The Redbreast(44)

his creditors as arranged. The financial crisis had

resulted in him having to improvise and he had

made his Jewish bankers transfer their bond

holdings, which the Austrian state had confiscated,

to Lang. And now Henrik Lang was in prison for

having conspired with Jewish enemies of the state.

Unlike her mother, Helena missed her father more

than she missed the social status her family had

enjoyed. She did not miss, for example, the

banquets, the adolescent, superficial conversations

and the continual attempts to marry her off to one

of the spoiled rich boys.

She looked at her wristwatch and scurried along.

A small bird had obviously flown in through one of

the open windows and now it was calmly sitting on

one of the globe lamps hanging from the high

ceiling and singing. Some days Helena found it

incomprehensible that a war was raging outside.

Perhaps it was because the forest, the tight rows of

spruce trees, closed out all the things they didn’t

want to see. If you went into the wards, however,

you soon knew that the peace was illusory. The

wounded soldiers with their mutilated bodies and

their battered psyches brought the war home to

them. To begin with, she had listened to their

stories, practically convinced that with her strength

of mind and her faith she could help to lead them

out of their misery. Yet they all seemed to tell

more of the same nightmare story about how much

man can and has to endure on earth, and about the

degradation involved in simply wanting to live.

Only the dead escape unscathed. So Helena

stopped listening. She pretended she was listening

as she changed bandages, checked temperatures

and gave them medicine or food. And when they

were asleep she tried not to look at them, as even

then their faces continued to tell their stories. She

could read suffering in the pale, boyish faces,

brutality in the hardened, closed faces and a

longing for death in the pain-contorted features of

one man who had just found out that his foot would

have to be amputated.

Nevertheless, she walked in today with quick,

light steps. Perhaps it was because it was summer,

perhaps it was because a doctor had told her how

beautiful she was this morning, or perhaps it was

because of the Norwegian patient in Ward 4 who

would soon say ‘ Guten Morgen’ in his funny

German. Then he would eat breakfast while giving

her lingering looks as she went from bed to bed,

serving the other patients, saying a few

encouraging words to each one. For every fifth or

sixth bed she attended to she cast a glance back at

him and, if he smiled at her, she would quickly

return the smile and continue as if nothing had

happened. Nothing. And yet it was everything. It

was the thought of these small moments that got her

through the days now; that allowed her to laugh

when the badly burned Kapitän Hadler in the bed

by the door jokingly asked if they would soon send

him his genitals back from the Eastern Front.

She pushed open the door to Ward 4. The sunlight

flooding into the room made everything white – the

walls, the ceiling, the sheets – shine. That’s what

it must be like when you enter paradise, she

thought.

‘ Guten Morgen, Helena. ’

She smiled at him. He was sitting in a chair

beside the bed and reading a book.

‘Did you sleep well, Uriah?’ she asked him

cheerfully.

‘Like a bear,’ he said.

‘Bear?’

‘Yes.In ...what do you call it in German when

they sleep all winter?’

‘Ah, hibernation.’

‘Yes, hibernation.’





They both laughed. Helena knew that the other

patients were watching them. She mustn’t spend

more time with him than the others.

‘And your head? It’s getting a little better every

day now, isn’t it?’

‘Yes indeed, it’s getting better and better. One

day I’ll be just as good-looking as I used to be,

you’ll see.’

She remembered when they brought him in. It

seemed to contravene the laws of nature that

anyone could survive the hole he had in his

forehead. She caught his teacup with the pot and it

almost toppled over.

‘Whoa!’ he laughed. ‘Were you out dancing until

the wee small hours last night?’

She looked up. He winked at her. ‘Mmm,’ she

said, and became flustered because she was lying

about such a silly thing.

‘What do you dance here in Vienna?’

‘I mean, no, I wasn’t dancing. I just went to bed

late.’

‘You probably dance waltzes, don’t you?

Viennese waltzes and so on.’

‘Yes, I suppose we do,’ she said, concentrating

on the thermometer.

‘Like this,’ he said and stood up. Then he began