So speaks Bruno my keeper. Perhaps he is right, but I should be very reluctant to admit it. One who has been brought back to life every two or three years by lady nurses cannot help being grateful; he is not going to allow any grumpy old male nurse, however likable, to sully my image of my beloved lady nurses, especially as his one and only motive is professional jealousy.
It began with my fall down the cellar steps on the occasion of my third birthday. I think she was called Sister Lotte and came from Praust. Dr. Hollatz’ Sister Inge was with me for several years. After the defense of the Polish Post Office, I fell into the hands of several nurses at once. I remember only one of them by name: Sister Erni or Berni. Nameless nurses in Lüneburg, then at the University Clinic in Hanover. Then the nurses at the City Hospital in Düsseldorf, first and foremost Sister Gertrude. And then, without my having to go to any hospital, She came. In the best of health, Oskar succumbed to a nurse who was a roomer in the Zeidler flat. From that day on my world was full of nurses.
When I went to work in the early morning, to cut inscriptions at Korneff’s, my streetcar stop was named: Marien-Hospital. Outside the brick gateway and in the flower-choked grounds, nurses came and went, on their way to and from work. I often found myself riding in the same trailer car, on the same platform with several of these exhausted, or at least weary-looking nurses. At first I breathed in their scent with repugnance, soon I sought it out, stationed myself as near as possible to their uniforms.
Then Bittweg. In good weather I worked outside amid the display of tombstones and saw them passing arm in arm, two by two, four by four, on their hour off, compelling Oskar to look up from his granite, to neglect his work, for every upward look cost me twenty pfennigs.
Movie posters: the Germans have always been addicted to films about nurses. Maria Schell lured me to the movies. She wore a nurse’s uniform, laughed and wept; her days were full of self-sacrifice; smiling and still wearing her nurse’s cap, she played somber music. Later on, in a fit of despair, she came very close to tearing her nightgown. But after her attempted suicide, she sacrificed her love—Borsche as the doctor—remained true to her profession, and retained her cap and Red Cross pin. While Oskar’s conscious mind laughed and wove an endless chain of obscenities into the film, Oskar’s eyes wept tears, I wandered about half-blind in a desert of white-clad anonymous lady Samaritans, searching for Sister Dorothea, who—and that was all I knew about her—rented the room behind the frosted-glass door in the Zeidler flat.
Sometimes I heard her steps as she came home from night duty. I also heard her toward nine o’clock at night, after the day shift. Oskar did not always remain seated in his chair when he heard her in the hall. Quite often he played with his doorknob. Who could have resisted? Who does not look up at the passage of something which is passing perhaps for him? Who can sit still in his chair when every nearby sound seems to serve the sole purpose of making him jump up?
Still worse is the silence. We have seen the power of silence in connection with the female figurehead, wooden, silent, and passive. There lay the first museum attendant in his blood. And everyone said Niobe had killed him. The director looked for a new attendant, for the museum had to be kept open. When the second attendant was dead, everyone screamed that Niobe had killed him. The museum director had difficulty in finding a third attendant—or was it already the eleventh he was looking for? One day, in any case, this attendant it had been so hard to find was dead. And everyone screamed: Niobe, Niobe of the green paint and amber eyes; wooden Niobe, naked, unbreathing, unsweating, untrembling, suffering neither heat nor cold; Niobe, wormless because, what with her historical value, she had been sprayed against worms. A witch was burned on her account, the woodcarver’s hand was cut off, ships sank, but she floated, she survived. Niobe was wooden but fireproof, Niobe killed and remained valuable. Schoolboys, students, an elderly priest, and a bevy of museum attendants all fell prey to her silence. My friend Herbert Truczinski jumped her and died; but Niobe, still dry, only increased in silence.
When the nurse left her room, the hallway, and the Hedgehog’s apartment early in the morning, at about six o’clock, it became very still, though when present she had never made any noise. Unable to stand the silence, Oskar had to coax a squeak or two from his bed, move a chair, or roll an apple in the direction of the bathtub.
Toward eight o’clock a rustling. That was the postman dropping letters and postcards through the slit in the outer door. Not only Oskar, but Mrs. Zeidler as well had been waiting for that sound. She was a secretary at the offices of the Mannesmann Company and didn’t go to work until nine o’clock. She let me go first; it was Oskar who first looked into the rustling. I moved quietly though I knew she could hear me just the same, and left my room door open in order not to have to switch on the light. I picked up all the mail at once. Regularly once a week there was a letter from Maria, giving a complete account of herself, the child, and her sister Guste. Having secreted it in my pajama pocket, I would look quickly through the rest of the mail. Everything addressed to the Zeidlers or to a certain Mr. Münzer who lived at the end of the hallway, I would replace on the floor. As for Sister Dorothea’s mail, I would turn it over, smell it, feel it, and examine the return address.
Sister Dorothea received more mail than I, but not very much. Her full name was Dorothea Köngetter; but I called her only Sister Dorothea and occasionally forgot her last name—what, indeed, does a trained nurse need a last name for? She received letters from her mother in Hildesheim. There were also postcards from all over West Germany, most of them with pictures of ivy-covered hospitals, written by nurses she had known at training school, obviously in reply to Sister Dorothea’s halting efforts to keep up with her old friends.
Nearly all these communications, as Oskar soon found out, were quite rapid and unrevealing. Nevertheless, they threw some light on Sister Dorothea’s past; she had worked at the Vinzent-Hospital in Cologne, at a private clinic in Aachen, and in Hildesheim, where her mother was still living. It could be inferred either that she was from Lower Saxony or that like Oskar she was a refugee from the East and had settled there after the war. I also found out that Sister Dorothea was working nearby, at the Marien-Hospital, that she had a close friend by the name of Beata, for the postcards were full of references to, and regards for, this Sister Beata.
The existence of a girl friend gave me wild ideas. I composed letters to Beata, in one I asked her to intercede for me, in the next I said nothing about Dorothea, my idea being to approach Beata first and switch to Dorothea later on. I drafted five or six letters and even addressed one or two; several times I started for the mailbox, but none was ever sent.
Yet perhaps, in my madness, I would actually have mailed one of these pleas to Sister Beata had I not—one Monday it was, the day Maria started up with Mr. Stenzel, her boss, an occurrence that left me surprisingly cold—found on the floor, below the letter slot, the missive which transformed my passion from love to jealous love.
The name and address printed on the envelope told me that the letter had been written by a Dr. Erich Werner at the Marien-Hospital. On Tuesday a second letter came. Thursday brought a third. What shall I say of my state of mind on that Thursday? Oskar tottered back to his room, fell on one of the kitchen chairs which helped to turn my bathroom into a place of residence, and drew Maria’s weekly letter from his pajama pocket—in spite of her love affair Maria continued to write punctually, neatly, and exhaustively. Oskar even tore open the envelope and gazed at the letter with sightless eyes; he heard Mrs. Zeidler in the hall, calling Mr. Münzer, who did not answer. But Münzer must have been in, for Mrs. Zeidler opened his room door, handed in the mail, and kept on talking to him.