The priest drops to his knees beside her. “You are a kind woman.”
When Erdmann sees him he begins to speak frantically, but Gertrud notices that he has slipped into a rare dialect unknown to the American priest. But the priest hesitates for only a moment. He does not let on as the colonel gives his final confession, but rather bends low and receives the words with mercy. The priest whispers comfort into dying ears.
Only God understands him now, Gertrud thinks.
Soon the words have stopped and he is still. The priest straightens with a weary look and searches the row of patients for the next to die. He ambles away, leaving Gertrud alone with the body of a man she barely knows.
THE CABIN BOY
The airfield is dotted with hangars of various shapes and sizes, all of them dwarfed by Hangar No. 1. It’s a glorified garage, large enough to house the biggest of zeppelins in the event of a storm, but this is not where Wilhelm Balla leads Werner.
“You don’t want to go in there,” Balla says, steering him away. “That’s where they’re taking the bodies.”
He takes the boy instead to a low-hanging, rectangular structure that looks to Werner like a barracks. Wilhelm explains to the older gentleman who greets them, in English, who Werner is and why he’s soaking wet. At the first sign of comprehension Balla hands the cabin boy over to the ministrations of this stranger and leaves. The stone-faced steward does not offer a single look or word of farewell, but Werner understands now, after all this time and after what has just happened, that it is because, once summoned, Balla has no capacity to control his emotions. The solution for him is simply to not give in to them at all.
“Come with me,” the old man says.
Werner follows, too tired to object, through the hangar, down a hall, and into a small living quarters where an old woman sits at a table with a stricken expression. The man hands him over to the care of his wife, speaking so rapidly that most of the words are lost to Werner. And then he too is gone, slipping out the door to help where he can.
The woman pulls a bundle of clothing out of a closet and sets it carefully in his arms but he can barely lift it. Werner’s arms feel as though they are weighed down with lead. And then she takes him back through the building to a long, narrow room filled with bunk beds. He changes into the dry clothes once she’s gone, then sinks into the nearest bed. He grabs the heavy woolen blanket and rolls to his side. And then the boy is gone, lost to sleep and grief and trauma before his eyes have fully closed.
THE JOURNALIST
The skin has blistered off Gertrud’s right palm, leaving the exposed flesh red and weeping. She cannot close her hand. She can’t focus on anything apart from the burning fire still cradled in her palm. It is as though her entire body has drawn inward to that one spot. She feels nothing else.
Her fingers are splayed open on her lap, her gaze still fixed on them when a young medic arrives.
“Are you badly hurt?” he asks.
“No.” She lifts her hand an inch and inclines it toward him. “Just this.”
He is remarkably gentle for such a large man. He lifts her hand in one of his own, pulling it close to his face. “It’s a bad burn. But it’s clean. I can wrap it and give you morphine for the pain, but time will have to do the rest.”
The medic pulls a syringe the size of a bicycle pump from the bag at his feet and she recoils.
“Don’t worry. It won’t hurt once the medicine hits your bloodstream.”
“No morphine. I’ve misplaced my husband, and he won’t be able to find me if I’m lying here asleep.” The medic gives her such a look of pity that she rolls her eyes. “Oh, good grief. Leonhard’s alive. He just wandered off.”
“Of course he is.” The medic pats her shoulder in pity and begins to clean her hand.
Gertrud cranes her neck in search of Leonhard instead. It’s a bad habit of her husband’s, this wandering off. She has often accused him of being part Aborigine because of his penchant for going on walkabout. Sometimes he’s gone for hours. Other times it’s no more than a few minutes. Leonhard insists it’s his way of finding time to think, to sort through a problem. But problem or not, Gertrud is getting increasingly upset about his absence.