Orphan Monster Spy

by Matt Killeen

  “I don’t know. I found him here,” Sarah evaded, still suspicious.

  “And what were you doing here?”

  Sarah stopped walking and waited for Frau Klose to turn back, a spark of fire returning to her eyes. “You ask a lot of questions.”

  “Because when the Sicherheitspolizei ask me theirs, I’ll have something to tell them.”

  She doesn’t hate Jews. She hates me, thought Sarah. Or rather she hates Ursula, the little Nazi.

  The enemy of my enemy.

  Sarah pushed past her toward the doors.

  “Helmut? Helmut? It’s Ursula, I’m coming in.” She pulled the doors apart and peered into the shadows, all at once frightened what she’d find. “I’ve brought a friend to help.”

  Sarah stepped toward the straw pile until she could make out the Captain’s form. He looked asleep. Or worse. Kneeling, she held a hand over his mouth and felt for the movement of air from his nostrils.

  He’s alive. I am still on the beam.

  She wanted to clap her hands and laugh.

  His eyes rolled open, and he smiled, very slowly. Then he saw the silhouette of the nurse in the doorway. Sarah made a reassuring noise and stroked his brow, which was hot to the touch.

  “It’s okay, Helmut. This is Frau Klose. She’s here to help you. She doesn’t care that you’re a poacher.”

  “I don’t care that you’re Jewish, is what she means,” called the nurse, shutting the door.

  “He’s not Jewish,” complained Sarah.

  “Is that what you told her, huh, Israel? How can the master race be so gullible?” The nurse shooed Sarah away and plonked herself down in the straw next to the Captain. She briefly examined his shoulder and then busied herself with her bag.

  “Messy, messy, messy. Drink this . . .” She poured something into his mouth. “Did you dress this wound, girl?”

  “Yes.” Sarah was in two minds about surrendering him to her. There was no choice, that was clear, but he was her responsibility. He was all she had.

  Sarah batted this thought away.

  “It’s atrocious. You’ve nearly cut off the blood in his arm. Did you clean the wound?”

  “Yes, of course I did.”

  “But you left the bullet in?”

  “No, I reached in and pulled it out with my fingers,” Sarah replied acerbically.

  Frau Klose laughed. “Come, sit on the other side and help me. Come on.” She handed Sarah a bottle as the girl knelt into the straw. “Pour a little of this on your hands and rub it in. That’s right. Now when I say, hand it back to me. See? Now you’re a nurse.”

  “Is he going to live?” Sarah whispered. He was all she had.

  “Your bedside manner needs some work. The patient is still awake. Pass the bottle, now.” The nurse began to clean her hands. “Here, take this and this. Soak the cloth, then hold it over his nose and mouth.” Sarah fumbled with the new bottle. “Go on.”

  She eventually unscrewed the lid. The smell was overwhelming, sickly, sweet, and sharp, and it hurt her nose. She lowered it onto his face, but he squirmed and moaned.

  “Just do it, girl,” urged the nurse. “The alternative is much worse, trust me.”

  Sarah pushed down with the cloth. The Captain writhed for a few seconds but soon stopped struggling.

  “It’ll dry out, so keep it wet,” Frau Klose instructed. “Then put your fingers there just to the side of the windpipe, there . . . Feel the pulse? Don’t let that get too slow. If it does, take off the cloth, got it?”

  Sarah nodded, the smell beginning to make her nauseous. With the Captain’s heartbeat nuzzling her fingertips and her other hand over his mouth and nose, she couldn’t shake the sensation that she was doing something treacherous.

  Frau Klose was injecting something into his arm. “He’s in a bad way. I may not be able to save him. I need to remove the bullet, and there’s probably some shirt in there, too. Then I’ll clean the wound out. If he survives that, it’s up to the sulfonamide.”

  Sarah nodded, but inside, her initial optimism, the sense of victory was extinguished.

  Just stay upright, use your toes to stay balanced.

  The seconds passed. Sarah felt his heart drumming like lazy fingers on a kitchen table. She counted each beat and tried to mark time, but the numbers got lost in her head. The drums sped up as the nurse opened up the wound and began swabbing the pus away with cotton wool. Sarah wasn’t squeamish—she’d seen worse—but she found she couldn’t watch and concentrated on the cloth. He struggled slightly like a dog in sleep, so Sarah trickled on a little more of the liquid. She found his pulse again. It was slower, maybe one beat each second. His fragility in her hands was terrifying—yet thrilling, too. She looked at the intense effort creasing Frau Klose’s face, her tongue busily licking her lower lip in concentration.

  “Why are you doing this?” Sarah asked.

  “Why are you doing this?”

  Sarah shrugged, unable to comfortably lie. The glass web of deceit and misdirection lay underfoot and breakable all around them. After a minute Frau Klose started talking.

  “I was a nurse in the Weltkrieg. Just a little girl really, head full of flowers and kittens, suddenly pulling shrapnel out of boys my own age. Boys with missing arms. Missing jaws.” She picked up her forceps and slid them into the wound. “I met a doctor, a surgeon. He was good to me; it didn’t matter that I was a woman, he recognized my skill, taught me, encouraged me. We saved so many men together.”

  She pulled the forceps out with a grunt. Glistening between them was a crumpled star of metal, a flattened pinecone of iron. Holding it up, she twisted the forceps to get a clear look at it.

  “Military ammunition. Dangerous being a poacher around here, huh?” She dropped the bullet into a tin tray and inserted the forceps again. “We worked together for nearly twenty years. He said I should have become a doctor, but I didn’t want to break up the team.” She drew a long scrap of wet black cloth from the wound. “Ha, there it is. Verflixt, he’s bleeding.” Her fingers began moving quickly, thread and needle, cotton wool and cloth. She worked through the dark red mess, seeing something that Sarah could not.

  “Then four years ago—” She cut a thread with her teeth. “Your lot showed up. Threw him out of the hospital. Can’t have a dirty Jew saving Aryan lives, can we? I went with him, of course. Working out of somebody’s office, then someone’s sitting room, without the right equipment or supplies. It was like nineteen eighteen all over again.” Sitting back, she ran a bloody forearm across her brow. “Eventually, he told me to leave. It was too dangerous. I was scared by then, by the violence, by the broken windows, by the words painted on my front door. So I left.” She looked at Sarah with undisguised hatred. “Last November they came to take him away. No one has seen him since.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Sarah after a moment.

  “You’re sorry?” Frau Klose snapped, her stare poisonous. “Well, that makes it all better, doesn’t it? The little Nazi is sorry.” For a moment Sarah thought the nurse would attack her. “He was just one of many. I’ve lost count already. Now they’re starting on the Poles. You know no hospital will employ me? I have medals. Who’s next, little Nazi? Who’s next?”

  Sarah felt the blame. She felt responsible. The irony was not lost on her. The Captain’s breath, through the cloth, seemed to be laughing.

  Klose worked in silence. Swabbing, cleaning, injecting, sewing.

  “Will he live?” Sarah asked. He’s all I have.

  “Time will tell. The drugs will work, or they won’t. These aren’t exactly sterile conditions. So why are you doing this, little Nazi?”

  Sarah told the truth. “For Germany.”

  The nurse regarded her curiously, then nodded. “You need to be very careful. You’re a flea on a tiger. You’ll kid yourself that you’re part of the animal, but if you j
ump around too much, it’ll scratch you off with the rest.”

  TWENTY-THREE

  “NATURE’S LAWS OF heredity are undeniably true. All living creatures, humans included, are subject to these laws.” Fräulein Langefeld talked and walked, swinging her stick. “Note that humans are not all equal, but rather they are of differing races. The drives and strengths that create cultures are rooted in a race’s genes . . .”

  Sarah felt that this lesson, these words had been rolling in a circle, always arriving back in the same place. It was a strip of paper looped and twisted, giving it just one side. Her left eye was twitching, like a wasp trying to escape the drapes and return to the sun. Staying awake was the mission; Elsa would have to wait. One move at a time. Sarah leaned one elbow on her desk, propping up her head, and covering the offending eye with a clenched fist. She had noticed at breakfast that there was still dried blood under her fingernails.

  “The success and final victory of our great task depends on the law of selection, on the elimination of those with hereditary illness, on the promotion of genetically strong lines, and on maintaining the purity of the blood . . .”

  Out of the corner of her working eye, she could see the Mouse staring off into space, her mouth hanging open. Sarah was irritated by the small girl’s lack of survival instincts. Maybe the National Socialists had that right, she mused. Maybe some people just weren’t supposed to make it.

  “In the case of plants and animals cultivated by humans, care is taken to weed out the less valuable. Only the useful and valuable genetic material is preserved. That is also what nature wants through the law of selection. Should we not do the same with people?”

  Sarah hated herself, suddenly and deeply, with a strength that made her want to vomit. She might be a flea, but she knew she wasn’t part of this animal.

  “This fulfills the command for loving one’s neighbor, and is consistent with God-given natural laws. The persons affected by the law make a great sacrifice for the whole of the people.”

  Sacrifice. For the first time since Memorial Day, she thought about the Sturmbannführer. She’d heard that he was crying by the piano day and night now. She wondered what he had sacrificed, or rather whom . . .

  “In Upper Bavaria, there were twenty-five beds for the mentally ill in nineteen oh one. In nineteen twenty-seven, there were four thousand. If this trend is allowed to continue, how many beds will be needed by nineteen fifty-three?”

  Sarah came to attention. She couldn’t juggle the numbers.They kept slipping away from her like a handful of sand. A few hands were raised until it was no longer safe not to do so.

  Don’t ask me. Don’t choose me.

  “Mauser? Do you not know?” barked Langefeld.

  Not again.

  “Er . . . seven thousand, nine hundred, and seventy-five,” the Mouse announced brightly.

  There was a gasp of admiration, followed by a series of sharp inhalations as one by one they realized the error.

  “Mauser, you are as feebleminded as the retarded children in those hospital beds. Think. What is the correct answer?”

  The room was silent except for the tap-tap-tap of the Mouse’s leg as it quivered beneath the desk.

  “It’s an extra three thousand . . . nine hundred . . . and seventy-five . . . plus four thousand . . . is . . .”

  “No, you imbecile. Stand up.” Langefeld towered over the girl, her feet apart, ready to strike.

  The Mouse’s chair scraped along the floor. “I don’t understand. It’s another twenty-six years . . .”

  “You don’t understand anything, do you, Mauser? You’re a moron. What are you?”

  “A moron.”

  “Schlafsaalführerin, what is the answer?”

  Liebrich jumped to her feet as if she had touched an electric fence, panic in her eyes. “One hundred and sixty times four thousand, which is . . . one hundred and sixty thousand, times four which is . . .”

  “Close enough, girl, sit.” Liebrich collapsed back into her seat in relief. “See, Mauser? Everyone knows the answer except you. Now the Schlafsaalführerin has given it to you, can you tell me what would happen twenty-six years after that?”

  “I don’t know.” The Mouse’s voice was so small it was barely audible.

  “How is that possible?” Langefeld shrieked. “You’ve been given all the information you need.”

  “I don’t understand . . .” The Mouse was crying now.

  Langefeld grabbed the Mouse’s wrist and dragged her to the front of the class, knocking into desks and scattering books and paper on the floor. She hauled the girl onto the dais, her bare shins cracking loudly on the wooden platform. By the time the Mouse was shoved against the blackboard, tears were streaming down her face.

  “You’re a parasite, Mauser, an imbecile living off the Fatherland. What are you?”

  “An imbec . . . a para . . . a . . .”

  “Give me the answer in five seconds or I’ll take the skin off your palms.” Langefeld’s own shoulders were rising and falling in excitement.

  “I don’t—I mean—”

  “Five . . .”

  “No, please . . .”

  “Four . . .”

  “Please!”

  “Three . . .”

  “No—”

  “Two . . .”

  “I . . . I . . .”

  “One . . .”

  “ENOUGH.”

  Everyone froze. The room went silent except for the whimpers of the Mouse. Sarah was standing in the aisle next to her desk, hands at her sides.

  “What did you say?” gasped the teacher, her face red.

  “Enough. She doesn’t know. She isn’t going to know, so LEAVE. HER. ALONE.”

  The clock ticked.

  “How dare you—”

  The wave of righteous madness was ebbing, leaving Sarah with the feeling of being soaking wet in a rising wind.

  “Leave her alone,” Sarah said again, this time quietly. “No one is learning anything when you pick on her.”

  “Don’t you tell me what to do, you little Hure, don’t ever tell me—” Langefeld could barely get the words out. As she stepped off the dais toward Sarah, she was so furious that she was shaking, her hands opening and closing on her wooden rod. Sarah saw only spite and hate leaking out of the woman’s soul.

  The scale of what she had just unleashed hit her, turning her bowels to water.

  Ask for forgiveness, beg for mercy.

  Don’t you dare.

  Sarah took a step forward and stuck her hand out, palm up in front of the teacher. She braced herself, feeling her leg muscles tighten.

  “You plead for mercy or I swear I’ll flay you alive.” Langefeld raised the rod above her head. The wall clock ticked.

  Sarah closed her eyes. “Just get on with it,” she said with a sigh.

  The first strike was a thousand nettle stings. It wasn’t just her hand. She felt it down her arm, through her elbow, tightening in her neck like a tourniquet. She felt a flurry of panic in her chest that demanded she run, escape, fight back.

  You are fighting back.

  The second blow was worse. It was every burn, tear, and scratch, every rip, twist, and pinch, returning to remind her of what she’d forgotten, in just one instant. Sarah clenched her teeth together until her cheeks hurt.

  She began to unpick the stitches over her misery and anger, to pry open the box where she hid the horrors, desperately trying to feed the seething, teeth-grinding fury and its insulating arms.

  She gained a moment’s clarity.

  You can hurt me. But you do not scare me.

  She opened her eyes and looked at Langefeld’s lipstick, with its creases revealing the roughness of what was underneath. Smack. She saw the beginnings of lines around Langefeld’s mouth. Smack. The faint diamonds of sweat building on h
er top lip and the few stray black hairs that the tweezers had missed. Smack. Her bared teeth, yellowing from coffee and cigarettes. Smack. The roots of her hair black where it had grown since the last bleaching. Smack.

  This hurts. This hurts so much. I could cry and squeal to make it go away. Make it stop.

  No, it can only hurt me. I know what that is, so I will not fear it.

  Sarah noticed the flecks of brown in Langefeld’s green irises. Smack. The veins in the whites of her eyes gathering in the corners. Smack. The mascara congealing in the eyelashes. Smack. Smack. Smack.

  Use the fear. Fear is an energy. Break it up and build something new.

  The stick caught in her fingers on the upswing. Don’t look at it. They had begun to curl with the bruising. The hand looked red and torn, but it was numb and Sarah could no longer feel it. She was winning.

  She looked up into Langefeld’s eyes and saw the merest hint of uncertainty there.

  Sarah smiled.

  The woman dragged Sarah by the hair down onto her desk with such violence that the other girls scattered to get away. She held Sarah facedown on the wood and slapped the rod across her back. Then did it again. And again.

  Sarah closed her eyes. Fending off the squealing, howling little girl inside her, she searched for a memory, somewhere to go, a place where she had never been in pain or frightened or hungry. There was nowhere. If she ever had been happy, she could no longer remember it.

  The frantic blows had no rhythm now. Her back was one endless fire, annihilating all her thoughts, stripping away the defenses to her fear and agony.

  She just let go of your hair.

  Then Sarah realized that she had little to lose, little to hope for, nothing that she wanted or needed, nothing she could imagine that could ever be a reality—except for this to stop. And nothing could carry on forever.

  She just let go of your hair.

  Sarah twisted like a corkscrew, and as the next blow hit home across her chest, she grabbed the rod with her good hand and twisted it out of Langefeld’s grip. She rolled off the desk and staggered to her feet on the other side.