“But he said he was in Gorizia, at a regimental hospital,” Lucius protested.
“Yes. But he wrote that he was tired of being just an assistant. He said they treated him like a student, gave him the mentally unsound, never let him operate. He was envious of you, I think. Of all the responsibilities you had.” There were tears in his eyes when he opened them, and Lucius thought how impossible it would have been for his parents to have this kind of knowledge of their son.
Perhaps I could tell Feuermann’s father of Horváth, Lucius wondered.
But this was only a fleeting thought. Beyond the empty tables, he could see an unlit kerosene lamp, and beyond that, a bed, or a series of planks laid with blankets, and a pair of pillows, and beyond them a stack of books, the old editions of the anatomy and physiology textbooks he’d bought for his friend. Loaned—Feuermann wouldn’t accept the charity, though Lucius never had any intention of getting them back. Above them were stacked the notebooks he remembered Feuermann filling at his side. He felt a sudden desire to see them, but this didn’t seem the kind of thing one did to the belongings of someone who was alive. So he turned his eyes away.
“He was a tireless writer,” said his father. “He wrote to me almost every day.”
August, thought Lucius. Before an unrelenting series of battles along the Isonzo had resumed.
“The lines of communication are poor in the mountains,” he said.
“Yes,” said his father. “That is what they say.”
Lucius might have promised to visit the War Office or use his mother’s contacts to try to find his friend. But Feuermann’s father did not ask for this, and when Lucius at last bid him goodbye and stepped out into the crowded, narrow street, he knew what he would learn. It was then that he knew he would return to medicine, if only because he could not survive this news alone.
He petitioned that afternoon for redeployment.
In the Medical Division Office for Field Operations in the East, the clerk took down his name and address. It would take some time, he said, his voice high and nasally. They had to communicate with his regiment in Kraków; he would receive his summons in the next few weeks.
“But I don’t need to return to Kraków,” said Lucius. “I’ll go to any theater. Whatever is available the soonest. If you need a medic…”
The clerk leaned back in his chair and peered at Lucius over his reading glasses. “A medic? Are you suicidal? Why so urgent? Aren’t the Viennese girls good enough?”
It was a Monday. On Friday, he returned home from his walks to find a letter waiting. But this wasn’t from the War Office. Instead, on faded university stationery, he found a note in the shaky hand of Zimmer, his old professor. Your mother says you’re home and set for reenlistment. I now direct a rehabilitation hospital for neurological injuries in the old Lamberg Palace, where I think your services are needed. If you will reconsider…
Mother. So he had received his redeployment letter. And once again, like some deus ex machina, she had intervened. He recalled how back during the heady days of mobilization, after she had done the same, he had defiantly discarded Zimmer’s letter. But this time was different. Your services are needed. He was desperate to return to medicine, any medicine. And perhaps he could tell Zimmer about Horváth and his dreams.
He found his professor in the palace that evening, in a vast ballroom converted to a ward.
In nearly three years, Zimmer had scarcely changed. He had the same puff-of-smoke sideburns, the same pebbly smile. Perhaps a little shorter, a little more piratical. His eyes now marbled with a slight sheen of cataract, and on his pate was a waxy scarab of a scab.
He was making rounds with two nurses and an orderly when Lucius found him. He held a flyswatter with an ivory handle, which he tucked into his belt as a soldier might a saber. He held out his hand and Lucius took it. His fingers were smooth and twisted with an arthritis Lucius didn’t remember being so severe. They shook. “My student,” said Zimmer, and held Lucius’s hand long after they stopped shaking, before he let it go.
Like the church in Lemnowice and the schoolhouses and châteaus Lucius had visited across Galicia, the Lamberg Palace Army Rehabilitation Hospital for Neurological Injuries was one of countless civilian buildings converted by the Austro-Hungarian Medical Service into wards for the wounded. It had been set up under the personal patronage of an archduchess, Anna, a cousin of Franz Josef. It was a family palace, dating from the reign of Josef II, with a high slate roof, gilded pilasters, and frescoed ceilings with trompe l’oeil crenellations and a trompe l’oeil sky. To this, the archduchess had generously donated personal touches from her family’s collection. The theme was martial—there were statues of Saint Michael, tapestries of the Turkish siege of Vienna, and a great canvas showing the corpse-strewn marshes of Marathon. A painting of Cadmus, sowing the earth with dragon’s teeth, overhung the chair for minor surgeries. Aloud, Lucius wondered if these were wise decorative choices for a room of injured soldiers, but Zimmer said that the archduke, a great believer in the curative power of manliness, had been adamant. After all, hadn’t the dragon’s teeth turned into even fiercer warriors, who eventually founded Thebes?
Moreover, said Zimmer, to Anna’s credit, she even volunteered. Of course, mostly she read war poetry, and when she tended to the men, it was above the waist only, and not on the face, and she didn’t like any wound with blood or pus.
“What kind of wound is that?” asked Lucius.
“So mostly she reads war poetry,” said Zimmer. But still she volunteered.
It was a testament to the remarkable constancy of medicine that such a setting might be anything like the little church with a crater in its floor. But within hours of arriving, he found himself back in the familiar rhythms. There were differences, yes. The wounds here were old, the injuries more stable, more recalcitrant to cure. Fewer dressings, more scars, more contractures. Little blackboards at the foot of each painted metal bed upon which were written names and diagnoses. A bewildering array of metal and leather strengthening devices. A phonograph, of course: this was Austria, land of Haydn, Schubert, Mozart. But so much else the same. Morphine for pain. Phenobarbital for seizures. Camphorated oil for everything. Chloral for sleep.
The first night he stayed long after Zimmer had gone home. There were close to a hundred and twenty patients, and unlike many of the simple fractures and amputations he’d cared for in Lemnowice, all were cases of great complexity. So when the lights went out, he took a stack of the thick charts and began to read. The summaries were mostly typed up by the transferring hospitals, with annotations in Zimmer’s unsteady hand. Head wounds, all of them, and as he read, he felt briefly, with a pang, that Margarete was there with him, introducing them as she had introduced the soldiers that first night in Lemnowice. This, Pan Lieutenant Doctor, is Gregor Braz of Prague, blind after being shot behind the ear; this is Marcus Kobold, a sapper from Carinthia, tremor following near burial underground. This is Helmut Müller, infantry, an art teacher, burned at the Marne, self-inflicted gunshot wound after being told he’d lost his eyes. Samuel Klein, Pan Doctor, a cobbler’s son from Leopoldstadt, blunt crushing trauma just above the ear. This is Zoltán Lukács, a hussar thrown from his horse, an epileptic. This is Egon Rothman, loss of memory since close-range penetration of a magnesium flare. This is Matthias Schmidt, with penetrating trauma through the left temple. This is Werner Eck, with drop attacks, and this is Natan Béla, paralysis of his left arm and leg after being wrongly hanged for spying and cut down before he died. This is Heinrich Rostov, lance wound, right temple, inability to swallow. This is Friedrich Til, Doctor. This is Hans Benesch. This is Bohomil Molnár. Maciej Krawiec, Daniel Löw…