The Glory of Life

by Michael Kumpfmüller

  She has told the farming family where she is staying that she is visiting her husband who is ill, as they have obviously realised at once. They speak a dialect that is difficult to understand. They give her bread and milk, nodding at every morsel she eats in an encouraging way that they have learnt for guests like Dora. The room is simple and clean, all made of wood, even the walls and the ceiling. There is a jug of water and a basin for washing, and bread and milk again for breakfast. She wakes early and before eight she is up at the sanatorium, where they send her away after pointing out the visiting hours. She protests, but all the same they send her away. She has not the faintest idea how she is going to get through the next few hours, stumbles round the park for a while, goes back to her room and then up to the sanatorium again. Half-way there she sees a long, low building in which people are playing skittles, patients in dressing-gowns and one or two male nurses, in a noisy, cheerful atmosphere. At quarter to one she is with Franz, who is obviously glad to see her, almost more so than yesterday. She has accustomed herself to the whispering, she misses his voice, but it is good that they are talking to each other. As usual, he is worried about money. Every day in the sanatorium costs a fortune, he says, and then there are the medicinal drugs with names that she is beginning to remember: liquid pyramidon three times a day for the fever, atropin for the cough, and cough lozenges of some kind. None of these medicaments do any good. Franz’s swollen larynx has left him unable to eat properly; the doctor who has come speaks of injections into the nerve, and says they must consider a resection, something that only specialists in a Vienna hospital are able to perform. At first she doesn’t understand. The doctor who gives them this news is impatient, Franz shakes his head, but it isn’t really so hard to grasp. There is no more they can do for him here in the sanatorium, they must leave and go to Professor Hajek’s hospital in Vienna as quickly as possible.

  The farming family are having breakfast when she says goodbye to them. Franz too has been awake for a long time, not in such a bad condition as she feared. The discharge papers have been signed, there isn’t much time left to think, but perhaps that is as well, it means you do everything automatically in the appropriate order. A car is sent for, she packs while Franz writes to his parents. The drive through wind and rain is terrible. For inexplicable reasons only an open-topped car is available, so they go the whole long journey with nothing to keep out the weather, Dora standing in front of him with her coat opened as if numb, as if it wasn’t true. At the hospital they take him away at once, and only after an eternity is she allowed into his room. It is really more like a cell; he is lying there with two other men who are in great pain, bed beside bed, and attached to his larynx is an apparatus of some kind that terrifies her. Franz quickly sends her away, and she takes up residence again in the Hotel Bellevue where, the oppressive atmosphere of the hospital fresh in her mind, she finishes writing a card to Robert that Franz had begun. There is nothing to lose now, she writes, Franz can’t speak any more. And sure enough, only at this point does she realise that he hasn’t spoken to her since this morning, hasn’t even whispered, although she always has the feeling that he is talking to her, as she did back in Müritz even when he wasn’t there, as if they were together inside her and would always be talking to each other.

  5

  They leave Franz in peace for the first day. When he was admitted the doctors had asked a number of questions about the general course of the illness, when and how often he coughed, about the mucus and blood he had brought up that night in the past, the fever he had in Berlin, the first indications in Prague, what they were planning to do to him, then about the effect of menthol, saying that they thought spraying the swollen larynx the best measure at present, and finally that he must eat, his weight is under fifty kilos and must not fall any lower. They did not talk to him absolutely frankly, as if they had agreed amongst themselves only to let the bare essentials slip, but he probably wouldn’t want to know much in more precise detail. He has also made the acquaintance of his neighbours in the ward. They have communicated with a nod or a wave, not being in any condition to do much more. By comparison, then, he feels almost healthy. The pain in his throat is unbearable, but he has a voice, and drinks in cautious sips every half hour during the morning. He is not in a very good state, but he grits his teeth, especially in front of Dora, who has gone for a walk to St Stephan’s Cathedral and is looking sad. He writes a few lines to his parents, the usual lies, saying that he is well looked after under the best medical supervision, and does not know how long he will have to stay. Dora keeps disturbing him with questions, she moistens his forehead and lips, she kissed him when she came in, and kisses him again later, long after the end of visiting time, under the reproving eyes of a male nurse.

  The doctor who gives him the first injection is new to the hospital, about Dora’s age, alarmingly nervous at first, so that unfortunately everything takes a long time. The syringe has a long, curved needle that looks rather frightening, but the worst part is the procedure before the injection, the leafing through papers, the drawing of the liquid up into the syringe, while the patient lies trembling on a kind of framework, half bed, half chair. I have never imagined, says the doctor, mentioning a name that is already forgotten again, and then he plunges the metal thing deep into his patient’s jaws, pokes about for half an eternity until everything is in the requisite place and an oily fluid can be dispersed. Is it still in there or has it come out? Not much can be established at first, there is a certain burning sensation, relief that it is over, and a slight improvement that he thinks he notices at midday, although he cannot think of eating anything. But he feels better. Just after one o’clock Dora comes, he is cheerful and happy, and can even feel glad to see his brother-in-law Karl standing in the doorway unannounced. Whether he happens to be in Vienna by chance or whether Elli sent him cannot be discovered. Karl passes on many good wishes and brings a drawing by Gerti in which he recognises the beach at Müritz with a castle in the foreground, a wicker beach chair with a little black figure of a man, and an arrow beside it bearing the words Uncle Franz.

  His brother-in-law visits him the next day too, but this time the mood is muted, for there was a death in the night. Dora will not believe it for a long time, while Karl more or less glosses over it. An elderly man, a local farmer, Franz suspects. About three or three-thirty he suddenly couldn’t breathe; a doctor and a male nurse appeared, but there was nothing to be done. He saw them leaning over the bed in the dim light, shaking their heads, and finally wheeling the dead man out of the ward. Apart from that there is not much to say. The effect of the second injection is discussed, and the fact that swallowing is no longer quite so painful, which was how he was even able to eat something in the evening, only a few spoonfuls of potato purée, but still something. When Karl left he promised not to paint the situation in excessively dark colours, or they would all be beside themselves in Prague and send Franz’s uncle again. He is now in a rainy Venice; there is already a telegram on the way to him, and it can only be hoped that it will not reach him. Isn’t Karl enough as a family ambassador? Instead of more visitors he could do with a down quilt and a bolster, because in contrast to the sanatorium only the basic necessities seem to be provided here. You feel as if you were in a factory, particularly since the doctors take no particular care of their patients, and when they do their rounds visiting them are too lazy to bring the mirror showing the larynx, or recommend chewing gum, which does nothing to alleviate the pain.

  If Dora is with him, he is likely to forget where he is as he closes his eyes and listens to her telling him how everything is in flower: the trees in the parks, the forsythia, the roses in the rose garden. As a rule the hours fly past, but now and then his mood falters, when he coughs, when his voice fails him. Once again he can hardly swallow; he eats only tiny morsels although he regularly forces himself to do so. Just now the nurse took his tray away, with the food almost untouched, and at that Dora plucked up her courage and asked if she co
uldn’t take over cooking for him; she knows the doctor rather better than the hospital staff do, his preferences, what he can eat more easily and what he can’t. At first the nurse won’t allow it, but then says she must ask first, and comes back with permission. She takes Dora straight away to show her the ward kitchen. As a rule they only make tea there, but it has all Dora needs, pans, cutlery, a stove. The nurse asks what he would like. She suggests soup, boiled chicken, cake for dessert. Oh yes, will you let me? Then you’ll have me here at eleven tomorrow morning. Anyone can see how glad she is. On the way from the hotel she saw a market hall, and she decides to go shopping there.

  His conversations with the others in the ward are not lengthy. They talk about fever, the doctors and nurses, forthcoming visits, the weather, because it is beginning to get warmer outside – the sun shines through the open window, and if this goes on patients can soon be taken up to lie in the roof garden, where they say you have a view over half of Vienna. His neighbour in the next bed, Josef, a cobbler with a moustache, has one of those tubes in his throat but is up on his feet all the time, eating the hospital food with a good appetite and envying the doctor, who sees his girl every day, because so far Josef has had no visits at all. For the first time in three days there is no menthol injection, which is very pleasant. The treatment seems to be working: he can eat a little for Dora’s sake as she serves him, one by one, chicken soup with egg, chicken with vegetables, and a biscuit torte with whipped cream. The banana from the kitchen is not entirely to his taste, but Dora is happy, there was nothing to make him uneasy or despairing. They are even making plans. The sanatorium in Grimmenstein is under discussion again, and another small sanatorium in Kierling, not far from Vienna. Dora has telephoned about it, and got Max to pull strings with his connections. Even Franz Werfel, apparently, has used his influence; Franz can’t and won’t bear all the constant deaths. Only last night there was another one; death swept Josef away on one of his walks. And Franz himself is not well, he has a high temperature, he is uneasy and can hardly be persuaded to stay in bed. Dora wants to go to Kierling, see the sanatorium there on the spot and decide whether the accommodation there will do. Professor Hajek, who is strictly advising them against any move, could come out from Vienna to treat him, and there are no restrictions on visitors, she could be with him all the time. She will go there tomorrow afternoon.

  It is all decided the next day. The train does not take long to get to Kierling, where they gave Dora a very friendly welcome. The sanatorium is not large, more the size of a boarding-house with only twelve rooms at the end of the village. The married couple who manage it are called Hoffmann. The fees are reasonable, and the best of it is that there are rooms for the patients’ companions. Dora looks pale when she is back; something in Kierling seems to have alarmed her, as if she knows that after Kierling there will be no other sanatorium. Once again she arrives two hours before visiting time to cook for Franz, but although there will be no more injections today and the weather is fine he does not feel well, he is thirsty after drinking too little for the past week, and now, on medical advice, he is not allowed to make up for it. Dora has told the doctors their plan, and his parents are to hear about it as well. Telling them, again, is a job that he leaves to Dora. They are starting on Saturday, she writes, the sanatorium is in a wonderful wooded part of the countryside. By evening he is gradually beginning to believe in it. A farewell is the wrong word for his move. He feels a certain heaviness that may be just lethargy at the idea of moving yet again, which unfortunately means that here, too, they see him as a case for whom nothing can be done – why else have they seen so little of the doctors in the last few days?

  Apart from the thirst his condition is reasonable, although he goes on getting weaker. He feels it with every movement he makes, when he is washing in the morning, as if he has a leak where fluid is calmly and steadily flowing out of him. Yet Dora is giving him all kinds of fortifying foods: full-fat milk or cocoa, followed by eggs; then chicken or a veal cutlet for lunch, with baked sieved tomatoes mixed with butter and egg, cauliflower or young green peas, and a tart with whipped cream for dessert, sometimes bananas or an apple; then at teatime more cocoa or milk with little flakes of butter; and an egg dish again for supper. Or is all this food the reason for his weariness? Even in the few hours he spends with Dora he finds it difficult to stay awake, and it is the same when Felix Weltsch surprisingly comes to visit for an hour, though he manages to keep awake for that hour. Felix does not let what he thinks of the doctor’s condition show, he is glad to meet Dora, and he has a friendly word for Josef before he brings greetings from Prague, from Max and Oskar who are thinking of him from a distance. For Dora, the visit is a welcome diversion; they are feeling fine, she says, and soon, when the weather allows it, they can go out of doors. She even mentions the idea of recovery; how glad she is, she says, that soon they will be leaving here. Two weeks ago, he thinks, the sanatorium represented hope, a week later it was Vienna, and now it is Kierling. Felix has a great deal of work, as usual, as publisher of the Czech-language Zionist journal Self-Defence, which the doctor still regularly reads. His parents recently sent him the latest edition, but he would like to have it sent directly to him, to read on the balcony, for Dora has said there is a balcony at Kierling on the south side of the building, where he could have a few hours of sunlight, which at the moment sounds almost like a promise.

  6

  Less than two weeks later, not much is left of Dora’s hopes. She would never have expected to lead a life like this, and yet this is what she is doing, putting up with it like a shipwrecked mariner cast ashore on an inhospitable island, managing as best she can, and she can’t always manage. In her hotel in the evenings she is regularly at the end of her tether, exhausted and yet still on edge, for there are always small causes for agitation: for example in the morning there is a telegram from Robert, announcing his imminent visit without previous consultation. He can be dissuaded only by drastic representations. Meanwhile Franz is counting every hour; all he wants is to get away, and this is their last day in Vienna. She has had a light meal in the restaurant, where no one takes much notice of her; the hotel is not very full, so the waiters have little to do and there is always one of them coming to her table, asking what she would like. She has asked for paper and a pen, because she wants to write his parents a letter – a letter just from her, which feels rather strange and makes telling lies no easier. She writes about their forthcoming move, all done with the consent of the doctors. That is standing the facts on their heads, for in reality they have advised against it until the last, but then Franz is cheerful and lively, and she will soon send brochures from the next sanatorium.

  On the day of their departure the mood has sunk to a very low point, for Josef, who was walking cheerfully around until the evening, died in the night. It is the first time she has seen Franz shed tears, angry tears, as if with the best will in the world he cannot understand why a man like Josef had to die. Couldn’t the doctors have looked after him better? Dora sees it above all as a warning; when a man is on his feet and eating well, it doesn’t indicate by any means that he will live. Once again final messages are sent, a card to Max, who has sold the story about the mice, and wants to know the address where he should send the money. Fortunately the weather is wonderful. At midday they set off, taking a car to the station, and boarding the direct train to Klosterneuburg just in time. Felix accompanies them. They are all relieved to be leaving the hospital behind, they breathe sighs of relief and make plans for the next few days, for the countryside here really is very beautiful, the balcony adorned with flowers, the room full of sunlight. It is all white, the walls, the bed, the wardrobe, the wash stand, and there is a desk that has somehow been fitted in, so the room is rather crowded, but not entirely heartless. Frau Hoffmann, who has come to welcome them with her husband, says it is an honour; there is a little tour of the place, but Franz is interested only in the room. It is on the second floor, looking out on the garden where
the first roses are in flower. Three or four patients are sitting on a veranda, there seems to be a brook further off, and woods and vineyards stand all around.