Fifteen Words

by Monika Jephcott Thomas

  Attached to mother via baby in this way he felt the next mutilating wave surge through them. The accompanying yell from his wife had Lieutenant Lagunov stepping in and out of the lamp-lit room like a vampire into the day. Impossibly, in this fridge of a room, Max was sweating now almost as much as Klara, and then, eased out on Max’s terms much to the frustration of Nature, the head appeared. Blue and puckered as if furious to be out in this world. And Max didn’t blame it.

  A head poked through the doorway. Blue and puckered. It was Dr Löwe.

  ‘How are things going in here, Dr Becker?’ his voice quivered as he laid a pair of freshly sterilised forceps on the table by the bed.

  ‘Well, everything is OK,’ Becker chewed on the words as he leafed through Stöckel, ‘But I am starting to think that things are taking a little longer than they should.’

  They both looked at Erika, who had to agree with him, but there was no way she was going to let either of them loose on her or her child with those forceps.

  ‘It’s fine,’ she gulped. ‘Just a little more time, that’s all we need.’

  ‘But the baby’s head is very low now, Frau Portner…’

  ‘Dr Portner,’ Dr Löwe simpered.

  ‘… And I’m not sure time is what we have.’

  ‘OK, Mrs Lagunov, you’re doing great. The head is out. Now,’ he mumbled the rest for his ears only, reciting from his university’s recommended manual on childbirth by Stöckel, the book he and Erika had tested each other from for the paediatric exam. He may have been able to coach her when it came to Latin, but when it came to childbirth she was clearly the better student. And in a way he wouldn’t let himself be better than her in this subject. They all knew Babyface was a natural when it came to paediatrics, but Max thought it was impossible to be more knowledgeable than a woman when it came to pregnancy and birth. After all, how could a man ever know what it really felt like to have another human being tearing its way out of him? How could he ever know what you would really need in that situation? Sure, Max knew where to clamp and cut, but that wasn’t what he meant. This was a heaven-sent miracle, but it was also one of the most brutal things he had ever seen, and he had seen some brutality since arriving at the front. He had no idea how he would ever deal with seeing Erika in this situation, if and when the time came for them to have a baby together.

  ‘Observe the restitution of the head through one eighth of a circle. The presenting shoulder can then be delivered from under the pubic arch,’ he recited from Stöckel. ‘Now, Mrs Lagunov when the next contraction comes you can push as hard as you like, OK?’

  Klara nodded furiously, her sweaty hair whipping her face as she did so. Then a sound rose from her like that of his old motorbike accelerating through the desolate streets back in Breslau, her entire being shuddered—

  ‘Push!’ he cried.

  She pushed with every reckless, visceral, fading pulse of power she had left in her body, spurred on by the sight of Becker reaching for the forceps. Dr Löwe let out a yelp, Erika heard the clattering of forceps against the other instruments on the table, she heard the call of a cuckoo somewhere out in the garden, then a high, furious wail drowned it all out and she felt something soft wriggling against her knees. Becker had dropped the now redundant forceps—

  And he held a little boy in his hands.

  And he held a little girl in his hands.

  For a moment Max marvelled at the sight and the soft slimy heat. Then he remembered there was work to be done and he applied two of his clamps to the umbilical cord and cut in between them with the pliers. He held the baby boy upside down by the ankles to ensure he inhaled no mucus and listened for breath.

  The room was so quiet now he could almost hear the five deutschmark watch, which languished in his pocket jealous of the quality timepiece lording it up on the window sill.

  Tick tick tick tick.

  Then the baby cried and Max wrapped it in a stained towel and gave it to its elated mother, who cooed over it as if it was a thing of serene beauty. But covered in mucus and blood, purple and raging, to Max it was ugly. It even sent strong recollections his way of horrors he’d seen on the Maginot Line. Yet the mother doted and seemed to be suffering from a joyful amnesia from the agony her body had just endured. He was suddenly aware of his own malnourished, aching, abused form and wished he could experience that forgetfulness new mothers have for pain every morning when he woke in that abominable hut alongside a thousand other tortured souls. But then, he reasoned, perhaps men do have amnesia when it comes to pain and suffering, the pain and suffering associated with war at least. Otherwise surely the First World War would have been war enough. And he found himself seeing the ugliness of the baby in Klara’s arms not just in its temporary physical state, but in its immutable gender too.

  But his job was not over yet. He needed, she needed, to deliver the placenta, and it needed to be delivered whole. If any pieces were left behind there would be a great risk of infection or haemorrhaging which in these conditions with these tools and medicines would be undoubtedly fatal. But, as with his thoughts on her perineum, he thought it was best not to share this with the patient either.

  Twenty minutes passed during which Max leant on the mildewed window-sill trying to recover the strength the delivery had taken out of him, whilst Lieutenant Lagunov, an officer who had fearlessly lead troops into some of the most bloody skirmishes on the Eastern Front, finally found the courage to perch on the edge of the bed, comfort his wife and greet his new son. One of the other women stepped inside too and helped wash and dress the baby in the smallest clothes they had – his big sister’s cast-offs which looked ridiculous not in their femininity but in their sheer size on his minute body. And then the placenta released itself from the womb. Although the parents could hardly have cared less what was going on at the other end of the bed, Max examined the organ with as much care as he had the baby itself. He held it near the lamplight and prayed it was intact.

  Lieutenant Lagunov shook Max’s hand and sent him out into the street with nothing but his thanks, which was fine by Max. He was worried for a moment there that Lagunov, like Utkin, might have pulled a bottle of vodka from somewhere and insisted on wetting the baby’s head, but it seemed Lagunov didn’t have access to the same provisions as Utkin, or if he did he didn’t want to share them with the German, doctor or not.

  Max floated home pleasantly intoxicated on the part he’d just played in the successful delivery. The wind that had molested him on his walk into town this morning was gone and the atmosphere now was halcyon. Even the Northern Lights put on a brief show for him and he would have stopped and bowed at the green dream cloud saluting him had he not been flanked by two moaning guards completely ignorant of the miracles going on all around and above them that day.

  The guards left him at the gatehouse and Max walked back toward the barracks alone, unaware of Sergeant Volkov aiming his rifle at the back of his head.

  She was perfect.

  Her little Netta blinking in the light of this puzzling world. Despite everything, Erika thought, I did it. Despite having to endure this birth not just without her husband or family, but without anyone she remotely knew present. Despite the presence of Doctors Tweedledum and Tweedledee who were currently delivering her placenta, though she had stopped worrying about their competencies as soon as Becker had lowered Netta into her arms. Despite being displaced from her family home by circumstances and then turfed from her temporary home by two American officers wielding riding crops. Despite the risk of being bombed or shot at at any time throughout her pregnancy. Despite having to keep herself and her baby healthy on such meagre rations. Despite the trauma she had put her body through travelling the length and breadth of the country in those horrid trains – and once on the outside of one. No! These thoughts – flowing through the bottom of a dark gorge in her mind while her senses above were incandescent with the new life before her – dammed themselves up momentarily and took another course: she had not put her body thro
ugh that trauma. He had put her body through that trauma. Hitler and his cronies. And deep in that gorge of her mind there was fury at the Führer that could have put her in such danger; that could have put everyone in the country through such pain and loss. But she buried it, for now at least, held her daughter just that little bit tighter, and thought her heart might explode when Netta’s tiny hand grasped her little finger and all her child’s vulnerability and all the journeys that awaited it, her desire to protect it and the Sisyphean enormity of the task tsunamied over her.

  As the waters receded she became aware of Dr Löwe’s gentle purring, ‘There’s someone here to see you, Dr Portner.’

  She looked up to see a large bunch of lilacs at the door with Karl peeking out from behind them. ‘Is it OK, to come in?’

  ‘Of course,’ Erika said crying almost imperceptibly. ‘Come and meet your granddaughter.’

  She had wanted so much, had rehearsed it even as she lay in bed every night in recent weeks, for that sentence to be Come and meet your daughter as Max appeared breathless at the door, back from the front, just in time, unharmed. And though it wasn’t to be she could never begrudge Karl the honour of being the first relative to meet little Netta.

  ‘Oh my Lord,’ he huffed waving the lilacs about until Dr Löwe took them from him and went in search of something resembling a vase. ‘It’s… she..?’ Erika nodded, smiling through her tears. ‘She’s here already? I… I had no idea it would be so soon otherwise I would have come…’

  ‘It’s OK,’ Erika reassured him and laughed at the sight she had been spared of two doctors and her father-in-law flapping around the room whilst she was trying to deliver her baby.

  ‘Do you want to hold her?’

  ‘Me?’ Karl said rather pointlessly as Becker had also long since left the room.

  ‘Yes. Her name’s Netta,’ she said holding the baby up to him.

  After visibly steeling himself for his most precious porterage of recent times, he took Netta in his arms and held her for much longer than he had ever managed any of those damned suitcases without so much as a twinge in his damaged wrist.

  ‘Oh, I almost forgot,’ Karl said to Erika though he was unable to take his eyes from Netta, ‘a man came to the flat, just while we were putting the last of the things on the cart. Said he had a message for you. He insisted upon giving it to you personally, so I brought him along. He’s waiting outside. But I said I’d only bring him in if you were up to it and now you’ve… well, perhaps I should tell him to come back another…’

  ‘A message from whom?’ Erika said arranging her hair and making sure the sheets were covering her in a manner which told Karl she had already decided to receive the messenger; that she had already decided whom the message was from. As Karl had. As they both hoped.

  ‘I don’t know. For sure.’

  ‘Is he German?’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘It’s OK. Let him come in.’

  Karl handed Netta back to her mother and disappeared for a minute. Erika told herself not to get too worked up speculating. After all, the last time she received an emissary a couple of days ago it was those callous American officers kicking her out of her home. At least this time she knew it was a fellow countryman. But was that a good thing or a bad thing? And if it was bad news, about Max, was this really the time to receive it, postpartum, with her baby in her arms. How would her own vulnerable physiognomy react to grief right now? And Netta shouldn’t be present, shouldn’t feel her mother wracked with grief at such a tender age; who knows what repercussions it may have on the child in the future? No, don’t let him in, not now, not today.

  ‘Karl?’ she called out weakly at first then she found more vigour, more volume in her urgency. ‘Karl? Karl?’

  ‘Yes,’ he was there again. ‘Is everything all right?’

  ‘Yes, but…’

  ‘This is the man I told you about.’

  It was too late, the man was there. Yet his face seemed benign. Or was that just the humility all men project in the presence of a new mother and the tribulations they know she has just surmounted? This man though, Erika observed, was clearly the survivor of his own tribulations. The dark circles around his eyes, his skin and his clothes hanging loosely from him, the two missing fingers of his left hand, which along with the other toyed with a scrap of yellow paper.

  ‘Hello Erika. My name is Paul,’ he said. ‘I am a friend of your husband’s, Max. Max Portner?’ he asked just to be sure as the woman had glazed over somewhat as if she wasn’t recognising the name.

  Eventually she nodded and he watched as she closed the blanket tighter around her child and let her little finger dangle near one of the baby’s hands until it gripped it instinctively.

  ‘Well,’ he continued, ‘we were both prisoners of war. Captured in different places, but we both ended up in a camp called Gegesha on the Russian border near Finland. He was the camp doctor…’

  Was? She thought, he used the past tense. Why did he use the past tense?

  ‘… and he treated me well when I needed it. He saved my life, in fact,’ he said holding up his left hand just long enough to make his point without making the lady uncomfortable. ‘And he asked me to give you this.’ He handed over the piece of paper. ‘I hid it in my shoe when I was released. In the heel,’ he beamed. ‘I made a little compartment in there for smuggling things about the camp, you know. We had to be resourceful like that. And your husband. He’s one of the most resourceful people I know. He’s doing such a great job for his fellow prisoners up there, taking such good care of them, when there’s so much sickness and injury.’

  Erika had stopped consciously listening the moment the paper had touched her hand. Those gorges of her mind channelled the sound of Paul’s voice, absorbed the plaudits, took comfort from them, but, up above, her senses were overcome. One arm cradling Netta, the other hand stroking the rough surface of the besmirched paper as if it were her husband’s skin, her eyes blinking away the tears urgently so she could examine the handwriting thereon. It was his all right. Because it was hers. Just like hers. There was nothing on it but an address, the address of the little store in Pechenga where the monk Christoph trudged to every day to pick up the post. But at last she knew he was alive, she knew why he had not been in touch (not that she doubted him for a second, she thought wryly, recalling some of the curses she had hurled at his image during labour) and she knew how to contact him.

  Volkov was jamming the barrel of his rifle into Max’s back with unnecessary and vindictive force, shepherding him away from the barracks, away from the hospital, away from the kitchens, away from any part of the camp Max was familiar with to the row of squat wooden huts downwind of the cesspit where the rats partied atop pyramids of faeces.

  ‘Can you explain to me, please, what this is all about?’

  Just like the baby boy he had delivered earlier, Max felt traumatised and furious at being pushed into a new world he was not ready for, that he would never be ready for.

  ‘You have failed to follow orders, Portner.’

  ‘Concerning what? What orders?’ He wracked his brains desperately trying to think of a situation that Volkov could have possibly misconstrued as him not following orders. If only he knew what Volkov was talking about he could explain the misunderstanding. But somehow, Max thought stealing a glance over his shoulder, judging by the delight on his aggressor’s face, Volkov had no intention of yielding to any explanations no matter how convincing.

  ‘I specifically told you when you began your work,’ he laced the word with as much sarcasm as he could to show how he rated their respective occupations, ‘that should you allow more than nine per cent of the camp’s population to be off work due to illness at any one time you will be held responsible’.

  ‘I don’t believe more than nine per cent of the camp’s population is sick right now. We keep rigorous records, you’ve seen them for yourself.’ He turned again and saw that Volkov had stopped outside the little huts, which up c
lose could more accurately be described as boxes.

  ‘Get in! Solitary confinement. That was the punishment stated for sloppy medical practise, was it not?’

  ‘Look, let’s just go back to the hospital and I can show you the figures, you can count the patients for yourself if you like. I am sure that there are less than nine per cent sick,’ Max insisted. And then a thought struck him like the moonlight glinting on the tip of Volkov’s gun. ‘At least there were this morning before I left.’

  Volkov giggled like a schoolboy. ‘Amazing what a difference a day makes. I guess you should have been paying more attention to your patients here than hobnobbing with the officers in town.’

  ‘Hobnobbing? They are my patients too. Because I was ordered to tend to them. By you!’

  ‘Get in!’ Volkov was no longer grinning. ‘And if I have to tell you again you’ll be shot.’

  Max had to crouch to get in the doorway and once inside the windowless cage it was only shards of moonlight, slicing through the gaps in the logs that made up the roof, which showed him the cell was a square, just long enough for him to lay down in either direction. There was nothing in there but a bucket in the corner. This he assumed was his toilet. He guessed because of the stench coming from it – the guards weren’t thorough when it came to cleaning the cell between guests.

  Volkov slammed the door and Max heard him slide the bolts with exhalations of great satisfaction.

  ‘Nighty-night, Portner,’ he called and Max listened to the fading crunch of his boots on the frosted grass.

  Just before the sound was completely muted Max was filled with a claustrophobic panic that had him wishing he was standing outside being stabbed by the barrel of Volkov’s rifle again rather than being locked in this box alone. He shouted, ‘How long? How long do I have to stay in here? How long? How long?’