Читать книгу All We Left Behind - Danielle R. Graham - Страница 12

The oddly coupled rural Italian soldiers didn’t shoot me. Instead, they arranged for a farmer to hoist me onto a primitive wood cart pulled by a scrawny, malnourished horse. They hopped a ride on the cart, too, only half-heartedly pointing their guns in my general direction since I wasn’t in any condition to fight or run off.

It was a strangely emotionless purgatory to be neither safe nor in immediate danger. Possibly I was in shock from the pain of the burns, or maybe it was just such a peculiar circumstance that my body wasn’t sure how to react, but I felt detached from the reality of what was happening.

An hour into the bumpy journey, the Italian farmer’s cart hit a pot-sized hole on the bombed-out dirt road. The rough jolt threw me against the grasshopper soldier, who smelled like tobacco and dried sweat. He pushed me off as if I disgusted him and yelled at the farmer to instruct him to watch where he was going. I didn’t understand the words but the sentiment was evident.

Dusk fell as we finally passed several stone, thatched-roof farmhouses on the approach to a German-occupied Italian village. The buildings were mostly rubble from the bombings, but laundry lines hung beside some of the structures that still had partial roofs, and I could imagine the peaceful quaintness that must have existed before the war. The farmer’s cart jarringly bounced over cobblestone towards a central plaza, designed around what at one time would have been an impressive tiered marble water fountain. It was half destroyed and empty. The cart stopped in front of a town hall that had been converted by the German military into a Kriegslazarett, a makeshift battlefield hospital for Allied prisoners of war. Several Nazi military jeeps and an ambulance were parked outside the one-storey, wood-framed building. The Italian soldiers stood on either side of me so I could rest my weight on their shoulders as they assisted me inside to surrender me to the Nazis. A clerk took one look at my burns and directed the soldiers to haul me promptly into an office that served as a treatment and operating room. They hoisted me roughly onto a cold metal gurney and then made their leave.

A German doctor who couldn’t have been much older than Tosh examined my feet and shook his head with a gravity that translated loud and clear through the language barrier. I worried it meant amputation. He pushed his spectacles up his nose and, without applying any numbing agent, began the tedious and tormenting task of cleaning the wounds with a solvent and a sharp metal utensil. I couldn’t watch. And my body convulsed in an instinctual gag as the layers of charred skin fell off. My fingers gripped the cold metal table, and although I was on the verge of shouting out in agony the entire time, I cursed only twice – once when he peeled off the last fragile layer of skin, and again when he doused the raw surface with a pungent disinfectant. Holding in the pain made my heart race, the surface of my tongue dry into a paste, and sweat gush from every pore on my body.

A nurse entered the room and smiled at me with a kindness that made me momentarily forget the physical suffering. But then I ached for the comfort of home. Her dark brown hair was twisted into a bun with her white nurse’s cap pinned just above it. Rose wore her nurse’s cap the same way. The nurse was pretty – almost as pretty as Chidori. Almost. No woman I’d ever seen was prettier than Chidori. When we were growing up, strangers always commented on how she was as beautiful as a porcelain doll. And it was true, she did resemble the doll on my sister’s shelf, with her long eyelashes, peachy-coloured cheeks, and lips that seemed always ready to kiss something. I didn’t realize until I was much older how rare it was to be that striking in real life.

The doctor left and the nurse gently wrapped my feet with bandages. When she was done, she reached over to turn my hand. Her frown deepened because my palms were burned badly as well. With the antiseptic the doctor had used, she cleaned my hands, arms, and a burn that ran up my neck and jaw. I winced and bit my lip to prevent myself from cursing in front of her.

‘Entschuldigung,’ she said.

I didn’t know what it meant, but it sounded apologetic. She began a full conversation with me, of which I didn’t understand a word. She smiled a lot and even laughed a few times, not minding that I didn’t say anything in response. And when I smiled, she gently pressed her finger to the dimple on my left cheek.

‘Gutaussehender.’

I tried to repeat the word and it made her laugh. Her friendliness was appreciated, and the only thing that made being injured, all alone in a foreign country, and in the custody of Nazis bearable. She helped me slide off the examining table into a wheelchair, then wheeled me over uneven wood-plank floors into a rectory that served as the dormitory. About thirty men reclined on iron-frame cots, playing cards or reading. Some were asleep. She placed me in front of an empty cot next to another Canadian pilot. I didn’t know him, but the familiar uniform folded up on a chair next to his bed gave me a sense of comradery with the stranger. He was asleep, so I tried to be quiet and not disturb him.

The nurse tenderly helped me move from the wheelchair to the lumpy and compressed cotton mattress and then assisted me to change out of my tattered uniform. She turned her head politely so I could slip into a thin hospital gown and then under the sheet. She must have noticed me wince from the weight of the top wool blanket, because she folded up the bottom of the bed linens to leave my feet exposed.

‘Danke,’ I said. I’d heard Rory say it to his cousin before, so I knew it meant thank you in German.

She nodded to accept the gratitude before she left the dormitory.

At lights out, the guard left his post by the door to do a bed check. The heels of his boots clicked against the wood floorboards and echoed through the dormitory – the sound nightmares are made of. He snaked his way through the rows of cots. When he reached my row, the beam of his torch landed on my face, forcing me to squint.

‘Schlafen,’ he grumbled.

I had no idea what that meant so I ignored him. I was still rattled from the dogfight and in too much discomfort to sleep, so I just stared at the ceiling and thought about home.

‘Sleep,’ he growled in English.

Truth was, I wanted to be asleep. Desperately, to make the night pass faster. But I couldn’t get the dreadful images of Gordie’s airplane going down out of my mind. The disturbing stench of burned bodies also hadn’t left me. The guard kept the light beamed in my eyes so I glared at him. His eyebrows angled together in contempt as he lifted his arm. The torch slammed against my bandaged right ankle, and my entire body contorted from a dynamite-like explosion that travelled up my leg and halted my heart for a beat. I would have screamed if the air had not been completely sucked out by the blow. Instead, I writhed silently as my muscles braced rigidly against the mattress to fight the torment.

‘Schlafen!’ he shouted.

I winced and turned my back to him.

If my mother had known I was in pain she would have sat on the edge of my mattress and rested a nurturing hand on my shoulder – that is, if she weren’t hysterically inconsolable over witnessing the damaged state I was in and the rudimentary medical treatment I had been provided. But, of course, she wasn’t with me and I wasn’t home. I was all alone in hostile territory. And yearning for a comfort that wasn’t possible only made me feel worse.

The click of his boots didn’t start up again until I purposely slowed my breathing to feign sleep. Once he was gone, my body shook from the intensity of the anguish, or maybe the rage. My desperation to go home had never been worse. But that wish wasn’t going to come true. At least not any time soon. I knew that. And the grim reality pained me worse than the weeping burn wounds that left me skinless and raw.

23 August 1941

Dear Diary,

I greatly admire a person who is able to remain upbeat through heartbreaking hardship. Mrs Wagner tragically lost her husband of fifty-eight years. She has no other family and she is in frail health herself, yet she finds the strength to be genuinely pleasant to everyone she meets. If the wretched hardships of war reach us here on Mayne Island, I aspire to be the type of person who can grow bolder and build strength through dreadful adversity. I pray tragedy never happens. But, if ever faced with the choice to wallow in despair or embrace love, gratitude, and appreciation, why not clutch to the contentment and awe of our fleeting life as Mrs Wagner does?

Who am I fooling? I failed to even clutch the joyous contentment spinning around right in front of my face earlier today. Hayden asked me to dance and I put it off so long that we missed our chance. That is my problem in a nutshell. I think too much. I worry too much. I hesitate too much. Hayden never hesitates. Once he knows what he wants, he bravely takes action to bring it to fruition. Admittedly, some of Hayden’s actions are too impetuous and end in calamity, but I admire that he is fearless. I admire so much about him. Obaasan says if you wish to discover the most important purpose in your life, you need not look any farther than that which puts a smile on your face when you wake up in the morning. For me, that would be Hayden – without a doubt. This afternoon when Hayden and I meet, I vow to be more spontaneous and daring.

Chi