by Unknown
I can help you, Mother, if you can’t get over that tree, I’ll help you, I can do it, you just watch! Peter wanted to go back to the tree trunk, he wouldn’t go in any other direction, he wanted to balance on it and show his mother how to climb over a fallen tree. But his mother, steadily putting one foot in front of the other, hauled Peter along behind her.
Let go, Mother, you’re hurting me.
Helene didn’t let go, she ran, she stumbled, cobwebs stuck to her face, she ran holding the basket out in front of her as if to fend off the cobwebs, the wood was thinning out a little here, ferns and grasses on the forest floor, there was almost no wind, they had to get away. The cow being hunted was a man, there were probably several of them there on the rails, decomposing, stinking. Prisoners, who else would huddle under the branches of the fallen tree in such flimsy clothing? An escaped prisoner. Perhaps this was one of the transports taking supplies to Pölitz. Once the war had begun not enough fuel could be provided, not enough workers found, prisoners were taken away and made to work. Even women, so the nurses whispered to each other, were working in the factories, toiling away until they couldn’t work any more, or eat and drink any more, and one day they wouldn’t have to breathe any more. Had she seen the face of the runaway prisoner, had he raised his head, had she looked into his eyes, frightened eyes, black eyes? Helene saw Martha’s eyes before her. Martha’s frightened eyes. Helene saw Martha in the cattle truck, she saw Martha’s bare feet slipping on the excrement, trying to find somewhere firm to stand, she heard the groaning of the people crammed into the trucks, heard the man’s groaning, saw him trembling under the oak leaves, heard him sneeze. A shot rang out.
A huntsman, hooray, cried Peter.
Dogs barked in the distance and a second shot was fired.
Wait a minute, Mother. Peter wanted to stop and look around, work out which way the shots were coming from. But Helene wouldn’t wait, his hand slipped out of hers, she hurried on, stumbling, falling, leaning on fallen trees for support, clinging to twigs and branches, she went on and never stopped, putting one foot in front of the other. She could run. Rabbit with mushrooms, a really simple dish. The cunning hare sits in the dale,/between the hills and the deep, deep vale. Ah yes, in the vale. Cattle. How could she ever have eaten rabbit?
They went on through the forest for she didn’t know how long, until Peter, behind her, called out that he couldn’t go any further and stopped for a rest. Helene was not to be deterred. She just went on.
Do you know where we are? Peter called behind her.
Helene didn’t, she couldn’t answer him, all this time she had kept her eye on the position of the sun, making sure that when sunlight fell through the leaf canopy it cast their shadows to the right. Did the sun or the trees cast shadows? Helene didn’t know. A simple question, but insoluble. Perhaps it was her hunger driving her, making her heart race, making her sweat. Yes, she was hungry. There wasn’t a single mushroom in her basket, she had just run and run, not even knowing where she was going. She had meant to make sure she was going west, leaving the train behind. Perhaps she had. They had to go on. Helene saw that it was getting lighter over there; they must be coming to a clearing, or a road, or a broad bridle path.
A hand took hers. Peter had caught up with her; his hand was firm and small and dry. How could a little boy have so much strength in his fingers? Helene tried to free herself, but Peter was clinging firmly to her hand.
Forward, one step, two steps, three steps. Helene caught herself counting her footsteps, she just wanted to get away, well away. Peter clung on, reached for her coat; she shook her arm, shook it hard until he had to let go. She went on ahead, he followed. She walked faster than he did. The thinning of the woods proved to be a mirage, they were not thinning out at all, the trees grew closer and closer together, and so did the undergrowth. Clouds had gathered above the treetops. They were driving over the sky up there, chasing inland. How late was it? Late morning, midday, after midday? Her hunger told her it must be late, two or perhaps three o’clock, judging by the position of the sun in the sky. Mother! Mushrooms fried with thyme, simply tossed in butter with salt and pepper, fresh parsley, a few drops of lemon; mushrooms steamed, baked, simmered. Raw, she’d eat the first one raw, here and now. Helene’s mouth was watering, she stumbled on mindlessly. Leaves and twigs, thorns of berry-bearing plants, maybe blackberries, but where were the mushrooms, where were they? Mother! She had left the beech trees behind, she was in an old plantation, all spruce trees now, growing lower and lower, branches hanging down, needles crunching underfoot, the forest floor was going downhill. A little clearing, soft mossy mounds rising from the needles. A fly agaric and another, poisonous, on guard. And there it was before her, a mushroom, its cap curved, dark and gleaming. Snails must have been at it already, one or two little nibbled places showed that someone else had been feasting here. Helene knelt down, her knees pressing into the moss, bent over the mushroom and smelled it. The leaves, the cap of the mushroom, it all smelled of the forest, of autumnal food. Helene laid her head down on the moss and examined the mushroom from below; the gills were still white and firm, an excellent mushroom. Mother! His voice seemed to come from very far away. Helene turned. There they were, standing lined up in the hollow, mushroom after mushroom, last night’s offspring. Helene crawled under the branches on all fours, making her way along on her hands, holding back twigs, wriggling forward, and lay flat on the forest floor. What a wonderful fragrance. Mother! Helene reached for a mushroom, broke it off and put it in her mouth whole. The tender, firm flesh almost melted on her tongue, delicious. Where are you? Peter’s voice was faltering, he was afraid, he couldn’t see her and thought he was alone. Where are you? His voice broke. Helene had left her basket in the clearing. The second mushroom was smaller, firmer, fresher, its pale stalk almost as broad as its brown cap. Mother! Peter was fighting back his tears; she saw his thin boyish legs through the branches as he trudged across the clearing and stopped at the place where she had left her basket, leaned down and straightened up again. He made a trumpet of his hands and put them to his mouth. Mother!
There was no echo. The wind was blowing up in the tops of the trees, lashing the top branches, trying to get down to the ground. Mother! called the boy, turning to all points of the compass as he looked for her.
Was it so difficult to keep still? The simplest exercise of all, no trembling, no snapping of twigs, just silence.
The boy sat down and wept. It was no joke. If she came out of the bushes now, just a few metres away, he would know she had been watching him and had hidden on purpose. What for? Why? Helene felt ashamed of herself and stayed still, and the boy shed tears. She kept her breathing shallow; nothing simpler. No sneezing, nothing to give her away. The ants tickled her, she felt a burning sensation on her hip, the tiny creatures were getting into her clothes and biting. A red spider with delicate legs, no bigger than a pinhead, climbed on her hand. The boy stood up, looked all ways, picked up her basket and set off south-east. He wasn’t stupid, that was the way to the village and then the city. Helene stuffed mushroom after mushroom into her mouth. How nice it was to be alone, chewing in peace.
When she couldn’t hear his footsteps in the undergrowth any more, she crawled out from her hiding place. Needles and bits of bark stuck to her jacket. She brushed down her skirt. There was a rustling, a bird flew up. Helene walked through the spruce trees and young oaks in the wood, going the way Peter had gone. She called, Peter, and on the second syllable of his name he answered in a high voice, relieved, happy, laughing impatiently as he shouted: Here I am, Mother, here I am.
Fine stitching, the skin above the eye was so delicate, the eye of the wounded man, of a father, of the war. The eye itself could hardly be seen under the swollen flesh. Helene took tweezers and removed splinters of glass from the man’s face, his forehead, his temple, very tiny splinters of glass from the cheek that was still recognizable and from the other, which was only raw, bleeding meat. The wounded man didn’t
move. After several attempts, and in spite of the low dosage, the doctor had managed to anaesthetize him. Medicaments were running low and most of the patients had to be treated without anaesthetic. They lay on camp beds, on bedsteads that had been dragged out of people’s houses, some huddled on the ground because there were not enough beds available, lying under tarpaulins and in the outbuildings of the hospital, which had been largely destroyed. Helene dabbed the rust-red tincture on the man’s wounds, she asked for gauze, but none of the nurses had any left. The little girl stared at her in silence; she had singed her hair slightly in front, had a boil, no more, and she had lost her mother. She never said a word. She’d have to be removed from the hospital, she must go somewhere, anywhere, but who had time to think about that? She would get soup here when someone managed to make any, when the gas was back on, when water came out of the tap again.
In March, soon after the last air raids, the Women’s Hospital had been evacuated to the seaside resort of Lubmin near Greifswald. Helene had promised to follow as soon as they had done what they could for the wounded in the city. She didn’t even mention her son any more.
Forceps, Nurse Alice, tweezers. Helene hurried about, handed instruments, opened a peritoneum, made incisions when something had to be done quickly and the doctor was in the other tent with a young pregnant woman who had only injured her foot, but might yet lose it. Helene made incisions and stitched them up, staunched bleeding with cotton wool, a girl held the instruments for her, the scalpel and scissors, the forceps and needles. Helene worked day and night, sometimes she slept for one or two hours in the shed that the nurses had fitted out as a kitchen. She thought only very seldom that she ought to go home and make sure everything was all right there. Peter should be going to school. He said no, there wasn’t any more school, well then, to lessons, oh God, he must just get himself something to eat, he had two legs, didn’t he, he’d have to find a place to stay. Hadn’t he been lucky? No harm had come to him in any of the air raids. Once, in winter, he had brought home a severed hand and wouldn’t say anything about it. Perhaps he had found the hand in the street, a child’s hand. Helene had had difficulty in prising it away from him. He didn’t want to let go of it. The boy had to leave the city, no doubt about it, she couldn’t have him around, he ought to be doing his homework, heating the stove for himself, looking for coal or wood, it was lying around everywhere, she’d had to leave him alone for weeks, for months. When she did come home he looked at her wide-eyed, always wanting to know something, asking questions, asking where she’d been, saying he wished she’d stay with him. He put out his hands to her, lay close to her in the bed they shared, wound his arms round her like an octopus. Tentacles, he was sucking her into them. His arms squeezed the last of the breath out of her. But she couldn’t stay, she had work to do. She wasn’t talking to anyone any more. Mummy! That was an old woman, on her deathbed, calling from where she lay. She didn’t mean Helene, Helene had never been a Mama or a Mummy, she didn’t have to turn to the dying woman, she could keep quiet while she dabbed, stitched, applied bandages and dressings. As soon as there was water again she washed her injured patients as best she could. She could hardly hold the hands of the dying, there were too many of them, too many hands, too many voices, moaning and groaning and finally falling silent; sheets had to be drawn up over faces, bodies put on trolleys. Back in the operating theatre, where a man was having his fourth operation on his skull, the doctor wanted Helene to help him; whether there was still any way to save the man no one knew, but the operation was performed. The bridgehead had been blown up, the Red Army was waiting outside the city with the fury of the starving, the first rumours said that they had licked up blood as they made their way forward, they were to be feared, the Red Army was already coming in, there were no muslin bandages left, give me a compress, anything to dress a wound. How long was it since she’d been home, one day or two? She couldn’t tell. She had last slept for a few hours lying in a shed the night before this, taking turns with other nurses; she had dreamed only once in these months, a dream in which she had been stitching people together to make a great web of human tissue, and she didn’t know which part of it was alive and which was dead, she just went on stitching the pieces together. All her other nights or hours of sleep had been dreamless, pleasantly black. Helene hurried home, it was dark already, she didn’t look up, didn’t look at the damage, didn’t take an objective look at what had happened to this or that building, she hurried on. She must tell Peter to get a new lock. Helene hurried, wanted her legs to carry her faster, but she was making no progress, the ground beneath her feet gave way, she slipped, stones, rubble, sand, she tried to get a footing, slipped lower, slowly going down and down, her feet sank into the sand at the bottom of the bomb crater; she used her hands to help her, she had to get out on all fours and kept slipping back. A crater could be a trap, a nocturnal time trap. One step took you in and even a thousand wouldn’t take you out, try as you might, much as you wanted to. Helene didn’t call for help; there were still a few people out and about, but all going their own way in any case, not hers. Her hands groped, she tried again, groped up and down until she felt something solid and was able to grab hold of it. It was so dark that she couldn’t make out what it was. She worked her way along the solid thing, a cable perhaps, a firm cable, a bent water pipe, then something soft, she let go of that, it might be a body or part of one, she was still working her way along her solid handhold, she hauled herself up by it and clambered out. The street was dark, the sky was dark, no light burned in any of the buildings, perhaps there was a power cut. The paving stones were smooth from the drizzling rain. From afar came the voice of an agitated woman complaining about looting. Who was going to join her in her indignation tonight, tomorrow night, the night after that? A young man leaned out of one of the dark windows. Arms outstretched, he shouted into the night: The Redeemer! The Redeemer! You didn’t see many young men here these days, those who were still around had to call on the Redeemer. Perhaps he believed in redemption. But what was gone was finished, over. Helene had to be careful not to slip. She heard men behind her. Insinuating remarks, she walked faster, she ran. Mustn’t turn round. Disguise would be a good idea; the ground smelled of spring, a dusty spring night.
She had to make a decision, she knew that; no, it was not exactly a decision, it was just something she had to do. All Germans were being ordered to leave the city, there was nothing here any more, no lessons, no fish for Peter. Where could she send him? He wouldn’t part from her, ever, not of his own free will. She had no time for long journeys, she couldn’t take him away and she didn’t know where they could go either. In no circumstances would Peter allow himself to be sent away. He would guess the meaning of any excuse, he would see through any threadbare pretext. Yet she had nothing more for him, her words were all used up long ago, she had neither bread nor an hour’s time for him, there was nothing of her left for the child. Helene’s time meant relief for her patients, helping them to live a little longer with a little less pain. There is a longing in the world, and we will die of it. Why did Else Lasker-Schüler keep haunting her? We don’t die of it, Else, we just cease to be. And that was good. Helene gave herself to the injured and sick who asked for nothing except for her to lay her hands on them, she must and could do that.
At home she found Peter in her bed. He was already asleep. She lit a candle and laid the sprat that she had brought home in her overall pocket, wrapped in a piece of newspaper, on the table. He would be glad to have a sprat for breakfast. She took the little dark-red suitcase out of the cupboard and opened it. At the bottom of the case she laid the woollen stocking with Wilhelm’s money in it. On top of that two shirts, two pairs of underpants, a pullover that she had knitted for him in the autumn. The pyjamas he was wearing were too short for him. Why did Peter have to start growing so fast just now? She would sit down at the sewing machine this very night; she had salvaged it from the fire in the next-door apartment and brought it into hers. She would m
ake him a new pair of pyjamas, nothing elaborate, perfectly simple. She had material for it. Why else had she kept a pair of Wilhelm’s pyjamas all these years? She put two pairs of long socks into the case, and his favourite book. He had been reading and rereading the stories in it for months: the myths of Greece and Rome. Without stopping to think for very long, she wrote a note on a piece of paper: Uncle Sehmisch, Gelbensande. Surely that brother of Wilhelm’s existed? At least there’d be a woman waiting for her husband to come home from the war. There was still food to be had in the countryside. Let them look after Peter. Wilhelm’s money might help. She put the note with the uncle’s address and Peter’s birth certificate under the stocking full of money, right at the bottom; she didn’t want it found too soon, not until the right time. And Peter could have the fish too, he should take it in the suitcase, the carved horn fish. What would she do with it? She burned Leontine’s letter in a pan on the stove, she burned all her letters now. As soon as she had to leave Stettin she would set out in search of Martha, she had to find Martha. She felt certain that Martha was still alive, of course she was alive. Perhaps the labour camp had been a safer place. A safer place to live? Martha was tough too, tough enough. Who knew what would become of them? Helene meant to travel back by way of Greifswald, by way of Lubmin, her patients needed her. She made the pyjamas for Peter; working the treadle with its regular rhythm calmed her. He must want for nothing, that was why he must go, go away from her. Helene shed no tears; she felt relieved. She was cheered by the idea that he would be better off and have someone to talk to him about this, that and the other, that he’d see sunlight in the evening. Helene made a double seam in the waistband of the pyjama trousers and sewed a small bag into it. She put her wedding ring in the bag and a little money; that couldn’t hurt. Then she sewed up the little bag. She put the pyjamas on top of the other things in the case. She mustn’t tell him that this was goodbye, or he would never let her go.