Leave Well Enough Alone (18 page)

“Miriam Coburg, Sister. Yes. And I’m going to enjoy the rest of the summer. Finishing
Nicholas Nickelby
, of course, and
Ivanhoe
.” Dorothy could not hear Sister’s reply to this statement. Miss Borg had dropped a coffee cup and was signaling furiously. “Excuse me, Sister, just a second, the nurse is very upset.” Dorothy watched helplessly as Miss Borg rattled on in rapid German. “Please,” she tried to interrupt, “I can’t understand. Wait until I get off the phone.”

“Dorothy, Dorothy,” Sister called through the wire at the same time.

“Yes, Sister?”

“I cannot guarantee that the German I studied at Trinity College in Dublin twenty years ago will stand up, but perhaps I can reassure your friend, or understand what is happening.”

Dorothy held the telephone out to Miss. Borg, who with a great heaving sigh placed it against her ear. “She speaks German,” Dorothy said to the doubt-filled blue eyes. The German did not slow down, nor did Miss Borg seem less agitated after ten or eleven minutes’ talking to Sister Elizabeth.

“What is it? What’s she upset about?” Dorothy asked when she was able, at last, to snatch the receiver back.

Sister sighed. “My German is really very elementary,” she admitted sadly. “She’s a Catholic.”

“I know she’s a Catholic.”

“Nearly all German Catholics come from the south. Bavaria,” Sister explained. “I’m sorry to say they are far more excitable and less methodical than their Prussian neighbors. Also, she uses a dialect.”

“Oh,” said Dorothy.

“I was only able to make out the last part where she slowed down a bit. The first part was all medical, I believe. She is apparently leaving to live with her sister in Munich. I suggest you ask her to write down, in an orderly fashion, whatever it is that is consuming her passion, and then translate it.”

“But Sister, I don’t know a word of German.”

“Use a dictionary. Is there one handy? Use your considerable gift for languages.”

“Yes, Sister, but...

“Dorothy, one day you will find yourself at a very fine university. You will have to read Goethe and Schiller. So you might as well start now. There’s no sense in reading Goethe and Schiller in English. Can you imagine how ludicrous Sir Walter Scott would be in German? I will see you in September and you’ll show me the results of your efforts?”

Dorothy glanced over at Miss Borg. The nurse was still talking, still explaining in German, now to no one. Her voice, under the impossible-sounding guttural syllables, was as crushed as a frightened child’s.

“I’ll do it, Sister,” said Dorothy. “Poor Miss Borg is upset. Even if I don’t get a word, maybe it’ll make her feel better, anyhow.”

There was a very short pause at the other end of the wire. Dorothy thought perhaps the line had gone dead. “God bless you, Dorothy,” said Sister, never for an instant losing the crispness in her tone. “I think you’ll find your way.”

Dorothy hung up without being able to reply. Nobody save her parents had ever said “God bless you” to her before, certainly not a teacher. How funny teachers could be outside the classroom. They actually seemed to have lives and feelings like real people.

The coffee was lukewarm. Dorothy scanned the bookshelf. Her eye came to rest on the small German dictionary that Miss Borg had brought with her on their walks among the flowers. She removed it from the shelf and, taking a writing tablet and pencil from the bureau, indicated to Miss Borg that she should write down what she was trying to communicate.

Miss Borg wrote. She crossed out and rewrote furiously. Dorothy watched her, dictionary in hand, and thought about Sister Elizabeth. Surely Sister knew about her upcoming punishment for what had happened at the Assembly. The whole school knew about it. Sister Elizabeth must have been just as shocked as Reverend Mother. Maybe, Dorothy thought, looking through the pages of German words, this will be much tougher than taking the Latin exam over again, even if no one gives me a grade on it. I’ll do the best I can, she decided, even if I’m not interested in what this poor old lady is upset about. I guess I’d rather die than let Sister down.

Dorothy’s interest in what the poor old lady had to say was sharpened the minute she looked at Miss Borg’s block letters. There was not a single word on the whole paper that resembled any Latin, any French, not to mention English, save one, and that was
Autopsie.
Dorothy smoothed out a sheet of paper from the writing tablet. She drew horizontal lines on it. “I can’t think without lined paper,” she said to Miss Borg. No recognition appeared in Miss Borg’s face. I’ll just pretend it’s like a French exam, Dorothy decided. I’ll translate the big words to get the gist of it and try to fill in the little ones and the grammar later. If I have time, she added to herself, looking at the clock.

Ich bin eine gute Christin und eine gute Krankenschwester.
I something something Christian and nurse? Yes. “
Gute Christin
,” Miss Borg was saying. It certainly sounded like “Good Christian.” All right. She was a good Christian and a good nurse.
Ich habe nichts Schlechtes getan. Die nächtlichen Besuche waren schlecht. Das Kreischen und das Anschreien waren schlecht. Außerdem war es eine Sünde, etwas ganz Schreckliches...
Awful! Dorothy thought. She stared at the sentence. On the other hand there was a word repeated several times.
Schlecht.
She pointed to it and Miss Borg looked it up for her. “
Ja
,” said Miss Borg. Wrong, bad, it turned out to be. Miss Borg indicated the second sentence.
Ich habe nichts
, that was the key.
Nichts
was nothing.
Ich
was I.
Getan
, probably done. I have done nothing bad. Okay. What was bad, or wrong? The
Kreischen
, shouting and
Anschreien
, shrieking? yelling? Keep going, Dorothy, Dorothy reminded herself....
überhaupt jemand in dieser Hütte
—something in this cottage. “
Schlecht
,” Miss Borg said emphatically, tapping a pen at this particular sentence—
gegen ihren Willen zu halten. Willen
was intent or will,
halten
was stop or hold, yes, and
Hütte,
like hut, was cottage. Dorothy looked at what she’d now translated. The good Christian and nurse, the bad shouting and yelling and now this. A guess, but maybe it would come clear later. Kept in here against her will. Well, a young baby wouldn’t care where it was kept. This must mean Mrs. Hoade did not approve of the baby’s being stashed away in the cottage. She hurried down the page.

Das Einzige, was ich getan habe, war Medizin zu einhalten, die ihr Leiden verlängerte.
A better sentence. Two words to look up.
Leiden
and
verlängerte.
Suffering and prolong. The medicine was halted and the suffering prolonged? Come back to this. Dorothy made a small asterisk.
Sie nahm massige Dosen ein.
Something about massive doses. The German grammar was unfathomable to her. At least, however, most of the important words, the ones Miss Borg kept pointing to and looking up for her, were capitalized.
Sie wollten ihr Leben natürlich solange wie moglich verlängern, selbst wenn es sich nur um ein paar Tage handeln sollte.
Something about wanting to prolong her life again.
Der Arzt
, that meant doctor,
behauptete
,
das neue Medikament
, something this new medicine,
würde ihr Leben um 48 Stunden verlängern
—the doctor something this new medicine prolong her life by 48 hours. Getting somewhere, now, Dorothy thought—
aber ich konnte mich nicht dazu bringen, ihr noch eine schmerzhafte Spritze zu geben.
Miss Borg was now making plain gestures. Her two fingers and thumb worked an invisible hypodermic. She indicated an enormous needle. Then she grimaced horribly, shaking her head, and pointed to the paper again. I can (could?) myself not bring to something these horrible injections. So that was the “medicine halted.” Miss Borg could not bring herself to give another painful dose of the medicine. Dorothy winced. And with only forty-eight hours for the poor little baby to live, at the most. Well, of course not. What an awful word
Spritze
was for an injection.
Sie weinte immer und sträubte sich so dagegen.
How awful. Something about struggling and crying against it. But here was the interesting part about the autopsy coming up.
Anstatt noch ein oder zwei Tage länger zu leben, starb sie in Frieden.
Instead, that even sounded like
Anstatt.
Something about a day longer, died in freedom, not in peace. Now. Here it was.
All dies kann natürlich leicht bewiesen werden. Bewiesen
—shown by evidence or proof.
Die Autopsie wird aufzeigen, daß die verschriebene Medizin nicht gegeben war.
Dorothy looked up at Miss Borg’s very agitated face. She understood, after looking up just a few words. The autopsy was written down. A copy of it would prove that the prescribed medicine had not been given. “You could be in trouble,” she said to Miss Borg. Miss Borg looked at her uncomprehendingly. She pointed to another sentence.
Kein anständiger Mensch könnte das laute Anschreien
—something about loud angry shrieking—
aushalten
—endure—
wenn sie abends herüber kam.
No decent person angershrieking endure when something here came, came over here.
Herr Hoade
—aha! said Dorothy. So there it is. What does she say about him? The word angershrieking seemed to fit him well—
hat meine Rückfahrt nach Deutschland bezahlt und mir eine Menge Geld gegeben.
Mr. Hoade has return passage to Germany paid and a lot of gold? The same word,
Geld
, meant money.
Ich wollte das Geld nicht, aber von irgend etwas muß ich ja leben. Ich habe nichts geerbt und nicht veil gespart.
I didn’t want the gold, no, money and then something about no inheritance and no savings. Dorothy guessed that Miss Borg had been forced, somehow, by her own straitened circumstances to accept money from the Hoades. Well, at least she was going back to Germany. Sister Elizabeth had found that out too. Dorothy peered at the clock. She would have to run in a couple of minutes. Her pencil paused over the part she had just translated. I wonder why Mr. Hoade wanted to pay her and send her back home, Dorothy mused. Miss Borg seemed to notice Dorothy’s hand, which was now doodling slightly around the word
Geld.
She opened her bureau drawer and produced both a steamship ticket for the
Bremen
and a cashier’s check for the sum of $10,000. This seemed to confirm something for Miss Borg. She was nodding as if Dorothy had asked her to prove the validity of the sentence.

Dorothy looked at the bottom of the page; all that remained was a reassertion of the good Christian, and good nurse, and a plea that the
heilige Jungfrau
, holy young lady? no, Blessed Virgin, forgive her if she’d done wrong.

Without all the little words, the pronouns, the conjunctions, and connectives, Dorothy couldn’t be exactly sure of her translation. It would take forever to look them up. This much was clear to her. The baby had been kept in the cottage against Mrs. Hoade’s will. Mr. Hoade had come down—
herüber
was apparently the German for “come hereover”—and had yelling fits for some reason, and Miss Borg had felt so sorry for the poor little thing that she’d allowed her to die peacefully. If the Hoades had a German dictionary up at the house, perhaps she’d be able to look up some of the little words and make more sense of the paper.
Es, sie, wenn. Es,
she made a note, after finding it, meant it and also there is. Capitalized it meant the musical E flat. Impossible! Dorothy said to herself.
Sie
meant they, you, she...did it mean if, as well? No, that was the French
si.
At least Latin made some sense in its consistency. At least in French there were recognizable words. The Germans seemed to string all manner of words together to make single big words. Like
Anschreien.
A noun meaning shrieking-at in English. Still, Dorothy had to admit it had a ring to it. Shrieking at a girl baby, a sick one at that. What an appropriate word for Mr. Hoade’s way of speaking. The quiet voice that, when it didn’t get what it wanted, became too quickly a yell, like a shove.

“I don’t understand all of this now,” she said to Miss Borg. She took up the dictionary again. “Not...
nicht verstehen
... She looked up everything in the English half. “
Alles.
But...
mais
...no, that’s French. I won’t say a word!” She put her finger to her lips, and crossed her heart with her other hand.

“
Ja
?” asked Miss Borg, color coming back into her face for the first time in half an hour.

“
Guten...
” What is it? “
Abend. Guten Abend
,” said Dorothy.

“
Gute Nacht
,
danke schön
,” said Miss Borg, and she took Dorothy’s hand in hers and, smiling over whatever German she decided not to say, pressed it with great warmth.

There was no German dictionary in the library upstairs. The girls were in bed, sleeping in two little hunched-up bundles of sheets. Dorothy waited a moment in their doorway to make sure they were all right. Jenny moved and sighed. Lisa’s thumb was thrust securely in her mouth. Dorothy closed the door.

The Hoades had gone to bed early too, it appeared from the snoring in the bedroom. She wandered around the empty living room looking at the bookshelves. No German dictionary. She’d have to wait and finish her translation at the Newburgh Public Library. In the meantime, Miss Borg’s paper and her translation were safely squirreled away in the spine of her
Ivanhoe
upstairs. The Hoades did have a complete set of Shakespeare, however, bound in blue morocco leather. Courage mounteth with occasion, she said to herself and pulled out
King John.
This ought to put me to sleep in a hurry, Dorothy decided, collapsing full length on the sofa. She yawned at the characters in order of appearance.

The family photographs on the long mahogany table in back of the sofa all faced her. They gave the appearance of intruding. Dorothy tried to read
King John.
“Went down over Pearl Harbor. Pearl Harbor bombing,” she murmured to herself, looking uncomfortably into the eyes of Mrs. Hoade’s father. What a minimal way to explain having your plane shot out of the sky. This was a better picture of Mr. Krasilovsky than the one in Mrs. Hoade’s locket. Well, he was younger. This was taken before the war and the other was taken in 1948.