“I should like to write you the kind of words that burn the paper they are written on—but words like that have a way of being not only unforgettable but unforgivable. You will burn the paper in any case; and I would rather there should be nothing in it that you cannot forget if you want to.”
— Lord Peter Wimsey, Dorothy L. Sayers, Gaudy Night
THE NURSE HAD NOTED that morning that it would be particularly warm; she could tell from the way the clouds hung low and gray at dawn. Now sunlight rained down outside, and dark afternoon heat drenched the corridors in the hospital. Her mother used to call it die Affenhitze, the ‘ape heat.’ The nurse hadn’t heard that expression much since her childhood, but on such days, it resurfaced in her mind.
Krankenhaus Sankt Magnus stood on the furthest outskirts of East Berlin. It was a low series of brick buildings, secluded among the trees. She had worked there for the last fifteen years. Like any hospital in East Berlin, it was a public hospital, but somehow it seemed to have more money than others.
She was wheeling her cart to the end of the main building, towards the long-term ward. She had finished her rounds, but then her supervisor, wiping the perspiration from his forehead, had asked, “Can you see to the long-term ward as well?” She'd agreed, hiding her reluctance. The long-term ward made her sad, and uneasy.
The ward was at the westernmost corner of the building, near the riverbank. Though the exterior walls were lined with windows, the blinds were drawn, and so were the gauzy inner curtains. It gave the clean white ward that special darkness found only in shaded spaces shielded from harsh sunlight.
Before her lay a dozen pale, motionless faces. She slowly pushed her cart along the aisle between their two rows. They were so few that they felt like a community—like they played cards together on weekends, smoking and talking of the old days. But they were drained as white as the rooms around them, and they slept as if they were already dead.
She stopped beside the last man in the row beside the windows. He had deep lines under his eyes and in between his thick red brows. With his untamed hair, he looked older and rougher than he probably was. He was not as pale as the others—in fact, his face was a bit ruddy. It seemed he was the only one who felt the heat. Sweat beaded around his peaked hairline.
The nurse remembered his arrival, almost nine years before. He had arrived anonymous. They knew nothing of him. They had removed the bullet in his chest and treated his burns, but he had not woken. His external wounds had long since healed; there remained something internal that would not resolve.
Yet he sweated. Even in the shade. The nurse tsked softly and went to the window. She pulled up the blinds and sunlight poured in.
She turned back to the sweating man. His eyes were open.
She gasped and jumped back, grabbing the headboard behind her.
He opened his mouth, forming a word: “Gott... Gott...”
Trembling, she pressed a hand to his shoulder.
“Water,” he croaked at last.
Why had he switched to English? The nurse recovered herself enough to nod.
She moved to go to the sink, letting go of him, but a hand caught her wrist. His grip was impossibly firm for a man in his condition.
“Wait.”
“Sir,” she said, speaking German, for though she understood some English, she could not speak it. “Please let go. You need water. I need to call the doctor.”
“No, no doctor,” he said, switching back to German. His accent was flawless. “I need the embassy.”
“You need a doctor.”
“I need the embassy.”
“Which embassy?” she said. “You are a diplomat, sir?”
He coughed. His face was sweating more than ever, but his voice was bone dry. She had never seen anyone who looked less like a diplomat.
“What year is it?”
She shivered.
“Sir... You must let me call the doctor.”
He squeezed her wrist. With his brown eyes open he looked ten years younger already. They begged her ear, made her complicit. “Call no one. Please. Tell me. What year is this?”
“1971.”
The man relaxed slowly, falling silent. The lines of his face loosened from consternation into something more obscure.
“Let me get you water,” she said softly.
He let go of her arm.
The nurse hurried to the ward phone and called the dispatch desk. But the internal line was busy. Agitated, she told the man she would return and to please lie still. He nodded, but his eyes were on the phone.
It took her five minutes to hurry down to the dispatch desk. The nurse on duty there did not know where to find the right doctor, and they spent ten minutes looking for him. But he was busy, and could not come until he had finished his consultation, and when he finally did, almost half an hour had passed. The nurse was agitated—the man’s wild eyes and strong grip had left an impression of danger. Whether he was in it, or was it, she did not know. But she did not like to leave him alone.
When she finally herded the doctor, her supervisor, and another nurse back to the ward, the man was gone. His bed was empty. The phone was off the hook. The window was open.
It was impossible that he had walked, after eight years spent dead. Impossible, the doctor said. He must have had help. So, the supervisor asked, who took him? Whom did he call?
It seemed impossible—yet the nurse had her doubts. None of them had felt that grip.
The window was still open, the same window whose blinds she had raised to let the light in. No breeze disturbed the translucent curtain.