In the Fall They Leave, page 25
After she finishes her coffee and roll, she carries the tray back to the door and must stoop again to slide it back out into the corridor. If she neglects to do so, there will be no noon meal. These are complicated actions for her weakening body, and they demand, first, summoning will. A box is in the way. An actual box. Finally, the tray is outside the cell and the box is on the table. Removing its lid, she finds paper, pen, and ink bottle. These objects make a nice arrangement, evocative of the outer world.
The pen has a satisfying weight. The paper is of good quality. She begins, in French, with the first words that come to mind.
To fight infection, use carbolic lotion to wash the wound; then wrap it in gauze soaked in carbolic lotion. Or, the wound can be “bipped” with a bismuth iodoform paste smeared over it. There is also the process called debridement whereby tissue around the wound is cut away and the wound sealed.
For weeks her thoughts have consisted mainly of fragmented bits of memory and wide-ranging fears. To see evidence of coherent thought tells her that she is not, in fact, losing her mind along with her deteriorating body.
Emotional wounds are more difficult to treat. These need:
Bed rest
Sunshine
Physiotherapy
Talk therapy
Time
She has to rest her head on her arms a while. Sometime later, she hears the scraping on stones and Monica’s soft “Bonjour. Sun today. October second.”
A faint scent of food rouses her. She summons will and takes three precarious steps and then must make the hazardous descent to pick up the tray.
A puddle of something this time. A watery stew? Also, a tin cup of beer. Then her island again. And the slow savoring. She draws out the meal even more because she dislikes the risk involved in sliding the tray out into the corridor.
But again, she counts herself fortunate she doesn’t faint, and soon she’s back at her table and looking at remarkable words someone else, surely, must have written.
Even more remarkably, she adds to these words an actual date, October 2, 1915, and a place name. St. Gilles Prison, Brussels, Belgium.
The next morning, she continues forming letters, words, and, remarkably, sentences.
Our fatally ill patients must have experienced the shock of knowing they are about to die. At least some of them must have. Here it is now…death. Sometimes in those full days, it occurred to me to wonder how it must feel, realizing that death is only minutes—or a moment—away. Even though I witnessed death often, it always seemed remote, except for that time with Sergeant Haske, when it seemed so near…
Lost in that memory, she neglects her breakfast.
I could not fully enter into his experience, so how could I fully empathize? Death was an abstraction, something we nurses defined as a series of physical occurrences culminating in the collapse of organs and therefore of life. This, I myself wouldn’t experience for years yet, if fortunate. With my patients I could only keep my voice low and kind and do what I had learned to do for wounds and illnesses. When my patients died, my sadness was only temporary. Not as now, with Papa and how he died and how I was unable to help him. Or, too, when I won’t be able to prevent my own impending death, or Matron’s, which I pray will be fast. The thought of being pierced by dozens of bullets wrenches me with terror. How bad will the pain be? Will it be over in an instant? Or will I linger and bleed out? Will that be part of the punishment? And after death, what then? How will I be judged? What if there is no judgment? No peace? What if there is nothing? Will it be, simply, like sleep? Or will consciousness somehow still exist to torment as dreams often do? And that will be the hell of my religious teachings. Thoughts making me want to cry out. So far, I haven’t. When hunger wakes me in the night, the firing squad is right there, just a few meters away, their rifles raised. Someone gives the order to fire…
There is no noon tray. Head on arms, she dozes through the time when the evening meal normally would have been brought, had she remembered her breakfast tray. But it’s still on the table, pushed to the side. The lightbulb in the ceiling fixture dims, and so it must be nighttime. She’s too tired to convert the table back into a bed and so stays where she is, head on arms. Slipping deeper into sleep, she’s aware of some presence filling the cell. Then a stab of terror again until she realizes the presence is not the firing squad but the matron. The matron holding an oil lamp the way Florence Nightingale did when she visited wards during the Crimean War. Marie-Thérèse understands that the matron has had to bring this lamp because electricity has been cut off for the evening due to the rationing. The matron also holds a glass of water, which she extends to Marie-Thérèse. The water carries sweetness down through her, and the sensation is magnificent. “Matron,” she hears herself saying, “I am so happy to see you.”
Then the electric bulb is on full strength, and someone is shouting, “What is the matter with you? Do you mean to die here in order to get me in trouble? Are you ill? Always something! How can I do any work? Sit up! Sit up, now. What are you writing? What is that nonsense?”
Marie-Thérèse raises her head and focuses. The shouting person is the matron of the women’s wing of the prison.
“Pardonnez-moi.”
“You are not allowed to speak French here. You know this. Do not provoke me further, Fräulein.”
The prison matron’s small nose tilts upward into a sharp point. It’s red, as are her cheeks. Marie-Thérèse is seeing an angry elf in some child’s story.
“Bitte vergib mir, gnädig Frau,” Marie-Thérèse says.
“That’s better. Are you ill?”
Marie-Thérèse nods.
“Your stomach?”
Marie-Thérèse indicates her lower abdomen. “I think my appendix. Possibly a rupture.”
“What does that mean?”
Marie-Thérèse explains in layman’s terms. The prison matron’s mouth crumples in disgust. “So, you will die, just to make my life miserable.”
“She will know for sure if it’s the appendix.”
“She?”
“The matron of our nursing school. Matron Cavell. She can diagnose it.”
“And you want me to bring her here, from her cell, I suppose?”
Marie-Thérèse leans forward and moans.
Deceptions
Still moaning, she turns her head somewhat. Matron. Marie-Thérèse closes her eyes and reopens them. Yes. Emotion clots her throat.
“I was told they all would be released,” the matron is saying. “Why is she still here?”
Those words, spoken in the same imperious tone she once used with Otto Mayer, are shocking. She confessed to save us?
The prison matron responds with equal hauteur. “Who tells me the why of anything? I have my work and I do it. That is all I know.”
“What about the others?”
The prison matron resorts to sullen silence.
“Allow me to examine this prisoner in private.”
“Nein. I must be here.”
The matron comes to Marie-Thérèse’s bedside and, blocking the prison matron’s view, palpates the abdomen. Marie-Thérèse whispers in French that she only wanted to see her and say goodbye. “Did you really confess?”
“Yes. They said others already had. They said they’d let you all go if I did.”
“You believed them.”
She pretends to take an apical pulse measurement. “It seemed a simple choice.”
“They tricked you, I think, by saying others confessed.”
“But then, how many times have we tricked them?” She examines each eye. “How many times? Do you understand my meaning?”
“That’s enough French, you two!”
Marie-Thérèse tilts forward, moaning. Under her breath, she asks forgiveness. The matron shakes her head somewhat, nods somewhat. Marie-Thérèse moans more loudly.
Très bien, the matron signals with her eyes then turns. “She must be taken to a hospital at once. The rupture must be repaired; otherwise, she will die before morning. I imagine you do not wish to have to explain yourself.”
Guards enter. Two escort the matron out of the cell, one before her, one behind. Soon two others enter and lift Marie-Thérèse onto a stretcher and carry her through corridors, down staircases, and finally out into the courtyard, where they slide the stretcher into the back of a van and close its rear doors. The air is cold against her face. She wants to drink it. She wants it for the matron. She thinks that her moaning must sound authentic, for it is. Every so often she pauses to listen, but everything is quiet. She wonders what hospital they’ll take her to and how she might escape. Will they post guards?
No doubt. She orders herself to think, but no plan forms. Cold sinks in. Her eyelids close again and again, each time for a while longer. She shakes her head to wake herself up. But that causes vertigo, so she lies still, trying to concentrate on listening for footsteps, for the engine to start, for warmth to seep into the cold box enclosing her. After some time, she knows.
Not to a hospital. No room in those hospitals for a traitor. They’re waiting for me to die. Tomorrow, the prison’s burial ground.
Her entire body is shaking. Hulbert? Unfortunately, Student-nurse Hulbert died of appendicitis. We did all we could for her.
Cardinal Mercier’s New Year’s Day words form in memory: Endurance is faith. Endurance is an act of rebellion.
She forces herself to sit up and slide toward the back doors. Then she brushes one hand across frigid metal. Fingers strike a tapered piece of metal.
Handle.
Surely locked, no?
As she eases the handle downward, it squeaks. Rigid, she pauses.
Still no sound from beyond the van.
She continues until the handle is vertical.
Knowing it must be locked, she pushes against it anyway. It swings open, nearly pulling her off balance. Some distance away, a guard is pacing in front of the prison wall, under a lighted portico. She pulls the door back and waits for her heartbeat to slow. Then she nudges the door slightly open and observes the guard in his back-and-forth pacing, fifty steps in one direction, fifty in the opposite. When he’s a few meters from the far end of the courtyard, she opens the door wide enough to ease herself out. For an instant, her skirt catches on something. But she’s able to pull it free before the guard makes his turn. Then she edges to the side of the van and pauses.
She didn’t latch the door. Will it start banging if caught by wind? Then he’ll come over to check, and he’ll see that she’s not there. He might check anyway, she thinks, since she’s no longer moaning. She peers around the back of the van. He’s stopped to light a cigarette. She ducks back as he raises his head and looks toward the van. Her breath is making plumes she hopes he didn’t notice. But then he’s walking toward the far end again. She clutches her skirt close and, hunching over, takes careful steps toward the courtyard gate.
We will both be wolves.
Its two pillars have unlighted glass globes on top, but a waxing crescent moon reveals the shadowy shape of a guard standing against the opposite pillar. The figure’s head appears non-existent. Rhythmic soft pops of expelled air come with regularity.
Sleeping. On his feet like a horse.
The buildings across the road are dark, the road empty. When clouds obscure the moon, she eases her emaciated frame through the space between the pillar and a wrought-iron picket, and then, bracing herself against the sides of buildings, keeps moving. The temptation to hide in a doorway and curl up against the cold is so strong she nearly succumbs. Farther ahead, a church. But when she finally gets there, she finds both its central doors locked. After panic eases, she notices a small door to one side of the main portico.
And that one opens.
The sanctuary light at the distant altar looks like a red star in a black void as she sits in a back pew, arms clutching her shoulders. Soon her head drops forward. When she opens her eyes, the church’s stained-glass windows are a complexity of faint color. People will be arriving soon for early morning Mass, she knows, and might take her to a hospital—or police station.
She stands and after a while makes her way up the nave, gripping the back of each pew, then climbs the two steps at the Communion rail. In the sacristy, light emanates from a narrow stained-glass window. A bureau stands along one wall; chasubles and other vestments hang from a rod on the other. There’s a scent of incense. She takes an armful of the chasubles and lies down against the base of the bureau. Another unholy act. After a while, she stops shivering, under all those colors of feasts and seasons. Her last conscious thought is that this is a good place to die.
Postulant
Prison? Yet she’s so warm it hardly matters. When she wakes again, the room is dark. How strange that they would turn off the overhead light. And the pillow under her head is soft. She tunnels deeper into the mound of duvet and in that warm burrow falls back asleep. At one point she wakes, thinking she must still be in the sacristy, under all the vestments. Thought blurs into dream and dream, thought, back and forth, until she finally opens her eyes.
A nun is sitting near the bed, the right side of her face illumined as she reads. Her rounded black veil indicates that she belongs to the Dominican Order. The rest of her habit is cream colored. Marie-Thérèse slides an arm from under the duvet, prepared to see bloodstains on lake-blue. But no, it’s unstained white cotton. The word comes slowly: nightgown.
“Bonne après-midi, mademoiselle,” the nun says, at normal volume. She places her book on the night table.
“Bonne après-midi, Sister.” Her voice is gravelly.
The nun pours water from a carafe and helps Marie-Thérèse drink. Then she repositions the chair, sits again, and says that Marie-Thérèse has been sleeping, off and on, for over three days. She’s had some soup during that time. Would she like a bit more now?
It’s liquid sunshine. Marie-Thérèse savors each spoonful and remembers Madame Kendahl, at the clinic, and her approval of the soup. Like Madame Kendahl, she can’t get enough of the warm broth.
“Merci,” she finally says, lying back.
After the nun helps her to a lavatory, she sleeps again.
When she wakes, the nun is still there. The light is dimmer. Marie-Thérèse asks if she’s in another section of the prison, a hospital ward possibly.
“Non, non. You are in a convent.”
“Am I still a prisoner?”
The nun’s laugh is a great whoop. “Non, mademoiselle. You’re free to leave at any time, as we all are. But we do not advise it just yet.”
Pieces are falling into place. “I’m putting you in danger. I must leave.”
The nun shakes her head and smiles. There’s something soft, this time, to eat. Rice and milk and—could it be?—butter. When she finishes, a sensation of having feasted fills her with warmth and clarity. She must leave. She can’t endanger these good people any longer.
The nun takes the empty bowl and excuses herself. The room’s one window holds a small rectangle of sky, pink with either sunset or dawn. But the window is too small. Soon, a different nun enters the room. Her eyebrows appear whitened with flour; her skin is pale and sagging. She wears eyeglasses, and behind them her eyes are large, watery, and blue-gray.
“Bonsoir, mademoiselle. Je suis Mother Gonzaga. Et vous?”
Her first impulse is to use Rani’s name. Instead, she lies there as if struck dumb by that simple question.
“Have you forgotten your name, mademoiselle? Do you remember anything about how you came to be here?”
“I remember only up to hiding in a sacristy.”
“Bien! Père Klei found you there. He took you for dead. When he saw that you were in fact breathing, something told him not to call any official. You were much in need of help, your clothing bloodstained, your hair filthy. We’ve had to cut it, I’m sorry to say. Someone left a flyer at our door describing you as a dangerous criminal who used her wiles to escape from prison. This, of course, explained your presence in the church. A reward has been set, quite substantial.” Mother Gonzaga leans back, fingers linked over her ample waist, and smiles. “I commend you, Mademoiselle Hulbert. That was no small achievement, especially in your condition.”
“You know my name then.”
“Of course. It’s on the flyer.”
“I must leave. I know what they can do. If they come here, it will be terrible. You will all go to prison.”
“I knew your matron. And I know that what they are doing is criminal.”
“Is she…still alive?”
“Oui. Petitions are being circulated in England and throughout Europe. We learned this on our radio. So there is hope, mademoiselle.”
Marie-Thérèse doesn’t want to argue with this kind nun who obviously has a more sanguine view of human nature than Marie-Thérèse does at that moment. She touches the nape of her neck, the wisps of hair.
“Yes, it has been cut,” the nun says. She goes on to describe how Marie-Thérèse resembles one of her favorite saints, Jeanne d’Arc, who also was a victim of political treachery. And, too, Marie-Thérèse resembles a postulant right after her tresses have been shorn. It is, Marie-Thérèse can see, a happy reverie. But they’re wasting time. Her nerves are taut again, her senses acute. She dismisses the thought of trying to hide at her ruined home. But who in their network would be brave, or foolish, enough to offer shelter?
“Mademoiselle, I have been thinking,” the nun says. “How would you like to join our convent, in a manner of speaking?”
Marie-Thérèse takes this in. “But you will be in constant danger. I cannot do that.”
“If we refuse out of fear to do what is right, they will have won. But you already know that, yes?”
