“Will you go back to the hospital after the baby’s born? My aunt says that you’re welcome to stay with her on the Josefsgasse, and Franzi’s said to be very good with children. The poor girl’s so soft in the head they’ve refused to employ her in a shell factory. And Professor Kirschbaum told me that he’d keep your job open for you.”
She was silent for a while, gazing out over the stubble fields.
“No. No, I’m not going back to the hospitaclass="underline" not as a nurse and not while the war’s on. I’ve had enough.”
“You always told me that your patients came first.”
“I’ve changed my mind since then.”
“Why? You were always so dedicated before.”
“A number of reasons, really. Above all because I’ve realised what we’re really doing there in a military hospital.” She turned to look at me, her deep-green eyes gazing into mine. “Don’t believe all that rot you read about us nurses in the papers: ‘the Angels in White’ and so on, nursing our wounded young heroes back to health. It’s not like that any more—if indeed it ever was. What we’re doing is cobbling them back together to a degree where they’re fit to be sent back to the trenches and blown up again, that’s all. I tell you, what we’re doing now isn’t medicine, it’s veterinary surgery. The only wonder is that we aren’t shooting the worst ones with a captive-bolt pistol yet—though according to Dr Navratil that’s what they’re doing in some of the field hospitals: giving the difficult cases a double injection of morphine and leaving them out all night.”
I was incredulous.
“Send them back into the trenches? Even the patients you have to look after? I don’t believe it.”
“It’s a fact: even the ones I have to look after. They’re all severe head- wounds—mostly facial reconstruction—and the authorities have realised that once they’ve been patched up to a degree where their brains no longer dribble out of their ears, they can still usually fire a rifle. In fact I think that the War Ministry is actually anxious to get the worst face-wound cases out of the way once they’re discharged. At least if they’re in the war zone they can’t go around alarming the public.” A tear began to glisten in the corner of her eye. “There was one boy on my ward in the spring, called Emil Breitenfeld. He’d been a Fahnrich with the Kaiserjagers in Poland and had half his lower jaw shot away. We spent the best part of a year rebuilding his face. Professor Kirschbaum and the dentists. They had to build in a metal bridge, but it never really took and gave him a great deal of pain. Anyway, in June the War Ministry Inspection Board people came around and told us not to waste any more time on him: that he was perfectly dienstauglich and wasn’t going to get any better and was taking up a bed; and anyway they were desperately short of officers at the Front. So out he went: recalled to active service on the Russian Front. We sent him off with a bottle of painkiller pills in his greatcoat pocket.”
“What happened to him?”
“He was killed a month later. He wrote me a letter just before and said that he couldn’t care any longer whether he lived or died—in fact he’d rather die if he had to go around after the war with half his jaw missing. His men looked after him as best they could—even mashed his food up for him like a baby so that he wouldn’t have to chew it—but he stopped a bullet in the end. His sergeant wrote to tell me. He was only twenty-two.
And just before I left there was a secret War Ministry directive came around. It seems that in future we are not to devote scarce resources to treating the really severe cases but instead concentrate our efforts on ‘those military personnel likely to be of further use to the war effort.’ May they all rot in hell for it. Another couple of years of this and we’ll have an army entirely made up of cripples and men half crazy with shell-shock.” She paused, thinking. “But then, I suppose that’s the best idea really; have your war fought for you by people who’ve got nothing left to lose.”
As we walked homewards, evening shadows streaming along the dusty white country road, a sudden thought struck me.
“I say, Liserl, did you ever have a fellow called Svetozar von Potocznik on your ward? He was wounded in the face when he was with the Germans in Flanders in 1914 and spent some time with Professor Kirschbaum in Vienna I believe.”
She stopped suddenly. “Potocznik? How did you know about him?” “When he was discharged he joined the k.u.k. Fliegertruppe and he’s now Chief Pilot with Flik 19F at Caprovizza. I haven’t spoken with him much, but he seems a decent enough sort, even if he has got Greater Germany on the brain. He’s very bright, and he would have been very good-looking too if he hadn’t lost one side of his face.”
She was silent for a while.
“Yes, yes. I knew him quite well. In fact before I met you last summer we might have got engaged. I liked him very much at first—but less and less as I got to know him better.”
“What’s the matter with him? ”
“I couldn’t really say. He’s very intelligent, as you say, and beautifully spoken, and very sweet and courteous when he wants to be. But there’s something off about him. In fact I came to the conclusion in the end that he was quite cracked. Perhaps it was the head-wound; perhaps he was like that before, I really don’t know.”
“Were you serious about each other?”
“Oh yes. At least, I was quite taken with him at first. Patients falling in love with you is an occupational hazard in my trade: I used to get at least three proposals a week before I married you and got this ring safely on my finger. But he was different for me. It’s just that he had reservations about me in the end, not the other way round.”
“How did you find that out?”
“It was one evening in the gardens. He was up and about by then, back in uniform instead of a dressing-gown. I’d just come off duty and we were sitting together talking about this and that. And after a while it got around to getting engaged. Not that I think we had any burning passion for each other; just that we rather liked one another, and if he was a little odd I put it down to what he’d been through and I thought that I might be able to spend my life with him. We got on to marriage, and what we wanted to do after the war, and I thought he was going to ask a certain question. Then he asked me . . . something else.” She stopped.
“What did he say? ”
“Oh, it was so stupid, it embarrasses me to tell you . . . don’t ask me, please.”
“What was it?”
“Really something so absurd that I don’t think even now . . . Oh there, you’ve made me get the giggles just thinking about it.” I was fascinated now, devoured with curiosity.
“Please tell me Liserl, what did he ask you? I’ll never rest now until I know. There shouldn’t be secrets between man and wife. I’ve told you about all my old affairs when you’ve asked.”
“Oh well then, if you have to know . . .” She was almost choking now as she tried to suppress her merriment. “. . . The silly idiot asked me what colour my nipples were. There, look, you’ve made me blush even now just with telling you about it.”
“For God’s sake, why did he ask you that?”
“I must say I was a bit puzzled myself at the time. In fact I couldn’t answer him for a while I was so embarrassed. ‘Silly boy,’ I said once I’d managed to stop giggling, ‘you really mustn’t ask nice well-brought-up girls questions like that. But why on earth do you want to know?’ I said, ‘Is it a hobby of yours ? And anyway, what do you mean by colour? Most women’s are more or less pink I believe, so I can’t see that the exact shade matters a lot.’ But he wouldn’t give up: sat there staring into my eyes, ever so solemn, and asked me, ‘Yes, but are they dark pink or light pink?’ ” “What on earth was he getting at? ”