“Plus diphtheria,” I said. “I’ve seen that, too.”
“They’ve developed antitoxins for that, but we don’t have any yet,” she said. “Medicine in the twentieth century . . . so fascinating . . . all the new ways to heal people.”
I had not even thought of its being a different century. It sounded so modern. But this tent did not look modern and efficient; some of the children did not even have cots, just blankets on the ground. Coughing and murmurs and low moans arose from the choir of the ill. A few white-skirted nurses floated between the cots like weary ghosts.
“See what it would be like if every mother was allowed in here?” she said. “I’m sorry, but there’d be no room to work. They would be underfoot. I hate to see them out there, and feel for them. And for the children in here, too, it’s heartbreaking. I know they think we’re witches, but it’s impossible. I can’t imagine how hard it would be to understand if it was your child sick in here. But there’s no choice. We couldn’t even walk in here, and fifty women coming in and out would spread so much infection it would turn into a plague.”
“Plague?” I thought of the Middle Ages in Europe. “From rats?”
“No . . . diseases,” she said. “It’s another problem nobody understood when they brought you all here. You have lived so long out there on your own, so isolated, that you’ve lost natural immunities to so many things that wouldn’t bother people in cities . . . children particularly.”
“So . . . what about me . . . my immunities?”
“Something to think about. Be clean, wash your hands. . . . We have soap here. Be careful what you handle. It turns out that nurses stay remarkably healthy . . . build up immunities to just about everything. We always seem on the verge of being sick but rarely come down with anything too serious.”
They did not look robust, but they were not as thin as most of our women.
“Did all the nurses volunteer to come here?” I could not imagine why.
“It’s a job. Some of them thought it would be a holiday, or a chance to meet an officer . . . that’s true,” she said. “I thought the war might be the best place to learn surgical nursing. I liked the idea of nursing soldiers. I was surprised they sent me to a camp instead of a field unit. But work is work. Sometimes it feels like we’re doing some good; sometimes I wonder.”
“They pay you?”
“Ten pounds a month.”
“How can I help?”
“The next time you come back, I’ll introduce you. You’ll do whatever a nurse asks, mostly getting things for them, or sponging off patients, or sometimes just talking to them. Everything you can do to help a nurse allows her to spend that time with a patient. There will be dirty work, too, cleaning up messes . . . sorry.”
She rolled a half-dozen r’s through the word “sorry,” and it had more substance.
“I’ve done it before.”
“And you know you’ll see bad things,” she added. “But you have to stay strong while you’re here. You can do anything you have to once you leave, but you can’t come apart in front of them. That’s the last thing they need . . . that any of us need.”
I understood.
“You’ve seen bad things already . . .”
I nodded. “I’ll get to see Tante Hannah?”
“Of course, she’ll be so excited,” she said. “We use her husband, Sarel, too.”
“I saw him one night . . . pulling the cart.”
“Yes . . . he still does that, but he works here, for us, too. He’s one of the best helpers we have because there’s nothing he won’t do.”
Oom Sarel at the hospital? “What?”
“It’s not a pleasant job, but he offered,” she said. “He collects the messes of the typhus patients and carts it all outside the camp, where he burns it in big barrels when the wind is blowing away from us. I can’t imagine how hideous it must be, and really very dangerous, but he volunteered. Certainly no one else wants to do it. We all think he’s a hero.”
MAPLES SHIFTED HIS EYES toward the fence and turned his back to me when I approached. I didn’t understand. I had been so upset with him that I’d avoided him for a few days. But thinking I’d offended him caused my chin to sink to my chest. He looked back and moved his head as if trying to pull me closer with a gesture. I stepped to his side. From his pocket he pulled a graying handkerchief covering a lump bigger than a man’s fist.
“I thought you could use it more than me,” he said.
I held it in both hands, feeling a familiar weight and density but allowing anticipation to build. I peeled back the corners of the handkerchief to reveal a glorious brown potato. I had not seen one in more than a year, or was it two? I wanted to bite into it raw. I lifted it to my nose and it smelled of the earth.
“I’m sorry. . . . I could get just the one . . .”
I turned away; I couldn’t look at him. I stared at the potato.
“Thank you.”
“Don’t let anybody see it.”
“Moeder?”
“Of course . . . but just your family.”
“Where did you get it . . . how?”
“It was headed for the officers, I suspect.”
I rolled it over, examining it.
“Won’t this get you in more trouble?”
“It could if you don’t put it away and go.”
I slipped it in the pocket of my pinafore as I scanned for anyone who might have watched. I spun to thank him again, to run up to him and hug him with both arms, but he was walking along the fence line in the other direction, rifle at his shoulder, as if marching in a parade.
I dared not look at anyone I passed, fearing I might give away the secret in my pocket. I felt its weight against my thigh as I walked. No one had ever given me a more valuable present.
The tent was quiet; the Huiseveldts were on their side. I had not thought of them. I remembered the way we shared with neighbors after animals were butchered, but that was in times of surplus, and as much as we talked about the value of sharing, we did so because the meat would go bad if we did not, and the act came with the expectation of sharing in return. This was different. It was not a pig or kudu. This was a potato.
I stood in front of Moeder with my back to everyone else.
“Look . . .” I held it in front of me with both hands.
She choked off a sound and looked over her shoulder at the others.
“Where . . .”
“Someone gave it to me . . .”
“Tante? Oom?”
“No.”
I feared greater protest, but she was overtaken by the sight. She scrubbed it like a family treasure.
“Not raw,” I said. “Not tonight.”
She questioned without speaking.
“Come here, little soldier,” I said to Willem. “Get the pot, Moeder.”
I took out my African Farm book and positioned an empty tin beneath the pot. I ripped a few pages from the book, the sound of tearing paper filling the tent.
“Match?”
“Lettie, no,” Moeder said.
I lit a few pages, and the flare warmed my fingers.
“That won’t be enough,” Moeder said.
“The whole book might.”
Willem edged close.