As soon as the news of Germany’s surrender was announced, the foreman had opened the factory gates and told the Polish slave labourers that they were free to leave. Within a few hours, the guards and officials had slunk away like rats, terrified of capture and execution by the Russians. Elzunia was dazed. The end of the war was such a huge, long-awaited moment, but she seemed incapable of grasping its significance. The war was over, she kept repeating to herself as though repetition might create the exhilaration she wanted to feel. She was free. But free to do what?
While the other women danced around the factory floor, hugging and kissing each other, she had sat in the kitchen trying to collect her thoughts. Herr Schnabel, who was packing up his implements in preparation for departure, watched her from across the room.
‘What will you do now?’ he asked. ‘Where will you go?’
She shook her head. The moment she had dreamed of for so long had caught her unawares.
He thrust his meaty hand into his pocket and pulled out a wad of banknotes. ‘Here, take this,’ he said gruffly. ‘You’ve earned it.’
He was still looking at her. ‘You could come and keep house for me. You’ll be safe there, you and the children. The roads aren’t safe for women any more, with those Russian bastards prowling around.’
She almost laughed. After all the atrocities the Germans had committed over the past six years, he was warning her to beware of the Russians. She thanked him for the offer but shook her head.
He sighed. ‘I will prepare food for your journey,’ he said, and before she had time to reply he was already slicing smoked ham and cutting wedges of cheese and packing them into a basket.
Although the war was over in this part of Germany, the situation in Poland was still unclear. She’d heard that in some areas the fighting was still continuing, while in others there were skirmishes, ambushes and sniper attacks. There were rumours that the communists were now in control, and anyone who had taken part in the Uprising was regarded with suspicion. She didn’t know what to do.
‘You are nurse, ja?’ the chef was asking.
He told her that his niece Ulli was working in a hospital that the British had set up in the grounds of some camp or other in Saxony. Ulli hadn’t finished her training but they were short of nurses, so they’d taken her on. ‘Maybe you could get a job there,’ he suggested, then added, ‘At least you’ll be safe from the Russians. But it won’t be easy work like here, mind you. Ulli says that the matron is like a prison commandant.’
It had taken Elzunia several days to get on to a train because the carriages were jammed with desperate evacuees, displaced people and former Nazis who had hurriedly stripped off all signs of their service to the Third Reich in an attempt to pass for innocent civilians. She had trudged the last few kilometres on foot, her knapsack on her back, with the children lagging behind, complaining and squabbling.
‘Where are we going? When will we get there?’ Zbyszek kept asking.
‘Make him wait for me,’ Gittel said in a querulous tone as Zbyszek ran past her. She flopped down on the ground. ‘I can’t walk any more. I’m tired.’
Elzunia knelt beside them and took out the thermos from her rucksack. ‘Have a drink and then we’ll keep going. We’re nearly there. See that building ahead of us? That’s the hospital.’
Her knees shook when she was ushered into Matron’s office, and she sank gratefully into a chair and looked around. On the bookshelf above Matron’s desk lay a worn volume. Its title, Notes on a Hospital, didn’t mean anything to her, but the author’s name leapt out at her. It was Florence Nightingale, whose story had inspired her to become a nurse, and whose portrait hung on the wall of the nursing school in the Ghetto. She felt the matron’s eyes resting gently on her and knew she had come to the right place.
‘That lady has orange hair,’ Gittel said.
Embarrassed, Elzunia hushed her, relieved that the matron couldn’t speak Polish, although from the amused gleam in her eyes it looked as if she had sensed that the child had made a comment about her.
‘You need nurse, yes?’ Elzunia said. She hoped she remembered enough of her English lessons at school to make herself understood.
Judith looked at her with interest. ‘You’re a nurse, are you?’
‘I good nurse. Long time. Polish.’
‘And these children,’ Judith asked, ‘are they yours?’
Elzunia shook her head and held the children closer. ‘Not mine but stay with me always.’
There was something about the girl’s resolute manner and devotion to the children that touched Judith. And she needed nurses with experience.
After showing Elzunia to the room that she would share with five other nurses, Judith looked at the children.
‘We can put two beds in here for them. During the day they can go to the kindergarten in the grounds,’ she said.
Elzunia’s response was sharp and swift. ‘Children with me, always,’ she said. ‘If kindergarten, I go.’
Taken aback by the girl’s ferocity, Judith decided to drop the subject for the time being. ‘You must be very tired,’ she said. ‘Have something to eat, unpack, and then I’ll show you around and explain your duties.’
‘I don’t know what’s going to become of these people when they’re well enough to leave,’ Judith said with a sigh an hour later as they walked around a ward where over a hundred beds were jammed, one next to the other. ‘The Jews don’t want to go back to the countries where they were persecuted and the British won’t let them into Palestine. The Poles refuse to live under a communist government, the Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians are afraid of reprisals if they go back, and there’s a civil war raging in Greece. The world’s in a bloody mess.’
Elzunia didn’t say anything. Although she understood the gist of what Matron had said, her spoken English was poor, and, in any case, she preferred to keep her thoughts to herself. Hospitals evoked bad memories. Hard work didn’t frighten her but she needed all her energy to suppress the ghosts of the past. As she followed the matron around the hospital, she was impressed by what this woman had achieved in such a short time.
Without saying any more about the kindergarten, Judith took Elzunia around the hospital grounds. They ended the tour at the kindergarten that she had equipped with toys and books sent by her friends in Australia.
Gittel and Zbyszek looked around. Gittel’s eyes were shining as she picked up some bright wooden blocks and held them out to Zbyszek, who was examining a red truck. ‘Look at all these toys!’ she shouted.
A few minutes later, they crept forward and sat on the floor beside the other children, who were gazing at a picture book the young teacher held up.
As Elzunia watched them, she realised that probably for the first time in their lives, Gittel and Zbyszek were able to play like normal children.
‘Kindergarten good,’ she said. ‘Children stay.’
Judith was impressed with the efficiency and dedication of her new nurse but she was puzzled by her selective understanding of English. Elzunia carried out all her instructions but whenever she asked where she had studied or which hospitals she had worked in, the girl looked blank and clammed up.
Judith knew that it was essential to tread delicately. Dealing with the bruised personalities of these people was like treading across a minefield where even the lightest step could cause an explosion.
Elzunia knew that she should answer Matron’s questions but although this was the first hospital she had ever worked in that wasn’t under fire, she couldn’t bring herself to talk about her other nursing experiences. She kept reminding herself that no bombs or rockets would fall on them here, and no SS officers would burst into her ward, but she still caught herself listening out for the thumping of boots and the bellowing of mortars.
She was on her way to see Matron early one morning when the sound of dishes crashing in the kitchen made her jump. She was still trembling when she entered the office, but saw that Matron was also in a nervous state, pacing up and down, not like her usual cheerful self.
‘There’s no power today,’ Judith said. ‘I was thinking of using wood to fire the bath heaters, but without electricity we can’t pump the water. The buggers have cut the power off without any warning, so we didn’t even get time to fill the tanks or tubs. I don’t know how we’re going to manage to wash the patients and cook the food. To say nothing of the dance this evening.’
She spoke more rapidly than usual, and Elzunia could only make out one word in ten, but she understood that it was about the blackout and the dance. She knew from Dr Silbermann that Matron had organised a dance that evening to boost the patients’ spirits, but it looked as if she had picked the wrong night.
Judith was still talking. ‘One of these days I’ll have to write a manual about how to run a three-thousand-bed hospital without water, power or disinfectant. It’s bound to be a bestseller!’
Although the power was not restored in time, Judith resolved that nothing would stand in her way. If there was no electricity, the dance would take place by candlelight.
The flickering candles cast long shadows on the walls and transformed the bare hall into a romantic ballroom. One of the patients, an old man whose hunched back and pointy ears reminded Elzunia of a gnome, rushed to the piano with surprising alacrity, and proceeded to play a Strauss waltz. As soon as he pressed one key, four others sounded simultaneously, but neither the jangling music nor the bizarre surroundings dampened the enthusiasm of the patients who had decked themselves out in whatever clothes they could lay their hands on.
The more sprightly among them grabbed a partner and shuffled around with euphoric expressions while the rest looked on, humming the tunes, tapping their feet or clapping to the music. Judith noticed that Anna Silbermann was standing on the edge of the dance floor with her back to the dancers. One of the men hobbled up to her, bowed, and said something. She shook her head and turned away but he persisted and with obvious reluctance she followed him on to the dance floor. Her movements, unenthusiastic at first, gradually loosened up, and soon she was twirling to the infectious rhythm of a Hungarian czardas. Watching them, Judith felt her throat close up. It wasn’t just the hall that had been transformed. The music had released a flow of energy and emotion that had been bottled up for so long. From the flirtatious smiles of some of the women, and the gallant gestures of the men, it was clear that the juices of life were flowing again.
But she felt that her own juices had dried up. The relentless effort of establishing and running this hospital had taken up all her waking thoughts, and when she fell into bed each night she sank into a dreamless sleep. But as she watched the patients bouncing around the wooden floor or swaying in time to the music, she felt such a surge of longing for Adam and the warmth of his embrace that she had to close her eyes to conceal her emotion.
She saw the new Polish nurse standing quietly beside her, thin and pale as a wafer. ‘What about you?’ she said. ‘Why don’t you take a partner and kick up your heels? It would do you the world of good.’
Elzunia started. Her eyes were pools of sadness and Judith wondered whether she, too, was thinking of someone she loved.