Fifteen Words

by Monika Jephcott Thomas

  ‘Sister Hilda dragged me down to the crypt as the bombing started,’ she said finally answering his query. ‘All of us who got down there survived.’

  ‘But some didn’t?’

  ‘Mother Superior, Trudi,’ she shook her head so slightly that Max wondered if he hadn’t mistaken it for her trembling.

  ‘Oh dear.’

  ‘But it was out of the frying pan and into the fire,’ she said getting on her knees and reaching under the bed for a small suitcase. ‘We eventually clambered out of the ruins and the Russians were all over the place. They sent the nuns off to labour camps and girls like me off to Russia to entertain the troops.’

  Volkov’s account of the German soldiers raping that Russian woman had Max thanking God the likes of Volkov seemed to be taking their frustrations out on the POWs and not the girls. Or were they?

  ‘And how are you?’ he asked suddenly concerned, as her doctor and her friend. ‘Are they treating you badly?’

  ‘I’m OK. I mean, it’s not exactly the convent here, is it,’ she sneered at the dank room, ‘but it could be worse, couldn’t it?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘For you too. Well, look at us. A couple of Germans in the middle of nowhere, captured by Russians with a hell of a lot of axes to grind. But you and me we’re alike, aren’t we?’

  Max didn’t want to disagree, though he couldn’t think how they were alike, so he kept his mouth shut and watched her as she finally fished something from the case and sat up on the bed next to him.

  ‘We both provide a service that the enemy needs. And they’re willing to give us some perks for providing it.’ She stroked her own fur coat, stroked the lapel of his, then put her arm out to encourage him to stroke it.

  He did.

  ‘It’s fox,’ she informed him proudly. ‘Yours too, eh?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ he said, though he’d never really thought about which animal the fur came from. He was far too busy enjoying the warmth it provided to ask incidental questions like that.

  ‘Yeah, it’s fox,’ she sighed. ‘The soldiers eat fox round here. Then they sell the pelts or have them made into coats like these for us lucky buggers.’

  Max caught his breath, his nose suddenly filled with the stench of the bodies he routinely put at the bottom of the hill, the bodies the maggots had done with, the bodies that froze like logs until the skinny horse hauled them up to the top of the hill where the foxes fed on them howling ghoulishly between rotten mouthfuls. Were the Soviets so sick or desperate for meat that they ate the animals that had feasted on decaying Germans? They’re cannibalism by proxy had him almost heaving. And his complicity in it by wearing the fox fur had his skin crawling. He slipped off the coat.

  ‘Warming up again,’ he mumbled.

  ‘I was putting away the spare trousers you’d borrowed when the bombs started falling,’ Jenny said showing him what she’d pulled from the case. ‘That was when I found this in the pocket and I was convinced you’d been killed.’

  It was the picture of the Black Madonna and child.

  ‘I told you to keep it with you always for protection, you dumby!’ she smiled as she slapped the air between them with the picture and for a moment he thought she might cry.

  ‘I know. I’m sorry,’ he laughed a little harder than he might have, to try and keep her tears at bay.

  ‘If you’d kept hold of it you might never have been captured and ended up in this Godforsaken place.’

  ‘But then I never would have met you again, would I,’ he said as lightly as he could, ‘so you see Mary must be looking after us anyway’.

  ‘What, God moves in mysterious ways and all that?’ she scoffed.

  He shrugged. He really wasn’t sure anymore.

  ‘Have you got a pen?’ she said with a pantomime tut.

  ‘In my bag,’ he said ducking into the other room where he’d left it and where the girls sprang into stilted conversation as if they hadn’t been trying to eavesdrop the entire time.

  He smiled politely at them, retrieved his bag and went back in to Jenny.

  She snatched the proffered pen, scrawled on the back of the picture and without letting him see it she buried it deep in the inside pocket of his coat.

  ‘You won’t forget it this time,’ she said.

  ‘No,’ he said, although if it wasn’t so cold outside he would have gladly abandoned that fox fur coat for good.

  ‘Now,’ she said buoyant again, ‘when was the last time you washed those trousers?’

  Max looked down at his lap gormlessly, ‘Er…’

  ‘No-oh!’ Jenny cried in mock disgust.

  Max showed his teeth in a guilty yellow grin.

  ‘That’s, what, three years since I last washed them?’

  His nod mixed mock shame with the real thing.

  ‘We don’t exactly have the facilities at Gegesha.’

  ‘Get them off!’ she ordered.

  And he heard tittering from the room next door as he did as he was told.

  As his trousers recovered from the shock of their own cleanliness, lying on top of the stove and gently steaming, Max, having to cover his legs out of modesty with that dreadful coat of his, and Jenny, examining her prune-like finger tips and reapplying her nail varnish, joined the others for more coffee. There were a few less ladies than before as duty had called them off to work, but Max was quite comfortable with any number of these women, as long as his friend was among them. And Isabel was just one of her comrades who had noticed that Jenny’s being had seemed to lose all its angles and edges since Max had been around, which compelled her to ask:

  ‘So how long have you been a POW, Max?’

  ‘Three years more or less. Since Germany surrendered on the last day of the war.’

  ‘Three years is a long time to be away from family. From loved ones,’ she added slyly.

  ‘It is.’

  ‘There are loved ones then?’

  He looked at her squarely in the face, not entirely sure what she was getting at and stated, ‘Yes.’

  ‘Max’s got a wife back in… Freiburg, isn’t it?’ Jenny announced, well aware what Isabel’s game was and determined to show her that her friend was not like the Russian officers round here with their sordid little secrets.

  ‘It was, yes, but she’s living in Bernried now with my parents.’

  ‘Oo, cosy,’ Isabel said into her cup.

  ‘We’ve got a daughter now too,’ he continued proudly.

  A few of the girls gasped with delight.

  ‘Really?’ Jenny said. She had to respond. He was looking straight at her when he said it. It was her he wanted to share his news with more than anyone else in this room full of strangers. But she allowed the delicate operation that is the application of nail varnish to keep her eyes from his for as long as possible, so there was no way he could register her disappointment; her sense that after all this time without him and after such a short time reunited, it was all over. Because when it came to babies it couldn’t go on. With clients it was a whole other story. No, she couldn’t give a damn if they were fathers or not. Christ, a girl has to make a living, right? But when it came to the others, potential lovers – even if they were married at first, even if they said that it made no difference about the kids – as far as she was concerned it did make a difference and men with kids were out of bounds when it came to finding a partner.

  ‘Yes, her name’s Netta,’ he beamed.

  ‘Netta. That’s a nice name, isn’t it, Jenny?’ Isabel said. ‘Jenny?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Jenny said. Her nail varnish had never been so badly applied. ‘What was that?’

  She could barely look up from the table, since it was only a few moments ago – that moment when he had unwittingly declared himself eternally unavailable to her – that she first realised she wanted him.

  ‘The doctor’s daughter. Her name is Netta.’

  ‘Oh. Nice name,’ she threw a smile across the table for Max to catch. He
was keeping his hands warm under the coat on his lap. One hand had ferreted its way into the inside pocket where it was gratefully caressing the old picture of the Black Madonna, its unseeing thumb gliding over the words newly inscribed on the back:

  My dear brave Max. May you never lose me again! With admiration always from Jenny. X x

  The surgery was empty. It had been empty since the day it had opened. It was full of things. The glass jars still stood on the shelves, the examination table still stood in the middle of the room, its cupboards and drawers now full of instruments and equipment. But the surgery was empty of patients. Not a single one had made an appointment. Twenty thousand people in the area, only three National Health Service doctors to go round. Why weren’t they flocking to the door, Erika said through chewed lips to the window where she stood endlessly, hands on hips like a mannequin advertising white coats. Perhaps Rodrick was right after all. Perhaps she did need some help and this proved she was too bloody stubborn to ask for it. And she didn’t just need furniture made for her by a man like Rodrick, she needed a breadwinner like him. What was she thinking? She knew for a fact that those other medical practitioners in the area were all men. She felt the buzz of exclusivity at being the only girl in her group of friends at university rush through her, then felt it instantly chased out of her by the male chauvinism of the medical world. That buzz hit the window with her breath and evaporated. Being a doctor was a man’s game, it always had been. She watched as the shiny new plaque on the wall by the front door caught the attention of passers-by:

  DR ERIKA PORTNER

  They registered the female name and moved on swiftly. That was what they were doing, she was sure of it, men and women alike. She should have had the sign made with just her initials.

  DR E. G. PORTNER

  Then by the time they had got through the door and realised she was not just the secretary or the nurse they would probably be too polite to turn around and walk out, they would have to go through with it and then they would realise she was a bloody good doctor, tell all their friends and she would have to find new premises to handle the enormous influx of patients, leaving those other three medics twiddling their insensitive thumbs and wondering where all their business had gone.

  Rodrick had nice thumbs. Nice fingers. Nice hands. They were hard, calloused, enormous compared to hers. She felt so precious when he put her hand on hers that time over there by the examination table. Precious because she felt as if that rock of a hand could crush hers with ease, but she knew it never would, it would only be gentle, only be sensitive, only be protective, only make her feel—

  These wild thoughts shot through the window, cavorted about on the pavement and darted across the road where they were instantly ran over by a bicycle already out of control, which promptly crashed into the kerb right outside Erika’s door.

  The rider was hurt. The rider was whining with pain. The rider needed a doctor.

  Erika’s eyes slowly rose to the clear blue sky above the terrace across the road.

  ‘Thank you,’ she mouthed.

  Was her gratitude for the distraction or for the patient? Probably for both. She grabbed her bag and hurried outside.

  The fallen rider had a nasty gash on one leg, which was bleeding profusely. She was also clutching her right arm to her chest which Erika recognised as the symptom of a broken clavicle. She bound some gauze tightly to the wound on the leg and helped the woman inside.

  Once sat up on the examination table with her leg elevated, aspirin administered for the pain, the woman found the breath to speak:

  ‘This is your surgery?’ she winced as she focused on her surroundings properly for the first time.

  ‘Yes,’ Erika said, examining the woman’s collar bone which was already swollen and purple where the break was. ‘Are you having trouble breathing at all?’

  The woman took a deep breath to test herself. ‘No, it just hurts in my shoulder.’

  Erika was encouraged by the depth of the breath and explained the pain was just from the broken bone itself. It had clearly not penetrated the lung. ‘We need to get a sling on that and keep it elevated for at least four weeks.’

  ‘Oh, no,’ the woman grumbled, ‘I can’t be out of action that long. I’m a writer you see. And I’m right handed.’

  ‘A writer, eh?’ Erika’s interest was piqued, hoping she had Germany’s answer to Virginia Woolf in her midst.

  ‘Yes, a journalist with the Mengede Zeitung.’

  ‘Oh, how interesting,’ Erika said, pulling out a folded square of bandage from the cupboard under the journalist and proceeding to turn it into a large triangle which she lay gently over the woman’s shoulder.

  ‘It can be,’ said the woman gradually letting go of her arm and entrusting it to the doctor when she felt how deftly she turned the triangle of cloth into a comforting and supportive sling and how respectful she was of her body as she worked so closely around her chest.

  ‘Oh, that feels a bit better already,’ she said.

  ‘The painkillers are probably beginning to take effect,’ the doctor said missing the compliment the journalist paid her on her sling and her manner.

  ‘Now let’s see about this wound,’ Erika said peeling back the gauze sloppy with blood.

  ‘Is it bad?’

  ‘Not too bad, but I could put a couple of stitches in there just to help it stay together as it heals if you like?’ she said pulling open a drawer at the journalist’s feet where she kept her sterile tubes of catgut.

  ‘OK,’ the journalist said paying more attention to the stirrups protruding from the table above the drawer. ‘You’re well equipped here,’ she observed recalling the cold table of her own brusque doctor and his rough fingers poking at her insides, ‘for women, I mean’.

  ‘I specialised in gynaecology during my training,’ Erika said. ‘Not that that seems to count for much now,’ she muttered as she found the appropriate needles.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, you are my first patient. And I’ve been open for over a week.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes,’ Erika sighed. ‘I suppose people around here are just not ready for a female doctor yet.’

  ‘Not ready? They just haven’t got a clue what they’re missing. A woman being treated like a woman by a woman. Instead of having our breasts and genitals mauled by these condescending apes,’ the journalist winced and smiled in quick succession as Erika introduced the sutures and looked up at her patient to check her reaction. ‘My friend has mastitis that needs surgery and she’s terrified about the state her doctor might leave her in after the way he’s maltreated her boobs so far. I know what she means. He’s my doctor too.’

  ‘Well, send her to me,’ Erika said appalled.

  ‘Oh I will and I think you’ll be getting many other women through that door very soon when they read my next piece about you in the newspaper.’

  ‘No writing till that collarbone has healed!’ Erika chastised her patient warmly though the thought of a glowing piece about her in the paper right now challenged her allegiance to the Hippocratic Oath to the utmost extreme.

  ‘I can type with one hand,’ the journalist grinned as they both admired her now neatly closed wound.

  Erika had so enjoyed the solidarity this fellow female had shown her; was inflated by the compliments paid her; grateful to her for pointing out her advantage over the other doctors, which, no matter how hard they studied, how many papers they published, they could never match: her femininity. But whilst the writer railed against men and despaired at having our breasts and genitals mauled by these condescending apes, Erika couldn’t help but notice a rush of blood to her own loins at the thought of her breasts being mauled by apish hands. It had been so long since she had felt another man’s hands running over her skin and squeezing her breasts in the naïve way they do. The writer, she guessed, had a husband at home who took his fill with such mundane regularity the woman could discern no difference between their doctor and
the husband anymore. But Erika, though appreciative of the sisterhood, did not see herself in the same tired category as her first patient. Erika was young, passionate and, for all she’d heard in the last couple of years, a widow. Or in other words, single. Alone. And that is why, having waved the writer off, she found herself making an excuse about catgut to Martha, parrying her mother-in-law’s concern for the surgery with a snappy comment about there being no patients anyway, and hurrying down the street smoothing her dress and prodding her hair between its clips.

  When she arrived at Rodrick’s workshop she was breathless, from the speed of her journey and the anticipation of the destination. He was up to his ankles in sawdust, sweating profusely as he sawed relentlessly at an enormous plank of spruce. In only his vest, Erika used the sight of his thick engorged arms pumping to tell herself she was in the presence of a mythical specimen, the kind of Nordic superhuman she used to tell her wide-eyed girls about as they sat around the Hitler Youth camp fires, and so this was an opportunity no one could blame her for seizing.

  Rodrick looked up as her shadow moved across his light. He stopped sawing, as breathless as she was, and asked her what was the matter, grabbing modestly at his shirt which was hanging on a nail in the wall. Without a word she stopped him from unhooking the shirt, slid her fingers up his moist muscular arms and, finding the back of his head, her eyes now glazing over in fear and ecstasy, she pulled him down to meet her fast drying lips.

  The workshop was open. Anyone in the village who chanced to look down the alleyway, or even worse, came to the workshop to request Rodrick’s services, would be able to see. But that made it even more thrilling to Erika. And Rodrick was more than happy to be seen, like this, thrusting into a woman such as Erika, as she lay half naked on his workbench, her hair now unclipped and full of sawdust; her hands frantically insisting he mauled her exposed breasts in a way in which he was more than happy to do.