The Whistlers' Room

by Alverdes, Paul; Creighton, Basil; Mayhew, Emily

  VI

  The whistlers loved one another; not that they would have admitted it to themselves or displayed their feelings to each other. But every time, as often happened, one of them was wheeled away on a stretcher to submit to the knife and forceps of the surgeon, the two who remained could play no game and hold no talk. Instead they busied themselves on the floor with one thing and another, each by himself, and went again and again, as though for no particular reason, as far as the big swing doors that separated the corridor from the operating theatre. At last the stretcher came trundling back, looking now like a white model of a mountain, for over the recumbent figure was now the arc light, a kind of wooden tunnel with many lamps inside, whose purpose was to warm the patient during his return. They walked along beside him as though at a christening, or, indeed, at a funeral. They cautiously lifted the cloth from his face that protected it from the draught and nodded and winked as though to say: “We three know what it is, and no one else does but us.” And the returning one, in spite of his pain, nodded back.

  At that time the doctor was doing his best to widen by degrees the whistlers’ natural air channel so that one day they would be able to breathe without pipes. It was done by repeated insertions of sharp spoons and tongs, and at last by pushing in long nickel rods and forcing them past the constricted passage of the throat. The process was, in fact, exactly the same as stretching gloves with glove stretchers, and, since it had to be carried out without an anæsthetic, it caused the whistlers the most acute pain. For it seemed that nature wished to protect from further interference what had once been torn without its consent. The places where the wound had healed became tougher; they hardened like the bones of young children and resisted the least alteration with fierce pain.

  The whistlers sat, during this procedure, three in a row on a long bench, wrapped in white sheets up to the chin, as though they were going to be shaved. They held the long bent tube whose end projected from the mouth firmly in one hand, for owing to its smooth surface and the wild convulsions into which the gullet was thrown by the effort to get rid of it, it was impossible to hold it with the teeth alone. With the other hand they drummed on their knees, at the same time passing the third finger without ceasing over the thumb. For it was a positive longing to give vent to their pain in some way or another; sometimes, too, they stamped violently with their feet. But the longer they kept the tube in the gullet, the longer there was for their endurance to assert its influence and to accustom the tissues more radically to the new condition. So the doctor said, and so, too, the nurses; nor were the whistlers behindhand, till at last from pride they prolonged the healing torture of their own free will. One morning, while she stood at the disposal of the doctor when he was putting in the tubes, the theatre sister said that they were curious to see which of the whistlers was the bravest and could hold out the longest. Now the word “brave” in reality meant singularly little to the whistlers. It went without saying, or at any rate they had had enough of it. Nevertheless, from then onwards, they sat side by side without a movement, merely groaning softly, and with stolen glances measured themselves against each other, till their hands trembled and the sweat trickled in streams down their foreheads. Then Pointner and Benjamin usually snatched their tubes out at the same moment, while Kollin sat on a moment longer though he allowed not a sign of triumph to escape him. Nevertheless, Pointner sometimes showed his annoyance. He tapped his forehead lightly in disdain and rolled his eyes upwards—a favourite gesture of his. The next day, however, he would pit all his strength to come off the victor.

  For the whistlers were devoted to their doctor with all their hearts, and held him in secret wonder and veneration, although they never spoke of him among themselves except with the kind of tolerance extended to a chum, and made no end of fun over many of his peculiarities. Although he could not be more than a few years older than Pointner and Kollin, they always called him the “old ’un,” and when he joked with them in his jolly and at the same time merciless way, or even praised them for their pluck, they smiled and cast down their eyes and were so overcome with pride that they did not know what to say. Then, as soon as ever he was out of the room, replies of the utmost wit and familiarity occurred to them, and they bragged before the others of all they might so easily have said.

  The “old ’un,” Doctor Quint, as his name really was, always came in in a blinding white medical overall which gave off an odour of powerful disinfectants and strong vinegar; beneath it were to be seen the creased trousers of an English suit. He wore bright silk socks and shining patent leather shoes. He liked bright red ties, and preferred that colour to any other because, as he said, it was a red rag to all priests. Owing to a certain refractory attitude that he had in official matters and his unconcealed contempt for the military hierarchy, he was not in the good books of the superior officers in control of the clinic; but as he was exceptionally gifted and spent all his great energy to the point of exhaustion in the service of sick and wounded, nothing further had come of several very carefully formulated reports in his disfavour. He had a small white face, very broad shoulders and well-knit frame, and all the sisters and nurses blushed when he went along the corridors with quick elastic steps, with his hands sunk in the pockets of his overall. His eyes were large and dark and fiery; but they were set at an angle to each other and for this reason it was his habit to conceal one of them with the concave ophthalmoscope which he used in his examinations. He was seldom seen without it in any part of the clinic. It was very much of the shape and circumference of a small saucer, and was kept in position by a leather band round the forehead. In the middle of it, just large enough to spy through, was a small aperture which had, as well, the effect of concentrating the light. When he sat in front of a wounded man with this instrument, it seemed that while his spy-glass eye was busied in scrutiny and diagnosis, the other roved sideways into the distance, as though he were already meditating new methods of healing; and this the whistlers firmly believed to be the case. For this reason as though by tacit agreement they never made fun over his eyes, and it was their dearest wish to look one day through this spy-glass with the light directed into it. What they expected from this great moment knew no bounds.

  Doctor Quint had the strength of a giant. To keep himself fit it was his practice to wrestle with enormous weights and lift them on high, and to make a sport of handling great iron bowls and disks of a terrifying circumference. He took a pleasure in displaying these feats of strength to the whistlers before operating on them. While the nurses were still busy strapping Kollin on to the operating table, he suddenly grasped the heavy iron surgical chair that stood in the same room and held it up in his outstretched arm.

  “Do that, Pioneer,” he said impressively after a moment, looking down upon him over his shoulders. Kollin, who had just been made fast with the knee-strap, smiled with astonishment. Even though he was not at the moment in a position to take up the challenge, yet the invitation to do so cheered him to the utmost, and he made up his mind to attempt it with another chair as a preliminary as soon as ever he had the opportunity. After that he submitted himself quietly to the knife with boundless confidence.

  The compass of Doctor Quint’s voice answered to these exhibitions of strength. As a rule he did not speak unusually loud, but occasionally it amused him to throw the nurses into alarm and consternation by suddenly giving vent to a sort of trumpeting over his work. Often while they were still sitting over their breakfast in their room the whistlers heard him in the far distant treatment rooms shouting at the top of his voice for an injection-needle or a basin. Then they raised their heads and listened with delight and nodded knowingly to each other. As a rule Doctor Quint appeared not long after in the passage outside the door, winking out of the corners of his eyes and strolling along with a man, who had just been operated on, resting like a doll on his arms, while the nurses, half pleased and half upset, wheeled the stretcher along in his rear. He chose the heaviest and stoutest
among all the lot of wounded for this manœuvre, and then laid them carefully in their beds wrapped in their blankets and still in the deep sleep of the anæsthetic.

  Nevertheless, he hated any shouting on the part of others. There was not the least occasion for whimpering and shouting, he informed his patients before a painful operation without an anæsthetic. He begged them to forbear, with the assurance that taken as a whole the affair would be perfectly painless. He granted that one bad moment could not be avoided. Of this he would give warning and then they might roar. As a rule after this the victims sat quietly without making a sound, till he suddenly threw knife and forceps into the basin, pulled the spy-glass out of his eye, and, with a look over his shoulders at the next man, announced that it was over. But not everyone was altogether satisfied. For many had been waiting for the promised moment when they might emit the terrific howl that they had been storing up.

  But to the whistlers he said: “Shout, Pointner! Shout, Bombardier!” and, holding them round the shoulders in a tight embrace, pressed down the agonising rod with relentless force past the scars in their throats: and they loved him for it.

  VII

  One morning, not long after his arrival, Benjamin went for a walk through the halls and corridors of the hospital. At that time he was still quite voiceless. He wished to visit a comrade with whom he had been at school. On his way he mistook the door and found himself in the ward of the blind. They sat in a green half-light on their beds or on chairs, many with bandages as in blind man’s buff, and all with faces slightly raised in the always-listening attitude peculiar to them.

  “Well, comrade, who are you? and what have you got?” Sergeant Wichtermann said after a moment, from a wheeled chair by a window. Sergeant Wichtermann had got the whole burst of a bomb in front of Arras. Nevertheless he was not killed, for, as he said, he had a strong constitution. But he was blind and had not a limb left but one arm with two fingers, and in these two he held a long pipe.

  Benjamin was very much frightened. He drummed at once with his hand on the door behind him, so as at least to give a token of his presence; and at the same time he looked anxiously round, in the hope of discovering a man with one eye who would be able to explain why he preserved so unfitting a silence in the ward of the blind. But there was not one to be seen.

  “Well,” Wichtermann growled, “can’t you open your mouth? Are you making fools of us?” “I’ll soon put him in tune,” promised another, getting down from his bed in a rage and showing his fists. A well-aimed slipper came hurtling through the air and struck the door close behind Benjamin’s head. Benjamin delayed his departure no longer.

  By good fortune he found Landwerhmann Ferge, whom he knew already, just outside the door. Ferge was a good-natured Thuringian with a pasty-coloured moustache on his sallow face, but he was not well received among his fellows. It must be explained that he bore an evil nickname. A bullet had gone right through his seat and torn the bowel. In order to give this very susceptible organ time to heal the doctors had made for him another temporary orifice in the region of his hip, and this unfortunately was always open. For this reason Ferge was forced to wear on his naked skin under his shirt a large india-rubber bag. This condemned him to a lonely existence and doubled and tripled the bitterness of his peculiar plight. For Ferge all his life long had had a passion for card play—that is for watching others play with an interest all the keener because his stinginess prevented him taking a hand himself. In earlier days this had been his favourite Sunday pastime; and now he might have whiled away entire months in the indulgence of this passion. For everywhere indoors and out in the garden, the halt and the maimed sat in three and fours and played sheepshead, skat and doublehead, and on still days there was a murmur and thunder, gentle and fascinating, from behind every door, of the trumps that were there slapped down upon the tables. But his comrades drove him off because of his smell, and so he wandered about in the park in the open air, longing for the day when his shame and torment would be removed from him.

  Hence he was now cheered to the heart when at last someone had need of him. He took Benjamin back among the blind and explained to them in a short address how it came that he had been dumb. The blind were immediately reconciled. They came round him eagerly, and each in turn touched his silver mouthpiece and held their hands in front of the warm stream of air that issued from it. Even Sergeant Wichtermann had himself wheeled up in his chair, and with his two fingers made a precise investigation of the tube, saying all the while: “I understand, I understand.”

  “The doctors make all you want,” he said at length very jovially. “One gets a new mouth and another a new backside. But after all it’s not the right one, except that you’re more easily known by it, Comrade Ferge.” At that everyone laughed uproariously. But Ferge sadly and silently withdrew and took his evil smell with him.

  After this the whistlers often visited the blind to play draughts or chess with them. For this the blind had chessmen half of whom were furnished with little round tops of lead. Also they were not simply placed on the board, but fixed in it with little pegs so that the groping fingers should not upset them. On these occasions Deuster, an army medical corporal, always greeted the whistlers with a finished imitation of their croaking manner of speech, to the delight of all, the whistlers included. Deuster was very small and red haired. His face and hands were thickly covered with freckles. He had lost his sight while bringing in one of the enemy who lay wounded on the wire in front of the trench. The cries of this man were so lamentable that they got on everybody’s nerves in the trench and set them jangling, till at last, as Deuster said, it was more than a man could bear any longer.

  Pointner was particularly fond of him and was always as pleased to see him as if he were a new discovery, for he was the only one among the blind who was now and then to be beaten at draughts or chess. For they saw everything as they had it in their own minds, and the opponent had scarcely made his move before their hands flitted over the board to ascertain his intentions and then replied at once in accordance with the well thought-out plan to which they clung meanwhile in their darkness with undeviating purpose. Deuster alone, who loved to chatter, sometimes made gross blunders, whereat Pointner was so beside himself for joy and delight that he jumped up and, skipping behind his chair, threw his arms affectionately round the neck of his conquered opponent. “Blind man of Hess,” he said to him, and admonished him like a father to keep his eyes in his fingers next time.

  For it was the custom in the hospital for the patients to chaff each other over their infirmities; they found a certain consolation in it. Fusileer Kulka for example, from what was then the province of Posen, who for a time occupied the spare bed in the whistlers’ room, rarely spoke to them without pressing his finger to an imaginary tube and rattling in his throat. He could only speak broken German, but he delighted in recounting in his singsong voice how he came to lose his leg. He was lying in the open with his company after it had swarmed out in an engagement with Siberian infantry, when a bullet ripped his left cheek and passed out through his ear. At that Fusileer Kulka unstrapped his pack and got out a little mirror that he kept in it. He just wanted to see how he looked, for he had a bride at home. While taking a leisurely survey he must have exposed himself too far, for a machine gunner got his range and shot him twelve times in the left leg. Now he he had one of leather and steel.

  The whistlers took him between them when he practised walking with it outside their room. Kollin on his right, Benjamin on his left, they tottered with earnest demeanour up and down the corridor. The whistlers, too, now appeared to have false legs. Just as Kulka did, they hoisted one shoulder and hip to the fore at every step, at the same time sinking a little on one side. When it came to turning about however, Benjamin, for preference, got into great difficulties. He hopped helplessly on one leg where he stood and tried in vain to steady himself with the false one. Finally he fell at full length, and then, raising his stick, he bega
n to chastise the refractory leg with it. At that Fusileer Kulka laughed so immeasurably that the tears ran down his cheeks and he threatened to fall over backwards in earnest. This happened outside the door of the blind, and instantly the army medical corporal, Deuster, came groping his way out and desired to know what the joke might be, for he was always eager to join in a laugh and for ever on the look out for an opportunity.

  On a later occasion he went for a walk with Benjamin in the park. Some days before he had been with the rest to a fine concert. Never in his life, he confessed, had he ever known anything so beautiful. From that day he had made up his mind to become a musician as soon as he was released from hospital, though he could not play any instrument and would first have to learn. He had been a worker in a cloth factory.

  “Comrade,” he said in an ecstasy, standing still after he had exposed his project, “it comes from within. It is all inside one. He who has it in him, can—” Suddenly he stopped as though he no longer knew what he had been going to say, or had himself abruptly lost belief in it. He lifted his face and fixed it on Benjamin’s. He blinked his hollow eyes without ceasing, and the corners of his mouth began to twitch. But Benjamin knew no more than he what to say. So he took him by the arm and led him, now dumb, back to the room of the blind.

  VIII

  Fusileer Kulka had been released and sent home and the year had once more passed into summer, when one morning the volunteer Jäger, Fürlein’ made his appearance in the whistlers’ room. Still clothed in his green uniform just as he had been sent to them by Doctor Quint, he stood among the whistlers and laboriously expounded to them what the situation was in which he found himself. He had not been wounded, but, from a cause that so far could not be explained, had suddenly lost his voice and it was an effort for him to produce even a hoarse whisper. At dawn, after a night under canvas, he had just crept out of his tent to pass on an order—and then he found this change in himself, and even with the air, as he said, he had had difficulty from then onwards. Even now he could sometimes scarcely breathe, and on such occasions an anxious expression came over his face and he hastily removed the clumsy shooting spectacles from his nose as though this would bring him relief.