He ground his cigarette out on a saucer on his desk. “Even in a task like this you are entirely replaceable. Remember that.”
Florence listened as the commandant spoke about the importance of secrecy when dealing with captured spies. And still, she remembered that the man had said he was a POW. She noted that Kachak was no longer wearing his brass knuckles.
“What is it?” said Kachak.
Only then did she realize that her mouth was open. She had no idea what she’d meant to say. Her only thought now was to ask him to obtain for her a raw onion, or potato, or a lemon—anything for her scurvy. But to bring up something so beggarly with the commandant would show her as homely and ill-bred. It would suggest she did not appreciate the significance of the topic at hand. And then there was this: If she admitted to being sick, would he find someone to replace her with immediately?
“Well!”
“Where shall I say I go?” she blurted.
“What?”
“What do I do when I leave the camp? I need a story.”
Kachak rapped the nail of his middle finger on the desk. Was it possible he had not thought through this far? “You’ve been assigned to a mineral prospecting team,” he said finally, “because of your training in geology. The rest is classified.”
—
THE YOUNG LIEUTENANT USHERED her out. The truck was waiting in the snowy road, and, seeing it, she knew the terrible mistake she’d made. Her frostbitten cheeks and fingers began to throb, as did the toes wrapped in her threadbare footrags. She was being returned to hunger, to the coldness of the barracks, the boot kicks of the guards. The thought made the ache in her leg seize up in a spasm.
“Get moving,” said the lieutenant, who was walking behind her.
Her leg could not move.
“Go on!”
She was an animal, trapped, and now only the instincts of an animal could point to a way out. She let herself fall like a beast into the snow.
“Get up!”
“I’m unable!”
She waited for the lieutenant to kick her, and when he didn’t, she undid her boot as quickly as she could and pulled up her pant leg. His face winced at the sight of her flesh. In the dimming light, her leg looked fully blue. “It’s atrophied,” she pleaded.
“You can settle it when you get to your camp. Go to the infirmary.”
“The nurse won’t give me a bed.”
“Nonsense. Get up!”
“They don’t give beds to politicals. Unless it’s a quarantine. You know that.”
“So—what do you want me to do? Take it up with your authorities.”
“I beg you. Keep me nearby. A day or two. Once I get a septic fever I’ll be of no use to you, or to your commandant. I’ll get the prisoner to talk. I can.”
“Keep your voice down, you louse,” he said. And then: “Don’t leave this spot!”
The cold snow burned her cheek. She shut her lids and it gave way under her body like a down comforter.
—
FLORENCE AWOKE AT DAWN on a real cot, in a hospital room with white-painted window frames. Her clothes were nowhere in sight. The flannel gown on her body was so thin and worn that it looked transparent in the cold light. Somebody must have changed her. She tried to rouse up some feeling of shame, but that too had long been driven out of her. All she could conjure was a dim memory of voices during the night.
Take her to the fourth ward.
No. Upstairs. He doesn’t want her near the criminals.
She’s a hag.
They’ll screw a hundred-year-old crone if you let ’em. She touched her leg. Someone had bandaged it tightly. Her fatigue was more powerful than the pain. She curled herself around the pillow like a sea creature and fell asleep.
—
FOR THE NEXT THREE DAYS she stayed in the main camp’s infirmary and was taken out during the day to assist with the interrogation of the pilot. Each day Robbins was asked anew about radars and gunsights, and each time he gave the same responses—requesting that his government be notified of his status as a POW, and that he be reunited with his fellow officers inside the camp. Her only contribution to the interrogation was to make out from his slurring, Southern-inflected speech the same repeated request, which became less intelligible by the day.
Florence had gathered from the chatter of the guards that Robbins had commenced on a hunger strike—that he was refusing to eat as well as to talk. She marveled at the dying man’s fierce will to let go of his last grasp on life. Having herself resolved to end her life many times, she knew that carrying out a plan to die—even in death’s own chamber—was not as easy as promised. Some small bit of joy or fortune—a sudden warming of the weather, the arrival of a letter from the orphanage—could undercut one’s will to end it all. She had seen fellow prisoners swallow too much snow in order to make themselves bloated and sick. Engineer nosebleeds. Rub dirt into a sore to get blood poisoning and spike their temperature to a fever. Urinate on their hands and feet to catch frostbite. But none of these inducements of illness was performed with the wish of dying. The aim was always to obtain admission to the hospital for some desperately needed rest. Self-mutilation was self-preservation. Few had the courage for the real thing. What little thought camp life had not driven from the mind was subordinated entirely to a dogged clinging to life.