An Old Heart Goes A-Journeying (22 page)

“I’ve already told you, Herr Schlieker, that I prescribe, and you do as you think fit. Surely there’s someone in the village who would give you a hand for a few days. . . .”

“In the village? In Unsadel,” said Schlieker in a scornful voice, “no one would come near me!”

“No one?” said the young doctor, looking meditatively at his patient.

“No one, Herr Doctor,” answered Paul, with a grin of something like satisfaction.

“You don’t know what the people are like,” said the woman venomously, and her pale, pinched face grew bitter.

“Indeed,” said Dr. Kimmknirsch, “indeed. Well, I will write you your certificate. You want it for the magistrate?”

“I’ll say I do! I’m going straight to him now, and I’ll get that blackguard’s house searched this very day. Do you suppose I’m going to let him keep the Thürke girl?”

“The Thürke girl?” asked the doctor in astonishment, recalling his midday conversation at the Archduke. “I heard she had run off to Berlin with the old man.”

“To Berlin?—” said Schlieker contemptuously, his mystification of the morning now quite dispelled. “That girl is hidden in Gau’s house—Gau is the fellow that knocked me about like this—and this evening she stole two dresses from my wife.”

“But—” Frau Schlieker began.

“Hold your tongue!” Schlieker shouted.

“Not so loud, please,” said the doctor. “And you must not shout at your wife for the next few days—if you must do so at all. Here is your certificate.”

“Thank you, Herr Doctor. How much will that be?”

“Three marks,” said the young doctor, rather regretting
to have opened his practice with such a fee. “But the magistrate won’t be at home now.”

“I know that, Herr Doctor. I know Kriwitz. He’ll be at the Archduke; and that’s where we’re going now. Good evening, Herr Doctor.”

“Good evening,” said the doctor, and switched off the ceiling light as his first patients departed.

It was now time to go and get his dinner at the Archduke. For a brief moment Dr. Kimmknirsch felt inclined to ring for Frau Bimm and ask her for some tea and bread and butter, and ponder in the quiet of the evening on this objectionable patient of his, and his wretched but equally objectionable consort.

However, he decided to go out. What did it matter whether he met that detestable pair again at the Archduke or not? After all, Schulz would not deal with the case in the dining room.

So he put on his overcoat, and called across the passage: “Back in half an hour, Frau Bimm,” and went out into the street.

It was a dank and rather misty autumn evening. The doctor strolled through the dark streets toward his destination, thoughtfully humming a popular tune.

But just as he was crossing the road near the inn, a shadow darted out at him from the darkness and the mist. Kimmknirsch tried to jump aside, as did the shadow. “Stop!” yelled Kimmknirsch, but too late; something struck him violently in the stomach and the chest, and he fell backward on to the pavement.

He heard a grinding clatter close beside him, a dull crash, two faint shrieks—and the old street lamps began
to dance before Kimmknirsch’s eyes in the most alarming fashion.

After a while he was conscious of a young, feminine and rather shrill voice saying something to him. “Quite all right,” he murmured, still half-bemused. “Thank you—thank you very much.”

“Oh dear, oh dear,” he heard the young voice say, and it grew rather more distinct, “have I hurt you very badly?”

“You have indeed,” said Kimmknirsch emphatically, sitting up on the cobbled roadway of the town of Kriwitz. “I’ve been knocked down by something that must weigh at least a ton and goes forty miles an hour.”

He noticed a bicycle nearby, apparently in ruins, and, two yards away, another shadow sat up and groaned. In front of him stood a slender shape that looked like a girl, though he could get no clear view of her by the somewhat parsimonious lamplight of the town of Kriwitz.

“I am so sorry!” she said, folding her hands most pathetically across her breast. “You see, I had the boy in front of me on the bicycle. He’s ill, I was taking him to the doctor. It’s downhill here, and the road is so slippery tonight.”

“And you had no light,” said the doctor, with emphasis, “don’t forget you had no light.” And he added briskly: “You didn’t ring your bell either!”

But the girl—it was certainly a girl—evaded his reproaches and began whispering to the prostrate figure in the roadway. Kimmknirsch felt his own body and chest with professional fingers; first he jerked one leg, then the other, and cautiously swung his arms. All his limbs were functioning, he could not be seriously damaged—though
his head was humming like a hive at swarming time.

The girl came back. “The boy says he can wait a bit. May I take you somewhere in the meantime. Either home or to a doctor? One lives quite near.”

“Indeed?” said Kimmknirsch grimly. “So you are prepared to take me to a doctor?”

“He’s only a young doctor,” said the girl apologetically, “and I dare say he doesn’t know very much. But it’s such a long way to the old doctor from here. And it won’t cost you anything,” she said suddenly, peering at his face in the darkness. “I’ve just got some money.”

“Have you indeed?” said Kimmknirsch, still sitting on the damp pavement. “What is the matter with the boy?”

“He,” she began, and then faltered, “he’s . . . ill. But please don’t ask questions, come along now and let me take you to the doctor.”

“We’ll see if we can’t take him with us,” said the doctor, rising heavily. “I can still manage to hobble along. You’d better go and fetch someone,” he said, bending over the prostrate figure. “I think he’s fainted.”

“No, no—don’t get anyone else!” cried the girl in a tone of such alarm that the doctor was startled. “I’ll carry him myself. Please don’t ask any questions, but we can’t have any more people here.”

“All right,” said Kimmknirsch, after brief reflection, “but we’ll have to leave the bicycle.”

“Oh—the bicycle,” she cried, “we’ll leave that! If I can only get the boy to the doctor—and you too, of course,” she added hurriedly.

“Come on then,” said the doctor. “Take hold.”

It was indeed a doleful procession that made its way very slowly through Kriwitz. Fortunately the streets were completely deserted at such an hour on an autumn evening, or it would have caused a most remarkable sensation. However, step by step, after many a pause for rest, they finally reached their destination. As the white plate came in view the girl gasped out: “There it is at last! That’s where the doctor lives.”

“I know,” panted Kimmknirsch, “I’m the doctor.”

“Goodness gracious!” cried the girl, too overcome to say more.

“Now hoist him on to my back,” said the doctor, by way of relieving her alarm. “I can carry him upstairs better by myself. Here are the keys—open the door. Gently, Fräulein, gently. Frau Bimm, the postmistress, is a shocking gossip, and if you don’t want anyone to know. . . . The white door on the right, the switch is on the left. That’s right. Hold his head, I’ll put him on the sofa. So. Now shut the door. Well, we’ve done it!”

He stood up panting. Had the folk of Kriwitz seen him, with the mud of their streets on his overcoat, trousers, and face they would have grinned and said: “We told you so.”

For a moment he stood panting and pondering. He flung only a brief glance at the girl, who was leaning with bent head against the doorway—as exhausted as himself. Then he went up to the unconscious lad, felt his pulse, and saw for the first time that poor half-witted face, now blue from loss of blood.

“What’s the matter with him?” he asked over his shoulder.

“A wound,” she whispered, “in his right foot.”

The doctor did not answer; he merely listened, bent over the lad and counted.

Then he swung round. “I can’t do anything while I’m in this filthy state. Sit down at the table and wait. You ought to wash too, anyway—look, over there.”

The doctor’s voice was no longer kind, it was very grave and stern. So Rosemarie obediently said “Yes,” and slipped into a chair beside the table. Not until he was going out did she dare to say plaintively: “Is Philip very bad, Doctor?”

“I must wash before I can tell you,” said the doctor, and departed.

She did as she was told, but she could not sit quiet at the little table, and kept on running over to Philip. She was terrified—and she had been terrified since the moment when the trap had closed on Philip’s foot and he had screamed—such a scream!

When she got him to the sand pit, he whimpered softly and muttered now and again: “It’s nothing, dearie, it’ll soon be all right.”

But it was far from all right. The blood flowed and flowed, and she could not stanch it. By the brief flare of matches that promptly went out, she loosened the trap and tried to make a bandage from her underclothes while the half-starved, maltreated creature grew steadily weaker.

Terror had taken hold of her—terror of what had been set in motion by an innocent little letter. And now that terror grew and spread like a fire, bursting out in unsuspected places, and she lacked the power to stem it or extinguish it.

Then that awful journey on Hütefritz’ old bicycle,
with Philip’s dead weight on the handle-bars, along the sandy road to Kriwitz, while she pedaled and steered and found her way in the mist, terrified all the while that he might die.

A black and misty October night, without a star, and a sad and sinking heart.

She recalled the young doctor’s face, as she had seen it in the street, his kindly eyes and friendly voice. And now he spoke to her: “I told you to sit at the table,” he said from behind her. He was wearing his white jacket now. “Come back at once.”

She obeyed, and sat with downcast eyes.

Was there no place in the world, she wondered in a flush of desperation, to which she could escape? Was there no support for people when they didn’t know which way to turn?

Her childhood and her dead parents and now Professor Kittguss should have taught her where to look, but youth refers always to this world and its denizens, and seldom turns its eyes to God.

When the doctor at last saw the foot he cried out.

“How did this happen?” he asked sharply over his shoulder.

“He stepped in a trap,” Rosemarie replied nervously.

“Oh,” said the doctor. “And what idiot put these filthy rags round it, with the wound not even washed and all full of sand and dirt?”

“We . . . I hadn’t anything else. And I couldn’t see.”

She felt defenseless against this cold and cutting speech.

“Fraülein,” said Herr Doctor George Kimmknirsch, surveying her with angry eyes, “you have had a little
rest, and you are warm again, are you not? Now listen to me. Put on your coat and run away. I won’t ask any questions, as you don’t want me to, but you must go.”

She looked at him helplessly. Her lips quivered, and tears welled up in her great shining eyes. But she seemed unmoved by his sternness and asked anxiously: “How is Philip?”

The doctor answered in a gentler tone: “The metatarsal bone is broken, and probably splintered too. There must be an operation, and I can’t do that here. He must go into the district hospital.”

“Oh, not into the hospital!” begged Rosemarie. “He’ll think he’s back in the asylum. He’s been there once, Herr Doctor, and he’s so terrified of it.”

Doctor Kimmknirsch eyed her thoughtfully: “But you can’t look after him,” he said. “No bandages, no light, no water and, I dare say, no money.” His face grew stern once more. “We can’t always have things as we like, Fraülein.”

“And then there’s the police!” she whispered still more fearfully. “He’ll have to be reported if he goes into hospital. He’s a runaway farm hand.”

“At last!” said the doctor angrily, “now we’re beginning to talk. And you told me not to ask questions.” He pondered a bit. “Can’t he go back to his employer? Who was it? Surely the man isn’t as bad as all that.”

“Schlieker of Unsadel,” she whispered.

“Indeed,” said the doctor, “indeed.” His voice softened, as he thought for a moment. Then he added: “And did Herr Schlieker set the trap?”

“Yes,” whispered the child.

“Not to catch an animal?”

“No,” she said softly, “to catch me.”

“Now be careful what you say,” cautioned the doctor. “Are you sure he didn’t set it to catch thieves—who came to steal clothes?”

He eyed her sharply.

She blushed, then added with a defiant toss of her fair young head, “Yes, for thieves, who came to steal clothes.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” said the doctor slowly. “I’ll fetch my colleague, Dr. Faulmann. The boy won’t wake up before I’m back, I’ve given him an injection. Now you are to swallow this tablet, and lie down on the sofa here in my bedroom and go to sleep at once. Remember—you’re not to get up until I let you. You’re to sleep.”

“Oh, Herr Doctor!” cried Rosemarie.

“Not another word!” he exclaimed. “You’ve got to sleep, not talk. And I’m not at all sure yet, Fraülein Thürke, whether I shan’t take you back to the Schliekers. Quick—here’s a blanket. Cover yourself well. Good night.”

The doctor looked at her and pondered. She felt as though his gaze were burning into her, but she did not mind—indeed she longed to have those eyes see into her very soul. She had a sudden sense that now she had found that support for which her heart had just yearned—and she almost smiled.