Marlene got up, but her mother whispered, “Don’t. The soldiers.”
“Mother, please. The soldiers would knock more forcefully. Someone might need our help.”
“You can’t know this,” her mother protested.
From outside the door sounded a shuffle and a desperate high-pitched groan. “It’s a woman, for sure,” Marlene said. “We have to open the door.” She glanced at her father, but since he didn’t even look in her direction, she forewent his approval and walked over to the door to open it.
“Oh my God! Whatever happened to you?” Marlene exclaimed at the same moment, as the young woman standing outside staggered into her arms. Her formerly beautiful black waist-long hair looked like a matted bird’s nest and her brown eyes were filled with horror. The gray-green dress, that must have been fashionable in a former life, hung in rags from her body, dirt and dried blood smeared all over her.
“Marlene…” the young woman hissed.
Marlene recognized the voice, but it took her a while to match the face of this wretch to her childhood friend. “Zara…? Is this really you?”
Zara nodded. Feeling that her friend’s legs were about to give out, Marlene grabbed her tight around the waist and dragged her into the basement room. Meanwhile Marlene’s mother eyed the visitor.
“What are you thinking to bring her inside? Who is this filthy person?” Mother scolded her.
“Mother, please, this is Zara Ulbert. Don’t you remember her?” Marlene responded, ignoring her mother’s shocked face and leading Zara across the room to settle her on her own cot.
“You’re not serious about letting her stay here? Look at her. I’m sure she’s full of lice and God only knows what else.”
Marlene looked at her mother with a stunned expression. “Can’t you see that she’s hurt and needs our help?”
“I can see that alright. But we can’t help her, she needs to go to the hospital,” Mother insisted.
“Oh… since you never venture outside, it must have passed by you, that there aren’t any working hospitals right now. At least not for mere mortals like us.” Marlene knew this was not an appropriate way to talk to her mother, but she couldn’t help herself.
“One more reason to not let her inside. What if she’s contagious? Has typhus? She’s a threat to our safety.” Mother pursed her lips, sending a helpless glance in the direction of her husband, who seemed too consumed with an old newspaper to even notice. He’d long stopped being the patriarch of the family.
“Mother, Zara used to be my best friend at school, how can you expect me to send her away when she is in need? Let me at least tend to her wounds,” Marlene begged.
Zara who hadn’t uttered a word until now, made to get up. She stood on swaying feet and said, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have come here.”
“Yes, you should not.” Marlene’s father suddenly joined the conversation. “Your father is a war criminal. Your very existence in our house is compromising us. Best if you leave right now.”
Marlene looked back and forth between her parents and Zara. When had they turned into stonehearted monsters? Here was a badly injured woman, needing their help and her mother was worried about lice, while her father feared being connected to a Nazi.
Zara had been Marlene’s best friend, until Karl Ulbert had been transferred to occupied Poland four years ago. Back then her family hadn’t known that Ulbert was one of the masterminds of the so-called death camps erected all over Poland and later became the commandant of the extermination camp in Mauthausen.
In after-war Germany he was one of the most-wanted war criminals. But her father’s profession wasn’t Zara’s fault. Like Marlene herself, she was born in 1925, much too young to have played an active role in the Nazi hierarchy. Marlene shook her head in disbelief.
Zara apparently misunderstood the gesture and her shoulders slumped as she shuffled to the door.
A sudden iciness in her limbs impeded Marlene from moving and she watched her miserable friend reaching for the door. Then, a sudden burst of anger attacked her and she cried out, “No. Don’t leave.” She raised her chin and looked at her parents, “We can’t let her go. She’ll die without our help.”
It wasn’t clear who was more shocked by Marlene’s open revolt against her father’s wishes: her parents, or she. Trembling with fear and rage, she wiped all thoughts of future consequences aside, and reached for Zara. “Please lie down on my cot. I will get a doctor.”
“Thank you,” Zara whispered.
“Don’t worry. I’ll take care of you.” Marlene fetched a glass of water for her friend and gave her a bowl of soup, ignoring the glowering stares from her mother. Then she covered Zara with a blanket and ventured outside to find the family doctor, Doctor Ebert.
He had known her since she was a baby girl and she was sure he would help. Outside early summer heat engulfed her, but didn’t stop her shivering. In front of her mother, she’d put on a brave face, but truth be told, she was scared to death every time she surfaced from the basement. She never wanted to relive the experience she had with one of the Red Army soldiers, shortly after the Russians occupied Berlin.
Dr. Ebert lived only a few blocks away, but it took her the better part of an hour to get there, because twice she needed to circumvent heaps of rubble she couldn’t cross. With a thumping heart she knocked at his door.
His elderly mother opened, giving her a toothless smile, “If that isn’t Marlene Kupfer. How have you been, my dear? Isn’t it such a shame what is happening with our Berlin? But maybe we deserved it.”
“Yes, Frau Ebert. Is Dr. Ebert here? A friend of mine is badly injured.”
“Oh dear, he’s not home. He’s in the hospital. Would you like to wait?”
Marlene was surprised. “He works in a hospital now?”
“Oh no, not a real one like before the collapse. It’s just an empty place where he takes the seriously ill. If you want you can find him there, it’s two blocks down the street.”
Marlene found the address easily. As Frau Ebert had mentioned, it was just a dilapidated building that miraculously featured running water. She found the doctor up to his elbows inside the gut of a patient.
Her stomach recoiled at the repulsive sight, but the moment Dr. Ebert became aware of her presence, he barked an order without as much as a glance in her direction. “Hand me the needle over there, will you?”
She swallowed the vomit rising in her throat and did as she was told. Torn between disgust and curiosity, she opted to look the other way while the doctor stitched up the person lying on the cot.
“Knife wound,” he explained and finally looked at Marlene. “Now. The bandage please.” His hand pointed to a table filled with smudged bandages that definitely had been used before.
She picked one up and handed it to the doctor, who wrapped it around the waist of the groaning woman.
“Shush, shush. You’ll be fine,” he murmured in his deep soothing voice. Then he walked over to the sink to wash his hands and said to Marlene, “As cruel as it sounds, but these women would be better off not resisting the Russians forcing themselves on them.”
Marlene swallowed. She didn’t want to be reminded. Then she remembered the reason for her visit. “Dr. Ebert, can you come to my place, please? A friend has been severely injured, and I am afraid she won’t make it without a doctor.”
His shoulders slumped, and she noticed the utter exhaustion in his eyes. But it took only a few seconds for him to recover and nod his agreement. “Let me grab my bag.” He packed some things into his huge doctor’s bag and, before leaving the hospital, he pulled on a dirty white coat with a red cross on the back.
“That has proven quite useful,” he explained, giving her a second one. “Even the Russians respect us medics, because they might need us one day.”