Alphabet House (8 page)

They had seen him when they walked past.

A sweetish smell blended with the blandness of the turnip cabbage and a growing dizziness overwhelmed Bryan’s train of thought. The pills were starting to work.

So he was going to sleep, whether he dared to or not.

The man to his right lay on his side, staring at Bryan’s pillow with dead eyes. From under the blanket came the sound of a series of pent-up explosions from the gases he was apparently unaware he was releasing.

That was Bryan’s final impression before sleep overtook him.

On Heroes’ Commemoration Day the ward was allowed to hear Hitler’s speech. It was the first time this had happened during the two months they’d been there. All the ceiling lights had been switched on and the heating turned up in honour of the occasion. The porters drew cables through the middle of the room to a small loudspeaker on the table beside the end wall.

There was an expectant hum in the room with constant fidgeting, rocking to and fro, prancing back and forth. While the
Führer
was speaking, most of the nurses listened with folded arms, smiling and visibly moved. Bryan’s neighbour to the left had only been conscious for a couple of days and wasn’t aware of anything at all, whereas the man on his right stared with eyes wilder than usual and began to clap his hands until an orderly made him stop.

Bryan had received his most recent electroshock treatment only the day before, so it was still difficult to sort out impressions. He was confused by all the commotion. How could anyone understand what the hysterical voice was screaming through that metallic-sounding loudspeaker? In the wake of the treatment even the Sunday
Wunschkonzert’
s tribute to lonely housewives, newlyweds and people celebrating anniversaries sounded like one continuous hodgepodge.

But people loved it and swung their arms and smiled. Operettas, film music, Zarah Leander and
Es geht alles Vorüber
. On days like that, one would think the war had never started.

Other days, one was left in no doubt.

The first time they led him out through the striped glass doors into the corridor, Bryan forced himself to believe everything was going be all right.

Many of them had already been to the examination rooms. And even if they were limp when they returned and often lay
for hours without showing any signs of life, they eventually recovered and didn’t seem to have suffered any harm.

There were six doors in the corridor, apart from the ward’s swing door that Bryan had only known from the inside. There were exits at both ends, with the nurses’ and orderlies’ quarters furthest down on the left. Next came the door of the treatment room, and then two more that Bryan presumed led into the doctors’ quarters.

Several orderlies and doctors were waiting in the next-to-last room. They bound him roughly with leather straps before he’d quite grasped the situation, gave him an injection and fastened electrodes to his temples. The electric shockwaves paralyzed him instantly and numbed all his senses for several days.

The series of treatments usually consisted of one shock treatment per week for four or five weeks, followed by a rest period. Bryan couldn’t tell whether they would repeat the treatment, but it seemed likely. The first patients had in fact started on a new series after a month’s pause. During the rest periods they got pills instead. Always the same ones, one or two a day per patient.

Bryan was afraid of how such a treatment might affect him. Pictures he had been clinging to in his head slowly disappeared. The idea of seeing his girlfriend again, of being able to talk to James, or of simply going for a walk unescorted in the grey drizzle outside – everything was blunted and stunted. His memory played tricks on him, so that one day he could recall a forgotten childhood experience in a Dover side street and the next day he couldn’t even remember what he looked like.

Escape plans fizzled out even before they were thought through.

Nor did he have much appetite. When Bryan looked at himself in the weekly shower his hip bones seemed to protrude more and more and his chest became disfigured with stuck-out ribs. It wasn’t because he didn’t like the food. Sometimes it was even quite tasty, with potato pancakes and goulash, soup or
stewed fruit. But when he was finished with a shock treatment and his body was crying out for new energy, the very thought of the breakfast porridge and slice of rye bread and margarine made him want to throw up. So he left his plate untouched and nobody forced him. Usually he could only manage to make himself swallow the sliced bread covered with leftovers from dinner or the occasional slice of sausage and cheese, and then only if he took his time about it.

And there lay James in his corner, passing the time listening and dreaming and fingering Jill’s scarf that was constantly near him. Under the mattress, under the sheet or under his shirt.

During the first couple of weeks they didn’t leave their beds, but as the patients began to be able to find the lavatories down at the end of the passage by themselves, it gradually took longer to get the nursing aides to come with bedpans. Bryan widened his vocabulary with
‘schieber
, schieber’
, but the waiting time could be unbearable before the lid clattered out of the utensil washroom and the enamel bedpan was finally slung onto his blanket.

James was the first to get up. Suddenly one morning he tipped his toes over the edge of his mattress and began moving from bed to bed, collecting the breakfast dishes on the trolley. Bryan held his breath. How perfectly he played his part, skipping along in his knee-length socks that had slipped so far down they barely covered his ankles. His arms stayed pressed against his sides, making all movement awkward, and his rigid neck meant he had to rotate his whole body every time he turned his head.

Bryan was glad to see James getting around. This meant the two would soon be able to make contact.

Only a few days passed before James’ neighbour deprived him of this self-appointed job. No sooner had James started moving around the ward than the big pockmarked man was out of bed, standing still and watching him. Then he took James by the shoulder and patted his head a couple of times, after which he led him firmly and authoritatively back to his bed and
carefully pressed his head down on his pillow. Ever since then it was Pock-Face who assisted the orderlies and tripped around, making the patients comfortable whenever the opportunity arose.

James was the apple of Pock-Face’s eye and should James drop a pillow during the night, or a crumb on his blanket during dinner, it was he who instantly got out of bed to pick it up.

At first the man had lain opposite Bryan, but on the day James’ first neighbour was driven down to the mortuary, Pock-Face moved next to him of his own initiative. Initially, some of the younger nurses had tried to make him return to his proper place, but he had whimpered pitifully and grabbed at their arms with his big hands. When the senior nursing officer finally came he was sleeping soundly in his new bed.

So she let him remain there.

After this thwarted attempt to procure a permanent chore, James got up only to go wash himself or use the lavatory.

The first time Bryan got out of bed by himself was a couple of days after a shock treatment.

In the midst of carrying out his customary minimal washing of arms and head, what his mother used to scornfully call a lick and a promise, he’d become dizzy and started vomiting uncontrollably, so the washbasin filled with soapy water tipped over the edge of the bed and the piece of soap, made up of scouring powder and sawdust, hit the floor and broke. At the same moment one of the most pigheaded of the nurses entered the room. Instead of helping him she cursed about the water that was trickling over the floor. Then she dragged him down to the opposite end of the room furthest from the treatment rooms. Bryan stumbled along, almost falling, delivering blob after blob of vomit onto the newly washed floor.

Light entered the white-tiled room from a big, bolted window that framed some other buildings and the snow-clad rocks behind. Without further ado she locked him in the lavatory.
Bryan fell heavily to his knees in front of the toilet bowl and discharged the remains of his giddiness with a hollow groan. When his stomach cramps wore off he sat down on the cold china bowl and looked around.

There were no windows in the lavatory itself, which received plenty of light from above the door. When he’d investigated every flake of paint and every scratch, he lay down flat on the floor and looked around as best he could. The partition rested on rusty metal poles cemented into the terrazzo floor. Behind it was another lavatory and then a brick wall. A narrow door on the opposite wall marked the storeroom from which the nursing aides fetched the bedclothes and where the cleaning woman kept her broom and pail. Bryan had seen them carting implements and linen back and forth. Then the room in the corner had to be the showering room, with the door beside the window leading into the utensil washroom.

They didn’t fetch him until just before the ward round, patting him on the cheek and smiling at him so effusively that he had to smile back.

After that, Bryan got out of bed several times a day. During the first few days he tried to make contact with James and waited only a moment before following him when he headed for the lavatory, but to no avail. However favourable the opportunity, James hurried in the opposite direction the instant he caught sight of Bryan.

On other occasions, usually after the control check in the middle of the afternoon when it was fairly quiet in the ward, Bryan tried unsuccessfully to exchange glances with James as he toddled quietly about.

In the end James only got out of bed when Bryan was asleep.

He quite simply refused to have anything to do with Bryan.

It was Calendar Man’s fault that time didn’t follow its natural course. Calendar Man was what Bryan called the patient who laid opposite James in the same row as himself. It was he who had dangled his short legs over Bryan’s stretcher in the lorry. A cheerful, silent little man who stayed in bed and whose only pursuit was to scratch the date onto his medical chart every day. This angered the nurses and for a long time they punished him by cutting his rations and telling tales about him during the ward round, leading the doctors to believe he was completely uncontrollable, so they treated him more harshly than necessary. As a result, after his shock treatment his cramps were sometimes so strong, they made him arch over backwards in his bed, bent like a bow.

His salvation arrived in the form of a new load of patients. One day they ambled across the yard and continued into one of the blocks behind it. The group of wounded soldiers was escorted by three young nurses who later replaced some of Calendar Man’s worst tormentors. After a few days the thinnest of these young girls, probably younger than Bryan and James, gave him a small block of coarse grey paper and knocked a headless tack into the wall above the head of his bed so his daily date routine could be seen by anyone passing.

Bryan was unable to understand how Calendar Man managed to keep account of the days following a shock treatment. He could merely ascertain that the lost time was always miraculously retraced with the greatest accuracy.

Even though it was April, the ward still felt clammy and most of the patients were allowed two woollen blankets at night. Bryan never removed his socks and tried to shield his body as best he could from the draft that sneaked in around the interior bomb shutters of the window and down along the heads of the beds. Many of them had recently caught colds and lay shivering and coughing.

Apparently Pock-Face rarely felt the cold and that evening he ambled over to Bryan for the third time to make sure he was tucked in. The wind had dropped a bit and the ward was quiet. Bryan closed his eyes and felt the big hands tuck the blanket carefully under him and the paw-like stroking on his forehead. Then he shook Bryan gently by the cheek as if he were a child, until Bryan opened his eyes and smiled back. Suddenly and unexpectedly, Pock-Face whispered a few words directly into his ear and for a moment the big man’s face was transformed. It had a watchful, attentive expression that instantly took in every detail of Bryan’s face before it clouded over again. Then he turned to Bryan’s neighbour, patted him on the cheek and said, ‘
Gut, guuut
!’

Finally he sat down on one of the chairs in the gangway and stared towards James’ bed. The two patients lying in the beds beside Pock-Face raised their heads, their silhouettes clearly outlined against the window with the moonlight behind. They too looked over at James, who lay stretched out flat on his bed.

Bryan scowled over the tip of his nose, his gaze wandering. As far as he could see, the rest of the ward was asleep. Intermittent, whispering sounds echoed towards him and the two shadows lay back down. Then came more whispering and Bryan’s mounting uneasiness made sleep impossible.

Was it really a faint whisper he had heard, or was it the shutters vibrating in the wind?

The next morning Pock-Face was still sitting on his chair. The patient who shaved them every other day had come scuttling in while they all slept and uttered such a roar of laughter at the sight of the snoring body with its drooping head that the duty nurse came rushing in and chased him back where he came from. She slapped Pock-Face on the neck and shook her head when he tried to appease her by charging into the corridor to fetch her apron.

Then, since she’d been woken so thoroughly, she sighed and began the day’s work.

Several of the patients were on the mend. Bryan’s neighbour no longer lay with the same staring, apathetic look as before, but looked peaceful and was always being patted on the shoulder by the nursing aides with whom he chatted in a jerky fashion. Other patients were no longer bedridden, but mostly sat at the table down at the far end of the ward, leafing through the porters’ pulp magazines that were full of love stories and Alpine scenery. Sometimes two of the older porters collected a small crowd when they played cards.

Gradually, as the days grew sunnier around noon, more and more of the patients stood staring out of the windows at the men from the other wards who were playing and laughing. They were wounded SS soldiers with common bodily injuries who were playing jacks, ball or leapfrog. They were soon to be discharged.

If he sat cross-legged up at the head end of his bed and craned his neck, Bryan could follow everything that went on in the yard. He could sit like that for hours, staring at the sky above the watchtowers down by the gate and at the undulating, wooded countryside behind.

It was also in this position that he managed to reach the top end of the bedposts, ease up their wooden props and dump his pills down in the metal tubing that formed the head end of the bed. Ever since he’d finished his shock treatment he had tried to avoid swallowing these pills when they were stuffed in his mouth. Sometimes he swallowed only one, at other times they were half-dissolved before he had a chance to spit them into his hand. But the final result was what he had hoped for. Gradually he began to feel clearer in the head. A longing to escape manifested itself.

Only one patient in his row had seen him deposit the tablets in the bed tubing. It was the man who had been staring up into the stinging jets of water on the first day. In the beginning, this puny man had done so much damage to himself that they kept him in a straitjacket most of the time, doped with medicine. Now, three
months later, he always lay quiet as a mouse, his hand under his cheek and legs drawn up under him, staring at the others. Bryan had caught his eye the very second he dumped the pills, and had received an exhilarated smile in return. Later Bryan tripped down along the beds and stopped beside the man’s mattress. His features were totally relaxed and his eyes betrayed no sign of recognition as Bryan bent over him.

With springtime struggling to melt the greyish-brown snow in the courtyard and bring the shadows to life, Bryan investigated every inch of the panorama that lay before him.

Their block was the closest to the boulders, its windows facing due west. The evening sun set directly between the watchtowers and cast dull red rays along the buildings that lay in front. To the extreme left towards the south lay the kitchen, which he could observe more easily from the window in the corridor beside the bathroom. Further towards the southwest there were small barrack buildings where the guards and security staff had their quarters. From Bryan’s own window he could see directly over to the end wall of the medical staff annex. Members of the staff often stopped at the entrance, making it possible to follow the young doctors’ persistent efforts to seduce the nurses. Apparently they never succeeded, which made the whole scene comical and its protagonists ridiculous, but, curiously enough, no more human.

The building to the north lay parallel, though staggered, in relation to theirs and was connected by a corridor. It blocked the view of the gymnasium and the entire area beyond. Some of the wards further down were also practically hidden by its sharp yellow corner.

Guards with dogs could be seen constantly, day and night, as they patrolled the fence encircling the area. The few civilians who were admitted to the hospital were always accompanied by security officers or SS soldiers.

Fear of being confronted with the family of the soldier whose identity he had assumed was a constant nightmare for Bryan
during the first long weeks. But even though the ward was full of men whose recovery might have been speeded up at the sight of a familiar face, no one’s family members ever turned up. The men were isolated and no one wished to inform anyone of their existence, let alone their state of health. Why anyone bothered to keep them alive at all was a mystery to him.

Bryan never saw James look out the windows. Since the beginning of April he had seldom been out of bed and was apparently heavily drugged by the medicine he was given.

Three lorries drove out the main gate, which was closed after them.
I should be sitting in one of them, driving like crazy till I am home again
, Bryan daydreamed. The motor noise died away quickly behind the ridge and the lorries disappeared down into the valley. Pock-Face’s neighbour came and stood beside Bryan’s bed, looking silently at the guards with his broad face. Meanwhile his leg quivered and his lips moved incessantly. He had carried on this silent conversation with himself since the very first day and Bryan had often seen Pock-Face and the broad-faced man’s neighbour on the other side put their ears to his mouth with expectant, patient faces. Then they usually shook their heads and giggled like half-witted children.

Bryan laughed as he thought about this and stared directly at the constantly moving lips. The man turned around and looked at him with a loony expression that made his whole face look even more comical. Bryan had to cover his mouth and suppress his laughter. Then the lips stopped moving for a second and the man smiled at him. The broadest smile he had ever seen.