The Twins (39 page)

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.