves and turns it this way and that. The card has beveled edges. The ink is dark. There is just the name and rank.
“Anyone can forge such a card. Did you forge this?”
“No, sir. He gave it to me prior to my journey.” The implication—In case I have difficulties—seems clear enough.
“Very good,” he says finally, handing back the card. “I wish your father a swift return to health.”
“Danke, sir.”
The younger guard opens the barbed-wire gate, and the woodcutter and his passenger proceed into a different country.
Hospital
In the village square, a young man runs up to the wagon just as Marie-Thérèse is climbing down. “Willy!” she says after a disorienting moment. “You’ve grown so much!” She grips him in an embrace. “I thought I’d have to inquire everywhere. How did you know I’d arrive today?”
“I come every day. Today is the thirty-second day.”
“You just wait?”
“Sometimes I help the farrier.”
“Tell me. How is Father?”
Marie-Thérèse holds him while he cries.
“Oh, my dear. Is he gone? Am I too late?”
He shakes his head and then, all but running, leads her to a small house surrounded by a low stone wall. Behind the wall, a tiny garden, its foliage merely brown clumps showing some green near the earth. Inside, the parlor curtains are drawn, their worn fabric letting in random coins of light. A wall clock clicks each minute. A generous coal fire burns in the grate.
“Stay here,” he says, then runs up a flight of stairs.
The room, with its settee and armchairs, is orderly and clean, but Marie-Thérèse detects a familiar odor. Diarrhea.
“Ma chérie!” Madame Hulbert cries, rushing into the room.
“Oh, Maman.”
“Dieu merci! You will see him before he goes.” Her voice rasps. Her eyes are glassy and reddened. The odor of diarrhea emanates from her hair.
Stepping back from their embrace, Marie-Thérèse sees her father descending the staircase. He doesn’t look ill in the least. “Here you are!” he cries, striding toward her. “We had all but given up hope! The villager promised that the letter would be delivered, but it seemed so improbable. Francine! Look who’s here! Put your soup on. She looks half-starved.”
If not quite starved, she is certainly struck dumb.
From a doorway leading into the sitting room, the housekeeper, in her usual starched apron, gives Marie-Thérèse a little bow and a sad smile.
“And bread! She must have lots of your good bread.”
“Oui, oui,” Francine says, in something of her old grumbling tone.
“Father, you’re not ill? Then—”
“Come.”
In an upstairs bedroom, Jacques is lying in a narrow bed, his eyes closed, his face dry and scorched with fever. To Marie-Thérèse, he appears all but unconscious.
“We didn’t dare say anything in the letter,” her father whispers, “in case it was intercepted.”
Jacques! She whispers a prayer of gratitude and in a small lavatory across the hall scrubs her hands and forearms with hot water and soap for a full minute before reentering the narrow bedroom. “He has been like this for days,” her mother says. “He takes some water and soup but nothing else. The doctor cleansed bullet wounds and set the bone of his right leg, but four bullet wounds…Mon Dieu. The doctor also gave him medicine for the diarrhea, but it does not stop.”
“Four? Was he able to remove all the bullets?”
“Someone did, he told us. But he’ll be here and you can ask him. He speaks Dutch and some French.”
Two chairs are near the bed, telling Marie-Thérèse how her mother and father have been spending their days while Willy wandered about the village square, waiting for her. The thought that she almost turned back causes a streak of pain.
“I would like to make an examination, Maman. You may stay or wait in the hall, whichever you prefer.”
Her father motions her close and explains that Jacques frequently soils himself and that the bedding was just changed but that it might happen again soon. “It’s very bad, the dysentery. I take care of this for your mother.”
“The doctor knows?”
“Yes. He gave us a bismuth solution for Jacques, but it isn’t helping.”
“May I see it?”
The matron lectured on bismuth as a treatment for dysentery, but a not particularly effective treatment. In fact, it could even be deadly, as the bismuth can coat the amoeba parasites in the intestine, and then they have nowhere to go, so they sometimes perforate the intestine. Patients often die.
“Father, can we have the doctor here?”
Willy leaves at once.
“Is there an apothecary in the village?”
“Oui.”
Please go and ask for emetine hydrochloride. If he doesn’t have it, ask that he send for it. I will also need a hypodermic syringe and a bottle of sterile water. Explain that a nurse has just arrived from…France.”
Marie-Thérèse follows him out into the hall. “You’ve been disposing the waste properly?” Her father had been a medical student. It strikes her as an unnecessary question.
“I dug a pit and bought lime.”
“Bien. And everyone has been washing hands.”
“Of course.”
“We should have some methyl alcohol and iodine here as well.”
“I already saw to that, my dear.”
“Forgive me, Father. I’m a bit nervous.”
He embraces her. “And rightly so. But look at you taking charge. I’m so proud of you, Marie-Thérèse.”
When Willy returns with the doctor, she introduces herself in the parlor and speaking Flemish and some French while gesturing, asks if she might consult with him concerning her brother. She explains that she’s a nurse. Wind has tufted Doctor DeKett’s sand-colored hair, and to her eye he resembles an indignant bird. The mottled red face, intently focused eyes under their wiry, curling eyebrows, and thin lips already locked in disapproval add to the impression. She decides to say no more until after he examines her brother. Then in the parlor again, she asks if he might consider using emetine hydrochloride.
He shakes his head with vigor. He slaps his chest with the flat of his right hand.
She understands. Possibly fatal to the heart. The patient must be strictly monitored. Through gestures, she offers to do so. He goes on in a forceful jumble of Dutch and French and further gesturing. Keep him warm. Still. Diet, smooth and bland. Liquids. Blood pressure twice a day. He strikes his chest again. More, if contractions. He grips a wrist, shaking it.
From her valise she takes out the sphygmomanometer she’d brought and shows it to him.
He calls her Juffrouw Hulbert and from the tone of his voice might also be calling her a fool. When her father returns, she asks if the apothecary had the emetine hydrochloride.
“Oui. And what’s more, the doctor telephoned while I was there.”
Heat rushes to her face. The man would know she acted without his permission. Would he even return?
In the parlor she tells her family that the little house has just become a hospital with strict rules. To keep the bedroom and household absolutely clean—and give Francine some help—another maid must be found. All the soiled linen has to be boiled and more purchased if necessary. If the linen is too soiled, Willy will be in charge of burning it in the back garden. Then she explains about disinfecting hands, cutlery, plates, bowls, and cups as well as the bedroom floor and their shoes.
