A Feather on the Water(13)

“She says she was told there was no room for her daughter, that the camp’s full already.”

“Nonsense,” Martha replied. “We know for a fact that there are empty cabins next to ours. They can move into one of those.”

As Martha handed over the pass, the major’s warning rang in her ears. You gotta learn to distance yourself, or they’ll break your heart. She could imagine him rolling his eyes when he heard what she’d done.

“There’s about twenty people in the line now,” Kitty called from the doorway.

Martha took a deep breath. Twenty people. Each one carrying a burden of sorrow she could only guess at. And this was just beginning. How on earth were she and the others going to cope? Three women caring for nearly three thousand DPs—in a country where she didn’t speak the language and was going to have to find the resources to keep them alive in the coming winter?

She closed her eyes, struggling to quell the rising tide of fear. And she made a silent prayer: Please let me do right by these people. Help me to be wise. “Okay,” she called to Kitty. “Show the next one in.”



To reach the hospital, Major McMahon took Delphine along the main cobbled road, past the kitchens, where the smell of freshly baked bread hung in the air. It made her stomach rumble. She hadn’t eaten as much as she could have at breakfast—her insides seemed incapable of dealing with the quantity of food she had been used to before the war. She wondered if she would ever be able to manage a substantial meal again.

Past the kitchens was the warehouse, and beyond that the first of the twenty blockhouses where the DPs lived. Delphine was surprised to see ducks and chickens pecking about outside the long wooden buildings. And there were shoots of what looked like lettuce sprouting from earth-filled rubber tires. She asked the major how the camp inmates had managed to get vegetable seedlings and where they’d acquired the poultry.

“You can get pretty much anything on the black market if you’ve got something to trade,” he said. “We turn a blind eye if it’s harmless stuff like this. What you have to watch for is the cattle rustling.”

“What?” Delphine looked at him, mystified.

“They steal livestock from the local farms. Butcher it in the woods at night, then trade it around the blockhouses. It’s caused a lot of bad feeling because the Germans are already obliged to hand over a percentage of what they raise on their farms.”

“Have you caught anyone?” It occurred to Delphine that the German farmers might be making it up, that pretending their livestock had been stolen would be a way of holding on to what they were supposed to be handing over.

“Not yet,” the major replied. “But we’ve found plenty of evidence: cow horns and hides don’t grow on trees.” He stopped and waved his hand toward a square concrete building set on the edge of the camp. “That’s the hospital,” he said. “The surgeon’s name is Ignatz Jankaukas. You can’t miss him: he’s six foot four.”

“Does he speak English?”

“Not much.”

“French?”

The major shrugged. “Don’t worry, you’ll make out fine. The Polacks don’t care what language you speak, so long as it’s not German.” With a grunt he cocked his head back toward the blockhouses. “I have to go now—okay if I leave you to it?”

“Yes, of course.” She was aware that the pitch of her voice had risen, that she sounded shrill. The way he spoke about the DPs implied a lack of respect. Perhaps it was unintentional, but it offended her.

He didn’t seem aware that her tone had changed. With a nod he turned and walked away.

Delphine heard a commotion coming from the hospital as she made her way along the path to the main entrance. She could hear babies crying and, from somewhere farther away, men’s voices yelling words she couldn’t understand.

She pushed open the door to the lobby, where a boy was sitting at a table, rolling bandages. He looked no more than twelve or thirteen years old. The sound of the door opening made him look up. She saw a flash of fear in his eyes. It was her uniform. It made her look like a German.

“I’m a nurse.” She said the words slowly, in English. She pointed at the red patch on her sleeve, then took a few steps toward him. His face was blank. “Je suis Fran?aise,” she tried.

“Francuzka?”

Delphine nodded. She jabbed her hand at her chest. “Madame Fabius.”

“Wolf.” He mimicked her gesture, a shy smile transforming his pale face. He stood up and beckoned her to follow him.

The volume of noise increased as he opened the door. It was a female ward—a mixture of pregnant women and new mothers. The adult voices subsided as Delphine entered the room, but the high-pitched wail of babies went on unabated. There was one in the cot nearest the door, its face red with crying. A woman lying in the bed next to the child was fast asleep—probably drugged after a difficult birth, Delphine thought, for surely no mother could sleep when her newborn was making a racket like that.

She scooped the infant out of the cot and held it to her, rocking on her heels the way she had when Philippe had been this size. The baby stank. She glanced at Wolf, pinching her nose. He nodded, pointing to the cot, where a greenish-brown stain was clearly visible on the mattress. Then he touched her elbow, ushering her across the room to a wooden table, where a pile of cloth diapers lay in an untidy heap. At least they were clean, she thought, as she laid the baby down.