The blind side of the heart

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 make 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.