In the Fall They Leave, page 21
Liese is still at the clinic. So is Gauthier and the matron. Madame Depage, though, has gone to America on a fundraising trip. No other students have left, and there are several new ones. The daily work of ward duty and study, the same. A new director has replaced Doctor Kuhn—an older man, Herr Doktor Klamer. As soon as possible, she asks the matron whether any hand-delivered letter arrived. With her eyes and a minute movement of the head, the matron indicates there’d been no such letter.
Anxiousness jitters through Marie-Thérèse when, later, she conveys the colonel’s warning and urges the matron to consider leaving for a while. And if that’s impossible, to at least stop taking in Allies. “Just for now, Matron. I beg you.”
They’re in the matron’s apartment, in the front room that serves as an office, and the matron is spinning a pen on the desk’s blotter. When she finally speaks, it’s to describe how the occupiers have converted the house across the street into a barracks and command post. “Why just there? They could have any house! But of course I know why. They’re watching us. I’ve ordered that those with rooms facing the street keep their curtains drawn. I think our cook is spying for them. She observes me so closely and recounts our supplies. But I can’t let her go. That would be too suspicious.” She rubs a cheekbone. She pushes back hair, a forceful motion, fingernails dragging at the scalp.
The colonel was right. Marie-Thérèse hears herself asking how many are left.
“Thirteen.”
“Matron, no. No!”
“Mademoiselle, you forget yourself.”
“Au contraire. I remember everything. I remember how you’d say just these few more. Over and over. Just these few more. You’re deluding yourself! Do you think they’ll spare you? Did they spare the villagers? And farmers who had done nothing? Did they?” Her outburst horrifies her.
The matron finally replies. “Non, mademoiselle.”
“That colonel…he knew something is going to happen here.”
“That was three months ago…and it hasn’t.”
“He told me not to return. There was a reason.”
“So, then, why did you?”
“Because Jacques doesn’t need me now, but you do. And the children. I don’t want you to go to prison. If you keep taking in Allies, you will.”
“What can I do when they’re brought here? Refuse? But you don’t have to stay. Others are helping now. Nearly everyone.”
“Liese?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, Matron, that’s—”
“I fear only our cook. Charlotte is with a family in Mollem for the time being. A nurse looks in on her.”
And administers her daily dose.
“But Liese, Matron!” Marie-Thérèse can’t stop the torrent of words, all questioning the matron’s judgment. “She…she may have told him things. She may have invented. She said she might do that as insurance. I’m so sorry you asked her.”
“But I can trust you.”
The barb stings. “Oui! You can! Yes, I failed you once, badly, with Doctor Kuhn and now by not getting you word. You probably wouldn’t have acted on it anyway. But, yes, you can trust me. I came back. I told myself it was to finish my studies, but I know the true reason. I want to get the children out and I want you to come with us. We’ll invent a pretext.”
“I’m afraid it’s impossible. Work has resumed on our new clinic, and I need to oversee it, for one thing. But you can leave with them. I will give you your examinations early. I’m sure you will pass.”
“Matron, you are so…stubborn. And you always have an answer and always must be obeyed even now, when you are wrong, pardonnez-moi, but you are wrong and will suffer for it. It must not happen, s’il vous plaît! It must not. I am going to help you with these patients and then we will get the necessary papers and leave.”
“Ah. You are no longer the little mouse, are you? I heard it in your playing at times and now I see it. You are showing fire and heart.”
Mouse. “Matron, if you saw me as a mouse, why in the world did you ever ask my help with all this?”
“I love all creatures, as you well know, and mice are fine…as mice.”
“So, you chose me because I was the least brave? The most tentative?”
“And it worked, I think. Don’t you?”
“You tricked me!”
“I felt I could trust you. But in another sense, it was a ploy, too, so yes, I suppose you’re right.”
“It was dangerous. And foolish. I might have revealed everything to the doctor out of my…mouse-ness! As it was, I probably said too much.”
“Mouse-ness. I like that. But you didn’t reveal the crucial things, did you.”
“No.”
“So, I was right.”
“You always are.” Would she hear the sarcasm? If so, Marie-Thérèse doesn’t care, which proves, she supposes, that all mouse-ness has left her. “Except right now you’re not. Those thirteen and then we’ll go, Matron. It’s a different world. You can teach there. And I will once again be your little mouse-student.”
“Do you recall… No, I don’t think I ever spoke to you girls about this, but years ago I made a vow. I told myself that someday, somehow, I would do something useful.” She’s smiling now. “Have more tea, please. Did I say that I’m very happy to see you?”
“You didn’t. Thank you. But, Matron? If you stay, your usefulness may come to an abrupt end.”
“We’ll see, mademoiselle. We shall see.”
The Spy
A new patient is upending one of the men’s wards. Not observing quiet time, up at all hours, demanding meals at odd times, and shamelessly flirting with staff, particularly the student-nurses. Black hair curling about his ears, bold eyes, audacious responses. Asked to return to his bed, he’ll reply, often in French, “Only if you come with me!” Liese finds him charming. “Later,” she might reply. Or, “Tonight!” He calls her a princess, an angel, and throws back his head and laughs at her responses, waking the ward.
Marie-Thérèse hates these displays. Yet she finds herself blushing in the man’s presence, and then it’s her turn to be noticed.
“Ah, you are new here, no?”
She responds in German. “I am a third-year student.”
“But I did not see you before, mademoiselle,” he continues in French. “Have you been hiding?”
“My name,” she states, again in German, “is Fräulein Hulbert.”
He repeats the words in stern perfect German and mimics her frown. “Such an expression, and you with such beautiful hair and skin too. Both of you! Princesses. It must be the air of Brussels.”
She finishes making up a bed and turns to go.
“Mademoiselle! Forgive me. I do not mean to be brash. It’s only…I am so happy I won’t lose my hand. At least I don’t think I will.” He regards his bandaged hand.
“You should be speaking German.”
“I do not wish to speak German, mademoiselle, though I can, of course. Indulge me.”
“You are disobeying the rules. And I am not allowed to speak French.”
“Rules. You’re so serious. It spoils—” As Liese appears with a tray, he shouts, “There she is! My angel! See how good she is to me, mademoiselle? Unlike someone I’ve just met.”
The matron approaches the man’s bed and reminds her two students that the ward holds other patients as well.
“If these two are princesses, then you, madame, are most definitely the queen.”
“And you, the fool in motley. Now, Herr Quien, kindly allow my nurses to do their work.”
“Look at me! A poor sick fellow. How can I stop them?”
“You manage quite well.”
Later Liese says, “Isn’t he magnifique?”
“Too bold. I think he loves himself too much.” It still shocks and appalls Marie-Thérèse that the matron revealed everything to Liese, justifying all of Liese’s previous suspicions. Why wouldn’t she tell the new doctor, in order to save herself? Or does she feel better now that she belongs to the matron’s inner circle. And the matron gambling on this,too. Oh, Matron, a bad idea. A terrible idea.
“Too bold? You think so? That’s good luck for me then, though he may not be here much longer.” She gives Marie-Thérèse one of her coy looks. “And please don’t get in the way. He noticed me first.”
“He seems to notice everyone.”
“It only looks like that. I know better.”
“Be careful, Liese. It’s against—”
“We’re not full nurses yet. You’re just envious.”
During her shift Liese frequently gravitates toward Quien’s section of the ward. Then Marie-Thérèse can hear the two of them laughing. Anyone in the immediate area is usually drawn into the fun. And whenever the matron enters the ward, she mimes clapping her hands, scattering everyone. But does so distractedly, Marie-Thérèse thinks, and without reprimand.
Marie-Thérèse studies her, from time to time, trying to see her as Matrone.
“Who is he?” she asks Gauthier.
“He’s French, according to Liese. A coal miner.”
“French! Why is he here? He’s in danger. He could be sent to Germany.”
Gauthier draws her lips together and tilts her head from side to side. “He seems friendly with them. They don’t mind him, for some reason.”
“He appears healthy enough. Couldn’t he be treated as an outpatient?”
“I don’t know.”
That night, in the cellar, she questions the matron.
“We’ve been observing his infection,” she says. “He could lose that finger, along with others.”
“Isn’t he afraid of being sent to Germany?”
“As a coal miner, he’s needed here.”
“Could he be transferred to another hospital? He’s so disruptive. And crude.”
“I’ve asked him to stop, but he’s…irrepressible.”
Asked him to? Not told him? So much seems off. “Who is he, Matron? Really.”
She gives Marie-Thérèse a long look. “A spy,” she finally says. “For France.”
A spy. The matron now involved with spies from France. Mon Dieu. It explains, in part, her reluctance to leave, given that her “duties” have now expanded.
In her room, its drapery drawn against prying eyes from across the street, Marie-Thérèse can’t fall asleep. What seemed simple before—get her to leave—now strikes her as immensely complicated. Not unlike a simple melody that in its variations becomes more and more complex and difficult and even unrecognizable.
In the next days, Marie-Thérèse and some of the others try to avoid Quien. It isn’t easy. His flirting, his boisterous laugh have a strange levitating effect, especially on warm spring days, the windows open to soft air. He has an ability, Marie-Thérèse realizes, to neutralize stress and worry. “Look at her,” he’ll say, “the Winter Princess! She smiles, no? Is that a smile? The tiniest little smile? Or is it the beginning of a frown, which she is so good at. No! A smile. Don’t hide it from us, my Winter Princess!”
Angry at herself, she’ll hurry away. And every so often the matron appears, silently scattering everyone.
When Marie-Thérèse graduates to “Winter Queen,” to Liese’s displeasure, she begs Gauthier to schedule her on other wards, and she throws herself into her studies, cutting back even more on sleep. Her hope is to take her examinations and leave with the girls as soon as possible. There are tears in her eyes when she tells the gardener her plan. “You will have to save her now, Papa. She won’t listen to me.”
He offers the saying she takes to mean meet force with force. It gives her a bit of hope, though she’s afraid his force will be no match for the matron’s.
And then everything becomes even more complicated.
“He’s here,” Julia says one morning as she’s stowing things from her cart. “Your beau. He asked about you.”
The words incomprehensible.
“The one from last fall?” Julia says. “Don’t tell me you forgot.”
“As a visitor?”
Julia shakes her head and motions toward the ward. “He was admitted late last night. A bullet wound but not critical. Looks like he’ll live,” she adds, leaving.
Rudi. Lying in what had been Private Schalk’s bed last October. His left arm bandaged from wrist to shoulder. It’s just seven in the morning and the ward quiet. Marie-Thérèse slips Rudi’s chart from its holder.
He was wounded when a bullet ricocheted off an automobile in which he was riding and entered his left arm at an oblique angle, causing a wide wound. Tendons were torn and tissue destroyed, but the ulna and radius somehow hadn’t been shattered. She looks from the close-written words to the patient. Rudi. His face relaxed in sleep, but the moment he opens his eyes, perhaps sensing a presence, his expression tenses. “Mademoiselle Hulbert. I was hoping you wouldn’t be here. And yet I’m so glad to see you.”
Words delivered without the least smile.
“Are you in pain?”
“Some. What have you been doing? Have you been practicing?”
“I’m sorry, no. But I’ve been teaching the little girl, Janine, to play.”
“Like my sister Margarethe, you avoid the issue by teaching scales. It was finished for her the minute she hung out her sign.”
Never argue with a patient. “I’ve been hoping it will help her speak.”
“Has it?”
“No. The sound of the piano seems enough for her.”
“Well, it might turn out all right. It’s a language too.”
Light words delivered without lightness. She takes a sterile thermometer from her cart. “Rudi, I must record your temperature.”
He holds the thermometer in his mouth for the prescribed time, but she knows from the glassy reddened eyes and taut dry look of his skin that he has a fever. She places a damp cloth on his forehead. Other patients are stirring and soon breakfast trays will be brought in, waking Quien.
The bandage needs changing…already. She removes the bloodied gauze, cleans and then studies the wound.
“What are you looking at?”
A darkened smudge she’s afraid might indicate the onset of gangrene. “We have been taught to be thorough. Do you feel chilled at all?”
“I was last night.”
“I’ll get you another blanket as soon as I finish with this.” She follows the protocol for wound dressing, finally applying the treated gauze and then the bandage, doing her best with the correct pattern. But her jaw is shaking and her hands slow.
Rudi.
“At least I will be able to skate, no?”
Finally, a smile.
“Yes, you will be able to skate next winter. But for now, this might earn you a visit home.”
“I thought so too but was soon informed otherwise. It’s for the best, really.”
“You know, you’re fortunate. The bullet might have shattered your forearm. You might have lost the arm.”
“Ja. A miracle.”
He begins shivering in spasms. She gets another blanket and is just covering him when Quien comes up and demands an extra blanket as well. He’s been calling for a nurse for some time, but has anyone rushed to his bed? No! And what’s more, he’s hungry, but is anyone bringing his tray? No again. And now, worst of all, he feels weak and lightheaded and is afraid he won’t be able to make it back to his bed. He’s a tottery old man who needs help from his Winter Queen immediately.
Heat scalds neck and face. Ridiculous man! “One moment,” she tells him. Then finds Gauthier in the nurses’ office. “Go help him or I’ll never translate for you again.”
“Me! I don’t want to help him. You help him.”
“He’s going to fall over, maybe on purpose, and as ward Sister, it will be your fault. The doctor will hold you responsible.”
Gauthier hurries out while Marie-Thérèse waits behind, hearing the commotion Quien is making. Surely no one in the ward is still asleep.
Her day has begun.
Sometime later that morning Gauthier pulls her into the office to say that Quien wants them to be wary of the new patient. He heard that he’s a spy. “Absurde,” she adds. “He just wants attention so he creates this fantasy. He also said he hopes there are no Allies here because he’d feel unsafe.” Her French storms out, in its bass line.
Warm water soothes chilled hands but has little effect on the rest of her.
In the matron’s sitting room, Marie-Thérèse says, “Did you examine Lieutenant Fischer’s wound, Matron?”
“I did.”
“And so you saw that blackened area.” The wound had been debrided yet a thin margin of darkened skin remained. “Is it gangrene?”
“No.”
“Could it be…gunpowder?”
“I believe so. He may have been shot at much closer range than stated by those who brought him here. Nor is the wound consistent with that of a ricocheting bullet, which tends to enter sideways and cause far more damage.”
“Why does it say ‘ricocheting bullet’ on the chart then?”
“It’s what we were told to write.”
“Then someone might have shot him at close range? Could he have done so himself?”
“If he’s right-handed, yes. Some do this in order to be sent home.”
“I don’t think he wanted to go home. And he isn’t infantry, so it would have been hard to explain. Do you think someone else might have shot him precisely there?”
“I don’t know.” She rubs the bruised flesh under her left eye. “Mademoiselle, it’s late. If you have no further questions—”
“Matron, I must tell you that Monsieur Quien has been saying odd things and quite loudly. He said he hopes there are no Allies here because he wants to be safe. And he used the phrase ‘tottery old man who needs help.’ He self-dramatizes, and yet that phrase? Has he seen us with the ‘uncles’?” This seems more than enough to worry her. Marie-Thérèse decides to postpone telling her what he said about Rudi. “It’s so confusing. I’m afraid I don’t trust him, and I’m so concerned about you.”
