The Diplomat's Wife(6)
I study Rose’s face, wondering if waking her had been a mistake. Should I call for a nurse? She does not seem to be in any distress. I lay back in my own bed, still holding Rose’s hand. I wish that it was morning so I could ask Dava where Rose came from, what had happened to her.
I think then of the bright stars above the mountaintops. Too tired to sit up again, I crane my neck upward to see them. Through the break in the curtains, I catch a glimpse of a star. Do I dare to wish on it as I did when I was little? I hesitate. It seems greedy to ask for anything when I should be grateful just to be alive. Still, I cannot help but wonder what I should wish for, what life has in store for me now that I have survived.
I turn to Rose to tell her about the mountains. But she is breathing evenly now, her expression peaceful. I will not wake her again. There will be time to show her tomorrow. Still holding Rose’s hand, I lie back and gaze up at the stars once more.
CHAPTER 3
We sit on the terrace behind the palace, Dava and I on one of the benches, Rose in her wheelchair close beside us. Rose reads aloud in English from Little Women, the book she holds in her lap. “‘I know I do—teaching those tiresome children nearly all day, when I’m longing to enjoy myself at home…’”
“Those sisters sure can complain,” I interrupt in Yiddish.
“Marta…” Dava shoots me a warning look.
“I mean, really,” I persist. “They’re supposed to be in the middle of a war, but they’re safe and warm in their own home. Yet one sister is complaining that she has to teach…”
“Meg,” Rose clarifies.
“And one of the others is upset because she has to sit in a big house and read to her aunt.”
“That’s Jo. But, Marta,” Rose says, “they suffered from the war, too, in their own way. I mean, they didn’t have a lot to eat and their father was off fighting…”
“I think that the American Civil War was very different for people who didn’t live close to the battlefields,” Dava offers slowly in English, teaching. “Not like here.” Battlefields indeed. Here our lives were the battlefields. “War can affect people in many ways,” she adds. She presses her lips together, a faraway expression in her eyes.
Rose raises the book. “Do you want me to keep going?”
“Yes,” Dava replies, patting Rose’s hand. “You’re doing great.”
Rose continues reading aloud, but I do not try to follow along. I have been listening for nearly an hour and my head aches from the constant effort of translating each word. Instead, I look up. It is only seven o’clock. Usually, the August sky would still be bright for more than another hour, but the sun has dropped behind thick, gray-centered clouds. I can barely see the hooked peak of the Untersberg through the fog.
I inhale deeply, savoring the sweet honeysuckle smell from the gardens that line the edge of the terrace. It has been more than two months since my arrival at the camp. My health has improved steadily since then, much more quickly, Dava said, than the doctors expected. The incision where my wound had been is nearly healed. It barely aches at all anymore, except when it rains.
“Marta,” Rose says. I turn to find she is holding out the book to me. “Do you want to try a line or two?”
I hesitate, running my hand along the warm stone bench. Earlier, Dava stopped Rose and let me try one of the easier passages, but as I struggled through the first few words, it was obvious that the text was still too difficult for me. “No, thanks.” Rose is nearly fluent in English, owing to summers spent with her aunt in London as a child. I, on the other hand, have been taking the English classes offered each morning in the palace library with some of the other camp residents. I’ve been able to pick up the spoken language fairly easily, but I still struggle to read much beyond children’s books. Dava helps me whenever she has the time. Her language skills are remarkable, owing, she told us once, to the fact that her father was a translator. She was schooled in English and French, in addition to her native Russian and Yiddish, and the German she learned growing up in Austria.
As Rose resumes reading, I turn back toward the palace, awed as ever at its size and grandeur. Schloss Leopoldskron is three stories high, with two massive wings jutting out on either side. Large paned windows dot the light-gray stone facade. The ground floor, I discovered when Dava let me get out of bed a few days after my arrival, is taken up by our ward, and a second ward, where the ballroom had once been, houses male patients. The two are separated by a grand foyer with an enormous crystal chandelier hanging from its high ceiling. Two curved marble staircases lead from the foyer to the first floor, where the library and a small chapel are located. The second floor, where the camp administrative offices are located, is off-limits to residents.
Rose pauses reading at the end of a chapter. “We should stop now,” Dava says. “I don’t want you overdoing things.”
Concerned, I study Rose’s face. Her complexion is pale and dark circles seem to have formed suddenly under her eyes. Rose has not had as easy of a recovery as me. The morning after her arrival, she did not awaken again. When I asked Dava, she told me that Rose was nineteen and from Amsterdam. Though she was only half Jewish, she had been interned in several camps, most recently a camp in Czechoslovakia called Terezin. I remarked that it must have been a really awful camp to make Rose so sick, but Dava replied it actually was not as bad as some. Rather, she explained, Rose had a blood disorder that had been worsened by the poor living conditions in the camp. I didn’t know exactly what a blood disorder was, but it sounded very serious. I watched as she struggled in her sleep over the next several days, keeping vigil as much as I could and informing the nurses whenever she awoke for a few minutes so they could give her water and medicine. Dava told me to concentrate on my own recovery, that Rose was not my problem. But Rose had to get better—I had promised her on the night she arrived that things would be all right.