A few windows, left ajar to let in the cool evening air, flew open, the light bulbs rocked to and fro on their leads above the beds. Somewhere a few stools fell over, a metal basin spun across the floorboards and came to a clattering halt. More and more patients crawled upright in their beds.
My brother went on sleeping. Meanwhile the air was filled with crackling, salvoes rattling through the evening sky like Morse code messages, deeper thuds, a long-drawn-out whistle followed by a new bang, farther away this time. Only when a new impact, close this time, seemed to lift up the whole hut for a moment did he wake up, but then an orderly pulled us away with him. We had to go to the main building, he said.
He had taken us through a labyrinth of corridors to the central hall, downstairs, in the old hotel, where we were supposed to wait till the shooting stopped. Around us male and female nurses walked to and fro, doctors in flapping white coats ran up and down staircases. My mother sat silently beside me, the bag at her feet, her hat on her lap, eyes closed. The artillery continued to fire, the day was fading visibly, and by the time the violence finally seemed to be abating it was already quite dark, too late to find accommodation elsewhere. One of the senior sisters finally beckoned to Miss Schliess and said, not without an undertone of sarcasm: “We have guests this evening. Take them upstairs.”
As we followed her up the stairs, I caught a fleeting glimpse of the old guest rooms, since all the doors had been removed. Beds, most empty, were lit up by the distant explosions. It had already struck us when we arrived. Most wards were deserted. Behind open doors and windows broom handles danced in the hands of orderlies. Bedding, languid as dollops of cream, spilt over the edge of big wicker skips. Elsewhere tough women cleaners were beating mattresses.
Miss Schliess said that the British high command was not fond of this hospital, independent as it was, which admitted both civilians and soldiers, friend and foe.
“Thanks to that little queen of yours,” she said, “and her husband’s penchant for neutrality.”
She took us all the way upstairs, under the rafters of the building, the upper storeys of which looked out over the scores of wards that had been put up around it, even close to the big window, down on the promenade, of the restaurant where we had eaten so often in previous summers, with a view of the sand and the waves.
In one of the other attics the figure of a nurse stood in the twilight, peering outside, where the sky was criss-crossed by the beams of searchlights. There were still the sounds of shooting and thundering, and the growl of aircraft, but farther away. The nurse watched and meanwhile buttoned up her apron by sense of touch. Perhaps she would be on night shift soon, like Miss Schliess, who took me to the fifth floor, where an area served as a rest room.
In the windows the day, apart from a faint glow far out to sea, was completely extinguished. Somewhere above the distant waves stipples of light sparkled and immediately disappeared. Above the land the searchlights still slid to and fro between the horizon and the clouds.
Miss Schliess lit a small candle and brought us tea. The faint candlelight made the white cuffs which she had fished from somewhere in her apron stand out against the calm blue of her dress. She had noticed the bewilderment when I saw her lacing those stiff linen bands around her wrists, just before we entered the room. “Dress code,” she had replied. “It’s a real convent here, mademoiselle… Dress like a nun, behave like a nun.”
She poured tea. The pale pot hung like a ghostly manifestation in her hand. “So you’re visiting your brother then?” she asked as she sat down opposite me at the narrow table.
“My brother. And someone else. A friend… Though Mum’s not to know…” I drank a mouthful. The tea was lukewarm. “It’s a secret…”
“Ah, a sweetheart, a soldier sweetheart…” Miss Schliess held her tea mug near her mouth, hiding her lips, but I could hear from her voice that she was moved.
“Can’t blame you, dear. Not too badly injured, I hope?”
I shrugged my shoulders. “Light injuries according to his letter.” In reality it was more a postcard scribbled all over, for safety’s sake put in an envelope and addressed to my uncle. “Haven’t seen him yet. Went to see my brother first.”
“Nothing serious, probably… There are others. Haven’t been so lucky myself, mademoiselle. Lost me darlin’ Henry two years ago…” She tried to sound breezy, but I could hear that she was finding it difficult.
She put her tea mug on the table, and clasped it with both hands. “Sometimes I dream that it’s a great big body that we have to put back together. One big mess of bowels and limbs. One long table full of arms, legs, eyeballs, lungs…” She hesitated. “Testicles…”
She brought the mug to her lips again. Behind her back, out to sea, a fierce light flared up momentarily, which briefly silhouetted the outline of her wimple, her ear, her neck. A little later a faint thunder reached the beach. “It’s ages since I’ve seen a chap with everything in its right place, mademoiselle… And these hands…” She put the mug back on the table and spread her left and right on the table top. “The places they’ve been… Ever had to stack someone’s liver back in place, Miss?” She looked at her own fingers and shook her head. “Smelt the smell of an open belly? Filled a hole as big as a football in someone’s thigh with gauze, kept your sick down despite the stench of wound fever?”
She looked at me, she had pressed her lips together. I saw that her eyes were moist. “Saw a bunch of our boys bathing, this afternoon.” She nodded in the direction of the beach. “Couldn’t take my eyes off them. Must have stared at them with me mouth wide open, mademoiselle. The others laughed their heads off… Seen a saint, Elsie, dear? Our Lord Jesus walking the waves?” She tried to smile and brought the mug to her lips again. “Wish I had…”
Beneath her hands, which were not so much holding as supporting the tea mug, there was the glow of the white cuffs. They seemed to surround her wrists like haloes, to support her hands like pedestals, but also to separate them from her body, as if they were infected by the knowledge they had acquired, the arms, legs, groins that she had washed, the wounds and cavities she had entered to remove bandages dripping with blood, to pour scorching carbolic acid onto flesh attacked by germs, pushing eyeballs back in their sockets, rearranging intestines under the midriff.
I drank another mouthful of tea. It tasted bitter, more like an infusion of tobacco than of tea. “I’m sorry, Miss. About your loss, I mean.” I was aware of how inadequate my words sounded.
“Never mind, love. Anyway…” She got up, produced a small watch from her breast pocket and glanced at it. “Duty calls. And you go back to your mother, mademoiselle.”
SHE LAY ON THE BED, the wet cloth on her face gave her the look of a dead person under a shroud. Her arms lay idle by her body, hands on the belly, between the two sides of her coat, which she had unbuttoned but not taken off.
“Is that you Helena?” when I sat on the other bed, which with its creaking augured a sleepless night. “Is that you, Helena?” It must have been the first time in three years that she directed words at me that did not end in an exclamation mark.
“Yes, Maman, it’s me.”
She said nothing else. Between us, on the floor, stood the dark material of her bag.
I lay down, the bed protested weakly. The mattress seemed to be trying to shake me off it and, through the rags with which it was filled, to push ribs or vertebrae into my back. I looked at my mother, at the wet cloth on her face and the square silhouette of light with which the dormer window framed her head and shoulders whenever the sky outside lit up because of a flare or a searchlight, and I thought of home, of my father.