Unlikely Warrior (28 page)

Within the hour orderlies brought extra coal and heated up the little oven until it glowed. The next day I was taken by car to the main prisoner-of-war hospital in Kiev. It was a three-story building with real windows and large tile stoves in each room.

Captain Pushkin came the same day, bringing with him a white-haired civilian. Dr. Petrovsky was an internist who gave me an examination, complete with all possible tapping, thumping, pressing, and listening. The Russian head doctor from the hospital and two German doctors stood next to my bed while the nineteen other patients watched, astonished at all the excitement and fuss being made over the health of one prisoner.

Dr. Petrovsky prescribed
banki
, and a Russian nurse brought these shortly after everyone else had left. On a tray next to a Bunsen burner lay fifteen hollow balls made of thick glass, about the size of small apples. Each had an opening approximately one and a half inches in diameter.

I was told to lie on my stomach. The nurse held each glass ball for a few seconds over the flame of the burner until the air inside became hot. Then she pressed it against my back, holding it there until the air inside had cooled somewhat, making a vacuum and sucking my skin inside. Blood was drawn to the surface for a supposedly therapeutic effect. It was a painful procedure.

After fifteen minutes the balls were pulled off, and this was no less painful as the air filled the vacuum with a smacking sound. I was covered with blue and purple splotches, plus blisters wherever the edges of the glasses had been a few degrees too hot when they made contact with my skin. The whole procedure was repeated each afternoon for ten days.

Evidently a report of my unusual status had traveled with me to the new hospital, for soon after my arrival the cook came asking what he could do for me in the kitchen. Again, the others in the room were struck dumb, but this time I was in such bad shape with fever and pain that I only took note of such minor details at the periphery of my general misery.

The mood in the room was very oppressive, above all because most of the men were seriously ill. Every day one or two of them died. Some of the patients moaned and complained unceasingly. Others whimpered quietly. A few drank water by the liter, and when water wasn’t available, they drank their own urine in order to still the burning thirst produced by the dysentery and their inflamed intestines.

Physically, I wasn’t one bit better off than the others. The mere act of breathing led to stabbing pains in my chest. I was too weak to attend to the calls of nature without help, and the flies crawled shamelessly over my face and into my mouth when I opened it. I was delirious for long periods, had no appetite and could barely eat, and still suffered heavy diarrhea. The glucose injections provided my main nourishment.

Perhaps it was my periodic fever fantasies that led to the idea of trying to make my mind the object of an experiment in self-distraction. With my eyes closed, in order to shut out the noise of the others, I went “inside.”

Since my childhood I had possessed this wonderful place of escape to which I could retreat whenever I found my surroundings or a particular situation unsatisfying. Now, in Russia, I retreated to that special place in order to find out whether it could provide me with distraction and alleviation of my pains. With the nonphysical part of me, I left my poor miserable body and went, like a guest, to visit myself. The importance and happiness of this state came from the realization that no one, absolutely no one, could follow me there. In my place of retreat I was not subservient to any rules. No one could give me orders or attempt to influence my thoughts—a wonderful thing when one considers that in my life up until then, I had always been expected to carry out the commands of others.

As a child my complete obedience had been expected as a matter of course. Later, in addition to my parents’ expectations, I had those of the school, where there was the eternal threat of having to repeat a year. This was followed by military service and new, more radical demands, including the demand to kill other human beings. And in the prison camp, my last little scrap of independence and freedom had been taken away. I was now reduced to a pitiful bundle of humanity, in a bed of pain, without the slightest physical or mental freedom. Or, perhaps not?

When I gazed inward, I usually could perceive a room. In the room I envisioned myself as a completely healthy being. Directly in front of me was a light-colored wall upon which I could project a relatively clear image of a particular landscape or some person or thing. I could build complicated pieces of machinery in my mind, let them run, and then correct their mistakes. Once, as a five-year-old, after hours of such mental fantasizing, I had marched to my Matador building set and proceeded to build an automat that popped out a sugar cube when a small coin was inserted. My mental constructions usually functioned perfectly.

By analyzing, I discovered that the light in my imaginary room always came from above. It was as though the ceiling consisted of milky glass through which the light streamed. There were no walls to the left and right, but rather slightly darkened areas in which abstract cupboards containing all that I had hitherto experienced in my life were located. Whenever necessary, I could draw from there whatever constructive thoughts I needed regarding experiences, data, and feelings. The most important implements seemed always to come from the left side of the room, and for this reason I regarded the right side as the darker one.

Additional rooms under me related to my past life. They seemed to build a tower of dark walls, with one room placed on top of the next but no connecting stairways. In the same manner, I sensed a room above, but I had no idea what it was like or when I would be able to move up. That I would eventually get there, however, seemed a certainty. Up there, in my mental room, there was no pain and seldom a disappointment. In those dark days of my need and weakness, I was able to create a certain small amount of strength just by ascending into my little room to observe with great interest my own emaciated body. “Just how long will that poor devil down there be able to hold out?” was a favorite question, one without the slightest feeling of fear that suddenly the poor devil’s heart might stop beating and everything would be all over.

During one of his visits, Dr. Petrovsky established the fact that I also had pleurisy. The fever continued to rise. I had excruciating chest pains and more and more difficulty breathing. The complete loss of appetite and the diarrhea had weakened me to such a degree that I was no longer able to sit up in bed without help. The orderlies had to lift me onto a bedpan several times a day.

One day during this period the doctors pierced my back in the lung area with a very long needle in order to find out whether my pleurisy was dry or wet—whatever that was supposed to indicate. The verdict was dry, but once the needle entered my body, I fell over unconscious from the shock.

I lost all sense for the passage of hours, days, for time in general, and didn’t even notice at first when they stopped administering the glucose injections.
Well, once again it’s come to that point,
I thought.
The end seems to be almost here.

But this time it was different. I didn’t feel driven into a corner, with the need to mobilize all my capacities like a good chess player seeking the right move to avoid the final checkmate. To the contrary, I lay peacefully in bed, running the events of my life past me like a pleasant movie: my childhood, Vienna, the glorious Austrian mountains, my parents …

Russia, sometime toward the end

Dear Mutti,

My thoughts aren’t very clear today. A short time ago a priest sat for a few minutes on the edge of my bed. He said I was on my way to another kingdom where everything would be beautiful, where I wouldn’t have to fight anymore, and where I would finally see all my loved ones again.

It seems to me as though I’m dying like an old person, where all is being reduced in equal amounts—the physical and mental strength, the will to live, and the creative spirit. Even the pain and fever are becoming less, as well as any resistance to my evidently unavoidable end. You are so close to me in my thoughts, soft and warm, as though I could reach out and touch you. It is getting darker fast; it must be evening. Your son embraces you …

It seemed as though I sailed soundlessly into a dark and friendly tunnel. All was completely still around me, soft and dark. I sailed away into eternity.

The orderly’s report on my case, justifying the hospital’s actions, must have read more or less as follows:

On January 12, 1945, the head physician left on vacation, taking with her the keys to the medicine cabinet by mistake. It became impossible, therefore, to administer the patient’s daily glucose injections.

Dr. Petrovsky was also out of town for a week and unable to attend to the patient, whose condition worsened by the hour. The doctors and nurses knew from experience that the patient was close to death. The suspension of the injections, as well as Dr. Petrovsky’s nonappearance, were taken to mean that all were in agreement that the patient could no longer be saved.

On the afternoon of January 15, the German field chaplain arrived, a man who also recognized the correct moment for a final prayer and a few words of comfort. He administered the last rites to the patient.

That same evening forty new patients were delivered. I tried to find patient Rauch’s pulse, and when I could discover none, I had him transferred to the morgue so that I could make his bed up fresh.

The next day Dr. Petrovsky arrived and asked for the patient. I informed him that he had died the previous day, whereupon he asked to see the body. Since I knew that it hadn’t been picked up yet, I took Dr. Petrovsky to the morgue.

Shortly afterward Dr. Petrovsky yelled something, and all the other doctors came running. They carried the patient to the examining room, and what took place there is unknown to me, but later a bed was found for him in a different room, where another patient had died the night before.

I am not concerned with exactly why my flight into eternity was interrupted. The only thing that really matters to me is that I left this world for an indefinite period of time and returned as someone considerably different. However long or short that period was, it initiated the end of one life and the beginning of a new one.

When my interior lights were turned back on and I started to be aware of myself once more, I tried to open just one eye in order to see this world to which I had returned. After straining for some time, I finally succeeded in the effort, and the first thing I saw was the wooden spoon next to my bed, the spoon with which I had been eating my soups and gruels for the past months.

With great difficulty I stretched out my right hand and picked up the spoon—more a ladle, actually—and brought it closer to my eyes. What a personality it had! The bowl was whittled rather roughly, but it had been polished smooth through use. The handle, somewhat longer than normal, had a little knob at the end with facets like a diamond. There were small notches at regular intervals along the handle, so that the dark reddish wood could be held securely between the fingers.

How many people had already filled their stomachs with the help of this spoon? Who had felled the tree and provided the wood from which someone else had so carefully and lovingly carved this utensil? How many thousands of years had it taken to develop such a practical form, so perfectly adapted to the size and shape of the human mouth?

Everything around me appeared in a vastly different light from before. Each thing I saw or feeling I perceived provided sufficient material for contented hours of thought. It seemed to me as though part of my personality had been left behind somewhere and replaced by something new and excitingly different. My relationship to the idea of life and death had altered drastically, and I determined that I would enjoy to the fullest, using all my senses, this indefinite but additional span of time that had been granted me.

I remained on the critical list for the next few weeks. Dr. Petrovsky seemed to have taken on my recovery as his personal goal. He was a good doctor of the old school, a wise man with little or no apparatus at his disposal but with all the more experience and concern for humanity.

Slowly my appetite returned, and the doctor told me that my eyes had a brighter shine. After another week I began playing a game of chess now and then, or reading a chapter or two in those books by Lenin and Marx. Then, in order to help reduce my diarrhea, I was given an oak bark tea that was brewed too strong, and as a result my fever soared again for a few days. Oak bark contains tannin, which is a diuretic, but too much of a good thing acted as a poison on my overweakened system, and my recovery was set back considerably.

Meanwhile, the other patients in the room had become accustomed to my special status. I ordered enormous amounts of food and gave it to them. To show their gratitude, each one spoiled me in his own fashion. Some brought me the bedpan when there were no orderlies nearby. One man tore off a piece of sheet and embroidered two very artistic napkins. Another made me a gift of a knife with a beautifully hand-carved handle.

As prisoners we weren’t supposed to possess anything other than eating tools, a cup, German money—worthless to the Russians—family photos, and a piece of fabric that served as handkerchief, hand towel, and napkin. I, however, was permitted a sack that I kept hanging at the head of my bed and in which I gathered together all sorts of things: the borrowed books, a bright orange butter can, a little cloth sack filled with sugar, a glass, and an aluminum set of folding knife, fork, and spoon.

In spite of the prohibition on personal possessions, many of the others also had things that they had smuggled in for their own use or to trade for other items. They hid these items under their mattresses or somewhere in the building, for example, under the water container in the toilet or in the roof spouts outside the window. Once a month we received a handful of
machorka
, a coarse tobacco that could be rolled in newspaper into long, thin cigarettes. Heavy smokers, often with tuberculosis, traded their food for this tobacco. For many it was one last pleasure before they died.