“Soon, professor, soon!” said the adjutant, revealing sugar-like teeth in his smile and ordering, “Fire!”
“Let me catch my breath,” said Leibe, stalling for time and backing away.
“Fire!” insisted the adjutant.
“Your ship’s bells are ringing over there,” he said, attempting to distract the relentless adjutant.
“Fire!” the other shouted as loudly as a donkey at a Sunday bazaar. “Fire and your damned egg will finally close up! Isn’t that what you wanted?”
The ship’s bells truly were ringing, though.
But this isn’t the ship’s bells at all. This is the professor’s little bell. For the first time, Leibe is glad about the ringing, which is usually unwelcome. He crouches. He lifts the egg’s dome slightly and it’s as heavy as a stone. He pokes his head out, leaving the liner, the bad-tempered adjutant, and the people (who continued applauding deafeningly) inside the shell.
He needs to catch his breath for a couple of seconds. His heart is pounding erratically. And it’s cold outside. It’s night and an orange fire is crackling. People are bustling around him.
“They’ve started… reproducing,” mutters one.
“Boil some water or something,” shouts a second.
“I think it’s best for the men to leave us,” says a female voice.
“We’ll freeze to death without the fire,” says a bass voice. “What, you think we’ve never seen a woman give birth…”
The maternity patient is lying with her face tilted up toward the sky, moaning quietly. Moaning in a bad way, Volf Karlovich understands. Weakened. She’ll lose consciousness soon. When childbirth begins, a woman should shout in anger, from the depths of her soul. She could use some smelling salts under her nose right now.
The egg’s heavy, warm dome presses at his spine. It quivers slightly, calling him back inside. Right away, thinks the professor, right away. I’ll just tell them to give her smelling salts and bring her to the clinic immediately.
The maternity patient raises herself slightly on her elbows, turns her face toward the fire with her eyes wide open, as if she’s searching for someone’s gaze, and falls on her back again. Why, it’s that very same nurse from the special train, the green-eyed one, the one in love! How did she end up here in the woods, surrounded by strange people? And Volf Karlovich himself, how did he land here? What nonsense. It’s time, time to return home to the egg.
He’s already begun lifting the bulky edge of the merciful dome to duck inside when he has a sudden thought that her eyes have been searching for him! Leibe freezes with indecision then casts one more glance at the woman after all. And he feels himself beginning to anger.
The maternity patient moans again, very quietly, wheezing slightly. Her feet are scraping along the ground as if they’re looking for something to prop against, and her belly is shuddering sharply – it’s large and overly broad at the bottom so the child is apparently lying sideways. She can’t give birth to that baby on her own.
“What the devil!” Leibe cries out loudly and distinctly. “To a clinic, immediately! What, don’t you realize the full seriousness of the situation?”
A dozen eyes are gawking at him with such surprise that it’s as if he’s speaking a foreign tongue or crowing like a rooster.
“There’s nowhere to go,” says a tall man in a military uniform, uttering each syllable individually, gingerly, and cautiously. He bears a resemblance to the professor’s adjutant from inside the egg. “This is the clinic,” he says.
This is the clinic? Well, this is just…
Leibe stands and looks around, dissatisfied. The forlorn egg remains hanging in the air behind him. In his fit of indignation, the professor doesn’t notice.
And what if this really is the clinic? He’s never once seen a clinic without walls or a ceiling. Where the medical staff are dressed in tatters and so muddle-headed they can’t lay the maternity patient down properly. Where the operating room is lighted by a campfire instead of a bright gas light. He’s spent so much time in the egg, though, that maybe customs have changed outside and people have become barbarous. It doesn’t appear that the high military officer is either joking or misleading him – this is not the time for that. The devil take it – this apparently really is the clinic, no matter how improbable that seemed at first glance.
The egg floats up behind him and affectionately touches his back as if to say, “I’m here, I’m waiting.” The maternity patient mumbles quietly and lets her head drop to one side; a strand of saliva falls from her mouth. That is not good at all. Leibe abruptly pushes away the egg: A little later, I’m busy.
“Why is it dark in the operating room?” he sternly asks the bearded old man in the torn shirt standing next to him.
The people around him are quiet and continue staring at him with astounded eyes. Quite the medical staff. Who the devil knows what they are…
“I asked for light in the operating room!” Volf Karlovich commands, a half a tone louder and harsher.
Some elderly nurse with a high hairstyle hastily flings an armload of spruce branches on the fire. A sheaf of sparks soars up, and it becomes lighter and hotter. At least there’s one sensible worker to be found in this herd of blockheads. The professor hurriedly rolls up the sleeves of his uniform and addresses only the sensible nurse:
“Hands.”
Blinking in astonishment, she presents him with a bucket of warm water from the fire. People help her, lifting the bucket higher and painstakingly pouring water on the hands the professor has placed under it. Leibe frenziedly rubs his hands together. There’s neither soap nor lye; truly only the devil knows what this is.
“Disinfection.”
A murky liquid smelling sharply of alcohol pours out of a large, rounded bottle onto his hands.
“Smelling salts.” He’s reciting things over his shoulder, carefully bathing his hands in the generous, strong-smelling stream. “Bandages, lots of bandages. Cotton wool. Warm and hot water. Scalpels and clamps, sterilized in flame. The maternity patient should be placed with her feet absolutely toward the light. Onlookers must leave the operating room.”
What am I doing here? is the despairing thought rushing around somewhere at the edge of his consciousness. Operating room, maternity patient, bandages – what silliness. The egg is already tired of waiting over there; it’s shining impatiently, even shaking. It’s time, it’s time to go there. But Volf Karlovich is too occupied to listen to all his thoughts. When he’s standing by the operating table, he hears only the patient’s body. And his own hands.
He’s already kneeling by the woman, who’s prostrate on the ground. His fingers are warming, filling with a taut, joyful keenness. His hands do everything on their own, even before he manages to mentally give them orders. They fall on the living, swaying mountain of her belly so that his right hand is on the hard bulge of the fetus’s head, the left on its trembling little feet. Transverse presentation, the devil with it. He’ll need to remove the fetus before the uterus tears. From somewhere the words surface, like a long-forgotten prayer: Do I have the right? I do not have the right not to attempt. Joy, some sort of youthful elation, suddenly grips him. Leibe pants a little and tears at his collar. And right then, like a bucketful of icy water: But I haven’t operated in a long time. How many years, five? Ten? So much time lost, mein Gott…
Left without any attention, the egg is rubbing more insistently against his back. The professor just jerks his shoulder as if to say: Whoever’s there, I beseech you, not now. He casts back a heap of skirts and moves apart the maternity patient’s paper-white legs, which resist weakly. Just as I thought: the uterus is fully open. It’s ready to release the child and its large, dark hole is gaping like a wide-open mouth in the fire’s bright light. The child is writhing inside, though, incapable of turning around and coming out of the maternal womb.