The Invisible Victory

'I know,' I told him coldly. 'I've read _Mein Kampf.'_

'It is pleasant to think we share a common taste in literature,' Rudi said calmly.

I wanted to escape from the room. 'If I raise the money, will you have the penicillin? It's urgent. And anyway I'm leaving Wuppertal for good the day after tomorrow.'

'Come back at noon.'

Hans with the dyed hair was waiting in the hall. I hurried back to the mess. I had ten pounds in sterling notes hidden in my room. The rest I borrowed from Greenparish, who I had suspected of hoarding currency from selling his cigarette ration. I climbed the cascade of stairs to Rudi's flat again the following morning. By then I was full of doubts over the unsavoury transaction. The penicillin might be understrength, or unsterile, so worse than useless by augmenting the infection.

Hans answered the door. He told me that Count von Recklinghausen was out. I waited until Hans returned with a foolscap envelope, which I tore open on the spot. It contained a squat bottle with a screw top, the sort used in laboratories the world over. Gummed across the stopper was a reassuring printed label saying unfruchtbar, sterile. It was half full of brownish crystals, like the early penicillin I had seen at Oxford. I handed over the money, which Hans counted carefully. He said 'Danke' curtly and shut the door.

In the hospital, the nurse with the flowing hat was not at her post. I walked up and down impatiently. After some minutes the old doctor appeared, still in his mended white coat.

'How is Frдulein Dieffenbach?'

He shook his head gloomily. 'The news is bad. She has suffered a spread of the infection to her blood. I had hoped that it might have remained localized, but in her present physical condition it was just too much for her. We must hope that she has enough reserve of strength to overcome it.'

I held up the bottle proudly. 'I have some penicillin.'

He took it silently, turning it in his thin, white fingers. 'It's not American penicillin?'

'American penicillin is impossible to obtain. You know that.'

'There are ways. I've had a few ampoules here, stolen from the military hospitals. Might I ask where you got it?'

'That's out of the question,' I told him shortly. It did not seem the moment to inspect the teeth of gift horses. Then I added, 'It was extracted from urine.'

'Yes, I know of that technique. But the source may still be of importance,' the doctor said musingly. He held the bottle towards the light. 'Sometimes it is not penicillin at all, but any sort of crystals, perhaps brown sugar, or water coloured yellow.' He abruptly broke the sterile seal, tipping some of the powder into his palm. 'No, that's not penicillin.' He sniffed it. 'It has a distinct scent. It is bath salts, ground up in the kitchen.'

I had gone a couple of streets towards Rudi's flat before realizing the pointlessness of again climbing the flight of stairs. Hans would certainly not open the door to me. I could do nothing against Rudi without landing myself in the same jail. He knew that I was leaving Germany for good the next day. He would just laugh at me. Which would be intolerable.

I hurried back to the mess. I told the orderly sergeant that I wanted a jeep and driver at once. It was not until mid-afternoon that transport could be produced. It was dark when I arrived in Bad Godesberg.

It was a modern Luftwaffe hospital, serving the airfields scattered thickly across north-western Germany. Like everything else provided for Hitler's Forces, down to their boots and braces, it was of better quality than afforded German civilians. A corporal on duty told me that Colonel Mellors was in the wards. I sent my name, with a message that my visit was urgent. Within a few minutes David appeared, in battledress and carrying a stethoscope, bubbling as usual.

'Can I have a private word with you?' I asked tensely.

'You've chosen a fine moment, boy, We've just got a couple of cases of typhus, which is putting the DDMS into a fine flap, typhus having been officially eradicated in this part of the world. I expect they're sitting up there saying I'm a bloody fool who's made the wrong diagnosis.'

He led me down a long low-ceilinged corridor into a room with his name on the door, containing a desk, a pair of metal and canvas chairs, some filing cabinets and a refrigerator.

'Got the clap?' he asked amiably.

'Certainly not!'

'I imagined that to be the case, from the secretiveness of your approach.'

'You remember, I worked out here in Wuppertal before the war? I stayed a year with a German family, the father was a doctor.' I told him quickly the story of Gerda, and of her present suffering.

'You say she's got puerperal? Just like your wife?' I nodded. David began to look uneasy. 'What do you want me to do about it, boy? Is she being treated properly? I know a squadron-leader who's a gynae man looking after the WAAFS at Celle, up near Hanover. I could get him on the phone.'

'I want some penicillin.'

I wondered if David would be angry, but he just said resignedly, 'Look, boy-'

'I'm sorry. I've put you on a spot.'

'I'm continually getting these pleas, you know. From the men, who've been fratting with girls. It's always the old father or mother who are dying. To tell the truth, I don't believe one of these heart-rending stories is true. The girls want to sell it on the black market. I can't get enough for my own patients.' He jerked his thumb towards the refrigerator. 'That's half full of penicillin, but I could use twice as much if I had it.'

Feeling deflated, embarrassed, and foolish, I asked, 'You can't spare an ampoule, even for me?'

He shook his head slowly. 'I just can't break the rules, can I?'

'I didn't really expect that you would.'

'That's flattering, I suppose.'

'I shouldn't have come here. It was all on an impulse.'

'This woman's pretty sick?'

'The doctor said she'd developed septicaemia.'

'She's likely to be a goner, then?'

'You'd know better than me.'

David sighed. 'It's her bad luck to be born a German, isn't it? But we didn't start the war. And we didn't lose it, either. No, I'm sorry, Jim. I'm sorry.' He got to his feet. 'I must get back to those typhus cases.'

'And I'm sorry to make a nuisance of myself.'

'Not a bit. You'd every right to bring me your problem. It's the Army which doesn't allow me to help.'

We exchanged a few commonplaces. At the door, David jerked his head and said, 'I've got to go in this direction. Can you find your own way out?'

I nodded. 'Shall I see you in London over Christmas?'

'Yes, let's make a night of it.'

David hurried round the corner. I waited ten seconds or so. I went back to the office and switched on the light. Inside the refrigerator were cardboard packs like cartons of American cigarettes. Each was labelled, 'Penicillin-50 Doses'. For the second time in my life, I stole.

36

Paris after Germany was as delightful as Offenbach after Wagner. Its smell was unquenchable. It still reeked of coffee and Gauloise cigarettes, though both were hard enough to come by. The breath of the Mйtro stations still blew as dry as a biscuit. There were GIs everywhere. Good Americans, having escaped death, went to Paris.

FIAT had first gone into action in Paris. Our vanguard of eleven scientists, with an escort of three armed American officers, landed in France just after D-day. They had entered Paris in a pair of jeeps with the leading tanks of General Leclerc's liberating division. There was good reason for the rush. They wanted to question Professor Joliot-Curie. He was married to the daughter of Madame Marie Curie, and the couple had shared the Nobel Prize for studies in radioactivity. FIAT wanted to know if the Nazis had the atomic bomb.

I had a room in a commandeered hotel on the rue de Rivoli, previously occupied by the Gestapo. I shared with two ebullient American officers, who promised to show me the delights of Pig Alley'-Pigalle. I had orders to report without delay to an office near the Place d'Etoile. But as often happens with military arrangements, the officer in charge had no news of my coming, no knowledge of me in his life and no interest in me whatever. As I had travelled overnight, I was in the street well before midday, at a loose end. At the next corner, I found the road crossed by a narrower avenue, Pierre Premier de Serbie. It was the home of the only man during the entire war to threaten me with a gun. I strolled to the block of flats, and saw with some excitement LAMARTINE against one of the numbers displayed in the hall. The lift was out of order, like most in Paris. I walked upstairs, full of curiosity.