A Feather on the Water(14)

Removing the soiled diaper revealed inflammation on the little boy’s skinny bottom and legs. No wonder he was wailing. Delphine motioned to Wolf to come and stand by the baby. This allowed her to open her knapsack and rummage through the supplies she’d helped herself to in the medical tent at the army base back in Cherbourg. There was an emollient cream that would help soothe the rash. But first she needed clean water and something to wipe away the mess. She glanced around the room. There was no sink to be seen—just rows of beds.

“Water?” She mimed raindrops falling from the sky to Wolf, who looked back at her uncomprehendingly for a moment, then motioned with his foot to something under the table. It was a bucket with a tin army plate for a lid. The water inside looked clean enough. There was a chipped enamel jug alongside it, which Delphine examined before dipping it into the bucket.

Wolf helped her pin a fresh diaper around the struggling baby once the cream had been applied. To her surprise, the crying subsided as Wolf hovered above him, making faces and little cooing sounds. With more sign language she asked him to hold the little boy while she went to find Dr. Jankaukas. She couldn’t believe there was no one other than this child on hand to assist the new mothers. There must at least be auxiliary staff, even if there were no trained nurses.

She found the doctor in a neighboring ward. This one was full of men. Some had obvious signs of broken bones. Others had bandages over their eyes. Ignatz Jankaukas was bent over a patient with blood oozing from a wound on his neck. Delphine stopped in her tracks, not wanting to interrupt what appeared to be a medical emergency. She watched him stanch the flow of blood, then administer an injection. The missing fingers the major had mentioned were on the hand holding the syringe.

He looked younger than she had expected. Late thirties, perhaps. But even from a distance, she could see exhaustion etched on his face. As he straightened up, he caught sight of her. There was a momentary wariness—not far short of the fear she’d seen in Wolf’s eyes. But unlike the boy, the doctor must have recognized the red patch on her cap.

He came toward her, wiping his hands on a surgical coat that was streaked with blood. “Madame Fabius—bonjour! Excusez-moi—je voudrais embrasser votre main, mais je suis tout sanglant!”

She was surprised that he knew her name, and amazed that he spoke French so eloquently. He was apologizing for being unable to kiss her hand because he was too bloody. In the next breath he told her she was an angel from heaven, that since the Belgian doctor had taken flight, the hospital had been on its knees. He said he had never in his life been more grateful to see a nurse.

Delphine didn’t often blush, but she could feel her throat and cheeks turning pink. In all her years of nursing, she had never received such a flattering welcome. She complimented him on his French and asked him where he had learned it. He told her that he’d studied it in college, alongside medicine, that he’d been offered a post at a hospital in Lille, but the war had prevented him from taking it.

She asked who else was helping at the hospital, explaining that she’d already met Wolf and needed someone to prepare a bottle for the baby she’d left him holding.

“There is a woman from the camp who comes in to wash and feed the men,” he replied in French, “but she refuses to care for the women.” He cocked his head toward the door to the maternity ward.

“Why?” she asked.

He told her that it was because many of the babies being delivered were fathered by the Nazis who had run Seidenmühle when it was a slave labor camp. The DPs didn’t want anything to do with the mothers of German bastards.

Delphine clicked her tongue against her teeth. “Et le gar?on?” She wanted to know why Wolf was willing to help when others had refused.

Dr. Jankaukas explained that Wolf was an orphan. He spent his days helping at the hospital because he wanted to be a doctor when he grew up. “Pauvre petit,” he said, shaking his head. Poor little one. Clearly, he thought this a forlorn hope.

“Montre-moi où tu gardes le lait,” she said. Show me where you keep the milk. That was her first priority: to get some nourishment into the poor thin baby next door. Then she could start working out how on earth to get this place running as it should.



By the end of the morning, Martha felt as if a stone had lodged itself in her throat. It was the effort of suppressing emotion, of swallowing back tears. It was as if she and Kitty had opened the door to a tidal wave of human misery, the wreckage of lives torn apart by war. The people in the camp had washed up in a place far from home, desperate for any comfort, any meaning, they could find. One man, who had been an opera singer before the war, had opened his mouth wide to show the stumps of his teeth, which he said had been smashed by the Nazis. He was asking for a pass to visit a dentist in the town downriver and planning to pay for the treatment by selling his mother’s wedding ring. Another man—wild looking, with a mud-spattered shirt and torn trousers—had said he wanted a pass to go to the woods outside the camp. At first, Martha had suspected that he might be one of the black marketeers the major had warned her about, but on further questioning, he had broken down in tears and explained that he had lost his wife and all three of his children in the war. In his previous life he had been a botanist—and all he wanted now was to be allowed to wander the forest, searching for wildflowers. The look he had given Martha when she’d handed over the pass had been utterly heartbreaking.