Chapter 22

Bern, November 1914

Rebecca ran out of the hospital and sat on the icy window ledge by the ambulance garage. She needed fresh air, even if it was freezing outside. It was one of those dreary fall days when the clouds were an ominous gray color and not a romantic silver one that people talked about in wonder. The sun had gone missing for at least a week. The relentless icy rain had covered the city in puddles, and the hospital was full of patients suffering from catarrh and pneumonia.

Rebecca closed her eyes and tried to calm herself down. She couldn’t go back until she got hold of her feelings. She must restrain herself or she wouldn’t be helpful to her patients. Suddenly, she felt someone’s hands on her shoulders and heard a familiar voice.

“I think you could use this.” Mark’s face materialized through the stinging icy wind. He wrapped a thick gray scarf around her shoulders and neck and sat down next to her.

“Thank you,” she said. “Where did you get this?”

“My mother sent it. These wool scarves are the way we keep warm when the winters get harsh at home.”

“I can’t take it. This was meant for you.” She pulled it off.

“I’m never cold. But I know you suffer from the cold, and I don’t like to see you suffer,” he said, kissing her frozen nose. Then he wrapped her back in the scarf, holding her tightly in his warm arms.

“What is wrong? You look so pale. Are you feeling ill?” Mark grabbed her wrist to check her pulse, but she shook his fingers off.

“No, not ill, only in a temper. I can’t stand it! I’m afraid it’s very difficult to control myself at times.”

“What happened? Why do you need to control your temper?”

“It’s Lohrer, he is…despicable! He treats his female patients like—I don’t know—like objects for him to practice on. He doesn’t see them as human beings at all! He talks about them as if they don’t even exist outside of their disease. He doesn’t care about their suffering!”

Mark sat down next to her. “I’m afraid many academics like him don’t care much about patients. They only wish to study the disease and observe what it does.”

“They don’t actually wish for the patient to be free of disease?”

“They do, but not in the way you think. They want a mechanical or medicinal cure only. You want more of a—what’s the correct word?”

“Healing,” Rebecca helped. “I want them to be healed. Emotionally, as well as medically. I wish for them to feel happy to come to us for help and medical care. I want them to have hope and know we’ll take care of them.”

“Correct. Dr. Lohrer likes to tell truth. You will live and you will die. He doesn’t worry about tears. He does know about their disease, and he gives good diagnoses and medicine. He’s not a healer, though.”

“I don’t think his patients want or like his truth.” Rebecca sighed.

“You can do better, for certain.”

“It’s just that working with real people is so different from simply looking at the pictures in textbooks for all these years as a medical student. You understand?”

“Of course I do. It is a shock to see real disease, not just read descriptions of it. You feel helpless often. That’s why I prefer surgery. I feel I can practice medicine that way better somehow.”

“Do you truly believe I can do better?”

“I know you do. These hands have the gift of healing.” Mark picked up her hands and kissed them. “I’ve seen you touch patients and relieve their suffering.”

“You’ve seen me?” She was mortified. She thought she had kept it hidden. Even from him.

“Of course I have. I love watching you heal, liebe.”

“I’m so embarrassed.” She covered her face with her hands.

“Why? I grew up with a healer in the village. We weren’t allowed to have a doctor. But healing is a great tradition in our culture, and I understand what it’s like. You have to use any gift you have. Surgery and medicine will only help so much.” He pulled her hands away from her face. “If you can relieve a patient’s suffering in other ways, you must do it.”

“You always do know how to help me feel better.” She got up. “I’d better go back.”

“Can I walk you home today?” Mark got up as well.

“Not tonight. I promised Sarah to meet her after her law classes. I haven’t talked to her in a while.”

“Is she really planning to become a lawyer?”

“She is. I’m so proud of her! It’s not easy for women to find employment as lawyers, but she’ll persist, I believe.”

“Is her divorce all done?”

“It’s not. At least her family was willing to take her back and protect her from that brute of a husband,” Rebecca said, opening the heavy door.

“I can walk both of you home?”

“We enjoy a chance at our own private female conversation sometimes. So, no, not tonight, my darling.”

“I miss you,” Mark looked around, then planted a quick kiss on her lips. “However, I do have something else to do tonight. More students are arriving from Berlin,” he whispered.

“More? Didn’t almost fifty arrive last week? Why are so many coming suddenly?”

“All German universities have a numerus clausus now, just like Ukraine and Russia. They can only admit so many foreign students. All foreigners must go to Swiss universities or go home. But if they go home, they’ll become soldiers.”

“So the German universities are discriminating against the Jewish students now as well?”

“They are. Just the same. Well, not the German Jews, though. I hope the Swiss universities let us stay, or we’ll have no place to go. Vlad heard a rumor that Zurich is going to allow only sixty foreigners a year. That’s why so many from Germany are coming here and not going to Zurich.”

“I have to speak to my father and see if he’s heard anything.” Rebecca felt so worried she hardly remembered her anger at Dr. Lohrer now. Was it possible for Mark to be sent away?

“Vlad, and I have to hurry and obtain Aufenthalters for these newcomers. That’s a temporary residence permit.”

“I’ll send you a note after I talk to Father.”

“When can we see each other longer?” He held onto her arm, not letting her go.

“My family will be going to a wedding in Vienna next week. I can stay at home. I’ll say I have hospital responsibilities.”

“I can hardly wait until next week then. No need to worry, I won’t be going away any time soon.” He gave her another quick kiss and rushed away.

“I love you!” she called after him.

That evening, she told Sarah about the German universities sending foreigners away.

Sarah asked, as they walked home slowly, “Do you truly think the university will send all these students home?”

“I won’t believe it; I simply won’t. We have at least five hundred here. And now even more are coming,” Rebecca said. “Lara did tell me that some of the women were thinking of leaving on their own, since schools in Russia now allow them to study. I’m sure many of them are homesick.”

“I hate that the other universities would do this,” Sarah said. “You know, I heard that there used to be protests here too, in the 1890s, against Russian students. The community didn’t want them to take spaces at the university that should be available to the Bernese.”

“That’s nonsense!” Rebecca protested. “It’s because the faculty allowed these Russian women to come and study here that they realized the women of Switzerland were intelligent and strong enough to study at the universities.”

“I think you’re right. If it weren’t for them, I’d never have been able to leave my husband and study law. At least the Russian colony respects women, not like the Jewish community of Bern.”

“Yes! The Gemeinde believes all we’re good for is volunteering for charity or heading women’s organizations. That may be good enough for Hannah, but certainly not for me. I wish to do grand things. I thought simply being a doctor would be enough for me. But I see the disrespect male doctors give to female doctors and patients, and I desperately want to show them that women deserve much better treatment. By all males—not only by the doctors.”

“So do I, of course. That’s why I wish to become a lawyer.”

They entered the small park near their homes and sat on the bench by the trees, inhaling the crisp fresh air. It was much warmer than earlier that morning, with no more icy rain. The mist still hung around the branches and the carpet of yellow, red, and orange leaves was soft and soggy under their boots.

“Are you enjoying your studies?” Rebecca asked, wrapping Mark’s scarf tighter around her neck.

“I love it. I really do. And I’m starting to volunteer at a legal aid clinic for women. Wives similar to me, who get hurt by their husbands and want to leave them, yet don’t know how to accomplish it.”

“Oh, Sarah, how wonderful! I’m so proud of you!” Rebecca gave her friend a warm hug.

“I can’t stand it that our marriage laws lead to such inequality between husbands and wives. Women are doomed to live in oppression, without a right to vote, sold into marriage by their fathers, then controlled by their husbands. If you hadn’t convinced me I had a choice to leave Friedrick and get an education, I don’t know what would’ve happened to me!”

“Well, I hope you’ll teach them to get an education as well. I think that’s the answer for the Swiss women in modern times. It’s the only way we can stop being men’s property.”

“Yes, we must advocate for new role models for Jewish women. Maybe, one day, I can even help fight for our right to vote. If we were not so dependent on our husbands and fathers for the taxes they pay for us to belong to communities, and if we could place our own votes, we’d have greater freedom to speak our opinions,” Sarah said.

“That we have so many educated women but still don’t have the right to vote is so out of step with our times. What good is education if you can’t change the injustice you observe?” Rebecca hit the bench angrily with her fist.

“The war will change everything all over Europe. It may be the right time for us to ask for more rights for women.”

“Do you really think the war can change things?”

“Of course! With so many men gone, there are less of them to stop women from doing what they want. Many will die, and women will take their place—in all kinds of work, even in government. Not in Switzerland, of course, but in other countries at least,” Sarah said.

“I never thought of the war as being positive in some way. I just worry whether Mark will have to go back to Ukraine.”

“I’d think he is safer staying here. Vlad, Lara’s fiancé, is in one of my classes. He says revolutionaries are against the war and they’re all staying here to plan protests.”

“This would be wonderful, if it is true. If Mark and his friends go home, the Tsar will force them to join the army and fight. He’ll never be able to finish his education,” Rebecca said.

“Vlad said that he’d never return while the war is going on. He plans to go to Italy if he has to leave Bern. I wonder if he’ll convince Lara to go with him.”

“She’d follow him to the moon if he went. I have to talk to Papi to find out what the university is doing.” Rebecca sighed.

“Do you think your parents will ever accept that you and Mark are in love?”

“I don’t know.” Rebecca got up and adjusted her hat. “You’re right. The war will change things. For now, I go wherever Mother orders me to. I pretend, I dance, I talk with other men. I just tell her the men don’t like me. It’s easy to be disliked.”

“Is it just his poverty your parents object to?”

“No, it’s also the fact that they believe all the foreign students are revolutionaries.”

“They are probably right, you know.”

“To some degree. But Mark is also an excellent doctor. So is Lara.”

“Vlad is also very smart. I don’t think he actually studies, however. He seems to do more arguing than studying during lectures.”

“He has no use for the Swiss law. He just enjoys going to lectures in between his political activities. And Lara makes him go.” Rebecca laughed.

“Well, I don’t appreciate him interfering when I’m actually trying to learn,” Sarah grumbled, getting up as they began to walk toward their homes, the rain picking up again. “Professor Reichesberg, one of our law professors, is a big supporter of the foreign students and allows them to pretend to study at the university while doing their political activities. I only hope they don’t stand in the way of my becoming a lawyer. I actually plan to do something useful with my education.”

Rebecca stopped, a thought occurring to her suddenly. She rubbed her forehead with her gloved hand, concentrating on explaining her thoughts to Sarah. “Do you think that, maybe, we can think of opening a place for women where they can come to receive health education from me and legal education from you? Women who can’t afford to go to the doctor or who don’t wish to go to see male doctors who berate them and treat them as less than human? Women who can’t afford to pay a lawyer?”

“Women who are being mistreated by their husbands?” Sarah finished. “You really think we could do something like this?”

“Yes, why ever not? I could teach classes on preventing pregnancies and diseases, and on hygiene in the home. You could educate them on their legal rights. Maybe Papi will allow me to borrow his clinic for one evening a month so we can do this.”

“He’ll never allow it. His patients would be outraged.”

“He has a very kind heart. But if he doesn’t allow it, I can rent a set of rooms somewhere. We could start with just a few hours a month and then do it more often as the need arises and we have interested patients. What do you say?” Rebecca’s heart was beating wildly. She couldn’t believe she hadn’t thought of doing this before.

Sarah smiled. “How could I say no to such an enthusiastic offer? And what else do I have to do in my free time? Embroider?”

Rebecca hugged her best friend. “I’m going to run and ask Papi. Will you make it home safely from here?”

“Of course. It’s only a block away.” Sarah kissed her and left.

Rebecca picked up her skirt and ran home, oblivious to the muddy puddles on the way. Worries about Mark forgotten, she now knew how to apply her efforts and healing abilities to something useful. For the first time since entering the university, she was aware of a sense of real purpose.