Alphabet House (14 page)

Sounds of shooting could be heard in the area almost every week since the day the executions had taken place. The three malingerers no longer whispered at night and James lay in his corner almost constantly, reacting only when food was wheeled into the ward. But otherwise, life continued as usual.

Of the simulants, it was obvious Pock-Face was especially on his guard. His customary solicitude for his fellow patients was still manifest. But whereas previously he’d had a glint in his eye and a word for everyone on his route, his eyes were now watchful and his words sparse. Bryan knew what he was thinking, and thought the same. Who else might be an imposter?

Pock-Face had his eye on James, first and foremost. Some evenings Bryan could catch all three of them sitting in a row, scrutinizing James. They were clearly keeping watch. Two of them couldn’t concentrate very long, however, and after a few minutes their eyes were wandering in and out of focus. They let the pills take over. Pock-Face, on the other hand, was able to keep himself awake for hours.

At first Bryan thought the malingerers were going to leave James in peace. What had they to fear from someone who by now lay most of the day as if unconscious? Bryan didn’t realise everything wasn’t as it should be until one day when Calendar Man pointed at James and began shouting and flapping his arms. Sister Lili came rushing in and immediately started thumping James on the back. He was extremely pale, trying to suppress a fit of coughing.

At lunchtime the next day the incident repeated itself.

During the days that followed Bryan sat up in bed instead of sitting on the edge beside his bed table as he usually did at mealtime. From there he could follow James’ attempts to swallow his lumps of food. While the clatter of plates, noisy chewing and contented burps filled the room, James sat motionless, staring at his plate as if trying to muster some appetite. Finally, before
the plates were collected, James’ shoulders dropped as if he was sighing, and he swallowed a couple of spoonfuls.

Then he immediately began to cough.

After this sequence of events had repeated itself for six days running, Bryan got out of bed while lunch was being brought in and strutted down to Vonnegut’s table, humming softly, his plate held high in front of him. Had Vonnegut or Sister Lili been there, he would have been ordered back to bed straight away. But a little earlier a patient had become very violent during shock treatment, giving the orderlies and nurses plenty to do before the afternoon rounds. Bryan put the plate down on the edge of Vonnegut’s table and began to ease the food into his mouth. His tongue was still considerably thicker than normal, but healing well. The malingerers watched his controlled swallowing movements with interest and glanced alternately at him and over at the rigid figure in the corner. James didn’t look up, even though he was probably well aware that Bryan was observing him.

James ate another spoonful, followed by one more. There were only a few feet between Bryan and James. Bryan pressed the edge of the deep plate, judging its resistance and weight.

Then he hit the plate so it shot out over the edge of the table straight towards the bedpost beside James’ foot, precisely as James’ coughing fit began. The loud noise made everyone stop gorging themselves for a moment. Bryan dashed apologetically after the runaway plate.

He stopped abruptly when he reached James and laughed tonelessly straight in his face as he pointed down at the mess on the floor and the overturned plate. James’ gaze didn’t shift from his own plate. Among the chunks of pork and grey, overcooked celery root lay something indefinable that resembled human excrement.

Starting to hum again, Bryan leaned playfully forward and poked at it with his spoon. It was difficult to suppress the wave of nausea than came over him. True enough, in the middle of James’ food lay a human stool.

Pock-Face laughed outright as his broad-faced accomplice rushed forward and snatched the plate away from James. Then, after scraping the mess on the floor on to it, he hurried out to the lavatory.

How the excrement had got into the food was a mystery to Bryan. But two things were certain. The malingerers were responsible, and they intended to keep it to themselves.

They had been harassing James like this for several days. It was an ill-matched and merciless open war with the sole object of getting James to give himself away. And perhaps they’d succeeded. James had reacted. He wouldn’t eat.

For the whole afternoon James was allowed to sit undisturbed on the edge of his bed.

There was nothing Bryan could do for him.

A couple of bomb shutters rattled against a window and woke Bryan up so suddenly that the echo in the room scarcely had time to die away before he was wide awake. A
panzer
officer lay in the bed beside him, panting heavily. Further down the row, the man who had stared straight up into the shower was leaning against the head of his bed, staring vacantly at the row opposite him.

The room was still softly illuminated by the summery night sky. The silhouettes of the malingerers towered in the darkness across from him and gave Bryan the shivers. All three were standing around James’ bed. One of them at the head end, one in the middle and one at the foot end. Now and then an arm was raised to administer a blow. There were no screams to reveal how James was taking the beating. Only groans could be heard later that night after they’d finally left him in peace.

You’re not touching him again!
Bryan threatened silently through clenched teeth, when he saw James hobble out to the bathroom the next day.

But they dealt with him as it suited them. So far they hadn’t bruised his face, yet night after night the sound of muffled blows came from the far corner.

Bryan felt desperate. He feared for James’ life. Several times he was on the verge of screaming out, pulling the emergency cord for the night nurse, or throwing himself between James and his tormentors. But years of war had created rules for survival that under normal conditions would appear absurd and irrational. In the midst of his helplessness Bryan knew helplessness was the one state he could abandon himself to.

James endured his final round of punishment the night before Sister Petra found him lying unconscious in a pool of blood. Her shocked and confused reaction that morning was a clear indication of the gravity of the matter. Both Holst and a surgical doctor were summoned.
You must be able to see that the hole in his head didn’t happen by itself, for God’s sake!
Bryan hissed silently, as they examined the edge of the bed, its frame at the head and foot and the floor for possible explanations as to how the injuries had come about.
Traitor!
he accused himself, and prayed James’ life would be spared.

There was a brief investigation despite the doctors’ reluctance. The young security officer inspected the deep wound thoroughly and felt James’ forehead as if he himself were a qualified doctor, then examined every inch of the bed. Next he inspected the floor, walls and bedposts. Finding nothing, he walked from bed to bed, stripping the blankets off the patients to see if they had anything to hide. ‘Please let there be marks on their hands or blood on their nightshirts,’ Bryan pleaded. James was white as a sheet and must have lost a lot of blood. But the security officer found nothing. Then he hassled the nurses who were having a hard time finding out who was to do what, and paced back and forth with clicking boots until Sister Petra arrived with the necessary medical paraphernalia.

They inserted a needle in the bend of James’ elbow before Bryan managed to grasp the seriousness of what was happening. At that distance the bottle hanging above James looked black as coal.

Oh, no, now you’re going to die!
Bryan’s mind screamed, as he tried to recall what James had said on the hospital train about blood transfusions and blood types. It seemed ages ago. ‘You do what you like, Bryan, but I’m going to tattoo A+,’ James had said, thereby sealing his fate. Now the blood plasma was flowing treacherously down the plastic tube from the bottle. They were in the process of mixing two different blood types in one battered body.

Bryan was convinced that the malingerers had not intended to kill James. Not that they couldn’t do so if they wanted. A dead Mr Nobody constituted no danger. But Gerhart Peuckert was not Mr Nobody. He was a
standartenführer
in the SS security police. And if they found he had been beaten to death or had ended his days in a way that was unnatural, no stone would be left unturned when the investigations and interrogations got underway.

The malingerers had hoped to gain certainty and control. So far they’d achieved neither.

Later on James was undressed, prior to being washed. He was deathly pale. Bryan sighed with relief when he noticed he wasn’t wearing his scarf. This was the only mitigating circumstance. The three men followed closely what was going on. The more bruises and severe blood effusions that appeared, the more the three bastards huddled in the safety of their beds.

All of Sister Petra’s repeated attempts to dig deeper into the cause of this strange catastrophe were immediately thwarted with authoritative grumpiness by her superior. Little Petra spread unrest. Sister Lili, on the other hand, always set out to normalize conditions in the ward as quickly as possible. Apparently she had adopted the pragmatic attitude that any suspicion of criminality would incriminate her. Investigations and interrogations might lead to mistrust, and mistrust, in turn, to her transfer. A field hospital on the Eastern Front could be the consequence.

Obviously Sister Lili was not lacking in imagination.

Therefore, despite Petra’s disapproval, she became solely responsible for looking after James over the next couple of days. The patient was unwell so the patient got his blood plasma. Two bottles in all. Thus they let almost two pints of the wrong type of blood trickle into James’ body.

And he was still alive.

As the days dragged on, Bryan gradually realised the nightmare was by no means over.

The first warning came when he woke up one morning and saw Petra sitting on the edge of James’ bed, body trembling as she pressed his head tightly to her breast. She was caressing him as if he were crying.

Later that week James vomited while he was sitting straight up in bed. The same evening Bryan ventured past his friend’s bed while Pock-Face and his broad-faced companion were out fetching the food buckets. The third malingerer appeared to be sleeping heavily.

Again, James’ face was very, very pale. His skin was like parchment and the arteries in his temples shone bluish.

‘See to it that you get well, James!’ Bryan whispered, glancing around. ‘Our troops will be here soon. A month or two and we’ll be free, you just wait and see.’ The words had no visible effect. James smiled, pursing his lips as if he were about to shush Bryan. Then he formed some words. Bryan had to put his ear close to the dry lips in order to understand them. ‘Keep away!’ was all he said.

As Bryan backed away from James, the third simulant flapped his blanket.

The Allies bombed Karlsruhe again, sending a massive stream of refugees into the hinterland and Schwarzwald’s protective idyll.

Towards the end of September several things happened that caused Bryan to rethink his precautionary measures, perhaps for the last time.

One bright morning, when the autumn light was penetrating the bomb shutters in all its clarity, they found James on the verge of bleeding to death again. All his bandages had been ripped off and the wounds in his head that had almost healed were gaping
open, almost drained of blood. James’ skin colour merged with that of the sheet. His hands were almost black with coagulated blood. In their blind faith that James had inflicted these wounds on himself, the medical staff bandaged his hands so that he couldn’t try it again.

And then they gave him another blood transfusion.

Bryan was at his wit’s end when he saw the glass bottle swinging over James’ bed once more.

Bryan and the malingerers kept an eye on each other in a state of armed neutrality. One day during one of these balancing acts, James drifted into such a deep state of unconsciousness that Dr Holst employed the word ‘coma’. Shaking his head, he turned with a smile to say goodbye to Bryan’s neighbour and the patient opposite, both of whom had obtained their green discharge stamps.

It was the first time Bryan had seen anyone in the ward dressed in something other than a hospital shirt. Since the very first day they had all literally gone around bare-assed in a get-up that reached to their knees and was fastened at the neck. Occasionally, very occasionally, they’d been given underwear.

The two officers beamed, having regained their full authority and dignity in their newly pressed riding breeches and high, erect caps, their baubles dangling on their stiff jackets. Dr Holst shook hands with them both and the nurses curtsied. The same nurses who, only a few days previously, had slapped them if they wouldn’t file past naked after their bath. When Bryan’s neighbour tried to shake Vonnegut’s hand, the latter became so embarrassed that he extended his iron hook instead of his sound left hand.

How the doctors could distinguish between the well and ill was hard to fathom. In any case, these two had been pronounced well enough to become cannon-fodder.

Both men were proud as peacocks and naively merry. They mentioned Arnhem.

Apparently it was there they were going.

When Bryan’s neighbour said goodbye and looked him straight in the eyes, Bryan could scarcely associate him with the patient who had been breathing heavily at his side, night and day, for over eight months.

The mood in the ward was divided after the first reports of a German victory at Arnhem arrived. Those patients who could expect to be discharged shortly straightened their backs and missed no opportunity to prove they were feeling much better. The rest became even more ill, screamed more frequently at night, rocked to and fro more than ever, displayed strange new twitches and grimaces and resumed their piggish eating habits.

The malingerers reacted as well.

Pock-Face intensified his voluntary service to the point where the orderlies had to take over his job, lest he come to scald someone or knock the doctors to the floor while barging around on his chores. His broad-faced confederate performed the same piece of play-acting every day and
heil
ed at Vonnegut and his fellow patients constantly. At night he could suddenly get the night nurse to storm into the ward in response to one of his attacks of gaiety, expressed by raucous singing and accompanied by a rhythmic banging on his bed bars.

Like the thin malingerer, Bryan huddled in his bed, pulling the blanket over his head and remaining silent. His obvious high rank and great responsibility, his frailty and doubtful signs of improvement were Bryan’s life insurance and guarantee not to end up at the front like his two neighbours. Perhaps no one had any idea where they should send him.

Bryan was not concerned about himself. Only about James and what the malingerers had in mind to do with him.

He had regained consciousness as a shadow of his former self, mentally passive and physically starved. It would be some time before he’d be able to get out of bed again.

And by now, thoughts of escape and how it could be accomplished had been uppermost in Bryan’s mind for more than four months.

Clothing was the first problem. Apart from the nightshirt, Bryan possessed nothing but a pair of socks that were replaced every third day by a pair that was even more washed out than the previous one. Since he’d begun going to the bathroom by himself, he had also been given a dressing gown. It was supposed to protect him against the biting gusts of wind.

But now the dressing gown was gone. One of the orderlies had been gazing at it covetously for a long time. His slippers had disappeared ages ago.

The distance to the Swiss border was manageable, scarcely more than thirty or forty miles. There was still a summer sky above that painted the landscape in clear, sharp contours. But it was cold at night.

Several weeks ago the west wind had blown up and carried new sounds with it. The occasional whistle and deep rumble of a train came like an echo of salvation.
We’re on the edge of the mountains, James!
he thought.
The railway line can’t be far away. We could jump on the train and ride down to the border. We’ve done it before. We can do it again. It would get us all the way to Basel, James! We’re jumping on that train!

But James himself was a problem.

The blue rings under his eyes seemed permanent.

Sister Petra became more and more grave.

One night it dawned on Bryan that he’d have to escape alone. He’d woken with a start caused by an inescapable suspicion that he’d been talking in his sleep. Pock-Face was standing beside his bed, looking at him. There was a brooding mistrust in his eyes.

Escape could be delayed no longer.

In certain risky moments he had toyed with the idea of knocking down an orderly and stealing his clothes. There was also the possibility that a doctor might leave his civilian clothes
in the ward or in one of the offices. But daydream and reality never came seriously to grips with one another. Bryan’s daily sphere of activity wasn’t large. He had a thorough knowledge of only the ward, the consultation room, the electroshock room, the lavatories and the bathroom. None of these presented any possibilities.

The solution came when one of the patients peed up against the bathroom door and shouted and screamed until they gave him a shot to calm him down. While Vonnegut was on his knees wiping up the mess, Bryan shuffled sideways out to the lavatory, wagging his head from side to side.

The door opposite the lavatory was wide open. Bryan sat down heavily on the seat, leaving the wooden door ajar. He had never seen inside the storeroom before.

It was actually just a big cupboard with cleaning rags, soap flakes and brooms and pails stacked on shelves or deposited on the floor.

A narrow ray of light illuminated the room from the side. Vonnegut was still at work on the floor outside, expressing audibly how far away he wished both himself and everyone else. A few steps and Bryan was over by the cupboard. He inspected the doorframe. It was half-rotten. The lock barely held in the brittle wood. The metal fittings had lost their grip long ago. The door opened inward and only needed a firm push on the handle along with the pressure of a knee. A worn, old pair of overalls hung on a porcelain hook on the back of the door.

Bryan gasped when Vonnegut shoved the storeroom door open. With a firm grip on his wrist, Bryan was led back to his bed, holding his breath with his heart pounding.

By the time the moon disappeared and left the ward in total darkness, Bryan had gone through in his head again and again what he’d seen in the storeroom. He’d left his bed and scuttled out to the lavatory four times during the evening. Frequent attacks of diarrhoea were not unusual in the ward. The increasingly poor quality of the food had its effect.

The first time Bryan went to the lavatory he’d forced his way into the storeroom and removed the two top shelves.

There was a small window in the storeroom. Situated above the top shelf, it was not easy to reach, but just large enough. And, unlike the small slits up by the ceiling in the bathroom and lavatories, it was not furnished with bars.

The window hasps could be unfastened without a sound.

Bryan quickly made up his mind. He would make his attempt the next time or the time after. He would put on the overalls, climb up on to the shelf, crawl out through the window and count on surviving the fall to the ground. Then he would make for the open square and climb over the barbed wire. It was a plan with all odds against it. A desperate undertaking like most of the missions he and James had survived. And now James was once again lying lifeless in the ward. Reality was a harsh master. The thought of having to live the rest of his life with a guilty conscience tormented him.

But what could he do?

It took three more trips to the toilet before Bryan remained in the storeroom. On his second visit he was disturbed by the little man with the bloodshot eyes. They flushed with their respective chains and tottered back to their warm nests, elbow to elbow.

Not until the third time did Bryan feel safe enough to put on the overalls. They provided scant protection against the cold.

The shelf creaked threateningly as Bryan pushed off and grabbed the window frame. The window was rather narrower than he’d expected. Not a sound was to be heard from the ward.

He squeezed out through the window to the point where he was about to tip over. Despite the darkness, the abyss beneath him stood out in terrifying detail. The jump was suicidal.

Parachute jumping and simulated plane crashes had made Bryan better prepared than most. But with a twenty-foot freefall, the chances of not being injured were devastatingly slim. There were no mitigating circumstances in regard to the dark chasm. If the fall killed him, it would happen quickly and mercifully. If, on
the other hand, he was wounded and caught, the security police would be sure to take terrible revenge.

The kitchen building that leaned snugly against the wall of rock was dark and peaceful. Familiar sounds floated alongside the wall and portended the guards’ regular night round. Breath escaped their mouths in steamy puffs of semi-repressed laughter and rose up to Bryan, perched above.

One of them started laughing loudly as they passed the building. Just as the mirthful roar reached him, a creaking sound came from behind and the shelf detached itself from the storeroom wall.

Only faint oaths escaped Bryan’s lips. He tried in vain to gain a foothold in order to push himself out as he clung to the brick wall with his elbows.

He was clammy with sweat in spite of the cold. The guards had not yet quite disappeared behind the square, but the dogs were diverted by their masters’ merriment and danced around playfully.

In a moment they would be back.

The crash from inside the storeroom was indefinable. He was still trying desperately to force himself the last bit forwards and out of the window when an iron grip locked his ankles from behind.

It was too late.