Gisela Devers’ presence made the two young guards stand at attention and look alert. She was the elegant wife of a superior officer in the SS and the only relative in that section of the hospital to have been cleared for visiting.
But as soon as she had walked past them, they began chatting together, smiling. They treated all the others with indifference, including the doctors. They knew their job and carried it out efficiently, without grumbling. As long as they did so, they were safe. Rather eighteen hours on duty every single day than just one hour at the front.
Petra had to agree with Thieringer. Horst Lankau was not the same as before. His ruddy, weather-beaten and jovial broad face was no longer smiling. The other patients seemed to be afraid of him. The army surgeon had also been right about his having been in Devers’ and ward hero Arno von der Leyen’s room a number of times without having had any business there.
After Lankau had been forbidden to leave his room, his fury knew no bounds. His protests became surprisingly colourful and graphic until he was finally given a shot to calm down.
Since then he had regained some of his previous charm.
Thus a great deal had taken place. Wilfried Kröner was getting much better and he now wandered freely around the entire Alphabet House. To everyone’s great amusement he carried the laundry down to the basement and pushed the canteen trolleys around on all the floors. Apart from his muscle spasms that mostly caused incontinence and occasional speech-impeding twitches, his behaviour seemed to indicate the treatment was basically drawing to a close.
The strange Peter Stich, with his sardonic smile, had quit staring up into the shower when he took a bath. Instead he’d begun picking his nose so violently that it looked as if he thought it would relieve the headaches from which he clearly suffered. Sometimes blood poured out of him during fits like this. Petra hated it. It made a mess and put the nursing aides in a bad mood. There was also the squelching sound of the vehement digging in his nostrils.
It made her nauseous.
The guards had acquired another object of their vigilance. An obergruppenführer with a nervous breakdown had been admitted to the room next to Arno von der Leyen. Even though the porters described him in detail, no one apart from a couple of the doctors and Manfried Thieringer knew the general’s true identity. Petra knew only that he was a well-groomed, middle-aged gentleman who seemed completely out of his mind.
No one was allowed to enter his room without the army surgeon being present. It was said he was just to be given peace and quiet to regain his strength. It would cause quite a scandal if word got out that one of the pillars of the Third Reich was lying there.
Gisela Devers had tried to use her cunning to attempt to obtain permission to visit the obergruppenführer, but in vain. Some suggested it was in this way she had attained her present position. Petra doubted it. Her handbag was decorated with a label from I.G. Farben. It was also said she was related to the owners, to which both her clothes and her marriage lent credence. That was a reasonable explanation as to why she was allowed to enter the section so freely.
Chapter 25
Suddenly Lankau stopped annoying Bryan.
Out in the hallway it was the guards who ruled. Why they had been posted there he didn’t know, but the single patient in the next room was not just anybody.
The two SS guards looked to be even younger than Bryan and their eyes were colder than a corpse.
A couple of times a day they opened the door of the room wide in order to air out the corridor. At times like this Pock-Face often passed by, chatting with folks.
Bryan wasn’t fooled by his attempt at a gentle facade. Beneath the surface lurked an alarming and callous determination.
The combination was frightening.
Upon entering their room he always began by straightening his neighbour’s pillow and stroking his cheek a bit. Then he usually turned slowly to Bryan with a grim expression on his face and deliberately traced a forefinger across his throat. Thereafter he patted the unconscious man on the cheek again and continued on his rounds with a quiet smile on his kindly face.
The thin man also studied him briefly while the door was open. That was all the guards would permit.
They despised his manner.
At night Bryan was alone. A mere groan from his senseless neighbour was enough to make him jerk upright in bed.
They usually left his pills on the bedside table so he could take them himself. He couldn’t go to the toilet after the onset of darkness; the door to the hallway was locked. His room had no washbasin, either. After a couple of attempts, he abandoned trying to get rid of the pills by dissolving them in urine in his chamber pot. So he waited until the ward was perfectly quiet, whereupon he went over to his neighbour, pulled his mask aside and crushed the pills into his mouth. He coughed a bit when Bryan pressed the glass of water to his lips, but after a while the swallowing movements always started.
The nurses gave his neighbour his own medicine as well. Bryan didn’t know whether it was supposed to make him go on sleeping or wake him up, but naturally he was worried lest the combination should prove fatal. But nothing happened. His breathing just became calmer and smoother.
If the malingerers were still after him, they would have to strike at night. This meant that in order to watch out for himself Bryan’s nights had to become days, and his days, nights.
He would fight back. If he screamed loudly, the duty room was close enough for help to reach him in time.
He would scream loud enough to wake both the dead and the man beside him.
But then Gisela Devers had stepped into the room and disturbed his rest.
A dangerous but impressive interruption.
Her presence brought back memories of parties his family had given in Dover when summer was drawing to a close and the upper-middle-class families were about to disperse in all directions to their winter domiciles. This was where Bryan learned about the intoxicating scent of women.
Frau Devers was only a few years older than he. Her posture was perfect and her clothes fitted well, accentuating the curves of her body. At first sight of her, Bryan kept his eyes half-closed.
He was spellbound by the graceful profile and the short, soft hairs on her neck that escaped the upswept hair. He inhaled her perfume and felt his desire growing. The scent was mild and ethereal, like an armful of fresh fruit.
She had sat down, her skirt following the curves of her thighs.
No one took further notice of Bryan. He was not expected to regain his usual level of activity until the fourth day. So he could lie gazing at Gisela Devers on the comfortable, dozing borderline between wakefulness and sleep.
On about the third evening Gisela’s body began trembling as though she were about to burst into tears. She bent over her husband’s bed, head hanging down over the book that lay in her lap. It was a sad sight. Bryan understood her.
And then the trembling stopped for a moment before returning in strange, suppressed laughter that slowly spread to her entire body. Her sudden laughter made Bryan forget himself and laugh, too.
Gisela turned around abruptly. She had completely forgotten Bryan’s presence and had never really looked at him. His eyes were glistening with mirth.
And this gleaming lustre made her freeze on the spot.
During the following days Gisela moved closer and closer to Bryan’s bed. She was apparently fascinated by his distant silence. Bryan had never heard so much German. She was very particular, choosing her words carefully and speaking slowly as if she realised special tactics were needed to break through Bryan’s barriers.
And she succeeded. The constantly repeated words gradually became meaningful. Finally he began to indicate that he understood her. This amused her. And if he nodded eagerly, she took his hand and patted it. Later she began stroking it gently even when he didn’t nod.
She was enthralling.
The thin man had been irritating the guards long enough with his curiosity. He’d ignored their
orders once too often on his eternal rounds in the ward. Without warning, one of the guards took firm hold of him from behind while the other stuck his fingers so deep inside the skinny throat that only guttural sounds came out after the vomit. Then they kicked him to the floor and ordered him to wipe up the vomit with his sleeves. During the afternoon inspection Bryan could clearly hear the senior nurse scolding him for the mess.
Gisela looked puzzled when the guards began to laugh.
The young Frau Devers didn’t understand much of what was going on in the ward. Instead she talked enthusiastically about herself most of the time, as far as Bryan could tell. He desired her intensely even though he didn’t doubt for a moment she would denounce him if she knew the truth about him. He was just as captivated by her as she was by Arno von der Leyen.
In spite of the deceit, it was delicious when she slid her hand under the bedcovers and whispered strange, gentle words in his ear.
On a day when Bryan least expected Frau Devers to make advances, Sister Petra had stood in the doorway for a surprisingly long time, chattering away as she cast stolen glances at Gisela’s black dress.
Frau Devers had merely given Petra a friendly nod without going out of her way to acknowledge her existence, let alone show any interest in her.
Just as Petra was called away by shouts from the guardroom, Gisela Devers turned towards Bryan. Her lips were parted. She let the book on her lap fall to the floor and carefully pushed the door closed. For a while she leaned up against the door frame, looking him deep in the eyes. She bent back one leg, thrust out her knee and began breathing so deeply that it was audible.
A fit of shivering drained the tension from Bryan’s body, leaving him hot and vulnerable. Then she took a step forward and stood so close to him that all he could see were the folds of her dress following the contours of her thighs. She leaned towards him, resting one knee on the edge of the bed. Bryan rose to meet her just as she put her arm around his neck. Her clothing was smooth, supple and cool. Her skin was moist.
These embraces were repeated, though only over a short period. The rhythm of the ward was constantly changing. Peace was difficult to come by. And they both had reason to be careful.
Eventually they could make do by merely looking at each other for hours on end. Only seldom did their bodies give way. Her voice alone was like making love. All other women were blotted out.
On one of these days her customary chatter became spiced with a new undertone. Concrete and direct.
Bryan’s inner alarm was slow in reacting. At first he thought she was saying Gruppenführer Devers would soon be having visitors.
Then it dawned on him that she was referring to him, Arno von der Leyen. That she admired him and felt convinced he would be home by Christmas. That he would soon be receiving distinguished visitors from Berlin.
And that she would miss him.
She glanced contemptuously over at her husband.
This was terrible news, if he had understood her correctly.
It became more difficult for Bryan to keep track of the days after he’d been moved to the new room, and he hated himself for being so slipshod. When he’d heard the violent reverberations from the last big raid on Karlsruhe, he reckoned it to be 5th November – two days before his birthday. That must have been about two weeks ago.
The fighting on the other side of the Rhine could no longer be ignored, but in which direction the fortunes of war were going, he couldn’t know. On the other hand it was obvious that the patients in the hospital risked being moved if the Allied advance became a threat to the region.
This, combined with the fact that he could expect a visit from Berlin at any time, made finding an escape plan particularly urgent.
This time it had to succeed.
Every night as he kept his lone vigil he busied himself with these plans and thought about James.
Several problems had to be sorted out. Clothing and footwear. How to get past all the watchful eyes. How to get out of, and away from, the building. The dog patrols and the new electric fence. The rocky mountainside in the dark. Having to navigate roads in the valley where military preparedness was now at its peak. The cold from the damp earth and the streams. The more than six miles of flat vineyards before reaching the Rhine. The uncertainty as to whether they were still harvesting grapes so late in the year.
And then there were the villages below, and all the possible surprise encounters and strange activities of small communities. All this had to be overcome.
Bryan knew he could no longer head south. The concentration of troops along the Swiss border had to be the greatest in the world. Instead he would have to flee via the shorter route towards the west by attempting to cross the railway that ran through the Rhine valley on the edge of the mountains. Eventually, he would try to reach the river.
Judging by the increasing din of war during recent weeks, the Allied troops must be just on the other side of the Rhine. But how would he get that far?
Right now, the mighty river that Bryan had so often used as a landmark on his raids was probably the world’s most heavily guarded waterway. Anyone caught there wouldn’t need to speculate over the consequences. So close to the front line, every suspicious civilian would be taken for a deserter and promptly shot.
And when the Rhine finally lay in front of him, how should he cross it? How wide was it, in fact, and how deep? How strong was the current?
The final question he asked himself wasn’t pleasant, either: What if he did manage to cross it? Wouldn’t his own side open fire instantly? Wouldn’t they shoot at anything that moved?
All in all, the odds were not good. As a child Bryan had learned from his stepfather that stupid people don’t appreciate the importance of reckoning with the odds. These people repeatedly came to prefer dreams, fantasies and illusions that were never realised, rather than steering their life in a safer – if more commonplace – direction. In this way they were often rendered incapable of making any decisions at all. The odds they disregarded forced them down blind alleys that gave them poor opportunities and turned them into losers.
And yet, in the given situation and despite his good upbringing, Bryan chose to disregard the odds. Another important aspect of his upbringing outweighed the gloomy outlook.
It was an eternal truth that problems exist only to be solved.
Naturally he was unfamiliar with the surrounding countryside, and his poor knowledge of the language was just as incontestable. But this was the very recipe for escape, as it were. Since he could no longer stay where he was, he’d have to do his best, and do it soon.
If and when the moment finally arrived, it was of the utmost importance to reach the Rhine before daybreak.
The question was whether James would follow him.
Bryan would have given his right arm for a walk around the buildings or a better view from his window.
The electric fence constituted the first obstacle. He would encounter that fence even if he chose to make for the craggy rocks. And even if he succeeded in getting over the rocks by some other route, he would be forced to creep all the way around the hospital site in order to get down to the road going west.
The easiest way was through the gate. Bryan ruled that out. It was also the easiest way of getting killed.
The next possibility was to dig his way out. But all the sections of the hospital facing the open countryside were dotted with barrack buildings. He wouldn’t be able to dig there in peace. As far as Bryan could tell, the remainder of the fence was on rocky ground.
So he would have to get over the fence without touching it.
The recollection of the cold march back from the square on Hitler’s birthday, past all the big fir trees that leaned over the fence on the eastern side, was still vivid in his mind. Just one little stroll out there and he’d know for sure whether a jump of that distance was too far.
There was actually another way of finding this out. If only he could get into James’ room, he’d easily be
able to judge the distance across to the fir trees from the window.
Bryan nodded resolutely. That’s what he’d have to do.
In any case, James would have to be drawn into the plan at the first given opportunity.
Caught unawares, Gisela grabbed her handbag and rushed out into the corridor. She’d heard the door creak the second before she’d kissed Bryan. Now Kröner was smiling in the doorway as she sidled past him with an indignant look. He had been watching, and he had seen their embrace. Bryan and Kröner exchanged icy looks. The rude awakening from a realm of silk and soft forms to the confrontation with Pock-Face’s smile instantly sent intense mixed sensations of warmth and hate through him.
Kröner was still laughing when Bryan rose threateningly from his bed. Pock-Face retreated to the hallway and glided away with his hand in front of his face, still chuckling. The guards were startled to see Bryan follow after him, but their vigilance ceased the moment Kröner evaded his stubborn pursuer by entering the lavatory and locking the door. Bryan wasn’t sure what he was doing, or why. Kröner was still laughing behind the door. And what could he do about it? Wait an eternity and jump him when he finally came out?
Even though this appealed to him more and more, there was little point in it.
The guards began talking in quiet tones. The whole ward was ticking over at its usual slow rate. Next to the lavatory door, behind which Kröner had gradually quietened down, the door to the shower room stood ajar, as did another door a couple of yards further along the hall. Bryan had never considered this last, pale green surface as being a door, but merely a section of wall before the glass door leading to the back stairs.
Alphabet House Page 19