‘How long has she been here?’
‘Her three months are nearly up.’
The three months were the maximum negotiated with the Swiss immigration authorities for the residence of foreign children. Gouverner, c’est prévoir: the strict limit of a quarter of a year was to prevent welcome spa guests from eventually turning into unloved immigrants. On the other hand, Switzerland was still a tourist country, and in spite of all the upheavals in Europe long might it remain one, and from the economic standpoint the powers that be had no objection to German children getting red cheeks in the healthy air of Appenzell.
Except that in this particular case the red cheeks hadn’t happened.
‘She’s coughing blood? All of a sudden? And you never noticed anything before?’
‘I’ve had nothing but trouble with the child,’ complained Fräulein Württemberger. ‘She’s a rover.’
‘Has she run away?’
‘Such things don’t happen here. I take my caring duties very seriously.’ She checked that no strands had still escaped from her bun. ‘It’s much more unpleasant than that.’ She lowered her voice and said almost in a whisper. ‘I caught her in Köbeli’s room.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘In the room of a halfwit! In his bedroom!’ She uttered the word as furiously as if the janitor had a whole suite of rooms at his disposal, apart from his cramped bedroom.
‘I know Köbeli. He’s harmless.’
‘One can never be quite sure,’ Fräulein Württemberger said darkly. ‘Luckily he wasn’t there at the time. Which doesn’t alter the question: what would a twelve-year-old girl want in a strange man’s room?’
‘I’m sure there’s a quite harmless reason for it.’
The director of the home would not be reassured so easily. ‘She was in her nightshirt,’ she said grimly. ‘So practically naked. And one knows all the things that can happen at that age.’ Fräulein Württemberger’s expression was eloquent: there are aberrations that she could not discuss with a man, even if he was a doctor. ‘And then this illness, on top of everything! When they were both supposed to go back next week.’
‘Both of them?’ Arthur repeated the surprising plural.
‘She’s here with her little brother. Irma and Moses Pollack from Kassel. Here are their certificates.’
Every child who came to the Wartheim from abroad had to show a medical certificate before crossing the border, attesting to his or her perfect health. That was also required at a higher level, because proud as one was of the health-giving properties of good Swiss air, one didn’t want sick people coming into the country. A tourist country cannot afford plagues.
A Privatdozent, Dr Saul Merzbach (before his specialisation, ‘consultant in gynaecology at the Red Cross Hospital, Kassel’ the word ‘former’ had been added in ink) had confirmed that he had carried out a thorough examination, including nasal smear for diphtheria bacilli on the siblings Pollack, Irma (twelve years old) and Moses (nine years old), and found no signs of illness in either the physical or the mental spheres. That had been three months ago.
But now Irma was coughing blood.
‘And her brother?’
‘Completely healthy. Now he’s clinging to his sister far too much. I’ve tried to separate the two of them. To encourage his independence. But there were scenes…’
Children can be so unreasonable.
‘Then I’ll take a look at Irma.’
Both children came in, hand in hand. Arthur would have guessed that the little girl was younger, perhaps ten, eleven at the most. She was small for her age, but had a rather adult face with big brown eyes and a slight squint. Her wandering gaze made her look as if she were constantly lost in thought and her attention were elsewhere. She didn’t look ill.
Moses wasn’t much smaller than his sister, but he looked up at her so trustingly, and she held his hand so protectively that one couldn’t help thinking of a mother with her child.
‘So you’re Irma,’ said Arthur. ‘And you’re little Moishi.’
‘My name is Moses,’ the boy corrected the diminutive. He had a very small voice, as if he had brought only part of himself from Germany and left the rest behind there. ‘The name comes from Moses Mendelssohn.’
‘And do you know who Moses Mendelssohn was?’
‘Not exactly. A musician, I think. But my father said it’s a name you can be proud of.’
‘Your father is quite right. Do you write to him regularly?’
‘We can’t write to him,’ said the girl. ‘He’s dead.’
Arthur wanted to bite off his tongue.
Fräulein Württemberger had no time for such useless chitchat. ‘There’s no need for any of this. Tell the doctor what’s wrong with you.’
‘I have no cough. It hurts, in here.’ She put her hand to her chest. ‘And sometimes there’s blood.’
‘Show the doctor!’
With her free hand, and without letting go of her brother, Irma reached into the pocket of her black-and-white checked apron, took out a crumpled handkerchief and held it out to Arthur. A big blood-stain had dried dark brown into the fabric.
‘Sure enough,’ said Arthur.
He held out the handkerchief to Fräulein Württemberger, but she stepped quickly back, startled and repelled.
‘The doctor in Kassel should have noticed that,’ she groused, and patrolled her bun once more for escaping tendrils. ‘Such things don’t just happen from one day to the next.’
‘Sometimes they do.’
Fräulein Württemberger held out her index finger with the chewed fingernail to the little girl in an accusatory fashion and snapped, ‘I hold you responsible! You should have told me this much sooner.’ And in a no less reproachful voice to Arthur, ‘What sort of illness is it? I hope it’s nothing infectious?’
Arthur was a mild-mannered person, far too mild-mannered, as Hinda was always reminding him. But enough was enough. ‘It may not have escaped even you,’ he said sarcastically, ‘that doctors sometimes examine their patients before making their diagnosis. And now please leave me alone with the child.’
‘I insist that…’
‘As you wish.’ Arthur put the stethoscope that had already taken out back in its case and snapped the lock shut. ‘Then I will finish my work now and inform the Women’s Association that here in the Wartheim we may have a case of a highly infectious pulmonary disease.’
‘But…’
‘Establishing who bears responsibility for such an epidemic will no longer be my concern.’
Once her bastion of polysyllabic words and unquestioned articles of faith had been penetrated, Fräulein Württemberger had little left to throw into the battle. She practically tore Moses away from his sister and marched outside with him, pulling the boy behind her like a prisoner of war.
The door slammed shut. Irma was about to run after her brother, but then stayed put.
‘If she isn’t nice to him,’ Arthur said consolingly, ‘I will give her some medicine to make her have a sore tummy for three days.’
Perhaps little Irma didn’t understand his joke. Arthur liked children, but he wasn’t used to dealing with them very much. The little girl just looked at him with big eyes, or rather, she looked past him and asked, ‘Shall I get undressed? So that you can examine me?’
‘Yes, of course. Let’s have a look at your chest.’
Most people, even children, turned away when they took off their clothes for an examination, hid for a few seconds the nakedness that she was about to present to the doctor. Irma didn’t. On the contrary: she looked at him as concentratedly as if she wanted to find something out from him, or solve a riddle that involved him.