The Diplomat's Wife(3)
CHAPTER 2
“Awake now, are we?” A woman’s voice, brisk and unfamiliar, cuts through the darkness. Have the Germans returned? I inhale sharply. Something is different. The air is no longer thick with waste, but with smells of rubbing alcohol and fresh paint. Gone are the sounds of the rats and dripping water, too. They have been replaced by gentle rustling, voices talking softly.
Snapping my eyes open, I am stunned to discover that I am no longer in my cell, but in a large room with bright yellow walls. Where am I? A woman stands by the foot of the bed. Though her face is blurry, I can see that she is wearing a white dress and cap. She comes up beside me and touches my forehead. “How are you feeling?” I swallow uncertainly. There is still pain in my side, but it is duller now, like a toothache. “My name is Dava. Do you know where you are?” She is not speaking Polish, but I understand what she is saying. Yiddish, I realize. I have not heard it since leaving the ghetto. But Yiddish is so close to German, and the woman speaks it with some sort of an accent. Perhaps this is just another Nazi trick to get me to talk. The woman, seeming to notice my distress, quickly answers her own question. “You are in a camp run by the Allies for displaced persons, just outside Salzburg.”
Camp. Salzburg. My mind races. “Nazis…?” I manage to say. My throat aches as much from saying the word as from the effort of speaking.
“Gone. Hitler killed himself and what was left of the German army surrendered. The war in Europe is over.” She sounds so sure, so unafraid. I relax slightly, letting her words sink in as she reaches above my head to a window and adjusts the curtains to block some of the sunlight that is streaming through. Don’t, I want to say. I have lived in darkness for so long. “There, that’s better.” I look up at her. Though her full figure gives her a matronly appearance, I can tell by her face that she is not more than thirty. A lock of brown hair peeks out from beneath her cap.
Dava pours water from a blue pitcher into a glass on the low table beside my bed. I start to sit up, but she presses against my shoulder with her free hand. “Wait.” She takes a pillow from the empty bed beside mine and, lifting me up slightly, places it atop the one already beneath my head. I notice then that I am wearing a hospital gown made of coarse, light-blue cotton. “Your body has been through a great deal. You need to move slowly.” I lift my head as Dava brings the glass to my lips. “Slowly,” she repeats. I take a small sip. “That’s good, Marta.” I look up, wondering how she knows my name. “It was written on your forehead when they brought you in,” she explains. Then, noticing my surprise, she adds, “The soldiers who are liberating the camps often write things, names or conditions directly on the patients. They either don’t have paper or they’re afraid the information would be lost on the way in.”
I take another sip, then lay my head down on the pillow once more. Suddenly I remember the soldier helping me drink on the prison floor. “How did I get here?”
Dava replaces the glass on the table. “The Americans found you in the Nazi prison when they liberated Dachau, just outside Munich. We’re just two hours south, not far from the German border, so many of the liberated are brought here. You’ve been unconscious since they brought you in more than a week ago. Your wound was infected and you had a very high fever. We weren’t sure if you were going to pull through. But you’re awake now, and the fever is gone.” Dava looks over her shoulder across the room, then turns back to me. “You rest for a few minutes. I’m going to let the doctor know you’re awake.”
As she walks away, I lift my head again. Although my vision is blurry, I can make out two rows of narrow, evenly spaced beds running along the walls of the long, rectangular room. Mine is in the farthest corner, pressed against a wall on one side. All of the beds seem to be filled, except the one beside me. Several women dressed in white move briskly between them.
Dava returns a few minutes later carrying a tray, an older man with thick glasses in tow. He picks up my wrist with one hand and touches my forehead. Then he lifts the blanket and reaches for the corner of my gown. Surprised, I recoil.
Dava sets down the tray on the empty bed behind her and steps forward. “He just needs to examine the wound to make sure it is healing properly.” I relax slightly and let the doctor lift my gown, trying not to feel his cold, unfamiliar hands as they press on my stomach. Then he pulls the gown back farther, revealing the wound. I am surprised to see fresh stitches along the incision line. “They had to operate again when you first arrived here,” Dava explains. “There was a piece of bullet still inside you and you had developed an infection.” I nod. In prison I often wondered why my side still ached so long after the Nazis operated on me. Now, not long after the second surgery, it already feels much better.
The doctor replaces my gown and turns to Dava, speaking to her in German too brisk and accented for me to comprehend. Then he hurries away. “He said you’re healing really well. And that you should try to eat something. Are you hungry?” Before I can answer, Dava picks up a bowl from the tray behind her. “Soup,” she announces brightly. I sit up slowly and this time she does not stop me, but brings the bowl close under my chin. A rich aroma wafts upward. Nausea rises in me and a cold sweats break out on my forehead. Noticing, Dava sets the bowl down on the table and picks up a cup and saucer from the tray. “Let’s just start with some tea.”