I take out the folded piece of paper Dr. Funkenheld gave me and lay it on the wireless. He comes nearly every night to see if I have gotten an answer to his message, and I take off the headphones and let him listen to the static. I tell him that we cannot get through, but even though that is true, it is not the real reason I have not sent the message. I am afraid of the commandant finding out. I am afraid of being sent to the front.
I have compromised by writing a letter to the professor that I studied medicine with in Jena, but I have not gotten an answer from him yet, and so I must go on pretending to the doctor.
“You don’t have to do that,” Müller says. He sits on the wireless, swinging his leg. He picks up the paper with the symptoms on it and holds it to the flame of the Primus stove. I grab for it, but it is already burning redly. “I have sent the message for you.”
“I don’t believe you. Nothing has been getting out.”
“Didn’t you notice the northern lights did not appear last night?”
I have not noticed. The ointment the doctor gave to me makes everything look red at night, and I do not believe in Müller’s theories. “Nothing is getting out now,” I say, and hold the headphones out to him so he can hear the static. He listens, still swinging his leg. “You will get us both in trouble. Why did you do it?”
“I was curious about it.” If we are sent up to the front, his curiosity will kill us. He will take apart a land mine to see how it works. “We cannot get in trouble for sending military messages. I said the commandant was afraid it was a poisonous gas the Russians were using.” He swings his leg and grins because now 1 am the curious one.
“Well, did you get an answer?”
“Yes,” he says maddeningly, and puts the headphones on. “It is not a poisonous gas.”
I shrug as if I do not care whether I get an answer or not. I put on my cap and the muffler my mother knitted for me and open the door. “I am going out to see if themail has come. Perhaps there will be a letter there from my, professor.”
“Nature of disease unknown,” Müller shouts against the sudden force of he snow. “Possibly impetigo or glandular disorder.”
I grin back at him and say, “If there is a package from my mother, I will give you half of what is in it.”
“Even if it is your gloves?”
“No, not if it is my gloves,” I say, and go to find the doctor.
At the dressing station they tell me he has gone to see Schwarzschild and give me directions to the artillery staff’s headquarters. It is not very far, but it is snowing and my hands are already cold. I go to the quartermaster’s and ask him if the mail has come in.
There is a new recruit there, trying to fix Eisner’s motorcycle. He has parts spread out on the ground all around him in a circle. He points to a burlap sack and says, “That is all the mail there is. Look through it yourself.”
Snow has gotten into the sack and melted. The ink on the envelopes has run, and I squint at them, trying to make out the names. My eyes begin to hurt. There is not a package from my mother or a letter from my professor, but there is a letter for Lieutenant Schwarzschild. The return address says “Doctor.” Perhaps he has written to a doctor himself.
“I am delivering a message to the artillery headquarter,” I say, showing the letter to the recruit. “I will take this up› too.” The recruit nods and goes on working.
It has gotten dark while I was inside, and it is snowing harder. I jam my hands in the ice-stiff pockets of my coat and start to the artillery headquarters in the rear. It is pitch-dark in the communication trenches, and the wind twists the snow and funnels it howling along them. I take off my muffler and wrap it around my hands like a girl’s muff.
A band of red shifts uneasily all along the horizon, but I do not know if it is the front or Müller’s northern lights, and there is no shelling to guide me. We are running out of shells, so we do not usually begin shelling until nine o’clock. The Russians start even later. Sometimes I hear machine-gun fire, but it is distorted by the wind and the snow, and I cannot tell what direction it is coming from.
The communication trench seems narrower and deeper than I remember it from when Hans and I first brought the wireless up. It takes me longer than I think it should to get to the branching that will lead north to the headquarters. The front has been contracting, the ammunition dumps and officer’s billets and clearing stations moving up closer and closer behind us. The artillery headquarters has been moved up from the village to a dugout near the artillery line, not half a mile behind us. The nightly firing is starting. I hear a low rumble, like thunder.
The roar seems to be ahead of me, and I stop and look around, wondering if I can have gotten somehow turned around, though I have not left the trenches. I start again, and almost immediately I see the branching and the headquarters.
It has no door, only a blanket across the opening, and I pull my hands free of the muffler and duck through it into a tiny space like a rabbit hole, the timber balks of the earthen ceiling so low I have to stoop. Now that I am out of the roar of the snow, the sound of the front separates itself into the individual crack of a four-pounder, the whine of a star shell, and under it the almost continuous rattle of machine guns. The trenches must not be as deep here. Müller and I can hardly hear the front at all in our wireless hut.
A man is sitting at an uneven table spread with papers and books. There is a candle on the table with a red glass chimney, or perhaps it only looks that way to me. Everything in the dugout, even the man, looks faintly red.
He is wearing a uniform but no coat, and gloves with the finger ends cut off, even though there is no stove here. My hands are already cold.
A trench mortar roars, and clods of frozen dirt clatter from the roof onto the table. The man brushes the dirt from the papers and looks up.
“I am looking for Dr. Funkenheld,” I say.
“He is not here.” He stands up and comes around the table, moving stiffly, like an old man, though he does not look older than forty. He has a mustache, and his face looks dirty in the red light.
“I have a message for him.”
An eight-pounder roars, and more dirt falls on us. The man raises his arm to brush the dirt off his shoulder. The sleeve of his uniform has been slit into ribbons. All along the back of his raised hand and the side of his arm are red sores running with pus. I look back at his face. The sores in his mustache and around his nose and mouth have dried and are covered with a crust. Excoriated lesions. Suppurating bullae. The gun roars again, and dirt rains down on his raw hands.
“I have a message for him,” I say, backing away from him. I reach in the pocket of my coat to show him the message, but I pull out the letter instead. “There was a letter for you, Lieutenant Schwarzschild.” I hold it out to him by one corner so he will not touch me when he takes it.
He comes toward me to take the letter, the muscles in his jaw tightening, and I think in horror that the sores must be on his legs as well. “Who is it from?” he says. “Ah, Herr Professor Einstein. Good,” and turns it over. He puts his fingers on the flap to open the letter and cries out in pain. He drops the letter.
“Would you read it to me?” he says, and sinks down into the chair, cradling his hand against his chest. I can see there are sores in his fingernails.
I do not have any feeling in my hands. I pick the envelope up by its corners and turn it over. The skin of his finger is still on the flap. I back away from the table. “I must find the doctor. It is an emergency.”
“You would not be able to find him,” he says. Blood oozes out of the tip of his finger and down over the blister in his fingernail. “He has gone up to the front.”