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.”
I swallow, my stomach calmer now. “I can hold it.”
Dava hands me the cup and I take a sip. The liquid is lukewarm and soothing to my throat. Cradling the cup in both hands, I look upward. The ceiling is high and decorated with a pattern of some sort. I squint to try to make it out.
“This used to be a formal dining room,” Dava explains. “The whole camp is housed on the grounds of Schloss Leopoldskron, which was one of the Hapsburg palaces. The Nazis confiscated it from its previous owners, and we took it from them. The palace is very beautiful, as are the grounds. I’ll give you a tour when you are well enough.”
“Thank you.” I take another sip of tea.
Dava points upward. “If you look there, you can see the Baroque influence. The detail is really quite extraordinary.”
“I can’t…” I begin, then hesitate. “That is, I can’t see it.”
“What do you mean?” Dava’s voice is heavy with concern. “Did the Nazis do something? A blow to the head, perhaps? Or did you fall?”
I shake my head. “Nothing like that,” I reply quickly, though of course they had struck me in the head many times. “It’s just that I am very nearsighted. And my glasses were confiscated when I was arrested.”
“Oh, my goodness, why didn’t you say something? We have a whole boxful of glasses in the supply room.” What happened to their former owners? I wonder. Dava continues, “As soon as you’ve finished eating, I’ll bring you a few pairs to try out. Now, let’s give the soup another go.” She takes the teacup from me and puts it back on the tray, then picks up the bowl once more. My stomach rumbles with anticipation. I swallow the first mouthful Dava spoons for me, savoring the warm, salty broth as it runs down my throat. Neither of us speak as she feeds me a second spoonful, then a third. “Let’s slow down for a minute and see how that sits,” she says.
I open my mouth to start to protest. It is the first fresh food I have tasted in months and I do not want to stop. But I know that she is right. I lean back and look around the ward. “I’ve been wondering, the rest of the room looks so crowded, but there is no one here.” I gesture to the empty bed beside my own.
“You mean, why are you being kept separate from the others?”
“Yes.”
Dava hesitates. “The others are from the camps.”
“I don’t understand. You said I was in Dachau. Wasn’t that a camp?”
“Yes, of course. But where you were kept, in the prison, you were not in the general population with the other women.” I study Dava’s face. Does she know why I was in that special prison cell? “The conditions in the general populations of the camps like Dachau were very bad,” she adds.
“Worse than where I was?” I try to imagine what could be more horrible than the beatings, starvation and isolation I endured.
“Not necessarily worse, but different. There were lots of diseases, dysentery, typhus.” Typhus. My mother died of typhus in the Kraków ghetto. I see her sore-ravaged body, hear her crying out in the delirium brought on by high fever. “We didn’t want to risk you catching something while you were weak from the surgery and infection, so we kept you as separate as we could. That’s about to change, though. We’re expecting another transport and we’ll likely have to use all of the beds then, so you’ll be getting a neighbor. But enough about that. Let’s have some more soup.”
As Dava spoons the broth for me, I look over her shoulder. Most of the other women lie still in their beds. I am suddenly aware of noises I hadn’t heard before, low moans, the whirring and beeping of medical equipment. There is another smell, too: the faint, metallic odor of blood.
I turn back to Dava, studying her face with interest. “Where are you from?”
“Russia originally, but my family moved to Vienna when I was a child. My parents died in Buchenwald.”
“You’re Jewish?” I cannot keep the surprise from my voice. With her ample figure, Dava does not look like she spent time in the camps.
She nods. “I was in the south of France studying languages when the war broke out. My family wouldn’t hear of me coming back. So I signed up as a nurse with the Allies, made my way back to Austria as soon as I was able. But my parents, our house, it was all gone.”