House of Gold

by Natasha Solomons

  Otto woke at dawn to find he was alive but could not speak. Out of habit, he looked around for Karl, realising with a pang that he was not there. They had taken the bullet out of his throat, but it had torn through his windpipe. They had stitched it as best they could, but the swelling had closed his airway and the surgeon had put a little rubber tube in his throat for him to breathe through.

  ‘When you feel a bit better, you will be able to whisper by putting your finger over the hole,’ explained the nurse.

  Otto touched his hand to his throat and gasped at the agony.

  ‘No, no, not yet. It must heal first. Try again in a week or two,’ said the nurse. ‘You must stay here for a few weeks until you are well enough to travel, and then you are going home.’

  Otto tried to turn his face away so that she could not see him cry, but it hurt too much and he lay on his back as tears rolled down onto his pillow. Tactfully the nurse withdrew. He’d thought he’d relinquished all thoughts of home. He’d hidden himself inside his bearskin and eaten with his hands and learned to think of little beyond the next few hours; days at the most. And yet, and yet. He allowed himself the briefest glimpse of his mother. The Baroness in her sitting room, stirring liqueur into horrid, over-sweet coffee, unsmiling as she pushed the cup towards him. To Otto, it was a demonstration of great tenderness. She expressed love with solemnity over the stirring of coffee, not with quick smiles and laughter. And Greta. Vienna would still be bereft of Greta. My sister, my enemy. What lies they make us tell.

  Karl sat on the floor of the hut, having packed Otto’s few possessions hastily into his officer’s valise. A couple of corporals from the platoon lingered, dismally sharing a cigarette.

  ‘It was rotten luck,’ said one. ‘You surprised a band of Russians who were trying to surrender.’

  Karl shrugged. He considered it bad luck to be shot in the throat, whether the Russian who fired the gun was surrendering or not.

  Shouldering the valise, he trudged painfully back towards the church, his foot throbbing. The church had been chosen as a field hospital since the enemy viewed the displaying of a Red Cross as a target invitation, but the Russians proved superstitious and reluctant to bomb a church, apparently more concerned about divine retribution than Austrian revenge.

  Karl pushed his way inside, dumping the valise on the floor and demanding, ‘Where is Leutnant Goldbaum? I want to see him. Is he dead?’

  The nurse tried to quiet him. ‘Sit down, Soldat, and mind the other fellows resting. See? He’s sleeping. They’re finding him a bed now.’

  Two orderlies carried an unconscious figure along the transept on a stretcher. Hardly knowing what he was doing, Karl stood, shouting, ‘Leutnant Goldbaum. Wake up, Goldbaum.’

  The nurse tried to subdue him again, reminding him helplessly of the other injured and dying men. Karl wouldn’t be budged and, finally exasperated, the nurse allowed him to wait. An orderly brought him a ration of beef tea and black bread. Karl chewed it slowly, with little hunger. His teeth felt loose in his head. Across the church, the nave had been portioned off with a grubby curtain to demarcate the officers’ ward. Even here, the niceties of social order must be maintained. A nurse made up a bed for Otto. A pair of stout German Füsiliers sat on either side of Karl, waiting their turn for triage. They had waterproof boots and sturdy gloves and gas masks. As he struggled to stay awake, Karl heard them muttering about their lot – they were only here because of the incompetence of the Austrians, whom they considered an unpalatable blend of peasants and useless aristocrats, fighting with heirloom pistols.

  Too exhausted to take offence, Karl dozed off, the mug of beef tea still clasped in his hand.

  On waking, the pain in Otto’s throat choked him. He coughed and thought he would faint from the agony; the cough dislodged the tube in his windpipe and he hammered on the bedside, unable to scream. He tried to call for help. But no sound came out. He began to suffocate.

  Across the church, Karl slept. Beef tea, cold now, trickled onto his leg, soaking his thigh, and he woke with a start, panicked that he had urinated on himself. He set down the cup, glancing anxiously from side to side, hoping that no one had noticed. He observed that the nurse had not properly closed the curtain on the officers’ side. He looked along the beds for Otto. A man in one bed was twisting, having some sort of fit. Karl sat up. He realised it was Otto, silently turning blue.

  ‘Nurse!’ he yelled, pointing.

  She saw where he signalled and, with a call to the doctor, ran to Otto’s bed. Karl watched as they laid Otto back down and re-inserted the tube in his neck. The nurse noticed Karl’s gaze and, with a deft flick, drew the curtain. Vaguely aware that he was risking a court martial for insubordination, he hastened across the aisle and, pushing aside the curtain, sat on Otto’s bed. Karl reached for his hand.

  ‘I won’t let them send me away again, sir,’ he said quietly. ‘It’s my job to take care of you.’

  Otto stared up at him, his eyes huge and frightened.

  Out of pity, the nurse allowed Karl to sit with Otto. She was run off her feet, and he could keep an eye on the naughty tube. Karl knew the reprieve was only temporary. He considered what he could do to stay in the hospital. It would have been easier if he, too, had been shot. Briefly he considered shooting himself – a flesh wound in the arm or leg. That was certain to earn a court martial, and probably a death-sentence for cowardice. He glanced around the dressing station. At least half the cases were frostbite rather than wounds. He remembered the first winter in Galicia, when their toes had been warmed by woollen socks knitted by women across the Empire. It had seemed then that the diligence of the women could save them, but then they ran out of wool and the supply trains didn’t come as often as they should and, when they did arrive, they brought shells instead of socks. Socks, Karl thought grimly, were as necessary as shells and bullets in winning a war.

  The pain in his left foot pulsed like a heartbeat. He hadn’t taken off his boot for some weeks, worried that if he did, he’d never get it back on again. He started to unfasten it and, with some trepidation, peeled off his sock. His toe was jellied and black. The stench was foul. He waved to the nurse. She ignored him. He waved again, pointing to his foot. Half an hour later she finally came over, breathed in the awful smell and summoned the doctor.

  ‘You soldiers – I can’t understand why you didn’t come here sooner,’ exclaimed the doctor, exasperated. ‘Now your foot is putrefying from frostbite. No one survives amputations here at the field station any more. We’ve no chloroform, or dressings, or antiseptic.’ The doctor turned to the nurse. ‘I want him out of the officers’ section. Find him a bed.’ He looked at Karl and shook his head. ‘We’ll have to send you back to Vienna. You might very well lose the foot.’

  All Karl heard was ‘Vienna’. He and Otto were going back to Vienna. The thought that, once there, their paths would immediately and irrevocably diverge was unwelcome and he pushed it away.

  Otto lay in the cool afternoon light, trying to swallow soup. It seeped out of the hole in his throat. Only his raging thirst forced him to try again. ‘Vienna,’ he mouthed. He must gain strength to survive the journey home. Two orderlies wrapped a body in a sheet and carried it out on a stretcher. Otto looked away and concentrated on his soup. Exhausted from the sheer effort of swallowing three mouthfuls without choking, he set down his spoon. He glanced across the nave to Gruber’s bed. If the boy lost his foot, he must see to it that work could be found for him in the house on Heugasse. He realised that Gruber was looking at him, and he raised a hand in recognition.

  Dusk fell. The church was lit by a single hurricane lamp. A nervousness hung in the air of the dressing station like electricity that needed to discharge. It was very quiet outside, an uneasy stillness. Nurses muttered. An orderly hurried out. The silence broke apart.

  Shots echoed, not just rifle fire but cannon, and with an intensity Otto had not heard since the start of winter. In a minute, all the patients were awake. They glanced
at one another with big eyes. Quietly, surreptitiously, one or two began to pull on trousers and shirts as best they could. Otto succeeded only in sitting up. If he moved his head too fast, the hole in his throat seeped blood and he felt light-headed. There were no clothes beside his bed for him to put on, even if he had been able to.

  The orderly returned at a run.

  ‘Orders are to evacuate the wounded! We’re under attack!’

  A pair of stretcher-bearers lifted the officer from the bed next to Otto’s, while all those men who could stand shuffled towards the church doors, half of them without any boots. Otto struggled to the edge of his bed. He tried to ask the orderly when they would be coming back for him, but no sound came out. A single nurse remained, tending those few patients unable to leave their beds without a stretcher. Otto waved at her, and she turned to him with a tight, worried smile.

  ‘They’ll be back, just as soon as they can. Don’t worry about a thing, Leutnant.’

  Otto sat back and listened, alert as a rabbit sensing a fox. There was no sound but the guns. Karl padded across the room, limping horribly. Otto wondered how he’d not noticed before. Everyone was too busy to notice the trespass, and Karl sat, silent and un-rebuked, on the edge of Otto’s bed. Dusk gave way to an uneasy, light-filled night. If a second was a bullet, then this battle would already have lasted a hundred years, thought Otto. A shell landed close to the church and there was a cascade of roof tiles, like the furious peals of a xylophone at a concert. It was odd to be in the midst of a bombardment, unable to fire back. Otto felt perfectly useless, able to do nothing but listen. He tried to hear the different notes of the guns; the Austrian rifles had a hollower sound and came from further west, while those of the Russians snapped from across the marshes. It seemed to Otto as if they were creeping closer, but it could have been the amplifying effect of the marsh. Karl went very still, his boots and knapsack resting on his knee. Then, rising in the distance, there came the sound of horses, a waterfall of feet on hard ground and harsh, guttural shouts, louder and louder. A glass window above them shattered, the glass raining down onto the floor. Otto signalled for a pen and paper. Karl rummaged in his rucksack. Otto wrote a single word on the paper.

  ‘Run.’

  Karl stared at him, his face pale with fear, appalled at the suggestion. Otto jabbed at the paper, hoping with that one word he could convey to him the futility of staying. He would be captured as a prisoner of war – and for what purpose? Otto glanced around at the lumpen shapes of men in the beds surrounding him. Still Karl did not move. Otto scribbled another word. ‘Please.’ He squeezed Karl’s hand. Karl looked at him, considering, and then stood. He hobbled across the room and then, hesitating only for a moment, quitted the church.

  Karl lingered on the porch, outraged. How dare Otto order him away, as if he were nothing? He contemplated going after the others; there was a column of soldiers retreating, but now that his foot was free of his boot and had been poked and dressed in rags, the pain was excruciating. He doubted he could run, even if he wanted to. His belly rolled, and he realised that he urgently needed to shit. Cursing at the pain in his foot, he hobbled to the latrine erected outside the church. He lowered his trousers and groaned as his guts gave way beneath him.

  Otto leaned back against the wall behind his bed and waited. He wasn’t sure whether the other men left in the church were conscious of what was happening. Clearly no one was coming back for them. The air was filled with groans and cries like the constant croaking of frogs. A surge of fear pulsed around his body, dulling the pain in his throat. The door opened, and Otto braced himself for the Russians.

  Karl stood shivering in the doorway. Otto looked at him with a wash of relief, ashamed at how glad he was to see him. He wanted to shout at him for his idiocy in not leaving, but he could not speak. Karl looked around the deserted church in desperation, observing the chaos. At last his eye fixed on Otto, who held up an arm in greeting. Karl limped over, hesitating at his bedside.

  Otto tapped the space beside him and after a moment Karl sat and then, apparently unable to hold himself upright any longer, slid in beside him. Then, despite the looming disaster, the gunfire and the screams, he fell asleep, his head resting on Otto’s shoulder. He was warm, his skin clammy with sweat, but his breath was even and quiet, apparently comforted by Otto’s proximity. Otto knew that as soon as the Russians arrived, they would be taken prisoner and probably shot, yet at this moment, with the sleeping boy beside him, he was filled with an odd calm and a simple pleasure at human contact and warmth.

  They were not shot. There were seven men left behind. Three died that first day without anyone knowing their names. Two more were given morphine and told to march, until only Otto and Karl remained. They stayed side-by-side, allies, reluctant to be separated even for an instant. A Russian doctor examined them both; he spoke to them brusquely in German, but he was not unkind, except that he would not lie.

  ‘Your risk is infection,’ he said to Otto, peering at the tube in his throat. ‘If you were at a good hospital in Vienna or St Petersburg, with clean sheets and efficient nurses, then you might live to heal. But here, my friend, the odds are against you. Not impossible. I’ve seen men with the will to live overcome worse things through sheer force of personality, but you? I don’t know.’

  Otto didn’t know, either.

  The doctor robbed them unapologetically. He discovered Otto’s few remaining possessions in the small stand beside his bed.

  ‘The soldiers will rob you in any case, my friend. You may as well give them to a fellow who will appreciate such things,’ said the doctor, fingering Otto’s gold watch. ‘This is a thing of beauty and should be in the pocket of a man who will take joy from it.’ He smiled at Otto with sorrow and benevolence. ‘Who were you, to have such a watch? The Tsar himself need not be ashamed of a watch such as this.’

  For once, Otto was glad he could not answer. He saw the watch that his father had given him on his first day at the bank go into the fat doctor’s waistcoat with something like regret. The doctor went through the papers with little interest.

  ‘The army will take a note of your name and rank and, if you’re lucky, tell the Red Cross. Your family might even find out that you were here.’

  He started to examine Karl, who sat slackly, avoiding eye-contact, reluctant to be noticed by any figure of authority.

  ‘That foot doesn’t smell too good. I think we should send you to one of the hospitals further back and have it amputated. Sooner is better than later.’

  Karl gripped Otto’s hand.

  ‘I don’t want to go alone,’ he murmured. ‘Make him send you, too.’

  Otto hesitated. He had resisted using it through the war, but that was to help himself. This was to help the boy. Karl was his servant, and he had an obligation towards him. He pointed to the pile of papers resting on his valise. Karl, grasping what he wanted, pushed them over. Otto sorted through them and then, with a silent snort of relief, found what he wanted. He tugged the doctor’s sleeve and gestured to the pamphlet in his hand. The doctor snatched back his arm, irritated at being pawed by a prisoner, but Otto was insistent, holding out the pamphlet. The doctor took it and peered at the small book.

  ‘A cheque book?’ asked the doctor.

  Otto nodded, wincing at the pain. He pointed to the name printed at the bottom: OTTO MOSES ABRAHAM GOLDBAUM.

  ‘You?’ asked the doctor.

  ‘Yes,’ mouthed Otto.

  ‘What’s to stop me from taking this and writing my own cheques, if that’s what they are?’

  Otto signalled for paper and, when it was given to him, began to write, hoping that the doctor believed that what he was writing was true, even if Otto harboured his own doubts:

  The cheques will travel to the Goldbaum Bank in Switzerland. Money knows no sides, Herr Doktor, even in war. Switzerland will send money to England, to Germany, to Russia. But the signature on the cheque must match the one held on file with the bank. You need not look di
sappointed, for I shall write you a cheque larger than you would dare to steal.

  The doctor’s eyes widened with interest and greed. ‘And in return you want?’

  Otto began to write:

  My friend and I are not to be separated. We are not to be beaten or starved. If he is sent to the hospital, then I am sent there, too.

  ‘You may not survive the trip,’ said the doctor.

  Otto shrugged, indicating that this was his choice. He picked up the pen, turning the paper over:

  You give the cheque into a bank, they cash it like any other, for a commission of course, and they will undertake to send it on to Switzerland. Money has no passport and every passport, Herr Doktor. It has little respect for borders. Money, like water, finds a way.

  The doctor gave a nod and passed the cheque book to Otto, who filled out a page, signed it and passed it back. The doctor read the numbers, his eyes widening. He threw his head back and laughed.

  ‘You are crazy. Or crazy-rich. I don’t know which.’

  Still chuckling to himself, the doctor slid the cheque into his waistcoat pocket and signalled to a pair of soldiers smoking in the corner. ‘These two are for the hospital in Pinsk. Take care of them. I don’t want to hear of injuries along the way.’

  Otto and Karl found themselves lifted onto stretchers and, with a thin blanket flung over their legs, loaded onto the back of an old cattle truck with a dozen wounded Russians, who eyed them with equal sympathy and suspicion. Although neither man voiced it, each was filled with a belief as fervent as any superstition that, so long as they remained together, somehow all would be well.