Commander Amanda Nightingale

by George Revelli

  "What!"

  "We have eliminated it by surgery but I am afraid it will leave a small scar for life. But it is not a scar that will show much, not even in & swim suit, providing the doesn't do the splits or something like that."

  "Is there no limit to all this?" Guy asked.

  "Not quite yet, I'm afraid." The doctor coughed in embarrassment, and was silent for a moment as if gathering courage. "There are two more things I am compelled to tell you, Major Nightingale," he continued. "The lesser of the two is this: Mrs. Nightingale, as you know, was most savagely raped by the Germans, and she contracted — very lightly, I am happy to say — a case of gonorrhea."

  "If that's the lesser," Guy cried, "what for Christ's sake is the greater?"

  The doctor reassured him hastily. "As I said, don't worry. That is all finished. We have cured her of that. If this war has achieved nothing else, it has achieved Queen Penicillin, the wonder drug. Social diseases are a thing of the past. They can be cured now in forty-eight hours. However," the doctor spoke at high speed to get it over with, "Mrs. Nightingale is pregnant."

  Guy closed his eyes and the black silhouette turned into a lump of gold against his retina. Shock and relief, followed by shock and relief; relief only to be followed by a new and bigger shock, shattering him in turn, like hot and cold showers, left him in a state of shuddering giddiness. He shook his head slowly. "She can't be… you mustn't…" Then he found the words. "To hell with the Hippocratic oath. You mustn't let this happen. Damn it, even in Italy, which is a Catholic country, the doctors are giving abortions to Italian women who have been raped by the goums and the Senegalese. This has to be terminated."

  The doctor nodded sagely. "Of course. Of course. As I said, don't worry. I felt it was my duty to tell you, since you are here. In wartime, rules change. Mrs. Nightingale has suspected her condition but I have repeatedly told her she is wrong. Don't worry. It will be terminated by a simple curettage, and she will never know. You won't worry, eh? old man?"

  Guy took a dislike to the fellow. "Is that all?" he asked politely.

  "That's all, old man, that's all."

  Guy could not abide being addressed as old man.

  "Quite sure?" he asked, smiling. "Are you sure she hasn't been just a little bit hung, drawn, quartered, turned inside out? No cholera, leprosy, or sleeping sickness? Surely she could not have gone through that without at least a dose of crabs?"

  "I know how you feel, old man," said the doctor embarrassed. "At least I don't know how you feel. I couldn't know how you feel. I am a pompous ass. Forgive me, Major."

  Guy was instantly contrite. "I am sorry, Doctor. Forgive me."

  "Of course, old man, of course…"

  The doctor put his arm around Guy's shoulder as they passed through the door together. Guy shook himself free, politely, and walked down the echoing corridors, past sisters in billowing white, and wounded soldiers in the pathetic hospital uniform of blue with red tie. Outside, the sun poured down on London. Guy took a deep breath and leaned against the street door to pull himself together. The streets were crowded with people, cheering long convoys of trucks packed with G.I.s heading for the Normandy beachhead. The G.I.s cheered back, especially at the girls.

  "Dad! Dad!" Two oval faces under green school caps, faces anxious with innocence and youth, peered from an open jeep parked at the kerb. Guy did not reply at once. He permitted himself one look of longing at the rumbling trucks, at the men who would be in combat in twenty-four yours or forty-eight.

  "Dad! Dad!"

  The waiting jeep was a special treat, quietly and unofficially loaned, complete with army driver, to Guy by the War Office with the approval of the Minister. Guy forced a big father's grin. "It's all right, men," he called. "Your mother's fine, just fine. She will be home in no time at all. Richardson," he addressed the driver who was standing with the door open for him. "Take us to Claridge's." And to the boys: "Lunch, men. A super lunch. Anything you want — providing it's still on the menu, that is."

  The sun shone brightly. It was D-Day plus fourteen. The Allies were solidly entrenched in Normandy, and British and German armour confronted each other at Caen.

  The room in which Amanda lay was curtained and cool. She slept stilly, breathing evenly, only occasionally giving a spasmodic jump, as one does sometimes when one dreams of falling or missing & step. An even lawn of blonde hair framed her skull. On her bedside table was a letter that had arrived the day before. It was from Free French Headquarters in London, from a friend of her days at 64 Baker Street. It informed her that Colonel Lucien Schneider had trod on a mine on D-Day plus five and had been blown to bits.

  Chapter Fourteen

  And so eleven months later the war ended, and an Allied fist of Apocalyptic vengeance was rammed into the sobbing face of prostrate Germany. Russia pillaged the east. The Americans, British, and French sat on the west, their cheeks bulging with food and Leicas around their necks. Into the devastated cities of the west poured refugees by the millions from East Prussia and Saxony. Their numbers were swollen by the skeleton-like displaced persons from the opened gates of Belsen and Auschwitz. The Germans had less to eat than the coolies of China, and they reeled and fell in the streets. A bar of chocolate, a packet of cigarettes could buy anything from a prize stamp collection to a German countess. The Germans were forbidden to address any Allied soldier, nor were the Allies permitted to fraternize with Germans, except of course to use German girls as slaves. No defeat in history had been more utter. The Germans became the world's untouchables.

  When a British Army truck stopped outside one of the few buildings still standing in Hamburg, there was nothing for the human stream of misery in the street to do except stand and look. It was a stream which was going nowhere, for there was nowhere to go, no movies to attend, no jobs to go to, no food to eat. The Germans with faces like death's-heads watched the English girls in uniform unloading the supplies of food. They looked on, not hungrily, but as though they were looking all the way through, through the apples to the core, from the carcasses of meat to the living heart of the beast.

  The girls meticulously ignored the famished onlookers and chattered to one another as they passed up the open boxes to the house in a human chain.

  "Here, Harriet, take this sack of apples."

  "What are those stupid Germans doing, standing there? Someone should tell them to keep moving. Have you seen how they jump if one yells at them. Their scalps go up and down like rabbits."

  "Mustn't talk to them. Non-fraternization rule. Personal orders of General Eisenhower."

  "It's not fraternization to tell them to go blow."

  "It is if you do it politely."

  "Who would want to talk nicely to a lot of Krauts? Who started the war anyway? Crumbs, Norah, not all those tins at once."

  "Have you ever tried tossing a packet of cigarettes at them? Watch."

  A packet soared through the air and a score of hands clawed for it. An elderly woman was knocked on her back, but nobody helped her up.

  "Vera, that was sadistic, and you know it."

  "Yes, but the Germans are masochists. Didn't you know they were masochists?"

  "Homosexual, too."

  "And perverted."

  Heinrich Scappini passed, and he too stopped to stare. Like the others he was emaciated and his eyes glittered from near-starvation, but there was an air of dandyism about him, a handkerchief in his breast pocket. His pre-war suit was shiny and had become too big for him, but it was well cut. His empty left sleeve was neatly folded and pinned back to prevent it flapping untidily. Like most German males, whether they were going to offices or not, he carried a briefcase.

  Unlike the others, however, he was not looking at the food supplies but at the girls' uniforms which, above the ubiquitous shoulder flash of Combined Operations, was inscribed FANY. He regarded them with a smile of pleasure, and the English accents fell so pleasantly on his ear that it scarcely mattered what they were saying.

  "Give us s
ome more Spam, Pru. I'm standing here doing nothing."

  "Who are you going to the dance with tonight, Brenda?"

  "Major King."

  "What, King of the Black Market?"

  "He hates it when you call him that. He likes to think of himself as the Great Emancipator."

  "He can most emphatically emancipate a keen Leica."

  "He has graduated beyond Leicas. He is running a line of Czech Tatras now."

  Scappini stepped forward. "Excuse me, ladies…" he said.

  Momentarily silenced by this impudence the girls stopped chattering and stared at him. Such an incident was unprecedented in the short, sordid history of occupied Germany, and they hardly knew how to deal with it. The girl nearest to Scappini turned her back. "What time are you going to the dance?" she said. This was the signal for the talking to resume.

  "Eight o'clock."

  "I am going with a divine Yank. He's from Oregon and he looks like Tyrone Power."

  "What's his name?"

  "Hank, of course. It always is."

  Patiently, Scappini said, "Excuse me, ladies. I don't want to break the non-fraternization regulations, but I notice that you are all FANYs…"

  The first time, they thought they might possibly have been hearing things. Now they realized that he meant it.

  "He's one of those English-speaking Krauts."

  "Those are the worst kind. Eton, Oxford, and the S. S."

  The girl nearest Scappini turned back to him. With great deliberation she removed a packet of cigarettes from her battle-dress pocket, and from the crowd there came a great sigh of longing. She took out a cigarette and put it in her mouth. From another pocket she took a Ronson lighter, lit her cigarette, inhaled deeply. Then she removed the cigarette, and, making a moue with her lips, blew the smoke into Scappini's face. The other girls laughed. Scappini's expression of smiling politeness did not flinch.

  "Hp's got some nerve addressing us like that."

  Pretending that Scappini was not there was proving fun. "I wonder how he lost his arm."

  "I know. He couldn't get it out of the way fast enough when he pushed a Jew into the gas oven."

  Scappini said, "I was simply wondering if any of you ladies happen to know someone I encountered during the war…"

  "Would it be considered fraternization, Wendy, if I told this Oxford-educated Hitler-lover to fuck off."

  "Well, it wouldn't be ladylike. I think it is of the highest importance that we English roses set the Krauts a good example."

  "Oh, leave him alone. If he stands there long enough he'll starve to death."

  Scappini was about to make another effort when a stentorian female voice from the house called, "HEY YOU!" Scappini looked up. "That's right, you." A young woman, obviously the senior FANY officer, was pointing her finger at him. "You know what the rules of the occupying forces are. No fraternization with Germans. That means you. Stop interfering with my girls at work. You can understand plain English. Beat it."

  Scappini looked at her and his hot eyes widened. She was a big, strong young woman, and quite comely, with a mouth that suggested humour and frequent laughter. But her face was spoiled by one spectacular disfigurement to which eyes were drawn and then turned away in embarrassment. Her nose was broken grotesquely, like a pugilist's, flattened, and knocked sideways at the tip. Scappini, for all the amusement that he was deriving among these girls from his secret knowledge and memories, was disconcerted. Without realizing it, a great smile was spreading over his face. That was Amanda's old adversary. He looked at her powerful shoulders, and involuntarily down at her knee. His admiration for Amanda's pluck soared. She played the game of life to win, took on all comers, won. He started to laugh.

  The girl in the doorway flushed with anger. She presumed he was laughing at her nose, as in a way he was. Once he started he could not stop. He held his chest with his one hand and tried to stop but could not. The girls stared at him, mortified and disturbed. Nobody in the FANY had ever laughed at Phoebe Smith before, certainly not to her face.

  "Beat it!" Phoebe shouted.

  "So sorry! Excuse me!" Scappini wheezed.

  "Vera!" Phoebe cried. "Brenda! Kick that misshapen Nazi in the backside."

  Scappini was laughing too hard, and was probably too physically weak to resist. Willingly the two girls spun him around, and, lifting their skirts to their thighs, booted him like a catapult back into the uncomprehending crowd, which made sympathetic space for their compatriot. But Scappini was still laughing. His laughter continued as he walked down the street past the bombed-out houses. "Oh, Amanda!" he gurgled.

  At least one girl heard this.

  "Did you hear him? He said, 'Oh, Amanda'!"

  "He couldn't have."

  "He did."

  "No, I think he said 'Oh, Amerikaner'. If he speaks English so well, why should he think we are Americans?"

  The incident had completely upset the girls' composure. Their chatter lost its resonance and cheerfulness. They resumed talking, quickly, compulsively, to cover their embarrassment for their chief.

  "What on earth was the idiot giggling about?" one muttered.

  "Probably light-headed from malnutrition."

  "Serve him right. Personally I wish all Krauts would drop dead."

  "If they keep on not eating the way they are not eating now, they all will pretty soon."

  "I challenge you to repeat that sentence…"

  The letter gave no address but the postmark said, "Soltau, British Zone, Germany," and the date, October 14, 1945, showed that it had taken more than two weeks to arrive. It was addressed to Mrs. Amanda Nightingale, M. P., House of Parliament, London, England. It read:

  Dear Mrs. Nightingale,

  I hope you must not think of me as presumptive to write and recall things you must find unwelcome to remember, and I cannot resist write to congratulate you on your decoration and your election to the House of Parliament, "against the grain" as I read. I know it all happened a long time ago quite, but I have had little axess to newspapers as I was in Berlin when the Russians came in and it took me a long time to reach the British Zone where now I am. I am now well, though before I have been very ill. Do you remember Sergeant von Bernstorff? He was shot in the war. Captain Scappini lost his left arm but this he counts himself lucky ("He's alive," Amanda thought). He was in military hospital when the attempt was made to assassinate the Fuehrer and so he did not share the deaths that were ordered for so many of his comrades, like Captain Mueller, and Surgeon-Major Krug. Mrs. Nightingale I think of you very much. During the dangerous nights in Berlin and after it fell and the Russians were everywhere, my hart kept going out to you, and wishing I could talk to you in the quiet of night. And when I was ill afterward for what the Russians did, I felt also for you. I do not seek to presume, and I know all we Germans are guilty for the war and the Jews, so I do not send my address, but merely wish you much suxess for the future as now, and I enclose a souvenir given me by Captain Mueller just before his execution by the Fuehrer which you may not welcome to see, but which is been very precious to me,

  Sincerely yours,

  Erika Sass.

  The letter contained a smaller envelope, sealed. Inside were long tresses of blond hair.

  House of Commons,

  Westminster.

  London, S. W. I.

  Sir Isaiah Goodman, O. B. E.

  October 14, 1945.

  UNRRA,

  Shannbeck,

  British Zone of Occupation,

  Germany.

  Isaiah, dear,

  I wonder if you would do me a very great favour. I wish to trace a German girl who played a part, but a Samaritanical part in my celebrated «experience». Her name is Erika Sass, & she has written to me from some place called Soltau. I have looked it up on my map & it seems to be quite small. Nevertheless, as she left me no address, I must leave you only with a few «clues». She was in Berlin when the Russians came in, & as I gather she has spent all this time making her way to th
e West, it is likely she is in some kind of D.P. or transit camp. She is very dark & quite beautiful in a rather horsey way, very short-sighted & wears thick glasses. Please, if you find her, take her out & fatten her up with a good meal. The poor thing is probably starving to death like the rest of them. Then tell her to get in touch with me immediately.

  She has been in touch with one Heinrich Scappini who might be more easily traceable, because he was a «good» German who took part in the Hitler bomb plot, & lost his left arm. I would like to get in touch with him too.

  Everybody in the House is terribly impressed by your selflessness in agreeing to work in a country where your people suffered so frightfully, & life must be very lonely for you since Rebecca died. As he probably told you, Abraham came and had tea with us last week &, judging by his comments, Harrow seems to be much more pleasant than it was in Guy's day. Guy joins mo in sending you our very warmest regards. Please find Erika.

  Affectionately yours,

  Amanda.

  Chapter Fifteen

  She was still drunk when it was all over and Guy had left her, and she lay on her back, muttering to herself, weeping. It had been a long time since Guy had seen her cry and he wiped away the tears that rolled down the sides of her head into her ears. "Whose baby?" she said. "Whose baby? I could have told. I could have told as soon as I saw it. I shall never know. Never, never, never know."

  Guy did not speak. He caressed her gently. "Such a shame," she mumbled. "So lonely. So lonely. All alone in a field. He could have kept company with thousands of his comrades, millions of them, piled in great heaps, but he was alone. All alone for the rain to fall on."

  "Don't worry, darling," said Guy. "It's all right."

  "Just grass and a running stream," Amanda said. "Not even a cow. Not even a god-damn cow to nuzzle him now and then. Just him alone. And think of all those mounds of others, in their millions. They could have kept him warm, and they could have told old, dead, soldier stories that the living could not hear. I wonder whose baby. I never talk about it, but I wonder all the time. All the time I ask myself, whose baby?"