大象传媒

During the last stages of the war I had to undergo surgery on my right eye. I was in my teens, and wept when the nurse shaved my eyebrow and snipped off my eyelashes. The surgeon was so patient and kind that he calmed me sufficiently to perform the correction, which did, however, leave me sightless in bed, my head hugely bandaged, and held motionless between two sandbags. Because of the many air raids I was placed in the cellar, where I lay alone, fed at the appropriate times by a probationer. I lay there for some weeks, hallucinating or sleeping.
At last a pinhole lens, held in place by further bindings, was placed over the injured eye, I was taken upstairs again, and soon allowed to walk around the hospital. Reading and writing were impossible, and since all the other patients were elderly I was soon bored to death. So I hung disconsolately around the corridor in my striped hospital gown, bothering the frenetically busy nurses. One day I thought I heard a child cry. A child, I thought? But there were no children on adult wards. Then I heard it again, and asked the nurses. I was mistaken, they said evasively, there was no child. I did not believe them. I took to watching, swinging my head around whenever one of the doors to the various sickrooms was opened. In vain, I neither saw a child nor did I hear it cry again.
One evening it was Sister who came to do the medical checks, so I asked her. She put a thermometer into my mouth, and suggested speaking to the surgeon, who would be visiting the following day. She must have warned him, for he came without his usual retinue of students and housemen. He inclined his head to one side when I put my question, looked at me for some time, and then muttered that he would make arrangements with Sister.
The very next afternoon the probationer led me to a door at the furthest end of the corridor, opened it, and pushed me inside. At first I saw little beside the usual hospital furniture, until I caught sight of a small iron cot. I had an impression of frothy gold and stillness, and saw that it was the child! Because of my monstrous appearance I scarcely dared to move towards it, but the child did not stir or cry out. It gazed at me calmly, and watched quite without fear as I gradually stole closer. I sat on the side of its cot where the bars had been slid down. I said 鈥渉ello鈥�. The child, a little girl I now saw, did not reply or give any sign of having heard me, but her eyes were intent on my face, observing me. I spoke to her softly, asking her name. I held up a doll she had among the pillows and made it squawk. I punched the pillow, rearranged her bedclothes - in short, I did everything I thought one might do with a small child. There was no response.
She could have been no more than three years old, her corn-coloured hair soft and gleaming, standing like a lucent crown about her head. Her skin was pink over the rounded, slightly roughed cheeks, her eyes were of the brightest blue, but with traces of a thick discharge in their corners. When I touched her curls she did not flinch, when I stroke her plump little hands she did not smile, when I tickled her short baby neck she did not withdraw or giggle. Even when I finally left the room she made no move or noise, but her eyes were fastened on me until I could see her no more.
I could get no answers to my questions from anyone except that the child had no name, and apparently could not speak. She hardly ever cried, they said, never protested, never smiled. She seemed like an alien from another planet, unfamiliar with our habits, untutored in our customs. I shared my ration of sweets with her, and it was evident that she had never tasted chocolate before. I sang to her, recited nursery rhymes, and above all I played finger games with her. Although she never spoke I grew to feel that she was pleased when I came; that she recognised me even when my appearance changed as my eye improved, ending with having to wear a pair of large black pinhole spectacles. I took over most of the nursing duties bar the cleaning: I fed her, changed her night-dress, put her on her pot, washed and bathed her, I was even allowed to treat her eyes occasionally. I grew to love that child as I had never loved anyone. I spent all day with her, begrudging even the visiting hour which would separate me from her. It was so easy to believe that nobody had as much claim on her as I had. I began to dream of taking her away with me, of adopting this inscrutable stranger and make her my own.
Then, one day, when my mother had brought me some more chocolate and I rushed after visiting hour to share it with the child, a sight confronted me that rooted me to the floor. She was covered in a thick red substance that had spilled over the bedclothes, smeared her face and clotted her hair. For a moment I though that it was blood, and I shouted for a nurse. But nurse was already on her way with a washbowl, flannel and towel, and a big sigh. The red sticky mess was jam.
And thus the mystery was revealed. The girl was the child of Ukrainian slave labourers, who had met in the camp where eventually the child was born. From earliest infancy she had been left on her own in the in the hut, looked after by a deaf and crippled old woman. There was no hospital attached to the camp, but our surgeon had been appointed medical officer there. When the child developed her infection there was nowhere for her to go for treatment. She was an alien, non-Aryan, an outcast, an untouchable. The surgeon had collected her and brought her here, risking his position, his freedom, and perhaps worse. Her parents were permitted to leave the camp only once a month, and when they came to visit their child they had nothing to offer but a crust of black bread thickly spread with a month鈥檚 ration of jam.
There is no end to this tale because I did not, could not, record it in my diary. My account is written from memory and in hindsight, for at the time I knew nothing about slave labourers 鈥� I probably thought of her parents as prisoners-of-war. I think the name of the courageous surgeon was Professor Dr. Nachtigall, and I have searched for him everywhere. But like my lost half-sister and millions of other war victims he seems to have vanished for ever.

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.