The Girl from Krakow Page 5

  Well after dawn, somewhere between Avignon and Narbonne, the young woman arose from her seat and left the compartment. An hour later she did the same thing. When she returned for the third time, Tadeusz ventured to ask, “Cramps? Could they be contractions?” The girl nodded with a grimace and dropped into her chair.

  By the time they were south of Perpignan, she was holding his hand tightly, and the Catalan woman facing them across the compartment understood as well.

  Tadeusz had little trouble retrieving the theoretical details of childbirth and delivery from memory, but he needed more information.

  He leaned toward the woman across from them. “Pardon me, do you live in Barcelona?” He hoped the Catalan-speaking woman knew some French.

  “Yes.”

  “Can you tell me whether there is a hospital near the train station?”

  “Yes. We come into the Estació de França, in Barceloneta. The closest place is Hospital del Mar, very close.”

  “Thank you.” It was still two hours to Barcelona, and there were the border formalities at Cerbere.

  Perhaps because it was a Monday morning, perhaps it was the socialist work ethic of the Republican customs agents, or perhaps they were just lucky. Passport and customs checks that morning were cursory. By nine o’clock the train was perceptibly slowing as the track joined others converging on the station. Tadeusz turned to the pregnant woman. “You won’t make it to Tarragona. The contractions are coming every four minutes. We are getting you to a hospital here.” She nodded compliance. “Where is your bag?”

  “I checked it to Barcelona. I have to change trains for Tarragona.” She winced.

  “Good. They’ll keep it for you at the Consigne. By the way,” he heard himself say, “I am Dr. Sommermann.” He’d never called himself that before. He liked the sound of “doctor.” So apparently did she. With a wan smile, she introduced herself, Mms. Borda, Aine Borda.

  Slowly they made their way between passengers and valises already crowding the corridor. “Permisso?” He had already begun to speak Spanish, or was it Catalan?

  On the platform now, she was leaning heavily on his arm, tears of pain running down her cheeks as she controlled the urge to cry out.

  At the station entrance, they found a cab. “Hospital del Mar,” Tadeusz snapped, pronouncing the ‘s.’ It wasn’t in the French word, hôpital, and he liked the sound—stronger. In less than three minutes, they were at the Urgencia—the casualty ward—where the door was opened by a young man dressed in white, wearing a flat-brimmed cap, also in white. As they entered Tadeusz shouted to no one in particular, “Anyone speak French?” There was a chorus of “Oui” from around the waiting room. A nurse, evidently in charge, approached. “Are you the father?”

  “No, I am the doctor.” Her demeanor changed instantly. She stood back, awaiting orders. So Tadeusz decided to play the part. “Is there a midwife on duty or a physician?”

  “Yes, Doctor, I will find her.” As she turned to leave, an orderly pushing a gurney turned up.

  It was an uncomplicated birth, over within an hour. The midwife did everything, but Tadeusz was surprised that he was able to anticipate and understand almost every move. As a physician he was shown deference—rather too much, he thought—and allowed to participate, cutting the umbilical cord and tying it off. The child was a healthy girl, and both mother and daughter were wheeled out of the Urgencia.

  He found himself wondering what she would name the daughter as he rifled through her purse for the baggage check. Finding it, he walked to the outside door, passing the head nurse, who was in conversation with the midwife. Both looked up. “I am going to get the patient’s bag. We just came off the train from Paris.”

  Coming out of the hospital, he looked around. He was facing the Mediterranean. Between him and the sea was a line of palm trees sinuously curving into the azure. They were the first he had ever seen, and he realized at once that he would love them. Beyond was a broad expanse of sand, already dotted with sunbathers, wearing less clothing than he was used to seeing on a strand anywhere in northern Europe. The beach sloped down so that he couldn’t see where it met the water, but the sea was a pointillist pattern of intense purple and phosphorescent white. Without sunglasses he could not stare at it long. He turned right, walked along the beach, and turned right again, into Barceloneta. The quarter was a perfectly regular grid of buildings, some painted in pastel, all about five stories each, close enough across the narrow streets to provide one another with shade even against the late morning sun. There were no balconies, but most of the windows were framed by a grillwork, over which hung tropical plantings and colorful laundry. At each intersection, in at least three directions he could see a fierce blue sky. He realized immediately that this part of Barcelona was a peninsula. Then he began noticing the fishmongers and the fry-up stalls among the bars. Shopkeepers and workers going about their affairs seemed remarkably cheerful and much more gregarious than their French counterparts. He was going to like Spain.

  It was an hour before he returned to the hospital, carrying their suitcases. Again he headed for the casualty entrance. As he came in, he saw a middle-aged man in a narrowly cut suit with a chalk pinstripe and a black tie in conversation with the intake nurse. The man abruptly turned from his conversation, walked over to Tadeusz, extended his hand, and addressed him in accented French. “Bienvenu, M. le médecin—I am Dr. Marti. We were not expecting you till tomorrow. Still, you obviously came at a moment convenient for one of our patients.” He smiled, and before Tadeusz could interrupt, he called over a porter and issued an order, evidently in Catalan. The porter took the bag from Tadeusz while Dr. Marti explained. “He will show you to a room.” By this point Tadeusz had decided to allow the misunderstanding to play itself out a little further.

  No one bothered him the rest of that day. So he unpacked, went to the hospital canteen for a meal, and took a turn on the beach. Again he was surprised, disturbed, pleased to see women walking along the water’s edge with bare midriffs and halter tops, looking like the posters of Josephine Baker he had mooned over in Paris. Well before anyone in Barcelona was even thinking about supper, Tadeusz was sound asleep in a room at the Hospital del Mar, overlooking the sea.

  The next morning a nurse presented herself at his door, addressing him as Dr. Nadeau. He could not allow the misunderstanding to go much further. He corrected her: “Dr. Sommermann.”

  “Very well, sir.” She spoke French. Off they went on rounds. As they moved to the first bed, she briefly explained the case—symptoms appeared to be simple pleurisy. “But she is not responding to treatment.” Then she fell deferentially silent, evidently expecting orders. In no position to give any and in fear that anything he suggested might harm the patient, Tadeusz assumed an air of friendly complicity. “What would you do?” The nurse looked surprised. Evidently she had never been asked for her opinion by a doctor. With a broad smile, she offered two or three observations on the patient’s history and made a suggestion.

  “Just what I was going to say.” He smiled. Fortunately the next patient and the one after that were suffering from the same symptoms. Tadeusz needed to say something intelligent. Looking at the charts surreptitiously, he noticed that all three shared a surname that ended in “ian.” They had to be Armenian and perhaps Turkish by nationality. He had it. “Could this be familial Mediterranean fever? It’s not uncommon among people from Turkey.” This was so rare a disorder only someone fresh from memorizing textbooks of tropical medicine would even have heard of it. Best of all, the prescribed treatment was identical to cases of pleurisy.

  The nurse looked at Tadeusz with a little gasp. “How did you know they are Turkish, Doctor? They’re sisters, an Armenian family from Anatolia.” Tadeusz’s omniscience was extended to include his textbook confabulation.

  The rounds did not produce any more difficulties, but evidently Tadeusz was treating staff in completely unaccustomed ways. “Please” and “Thank you.” “What is your advice, nurse?” Every
request he made was met with alacrity. Every question was answered in detail. A surprising number of the staff spoke at least a little French, and the Catalan was not impossible to guess at. Things were going much too well.

  At four o’clock that afternoon, Dr. Marti, the director, appeared on the ward, flushed but closemouthed. Sighting Tadeusz, he crooked a finger. “Doctor, follow me!”—the words spoken with a tone of anger. Marti led him to an empty consulting room off the main floor. “I have a telegram from Dr. Nadeau here. He’s gotten a better offer and changed his mind about coming. Exactly who are you?” He was fierce but speaking just above a whisper.

  “I am Dr. Tadeusz Sommermann. I tried to correct your staff as to my name each time they addressed me. I am a doctor . . . I admit I am not the doctor you were expecting. Give me a moment, and I will explain.”

  Marti’s silence was enough of an invitation to continue.

  “I brought in the young woman who was delivered of a child yesterday morning.”

  “Yes, the midwife and the head nurse told me that you supervised the delivery efficiently. Go on.”

  “When you said you needed medical staff, I thought there might be something for me here. I came to Barcelona with orders to join the medical units of the International Brigades. But I am much more well suited to a women’s lying-in hospital.” Much less suited to a frontline dressing station, Tadeusz thought to himself.

  “So it seems. I have had reports from the ward nurses about your intelligent interventions all day.” Marti pressed the tips of a thumb and forefinger to his forehead and drew a deep breath, then released it in a despairing sigh. “What am I to do?” He was looking at Tadeusz, but appeared to be addressing himself or the air. “They’ve taken away all our experienced men. The only way we were going to keep a doctor was by getting one they couldn’t use, a gynecologist who doesn’t speak Catalan or Spanish. And now we have been denied even that.” Another deep breath, another sigh. Only then did he focus on the man before him. He glared at Tadeusz. “What is your previous experience?”

  Here an outright lie was called for, and Tadeusz had no difficulty providing it. “Six months in Sisteron, Haute Provence.” He did not offer the name of any hospital, and to his relief none was requested.

  “Do you have your medical certificates?” Marti was still glaring. “Bring them to the office immediately.” Before Tadeusz could answer, Marti had turned his back and was descending the stairs. Five minutes later, Tadeusz was sitting in the hospital director’s office, his medical lecture attendance book and a copy of the Journal Officiel of the previous April spread out on the desk between him and Marti. It was the best he could come up with. It did not seem advisable to present his Spanish military medical service orders. After what seemed an eternity of study, the director leaned back in his chair.

  “I need OB-GYN staff. You can stay on as long as the International Brigades can spare you. One hundred pesetas a week, meals in the canteen, but I can’t give you a place to stay in the hospital. Too dangerous for us.”

  “I accept.” Tadeusz gulped.

  A week later Tadeusz was called from the wards to Marti’s office.

  “You’re doing a good job, Sommermann. I want to keep you. But you have to get rid of that name. The authorities have sent warnings around about international recruits for the brigades arriving and disappearing into thin air.”

  Tadeusz said nothing.

  “Here’s a death certificate I pulled out of our files.” He passed it across the desk. “Memorize the details, go to the registry at the Ajuntament, and get a new carte d’identité.” He looked down at the form. “Starting today you are Guillermo Romero.”

  “But the nurses all know me as Sommermann.”

  “Just tell them. They’ll follow orders if you would try giving any, instead of always asking for their advice.” The irritation in Marti’s voice was tinged with humor. “Besides, the nursing staff turnover is so high that in three months, there will be hardly anyone left who knows you by any other name besides Romero.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  One night in April 1938, nine months after Tadeusz’s last visit to his parents in Karpatyn, Doctor Gil Romero was standing at the counter of a small workers’ café in the Barceloneta. It was around the corner from his rooms, on the Carrer Balboa, and close to his favorite restaurant—a workers’ seafood grill on Carrer Baluard. The café was not large, the doors were wide open, and he could feel the gentle breeze off the playa. Small lamps on the walls and the bar fought vainly against the warm velvet darkness flooding through the open double doorways from the street. Occasionally the aroma of pulpo—octopus—being grilled for a tapas would overpower the sea smell and tempt him into ordering up a ración. Gil had hoped to see an acquaintance or two. But no one had turned up, and after a beer he was ready to leave.

  By now he had no trouble thinking of himself as Doctor Gil Romero, a specialist, a ginecòleg in the Catalan language, which increasingly expressed his thoughts. He loved working with women and on the medical problems of women. At first he had to listen carefully simply to understand the Catalan. Thus, almost by accident, he acquired a habit of listening. This won the nurses’ confidence. He had found a calling, something he was good at, cared about. There was even some money to be made from wealthy women, often officers’ wives, who came to him to deal with indiscretions committed while husbands were at the front.

  Gil knew that things could not continue this well much longer. The Republic was not going to win. People already knew it, on both sides of the Civil War. In Barcelona the atmosphere was fevered by the knowledge. Military police were combing the bars and bordellos, sending men south toward the Ebro. More and more of those who could get out—the wealthy, freemasons, loyal naval and air force officers—were leaving for France.

  Gil picked a newspaper off the bar. The Nationalists—Franco’s troops, including Italians and Germans—had finally cut off Cataluña from Madrid. Meanwhile, on Moscow’s orders, the Catalan government was rounding up anyone who didn’t accept the discipline of the Spanish Communist Party. The last remnant of the POUM leadership—the left opposition—were all put up against a wall and liquidated. It was the sort of reaction to disaster Gil had come to expect. Lose another battle; blame it on the motley conspiracy of Trotskyites, anarchists, utopian socialists, and others who could never take Comintern orders—Stalin’s orders. Matters were dealt with by the Spanish Communist Party’s version of the Soviet secret police. In fact, they had help from the real one—the NKVD, more efficient in dealing with enemies on the left.

  As he was about to leave, Dr. Marti passed along the open front of the café, smiled at him, stopped, and came into the glow of the bar. “May I join you?”

  It was a rare occasion. Gil smiled. “What can I buy you?”

  “You can get me anything but a sangria.” He was using the familiar tu, and Gil noticed immediately. It was the first time in a year Marti had been friendly. He decided to take advantage of the moment.

  “Dr. Marti—”

  “Call me Marti. That’s what friends do, Romero.” He smiled as he made his point.

  “Molt be.” He hoped the Catalan carried the same meaning as the Spanish muy bien. “I was about to ask if you were a party member. I assume so, since you are director of a city hospital.”

  “I am indeed. Fully paid up.”

  “But if you’ll excuse me, it’s obvious you’re not loyal to the party. You hired me instead of sending me to the barracks or even having me arrested. You’ve helped me cover my tracks.”

  “You’re a good doctor. And I am a poor Stalinist. In fact, I am no communist at all. But I would have lost my post if I hadn’t joined. And you?” Marti’s frankness was more than disarming. It was dangerous. An admission like that could cost him his position, or much worse.

  Gil wondered, Is he trying to smoke me out? Surely not. He already knows enough to sell me to the NKVD or their Spanish acolytes. He decided to be cautious.

  “I am som
e kind of Marxist, or at least a dialectical materialist, and that’s enough. I won’t take sides in parochial disputes on the left.”

  Marti looked at him. “Dialectical materialism? You are a doctor, a scientist. You can’t accept that mumbo jumbo.” He drank off half his beer, looked at Gil, and continued. “The only part of dialectical materialism that’s right is the materialism part.” The thought had a faint echo in Gil’s memories of Paris. Gil said nothing. He wasn’t going to tip his hand, take sides, give hostages to fortune. The silence hung between them.

  “Well, if you are not going to be straight with me, joven, I’m off.” Marti raised the glass of beer and then finished it off. “Good night.” Marti’s smile was genuine and left Gil even more perplexed.

  By September things were falling apart for the Republic. First there was the pointless offensive on the River Ebro by a Republican army that fought well only when defending. Gil recalled its victory in the battle of Madrid. The Fascist general, Mola, besieging the city, claimed to have four columns outside and a fifth column within. But the Republican army had succeeded in resisting encirclement for three years. It was fighting on the offense that seemed to be beyond them. Now, losing on the Ebro front, the Republican government premier, Negrin, unilaterally withdrew his best soldiers, the International Brigades, from the war altogether. And he invited the fascists to send their “volunteers” away. Why? Gil could only laugh out loud. Did Negrin think for a minute Franco would send his German and Italian troops, their tanks, bombers, and transport planes home too? That was the moment Stalin picked to order the Spanish party to complete its liquidation of their allies on the left.