Alphabet House (4 page)

Still expressionless, James flung one leg over the excrement-littered bed and lay down on top of it. Taking a deep breath, he collected himself, stared briefly at the ceiling and without turning his head, whispered, ‘OK. So far, so good. Now we lie here, get it? No one knows who we are and we’re not going to tell them. Whatever happens, remember to keep your bloody mouth shut! One single slip and it’ll be the end for both of us.’

‘You needn’t tell me that, dammit!’ Bryan looked with displeasure at the stained sheet. It felt damp as he lay down. ‘I’d rather you told me what you think the orderlies will say when they see us. We can’t fool them, James.’

‘If you just keep your mouth shut and pretend to be unconscious they won’t suspect anything, don’t worry. There are probably more than a thousand wounded men on this train.’

‘The ones in here seem to be special…’

A clanking metallic sound from the carriage in front made them stop short and shut their eyes. The sound of steps grew louder, passed them by and continued into the next carriage. Bryan opened his eyes a fraction and caught a glimpse of a uniform as the figure disappeared.

‘What about those needles?’ Bryan said quietly. James glanced over his shoulder. The rubber tubing hung limply beside the bed. ‘You won’t get me to stick one of those in my arm.’

The expression on James’ face sent shivers down his spine.

James was out of bed without a sound and grabbed hold of Bryan’s arm. Bryan stared wildly at him. ‘No, you don’t!’ he hissed, horrified. ‘We have no idea what was wrong with those soldiers. It might be dangerous!’ A second later, Bryan’s gasp told James that such deliberations were now superfluous. Bryan stared incredulously at the needle that was buried deep into the bend of his elbow, the rubber tube still swinging. James had thrown himself back into the neighbouring deathbed.

‘You needn’t be afraid, Bryan. Whatever the soldiers suffered from won’t kill us.’

‘How do you know? They didn’t have any wounds. They could have had terrible diseases.’

‘Would you rather be shot than take that chance?’ James looked down at his own arm and tightened his grip on the needle. He turned his head to one side and pressed the needle into a vein at random, making him almost pass out. Just then the rear door of the carriage opened.

Bryan felt his heart beating treacherously loud as the sound of footsteps merged with voices. He couldn’t understand the words. For him, they were merely sounds.

Scenes from happier times at Cambridge suddenly flashed through his mind. In those days, James had been too busy studying German, his main subject, to partake in typical college foolishness. Now he lay there reaping the benefits of being able to understand what was being said. Bryan was plagued
by qualms of guilt. If he could, he’d gladly give all those hours of laziness and all his springtime flirting and other frivolous pursuits in exchange for being able to understand a fraction of what was being said in the railway carriage.

In his frustration Bryan dared to open his eyes a tiny crack. A few beds away, several people were bowed over, studying an upturned chart.

Then a nurse drew the sheet over the man’s head as the others moved on. Cold, clammy sweat broke out along Bryan’s hairline and trickled slowly down his forehead.

A buxom older woman led the way and cast appraising glances over the side of the beds as she shook the metal ends. Apparently she was in charge. At the sight of James’ ear, she stopped and wedged herself in between Bryan and James’ beds.

She muttered a couple of words and bent further down as if she were about to swallow James up.

Straightening, she turned and glanced at Bryan just as he was closing his eyes. ‘Please God, let her go past me,’ he thought, promising himself not to be so careless again.

The click of her heels disappeared behind him. He scowled from beneath almost closed eyelids. James still lay quietly on his side with his face turned towards him, eyes closed, without the slightest trace of a blink.

Perhaps James was right in thinking the staff couldn’t tell one patient from another. At any rate, the senior nursing officer had walked past them without comment.

But what if it came to a closer inspection? When they had to be washed, for example. Or when they simply had to pee. Or shit, for that matter. Bryan dared not think that thought through to the end, already feeling a treacherous pressure mounting in his abdomen.

No sooner had the senior nurse checked the last bed in the carriage than she clapped her hands loudly and gave an order. In no time there was complete silence.

After a few minutes Bryan half-opened his eyes again. James lay staring at him meaningfully.

‘They’re gone,’ whispered Bryan, glancing down the row of beds. ‘What happened?’

‘They’re leaving us till later. There are others who are worse off.’

‘Can you understand what they say?’

‘Yes.’ James put his hand to his ear and looked down at himself. The cuts on his body and hand were not conspicuous. ‘What do your wounds look like?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Then find out!’

‘I can’t take my shirt off now!’

‘Try! Remove the blood, if there is any. Otherwise they’ll suspect something’s wrong.’

Bryan glanced at the needle. He looked down the passageway, took a deep breath and pulled the shirt sideways over his head so that it hung loosely on the arm with the needle.

‘How does it look?’

‘Not too good.’ Both arms and shoulders needed a good wash. The cuts were not deep but a gash in Bryan’s shoulder continued onto his back.

‘Wash it off with your hand. Use spittle and lick your hand afterwards, but hurry up!’

James raised himself up a trifle. He nodded slightly when Bryan’s shirt once again hid his shoulder wound. His lips tried to form a smile but his eyes were intent on something else. ‘We’ll have to tattoo ourselves, Bryan,’ he said, ‘as soon as possible.’

‘How do we do that?’

‘You prick some dye under the skin. We’ll have to use the needle.’

The thought made him nauseous. ‘And the dye?’

‘I think we can use the dirt under our nails.’

An examination of their hands revealed that the amount of dirt was at any rate sufficient. ‘Don’t you think we’ll risk getting tetanus?’

‘From what?’

‘The muck under our nails!’

‘Forget it, Bryan. That’s not our biggest problem.’

‘Can you imagine how painful that would be?’

‘No, I’m wondering what to tattoo.’

The clarity of this statement took Bryan by surprise. At no time had he thought of asking himself that question. What should they tattoo? ‘What’s your blood type, James?’ he asked.

‘O-rhesus negative. And you?’

‘B-rhesus positive,’ Bryan replied quietly.

‘Sorry about that,’ said James, wearily, ‘but listen. If we don’t tattoo “A+” they’re bound to find something’s bloody wrong sooner or later. It’s written in their medical records, isn’t it?’

‘And what if they give us the wrong blood? That’s dangerous as hell!’

‘Yes, I suppose it is.’ James spoke very quietly. ‘You do as you like, Bryan, but I’m tattooing “A+”.’

The pressure in his abdomen confused Bryan, diverting his attention. He couldn’t hold out much longer. ‘I need to pee,’ he said.

‘Then pee!’ There’s no need to restrain yourself here.’

‘In the bed?’

‘Yes, damn it, in the bed, Bryan! Where else?’

Sudden movements from the carriage behind them made them shut their eyes and freeze. Bryan was lying uncomfortably with one arm beneath him and the other slantwise over the blanket. He wouldn’t be able to urinate now, even if he wanted to.

Nature’s own regulating mechanism saw to that.

By listening to their voices, Bryan guessed there were as many as four nurses. Most probably two nurses saw to one bed at a time. Bryan dared not turn his head.

At the far end of the compartment one of the nursing teams lowered the dead man’s bed guard. They were presumably going to remove him.

The team nearest Bryan was chatting intimately and working efficiently.

He caught a glimpse of them pulling the shirt off the patient in front of them, exposing his legs and genitals. They stood bent over him, rotating their arms in rubbing movements, never pausing or hesitating, with the sole object of getting the job over with.

The nurses at the back of the carriage had already wound the sheet around the dead man in the third bed and were about to turn him onto his back. As they pulled the soldier into the middle of the sheet, a sound came from him that made all four nurses stop what they were doing. A long wound, stretching from one shoulder up over the back of his head, had begun bleeding. Without paying attention to it, one of the women drew her nurse’s badge out of her collar and jabbed the pin into the man’s side. If this drew any protest from the patient, Bryan couldn’t hear it. Whether they considered him to be dead or not, they kept on wrapping him in the sheet.

He had no idea how he and James were going to be able to keep still enough to not arouse suspicion. Bryan looked at the nurses’ dispassionate faces as they worked. And what if they stuck a pin into
him
? Would he be able to lie motionless? Bryan doubted it.

He shuddered at the thought.

It gave Bryan a start when the nurses skipped James and made straight for him. They ripped the blanket off him in one movement. A single firm grasp made him roll over on his back.

The women were young. He felt embarrassed as they parted his legs and began to wipe around his anus and under his scrotum with firm movements.

The water was icy cold and the shock almost made his thigh muscles quiver visibly. Bryan concentrated as hard as he could. If only he could avoid arousing suspicion.
Keep your armpits covered,
he said to himself, as they turned him around again.

One of the women pried his buttocks apart and felt the sheet between his legs. They exchanged a few words. Perhaps they were surprised the sheet was still dry. Then one of the nurses bent over him and a second later Bryan sensed the whir of a slap heading for his cheek. In that fraction of a second he registered the fact that he was about to be struck and told himself to relax. The blow fell hard on his cheekbone and across his eyebrow without his moving a muscle.

And now the pin, he supposed.

He let his mind go, far from the nightmarish reality in the pitching train, and felt the pin being thrust into his side.

He grew cold. But not a muscle moved.

This would be more difficult next time, if there were a next time.

Then the train carriage began to sway, making the beds creak. From the far end of the room came the sound of a thud. The two nurses who had just reached James’ bed shouted out and rushed back to where they had come from. The corpse they’d just wrapped up had fallen to the floor. Gingerly Bryan slid his arm down to the tender spot on his thigh where they had jabbed him with the pin. On the bed beside him lay James, quiet as a mouse with his shirt halfway up over his head, looking at him with eyes wide open in a chalk-white face.

In spite of himself, Bryan managed to mouth that there was nothing to fear, that he should relax and close his eyes. But James was far away in a state of anxiety and dread.

Insidious, traitorous beads of sweat trickled down his face. Several repeated jolts of the carriage made the nurses topple forward and drop their heavy, dead burden. Their loud complaints made the other two nurses rush to their aid. James gave a start as they ran past and he began panting in short gasps under his blanket.

Two more violent jolts made the whole carriage quake and Bryan was thrown to the edge of his bed. James drew his legs up under him, convulsively clutching his sheet.

As the train continued to jolt along, Bryan stretched an arm towards James to try to calm him, but James didn’t appear to notice. Instead, a scream began to form itself deep inside his throat. Before it had a chance to pass his lips, Bryan sat up and took hold of the steel basin the nurses had left by the bed in front of James’ half-naked body.

The water splashed up against the wall as Bryan slammed the basin down on his friend’s temple. The nurses turned around when they heard the sound, but could see only Bryan, whose body was hanging limply halfway over the edge of the bed. The washbasin lay on the floor, upside down.

As far as Bryan could tell, James gave the nurses no cause for suspicion as they washed him. Chattering softly, they finished what they were doing, engrossed in conversation and without the slightest interest in the armpit’s missing tattoo.

As soon as they left, Bryan took a good look at James. The mutilated earlobe and the bruises across his face made his otherwise fine features look crooked and added years to his age.

Bryan sighed.

According to the picture imprinted in his mind as they jumped on the train, they had to be in the fifth or sixth railway car. Behind them were carriages as far as the eye could see. If circumstances demanded their jumping off the train in daylight, they would be passed by as many as forty carriages. They were hardly likely to make such an escape without being discovered. And where would they hide, hundreds of miles behind enemy lines?

The worst thing, however, was that they could no longer give themselves up. One could say they already had three human lives on their conscience. What difference did it make that one of their victims had already been dead and the other dying? Not wearing the correct uniform, they would be treated as spies and tortured to make them divulge everything they knew. Before being shot.

Despite the misery Bryan had witnessed during the war, he felt injustice had dealt them an unreasonably hard blow. He was not ready to die. There was still a lot to live for. Fleeting images of his family evoked sadness and despair, but also warmth.

At that moment Bryan’s body relaxed for a moment, allowing his bladder to empty itself freely and soothingly.