Chapter 3

October 1918

Pasewalk Hospital, once known as the Firing House for its use as a firing range, was a large, austere red brick building replete with turrets on either side of the entranceway. A row of trees lined the street in front of the haunting building.

I arrived by train in the late afternoon and was transferred to a horse-drawn lorry. Finally, tired and stiff, I found myself on a slow-moving queue that began outside the hospital and snaked its way inside. I staggered to the front desk.

“Name,” barked the nurse.

I displayed a sheepish grin. “My name is X.”

My response did not jar her. She looked at the nametag pinned to my makeshift uniform, saw that X was my name, checked off a box, had me sign something I did not bother to read and ordered me to Ward B on the second floor. Nothing private this time. The ward had eight beds.

I was assigned to the only empty bed, in the far right corner. I had nothing other than a photograph and my kit of toiletries to put in the chest of drawers next to the bed. The bedsprings squealed from my weight. The thin mattress sagged in the middle. None of the patients acknowledged me. When the chap next to me finally did speak, he had a terrible stutter. The fellow next to him had a nervous twitch that caused him to claw at his shirt top and stretch his neck to the right in a bird-like manner. As a group, my new neighbors exhibited bizarre behaviors. Memory or no memory, my anticipation of help turned to schemes of escape.

*

Sleep eluded me that first night. My neighbors jabbered, cried out, screamed, or sobbed in a cacophony of noises. I had finally drifted to sleep when a nurse roused us up.

She strutted to the foot of my bed. “Welcome to Pasewalk. My name is Gerda. Breakfast is in ten minutes.” Before I could answer, she continued. “After you eat, you have an appointment in the clinic with Dr. Forster.”

“Who is he?” I asked, still in somewhat of a sleep-deprived fog.

“Your doctor.”

In time, a nurse escorted me to a small, windowless office. She pointed to a stiff, wooden chair planted in front of a steel desk devoid of any extraneous artifacts save a solitary folder: my medical records. Given the number of surgeries, the folder was thick.

I continued to fidget when the door opened and a large man almost as tall as me, entered. He struggled into the chair behind the desk, offered me a cigarette and when I declined, fired up his own. “My name is Dr. Edmund Robert Forster. I am a psychiatrist. My job is to help you find out who you are.”

“That would be appreciated,” I said, my remark laced with both hope and skepticism.

It was as if he had not heard me, for he did not react. Instead, Dr. Forster spewed out a plume of blue-gray smoke. He studied me from behind round black-framed glasses that gave him an owl-like stare. “Do you know who you are?” he asked without preamble.

I gave up on the friendly approach. “If I did, I wouldn’t be here talking to you, now would I?”

“On the contrary, it is quite possible you want to be here.”

“Surely you don’t believe that, Herr Doktor. No one wants to be here unless it is to get better.”

Forster lit another cigarette with the embers of the last. He drew in a long drag before speaking again. “You have much to learn, Herr X. The patients here—personally, I would prefer to call them inmates—have one thing in common: none want to get better. They know that if they did, they would be sent back to the trenches. None want that.”

There was nothing to like about this man. “That may be true for others, but not me. I don’t want to be here.”

“So you say.” He glanced at my file.

My fists opened and closed. I bounded out of the chair, although it caused pain to move so fast.

He held up his hand. “We’re not finished.”

“We are for today, Herr Doktor Forster.”

*

Departing from breakfast the next day, I heard a piercing scream from the bowels of the building. I froze. I turned to the soldier next to me, the one who blinked non-stop. “What was that?”

“Probably the sleeper. He sleeps day and night. The nurses poke him every few hours to use the W.C. so he won’t crap in his bed. They hate cleaning it up. The doctor is convinced he is faking it.”

“Is he?”

The man shrugged as if to say, who knows?

“What are they doing to him?”

“Electrodes.”

I knew better than to ask where the wires were attached. One thing was clear to me: I had to get out of this place. I began to push myself. I tried to pry open the window on my memory. I started with what I knew. From the onset, I had the ability to speak. No one questioned that German was my native language. I could do numbers in my head, so that part of my brain worked. But when it came to conjuring up my past, everything was missing.

Back in my ward, I plucked out the photo that Anna and Dr. Joseph had found in my boot from the night table next to my bed. I studied each face as I had done a hundred times before, hoping to ignite a memory. The girl in the picture might have been eight or ten. She wore a light-colored dress that had a high neckline and ended at her knees. The boy stood next to his father; he was already half a head taller than the girl. He looked large for his age, as I might have been, given my oversized frame. From the date on the back of the photo, I knew I could not be the father.

*

The next day a fight broke out during lunch hour. One patient taunted another. The instigator was a thin, small, balding patient who enjoyed annoying those around him. This time he picked on a patient who was a head taller and twice as wide. The big man reached across the table, grabbed his tormentor by the throat with his left hand, and smashed him with his right fist. He didn’t stop with one punch even though the agitator was already unconscious. He drove punch after punch into the man’s face. Blood poured from the fellow’s nose as his limp body absorbed the punishment like a ragdoll.

No one tried to stop it. I could have minded my own business, too. I didn’t. I grabbed the big guy by the shoulder and spun him around.

“It’s enough! Do you want to kill him?”

He snarled. “Who the fuck do you think you are?” Without waiting for a response, he swung his paw toward my chin. As if I knew how to fight my entire life, my left arm blocked his punch and I connected with a solid right with enough power to drive him to the floor. I readied myself for when he got up, but he lay there without moving. Seeing he was no longer a concern and ignoring the pain shooting through my arm, I scooped up the agitator and carried him to the intake room. When the nurse saw me cradling him, she pointed to the cot.

“What happened?” she asked as I laid him down.

I explained about the oversized brute and the thrashing he gave the man on the cot.

“Must have been Schweinitz. He has manure for a brain. The last one he sent here didn’t have a patron saint like you.”

“I did what anyone should have done.”

“Not many around here would have been brave enough to stand up to that bully.”

I rubbed my fist. “He wasn’t that tough.”

“Let me take a look at that.”

“It’s just a little stiff.”

The nurse ignored me. She had me wiggle my fingers.

“Nothing appears broken. You may not be so lucky next time.” She nodded to the man on the cot. “Thanks for saving him.”

No one at the hospital fought near me again, and when I walked the halls patients took a wide birth around me. As the days passed, I struggled to recall, without success, how and why fighting came so natural to me. As it turned out, these skills would prove useful in the years ahead.

*

“Has any of your memory returned?” Dr. Forster inquired the next day. I shook my head. I noted a change in his demeanor. It was somehow different, even respectful. “From what I heard, you know how to handle yourself. Look at you. You stand six-foot-seven. Even after being in Charité for some months, you must weigh at least two hundred and twenty pounds. Most men would know not to tangle with you. Perhaps you trained soldiers how to fight?”

“I wish I knew.”

Forster continued. “Do you even know why Germany is fighting? Why you and your fellow soldiers are risking their lives?”

“I’ve heard bits and pieces. Nothing that makes a coherent story.”

He lit a new cigarette with the stub of the one already burned down to his finger. The nails on his right hand were nicotine-stained.

“We fight for our Fatherland. For a way of life that is superior to other countries. Our motto is ‘Der deutsche Geist soll die Welt heilen.’”

The German spirit shall heal the world.

“The German spirit may be good for the world, but it is not healing me. Why are you telling me this?”

“Because you have no views, opinions, or information. Here is the truth, Herr X. We are losing this war. But the war is bringing us together. Uniting Germans as we have never been united before.”

This talk caused me to wonder which of us was ill. He sounded more like an inmate than a physician, but he gained my attention by changing the subject.

“Let me ask you, do you like being called X?”

“While I don’t mind it, I would prefer to have my own name.”

“From the army’s point of view, you exist because they sent you here. We are even required to pay you, but you don’t exist with respect to an identity. As long as you are in this place it doesn’t matter. You’re safe. But it cannot last forever. In time, anonymity will work against you. To help, I am going to give you a name: Friedrich Richard.” He picked up a pen, wrote the name out on a pad, and handed it to me.

“Why this one?”

“Friedrich Richard was a patient here. He died not long ago. Actually, he committed suicide. As far as we know, he had no family. More importantly, we haven’t reported his death yet. The army believes he is still here. You can become him and no one will dispute it.”

I squirmed in my seat. “I don’t see why I have to assume the name of a dead man.”

“Look, X, you need to be someone. The war will end soon and you must have official papers. Use Friedrich Richard’s military identification card. When your memory returns, toss his name and become your old self. No one will be the wiser.”

I didn’t like it, but it gave me a way out. “You must think that I’m much better or you wouldn’t be doing this. I’m grateful for what you’ve done. So, yes, the identify papers with my new name are a great idea. I’ll be able to function like any normal person. If that’s the case, isn’t it time to release me from this hospital? I could be on tomorrow’s train and away from here.”

Forster shook his head. “You’re not ready to leave.” His voice was cold and final.