Yet the face was not the captain’s, and neither was the hand.
Both of them belonged to Gabrielle Belmont.
She stood directly beside me, her wavering image surrounded by a halo of darkness, her cheeks aglow with the lemon flicker of an oil lamp from somewhere and her full lips closed and calm. Her head was wrapped in a white woolen scarf from which some strands of her blond hair veiled a portion of her eyes, and her composure was in counterpoint to the panic of my waking. I did not know where I was, my heart still pounding and my lungs still gasping with the nightmare, and I dropped my gaze to find my white-knuckled fist gripping her small hand so that it most certainly was painful to her, yet there was no flinch in her expression. She slowly raised her other hand and covered mine, and with the warmth of her small fingers I slowly exhaled into a trust that I was indeed safe, and alive.
I lay back, finding my head upon a pillow, my body in the canvas boat of an army cot, its wooden frame creaking beneath my weight. I squinted and turned my head from the lamp, for even its soft glow was too much for my eyes that had taken no light for a fortnight. I could see the damp walls of a large field tent, its sides rolled to the ground and buckling against a cold night wind. There seemed to be eight or perhaps ten other cots inside the tent, yet only three were occupied, all by men heavily swathed in bandages. The man to my immediate left appeared nearly mummified in strips of gauze that oozed with yellow antiseptic and watery blood serum, and between us, my master’s gramophone sat upon an empty oil drum, softly crackling out the strains of “The Blue Danube.”
I looked again at Gabrielle as she gently peeled my fist from her hand and laid it to my side, and she pulled up a layer of woolen blankets and tucked them about my neck. She was not looking directly at me, but appeared to be focusing on the precise maneuvering of the blankets, and I was not sure at all that she was really there until she softly spoke.
“Welcome back to your world, Shtefan Brandt.”
I tried to swallow and speak, but it was as if a large dry ball was mired in a gullet of sand. Gabrielle reached for a water bottle, and she lifted my head and wet my lips, and the small cool stream felt wonderful in my throat. I flicked my eyes to the gramophone and back.
“The music doesn’t disturb the others?” I whispered.
“I think not.” Her eyes smiled a bit as they met mine. “They are in a deeper sleep than you have had.”
“How long was it?”
“Two weeks. For a time, we thought it might be much longer.”
It was then I remembered my wound and my leg, and not knowing what might have transpired while I was far away and deep in my dreams, I tried to raise my head and look.
“No.” She laid a palm upon my brow and pressed it back to the pillow. “You still have your leg.” For a moment, her hand remained on my forehead. “But you are fevered and must rest.”
She moved away, and I lay there looking at the peaked ceiling of the tent, the oil lamp projecting her giant shadow there as she worked at something.
“Where are the others?” I asked.
“The others?”
“The wounded.”
“Most of them are recovered and back to their work.”
“Most of them.”
“I am sorry, Shtefan Brandt. I do not know the names of your friends.”
My friends. There was something in her tone, and the way in which she used my full name, and I realized with a sense of gloom that she was performing a task without care. If my recovery moved her, I would likely never know. She would not fret, perhaps over nothing and no one ever again. She had seen her parents murdered.
“I am the one who should apologize.” My voice was a hoarse croak. “It seems late. You must be very tired.”
“It is four o’clock in the morning.” I thought I heard a smile in her voice, yet she placed a cold towel upon my brow, and I could not see her face, and I shivered. “Fatigue is a luxury long passed.”
“Yes,” I said, even as a profound exhaustion settled in my bones.
“Besides,” she added. “We are young and vigorous, are we not?”
I tried to agree, but my voice had left me again. And yet, all that mattered at that moment was Gabrielle’s admission of our link by youth, if by nothing else...
* * *
I awoke to a spring wind, emerging from the feathered edges of a dream I could not remember, except that it had something to do with a shimmering summer lake and a boat with a large sail. My eyes were heavy with encrusted sleep, and I raised a leaden hand and rubbed them, squinting up at the great canvas roof of the tent, which snapped and crackled with every whip of the breeze. The walls were still rolled to the ground, yet it seemed to be midday, for the heavy cloth nearly glowed with a mossy hue and thin shafts of light pierced the structure’s errant holes and cracks. Outside, the wheels of caissons trundled across the muddy ruts, doctors shouted orders and the walking wounded murmured, and I could hear the labored breathing of my tent mates, though none of them stirred or moved.
Beneath the heavy blankets, I curled my toes against the coarse wool and was so pleased to find them functional that I tried to bend my knee. A blade of pain sliced up immediately from my thigh to my groin, and I exhaled a whispered hiss and returned my leg to its place, releasing my teeth from their clench. I turned my head to the right, and spotting a water bottle on a flimsy metal table there, I reached out for it and brought it to my lips. Yet as I raised my head to drink, I started and dropped the bottle in horror, for it appeared that a huge black spider was perched on my left breast.
I blinked, and then I blinked again. The object was not arachnid at all, but in fact the army’s Iron Cross. I was wearing a heavy, long-sleeved undershirt, and the medal had been pinned to the sweat-stained garment, and in contrast to the drudgery of my hospital attire, it gleamed like an onyx jewel and its red, white and black ribbon was bright as freshly spilled paint.
The flap of the tent suddenly flew open, and the light was so bright that I covered my eyes with my hand. Squinting through my fingers, the figure that stormed through that rectangle of harsh sunlight seemed to be emerging from a blazing fire.
“Come come come, Brandt! You think you’re going to sleep through the rest of the war?!”
It was Himmel, and he strode into the tent as if attending the surrender of General Eisenhower. It is difficult for me to describe how I felt upon his appearance. Yet I would dissemble if I denied the sense of joy, and I sat up on my left elbow and saluted him smartly, and I hardly noticed the complaint of my wound. The Colonel marched straight for my cot, followed closely by Captain Friedrich, whose appearance I interpreted as an exceptional compliment.
“You see, Herr Colonel?” Friedrich chimed. “He is a lazy boy, as I’ve always said.” Yet the captain’s words were accompanied by a wide grin.
Himmel stopped at my side, slipped a finger beneath my Iron Cross and flipped the medal once like a door knocker.
“Mmm. Very pretty.” He frowned. “Do you think you deserve this?”
His expression was grim and gave nothing away, so modesty appeared to be my safest course.
“No, Herr Colonel.”
“No?” Himmel placed his fists astride his hips. “No? So, you are telling me I did all of that paperwork for nothing?”
“No, Sir. I mean, I thank you very much for...”
Friedrich cut me off as he flanked the other side of the cot.
“And I suppose you think I don’t deserve mine either, Brandt?” The captain snapped, even as he pointed to an identical medal on the left pocket of his tunic.
Their expressions were so serious, that I looked from one to the other at a loss, finally settling on Friedrich.
“Well...” I stammered. “Yours suits you.”
And with that they both threw back their heads and laughed fully and with great pleasure.
After a moment, Himmel suddenly reached for the hem of my blankets and then snapped them off of my body with the flourish of a matador. We all looked at my leg. The entire thigh was swaddled in fresh white bandages, yet already a swath above the sutures was seeped through with an umber ooze. The flesh from knee to toes had a grayish pallor, like the belly of a lake fish, and Himmel crinkled up his nose.
“You stink, my young corporal,” he said. He covered me with another whip of the blankets. “Have the girl wash you.”
Did he not realize that the “girl” of record was his own lover, Gabrielle? Yes, of course he realized it, but her exposure to my immodesty did not disturb him in the least. After all, his was the ultimate power in the land, he was king of the castle, and my filthy and half-crippled form was hardly an attractive sight to behold.
“Yes, Sir.”
“And get up on your feet, Shtefan.” He wagged a finger at my face. “A wound only begins to heal when you make it scream. Pain is the key, a message from the brain that the blood flows again into mending flesh, that your will shall conquer weakness. If you lie there and try to fight it, you’ll simply rot. Believe me, I know.” He gestured then at a spot on his abdomen, referring, I assumed, to the vivid memory of his own wounds.
“Yes, Sir.”
“Besides, I need you back at quarters. My office is a shambles. Mutti’s been typing for me.”
Friedrich snorted and wagged his blond head. “He can’t spell.”
“Spell?” Himmel boomed. “He can’t write, he’s half-deaf, and he can’t post a simple order. If he didn’t cook so well I’d have him shot!”
Despite myself, I began to laugh. But it was not the bantering that so raised my spirits; it was the concept that I was in fact an integral part of Himmel’s machine. My laughter was halted by the Colonel’s slap of his gloves into his palm, and he became instantly stern again.
“I mean it, Brandt. I want you up and walking. By tonight.”
“Are you taking over my command here, Herr Colonel?” It was another voice, and Himmel turned from the cot and I saw a Wehrmacht field surgeon standing in the tent opening. It was the very same officer whom I’d met upon first seeking the whereabouts of Gabrielle. Himmel lifted his palms up.
“I would not dream of superseding your medical expertise, Herr Doktor.” He offered a short bow, which I recognized as utterly sarcastic. “I was simply offering my corporal some encouragement. His talents are required in my command.”
“Good.” The doctor advanced, and in contrast to Himmel’s rough inspection, he gently lifted the blanket hem and looked at my leg. “Because, as you well know, this young man’s condition has been grave. The infection is only just receding. He was on the verge of death.”
“Yes, well...” Himmel coughed, and immediately his conciliatory manner switched. “He’s on the verge of life now, isn’t he? Get him up.”
The doctor blinked as he lowered the blanket.
“And all those needle pricks on his hip,” Himmel continued. “No more of that. No more opiates. He doesn’t need them. I’ll not have him addicted and staggering about until we have to slap him back to his senses.”
The doctor had gone quite pale. “Are you issuing me orders, Herr Colonel?” His cheek quivered.
“Look at your rank.” Himmel shrugged. “Then look at mine. Yes, I am that.”
My master then turned to Friedrich, snapped his fingers and gestured at the gramophone. Friedrich walked around the cot and picked it up from its oil-drum stand.
“I trust you don’t mind if we have some music back.” Himmel grinned at me. “We need the morale.”
“Of course not, Sir. Thank you, Sir.”
“Good. Now remember, Shtefan. Up, up, up!”
He turned and began to stride from the tent, with Friedrich and the gramophone close behind.
“Sir?” I called out to him. He turned and squinted his one eye at me.
“The men...” I began, but I could not find the words to ask after the dead. I did not need them.
“Heckler, Stolz, Von Tolberg and Hennig,” Himmel recited. “Schneller you know about. And Rolf. He died here in this tent, four days ago.” There was absolutely no emotion in his voice. “They shall be remembered. Is that all?”
“Yes, Sir.”
He grinned and patted the gramophone as Friedrich held it.
“Have the girl sing to you. She has a magnificent voice.”
And then they were gone, leaving the doctor at my side, muttering curses under his breath...
* * *
Gabrielle, of course, did not sing to me.
In fact, the gentle manner she had displayed upon my first waking seemed to quickly shift as my full recovery was evident. It was almost as if that, while I remained comatose, my fate uncertain, I hovered between Himmel’s world and hers. Perhaps she viewed me then as an innocent creature, one enslaved in a sense like herself, with all the potential for escape and redemption, even if that meant my death. Yet as soon as I broke the bonds of my fevers and began to truly heal, Himmel had returned to reclaim me, and it was as if Satan had once again left his calling card, and she would have none of me.
When she first returned, on the afternoon of Himmel’s visit, I attempted to make some conversation. Some spring warmth had risen with the bright sun, and Gabrielle wore a fir-green sweater over a gray woolen skirt, and over that her nurse’s apron. She wore no cap, and although her hair was pulled into a tight ponytail, it could not make her features severe. I had then no power to still my own voice, for I so wanted to hear hers.
“The weather seems fine today.”
“Yes.”
“You must be tending your garden now. Planting fresh flowers.”
“Yes.”
I fell still as she changed my bandages, and I closed my eyes and blushed in silence as she stripped me and bathed me with a sponge. When she began to roll me to one side in order to slip a metal pan beneath me, I said, “Please. I would like to do this myself.” She left the tent without a word.
In the evening, she summoned an orderly, and for the first time they helped me to my feet. With my arms slung about their shoulders, I curled my bare toes into the freezing mud of the tent floor, my right leg barely touching down like that of a hobbled dog. I wanted to scream out, but I would not, and I bit my lip nearly to bleeding as I made my first endless circle around the cot. At last, they laid me back upon it, my limbs quivering and the sweat beading my brow. Soon after, she brought me two apples, a small hunk of cheese and a fresh water bottle. Yet she did not stay to help me eat, as if assuming that my secretions and consumptions were equally private matters.
On the next day, the man to my left began to moan. The surgeon visited often, administering medicines and painkillers to the poor soul, yet he fairly ignored me, as if I was the cause of his humiliation by an SS colonel. Gabrielle was also in attendance, and although she dressed my wound and again helped to exercise me, including the washing afterward of my muddied feet, my attempts to elicit some humanity from her remained empty.
“Do you think he might recover?” I whispered, jutting my chin at the terribly wounded panzer crewman.
She merely shrugged.
“He is badly burned, isn’t he?”
“Yes.”
I began to despair then, experiencing waves of clashing emotions. I felt utterly and cruelly rejected, and unable to touch Gabrielle in even the most simple way, I swayed between fury and self-pity. Lying there hour after hour, without conversation or a book or a distraction of any sort, my defenses began to crumble as I pondered my life. I thought so much of my mother then, of how she had cared for me when I was ill as a child, and I wondered where she was and how she suffered, and who if any might cool her own fevers now. I tried to summon the strength and righteous courage of my father, then fled from the horrible conviction of what he might th
ink of me now. The truths of what I’d witnessed in Himmel’s violent galaxy rose to the fore of my brain, and I wept more than once, covering my mouth with a tight palm so that no sob would emerge.
Sensing the approach of meal times or nurses’ rounds, I knew that Gabrielle would return. I would not allow her to see a morsel of my distress, and I painted myself with composure.
That evening, she sat me up upon my elbows and slipped a shallow basin beneath my head. The water had been warmed, and with a metal cup she sluiced it through my encrusted scalp, then washed my hair with a bar of rough soap. The touch of her small fingers massaging my neglected skin was heaven, yet I poised there above the basin with my eyes fully open as she worked, refusing to let her witness my pleasure.
She rinsed my hair and toweled it, and then she produced a comb from her apron and quickly parted and arranged it, with all the warmth of a mortician. I lay back upon the pillow and looked at her. She wiped the comb on the towel, and then pulling the end of her golden ponytail before her face, she began to groom the thick strands. I watched her for a long moment before I finally spoke.
“Do you judge me, Gabrielle Belmont?” I whispered.
She stopped in midmotion, frozen there as if I’d shot her through with a steel arrow. She lowered her head as something came over her face, and her lips began to quiver, and my heart filled with a pain as real as that in my thigh. She reached down and took my hand, and she gripped it very hard as she whispered.
“No.” She slowly shook her head as a single tear coursed down her cheek. “No, Shtefan, I do not...”
And she dropped the comb and rushed from the tent.
* * *
A thing that was between us shattered on that night. Like a high thick wall of frosted glass, through which two people cannot gain a clear vision of each other, it crumbled to the ground to reveal a frightening truth. I know now that it was a barrier we had built, instantly constructed upon our first mutual glance. It was a veil of false disdain, of the type created by a pair of coworkers who may not touch, or married people who cannot betray their spouses, or even schoolchildren too young to confess their attraction. This was a fence we had made fast and well and strong, for without it, our very lives were in danger. Yet when it came down, Gabrielle and I began to slowly tumble toward each other, and gravity would not be denied.
The Soul of a Thief Page 12
