by Tessa de Loo
She gave up and trudged off the bridge up the slope back to the seminary. It was all over: she had left her life behind, tossed it into the Danube, it was floating away in the suitcase – only her body was still there; there was nothing else to do but let it move the way it usually did. She went back into the room and waited with resignation until the waiting could come to an end. But only the rain ceased: she stared outside indifferently and saw, without actually taking it in, that the sky was slowly clearing. She had no sense of time – somewhere in that endless night there was a knocking on the door. Half-asleep she shuffled down the corridor. They seemed to be in a hurry, the doors were flung open. ‘Where is the military hospital?’ cried impatient SS orderlies. ‘What hospital?’ said Anna. ‘Surely this is a military hospital!’ ‘I don’t know if this is still a hospital …’ she hesitated. ‘I should have been relieved but no one …’ They had no time to listen to her, the front was very close, they had to unload and get back. The wounded were laid each side of the corridor in a great hurry; the stretchers were taken away for the subsequent victims, the blankets too. Before she had realized it they had gone away, and she paced to and fro between rows of badly wounded – at least a hundred. Boys who had been taking part energetically in the battle a couple of hours before lay naked on the chessboard motif of the stone floor, reduced to a memo that stated where they had been operated on. Moonlight came through the high, gothic windows onto their unconscious, pathetically young bodies. The romantic moon, patron saint of lovers, shone without compassion upon their nakedness, in a perverse aesthetic. Anna walked up and down, taunted; she could do nothing except witness their deaths. Her disgust at the phenomenon of war became greater with every soldier who died. This was how it was, everything that she had gone along with up to now had been merely a prelude. This was it – all care, fostering, sacrifices of anonymous mothers, all dreams and expectations, everything was felled by an obtuse, premature death … The son, fiancé, father, no more than a naked, numb, redundant thing, a name on a card.
A soldier came to. ‘Schwester …’ he rattled. Anna bent down over him. He seized her arm, his eyes glittered. ‘Schwester, we’re still holding out!’ ‘Yes, my boy,’ Anna nodded. He wanted to add something else, opened his mouth with elation, but at the same moment something invisible happened in his body. The unspoken died on his lips, his body went rigid – the frozen expression of stubborn passion was so unbearable that she quickly closed his eyes.
Somehow or other the dawn broke. The dead were grey in the dull morning light. Once again the doors were flung open, doctors and orderlies swarmed inside the building. They looked around fleetingly. What they saw seemed not to surprise them, except for Anna’s presence: she was stared at as though she were a ghostly apparition. ‘What are you doing here …?’ cried one of the doctors in astonishment, stroking his ginger moustache. ‘Have you gone mad? The Russians are coming!’ ‘So …?’ she said indifferently.
A day later it was teeming with industrious Red Cross sisters. Anna did not know where they had come from. She had long ago given up wanting to understand anything about it: suddenly there was talk of organization again, everyone got on with their own duties – but she was not taken in by it, it was no more than a cover for the chaos that could gain the upper hand at any moment. A meeting was called too. The adjutant summoned all the doctors, orderlies and sisters together to receive the Gauleiter’s instructions, ‘The Upper Danube region is holding fast,’ he announced. ‘We will remain here at our posts under all circumstances. The sisters too. They have no reason whatever to be anxious about the Russians. Their safety in this hospital is assured.’ Anna, sceptically letting his soothing words fall off her, stepped forward from the middle of a group of nurses and shouted, ‘But you have already sent your own wives and daughters away, eh?’ The sisters pulled her back into the group in a reflex so that she became a uniform among uniforms again. ‘Who was that?’ said the Gauleiter sharply. He sent his adjutant over; the sisters were asked in turn who had called out but no one answered – they closed ranks.
After the meeting the doctor with the moustache took Anna aside. ‘Listen, Sister,’ he said confidentially, ‘I have four wounded patients here and only their arms are bandaged – they can walk. Now I am going to give you and two other sisters a marching order to accompany them to Munich.’ Anna nodded mechanically. Naturally, she still did what she was told, even if it was something rather pleasant like leaving the seminary. ‘Incidentally,’ he scratched behind his ear with his pen, ‘did you hear that yesterday, that woman who called, “But have you already sent your wives and daughters away”?’ He looked at her with such a shrewd but at the same time faithful dog’s expression that Anna replied in a tone that implied a confession, ‘Yes, I heard it.’ At once she realized why he had thought of the marching order to Munich. Because she could not thank him openly she let him know with her eyes that she knew that he knew that she knew.
‘It seems like something from a former life …’ Anna murmured.
Lotte was staring at her. Behind the face opposite her for the first time she could see the young woman Anna must have been – on a stone bridge in the rain, in a corridor with dying soldiers. It touched her more than she could concede to herself. Making an effort to get her voice to sound matter-of-fact she said, ‘How could all those badly wounded soldiers possibly be left behind?’
‘You have to imagine it: the front is close by …’ Anna gesticulated, ‘orderlies carry the wounded out of the battle and take them to the field hospital. The most severe cases are dressed there, something is scribbled on paper – such and such was done – then they are chucked into a vehicle and ordered to a military hospital behind the lines. Then they dump them and have to go back straight away. They were SS, the Waffen-SS were the ones fighting to the last, the youngest, healthiest boys. One after the other died before my eyes that night. There was no one to nurse them. That long, dreadful corridor. I was alone and I could do nothing. I have repressed that night for years, I could not talk about it. There’s a song, “A moonlit night in April”, that always makes me think of it.’
Seven insignificant little figures progressed with difficulty beneath a heavy sky. Anna was lugging her possessions in a fat leather suitcase. They slept in schools or churches on the way – villages were obliged to provide shelter for them on presentation of the collective marching order. One of the soldiers discovered a cart somewhere into which they could put all their baggage and they trudged on, day and night, ever further, until they came to a railway junction that professional bombing had turned into a moribund moon landscape with craters where shining pieces of twisted rails protruded. They manoeuvred through with their cart; the wheels were creaking dreadfully. Suddenly Anna saw that her suitcase was no longer on it. She ran back, stumbling, tripped in a hole with one foot. Was that her case, that shiny black thing floating in a crater’s inland lake? She fished it out. Now it really was heavy. When they put it back on the cart a wheel broke – they left the cart behind in the company of capsized railway carriages.
Anna stopped to empty her shoe. Her soles were full of holes – her feet were sliding about in the worn-out leather. One of the soldiers gave her the extra pair of boots he had with him, and his helmet as protection from the rain. Still not satisfied, he took her suitcase from her with his one arm and she carried his rifle instead. During the evening it cleared up. The moon peeped out onto the plodding travellers between scurrying clouds. Two guards sprung up from nowhere and barred their way. ‘Mensch, Meyer, look …’ one of them called in amazement, ‘That soldier here is a female!’
From now on reality consisted wholly of having to put one foot in front of the other. Every metre was a metre closer to Munich, a metre further from the Russians. One evening, when every metre had become a metre too much, someone took them to an old school. There were wooden bunk-beds. Anna was shown to a bed, apathetic from tiredness. She lifted herself up with a last effort – still wearing her helmet she collapsed
onto the bed there and then. But the bed could not bear so much tiredness, she fell though the middle and onto the one sleeping below, straw sack and all. He rolled the weight off him without waking up, she landed on the floor with a bump and went to sleep immediately. Early in the morning she opened one eye – a dwarf-like old man with a knobbly face above a narrow, sunken chest was looking at her from the bed with shock. ‘Jesus Maria Joseph, what a dragoon fell on me during the night. I thank God I am still alive!’
Every kilometre on the other side of the border had to be conquered on foot too. Stabbing pains in her knee warned her that it could not go on much longer, the joint was swollen out to the top of the boot. Defeated army units were hurrying to the middle of Germany: cars and freight lorries whizzed by, loaded with women, soldiers, officers. They tried to get a lift but nobody stopped – the ghost of the defeated was breathing down the military neck. The pain became intolerable – her body now refused for the first time too. Anna dragged her suitcase into the middle of the road; she took off her helmet with a bow, as though greeting the traffic, and sat astride it. ‘Have you gone mad?’ cried her companions indignantly, ‘you’ll be killed.’ Anna laughed disparagingly. ‘I couldn’t care less whether they take me with them or run me over!’
A freight lorry approached. There was something comforting about the dumb mechanical strength that took no notice of living creatures – she waited for it with an inviting smile: do it quickly. The screams of panic from the others sounded like a choir singing in the distance. The justice of a primitive fairy-tale was being invoked in the middle of a main road: if the maiden completely surrendered to the monster it would turn into a prince. The lorry came to a stop at a polite distance. A young officer got out; he invited her to get in with military respect for her cold-bloodedness. Stoically she stood up. She beckoned to the others over her shoulder and got in.
The reception at the hospital was not what they had expected after their brutal journey. ‘What do you want here?’ the sisters were snarled at, ‘we don’t need you here at all!’ Only the wounded soldiers were allowed to stay. The three Red Cross sisters got a new marching order: back to the Bavarian Alps, to a military hospital on the Chiemsee. They were back on the road again and everything began anew. They took it in turns to hold their hand out, listlessly, at the kerb. ‘We don’t need you …’ echoed in Anna’s head. Now I understand, she thought bitterly, how it is possible that a hundred soldiers could die in a cold corridor while there were no sisters to care for them: there are too many here.
A military lorry stopped. The driver stuck his head out. ‘Who knows the way to Traunstein?’ ‘I do,’ cried Anna. They had been past it on the way there, it was not far from the Chiemsee. Anna had to go and sit at the front. The driver drove on slowly and watchfully. A soldier on the bonnet was scanning the sky with a telescope. ‘What is he looking for?’ Anna asked. ‘Fighter bombers,’ her neighbour grimaced. The corners of his mouth were still twisted when the cry came from outside, ‘Get out! Bombers!’ They jumped out blindly, threatening circles were being described above their heads. They dived into a deep trench. Anna was buried under her own suitcase. At that same moment the lorry bringing them nearer to the Chiemsee exploded. It was as though it was being hit repeatedly – one explosion set off the next in a chain reaction, debris rained on her suitcase. Only when nothing more could be heard did they creep out from their hiding place. They stepped timidly into the silence that followed the bomb – everyone was still intact. There was a smell of ammunition in the air. ‘It is …’ the driver began, ‘it was a munitions lorry.’ The scorched remains were smouldering. Looking at it was not helping to get them further so on they all went, silently ruminating on the thought of a narrowly escaped death. A freight lorry from Hitler’s construction organization, TODT, stopped. They signalled. ‘Only the sisters,’ cried the driver sternly. As though he thought he would be tempting the irate gods above if he spoke, he took them without saying a word straight to the military hospital by the Chiemsee, which had been set up in a former hotel. It proclaimed itself from afar because – with an eye on the same gods – on the road big white circles with red crosses had been painted.
At the side of the road two men without lower limbs were sitting in wheelchairs. They watched as the TODT lorry unloaded sisters instead of building materials; they saw Anna with her impossible suitcase twist her knee and land on the asphalt. They were not unmoved. One of them wheeled over smartly, gathered her up and put her on his lap, the other took her suitcase. At a brisk pace they traversed the two hundred metres to the chief doctor’s office, where they left her on a bench in the passage, proud of the compensatory strength in their arms. A passing soldier reported their arrival. ‘Don’t drop them in here just like that …’ they heard the doctor storming on the other side of the door, ‘we don’t need anyone! The war will be over the day after tomorrow; we have nothing to eat, they’ll have to manage for themselves.’ Anna let her head sink onto her chest. She looked at her nails with great attention: they were black as though she had been digging up potatoes. All her emotions had been used up; the doctor’s roaring did not move her. One thing was certain: she was not taking another step. If needs be she would take root on that bench, opposite his door, to remind him of her existence. ‘Those poor women.’ she heard the soldier complain, ‘there are still some beds, why can’t they sleep there? And they could get that ration of three potatoes too …’ The doctor changed his tack; hearing out the soldier’s plea was more exhausting than consenting. That night she lay in a real bed between smooth white sheets. Anna vaguely remembered the perception of unfamiliar luxury from long long ago, when she had arrived at her uncle’s house in Cologne.
Although the chief doctor did not need anyone, on her rambles round the hospital the next day she had discovered a room with mattresses strewn on the floor. Young children were lying on them with a large bandage where an arm or leg had been lost, or with a bandaged head, eyes staring straight at the ceiling. Anna, who thought she had experienced the very worst with the dying soldiers in the night, who had intended to get rid of everything to do with children with her suitcase of baby clothes, walked in a daze between the mattresses, now and then kneeling down by a motionless child who looked at her with dejected resignation. No child was playing or laughing; an oppressive silence ruled as though they were all in a permanent state of shock and were waiting passively until their mother or father came to take the shock away with a kiss. But there were no mothers or fathers, no tellers of fairy-tales to distract them. They lay there, but overwhelmed by a collective resignation as though they were doing penance for something they had not done. An associated absurdity also struck Anna: they were light blonde without exception, they all had blue eyes. Well fed as they were, they looked like plump little cherubs who had been shot down from the fluffy clouds by a misanthrope whose hate extended to heaven. Although the chief doctor did not need anyone, Anna got down to work as usual.
‘What had happened to the children?’ Lotte looked at her nervously. There was a speck of foam on her upper lip, which made her look a bit ridiculous and so Anna found it easier to distance herself from the oppressive images that she had been recalling.
‘They were living in a children’s home on the Obersalzberg,’ she said soberly, ‘that had been bombed by the Americans. They were the Lebensbornkinder, pedigree children of the Nazi breeding farm. Specially selected blonde men and women were brought together – for insemination, as it were. A child then arrived and they donated it to the Führer.’
‘And what did he want to do with it?’
‘After he had tidily exterminated the Jews and the gypsies the noble Master Race had to be created instead, to rule the world. These children were being brought up on the Obersalzberg, well hidden from the outside world. After the bombing they were fetched down and taken to the emergency hospital on the Chiemsee – and then the chief doctor said he didn’t need any sisters.’
It baffled Lotte. It was too much, t
oo complex, too macabre. She disengaged. ‘I think I’ll ask for the bill, I’m so tired all of a sudden. It must be from all that eating, and the alcohol.’ She pushed her half-full wine glass aside deliberately.
‘At our age you can’t take as much,’ said Anna ambiguously, ‘you are reminded of it over and over again in a painful way.’
Back at the hotel Lotte received a telephone call from her eldest daughter who enquired expectantly ‘on behalf of the others too’ about the progress of the cure. Lotte gave a flattering picture, full of false enthusiasm. I must tell her about it, hammered simultaneously in her head. But what should she say? I have found my sister, your aunt. And then? The incomprehensible, unbelievable, unsavory drama in X acts? How could she ever explain it? She let her daughter’s counsels wash over her – take it quietly, enjoy it, relax, don’t worry, have you already met nice people? – and said goodbye. I must stop all that talking, she said to herself angrily, the receiver still in her hand. It exhausts me – the children are expecting me to come home rejuvenated. They have a right to. It is their present, it has cost them plenty of money.