Chapter 4

My wounds healed. I outgrew physical therapy and turned to weight training as an outlet for my energies. While my body mended, my mind remained clouded. Squeeze the trigger with gentle pressure. That phrase wormed its way into my dreams each night. It must have come from my past, but only served to further confuse me. I needed to learn more about myself.

One day, I asked Gerda if she could arrange for me to shoot a pistol. I thought it might jog a memory.

“There is an open area in the back that used to be a shooting range. You were a soldier. It makes perfect sense. Let me speak to the administrator.”

*

An aide named Markus marched me to the open field behind the hospital. Beyond it lay a square cemetery with simple gray-granite tombstones. The aide placed an empty bottle on each of ten posts supporting the fence surrounding the cemetery. He handed me a pistol.

“That’s a Mauser C96,” I said without a second’s thought.

Markus was stunned. “How did you know that?”

“I don’t know, I just did.”

There was a red number nine branded into the wooden handle that looked cut from a broomstick. The number was a distinct reminder not to use 7.63 mm ammunition. I seemed to know that, too. With its long barrel and a strip of nine-millimeter brass-shelled bullets serving as a miniature bandolier dangling from the right side of the gun, the Mauser C96 resembled a tiny version of a machine gun.

The gun’s weight felt comfortable in my right hand. I was relieved there was no lingering pain as I lifted my arm to aim. I cupped my left hand under my right wrist, aimed, and fired. I missed the first bottle. I dropped the pistol to my side, drew in a calming, deep breath, repeated the steps, and squeezed the trigger with gentle pressure. This time the bottle shattered, as did the next and all the rest. It was rapid and effortless.

“Perfect,” said Markus.

“I missed the first one.”

“That one didn’t count. That was remarkable shooting.”

*

Gerda stopped me in the doorway to my ward as I returned from another unproductive session with Dr. Forster. “Friedrich, you are going to have a new bunkmate.” She pointed to the empty bed next to mine.

“What happened to the stutterer?”

“He progressed enough to return to the front.”

“Shock therapy?”

“Who wants to stay here after that?”

*

A few hours later, I turned the corner on my daily walk around the grounds to witness a caravan of horse-drawn carts filled with new patients pull up to the front. The last man in the rear wagon could not steer his way down without help; his eyes were bandaged. He was thin and pasty-faced. His straight black hair draped across his forehead and he had a thick walrus moustache that drooped beyond the corners of his lips. “Get me down,” he ordered to no one, his arms flailing to touch something. The cart driver grabbed the man’s extended hand, guided him to the ground, and then forced him to grasp the belt of the patient in front of him.

I followed as they marched to reception. Once registered, each was shown to their ward and bed. Gerda sidled up to the soldier who would soon occupy the bed next to mine.

“I’m Gerda. I will be your nurse.” She caught my eye and winked. Without a word, the man took her arm as they shuffled toward our ward. I followed a few steps behind. She patted the mattress hard. “This is your bed,” she pronounced in a loud voice.

“I’m blind, Fräulein, not deaf.”

Gerda grimaced. She made no effort to hide her distaste for this chap. “Someone will take you to lunch in a short while.”

“Danke schön,” he mumbled to Gerda’s retreating backside. I watched him lean and feel around the bed. When he got to the pillow, he oriented himself, swung his feet onto the mattress, and settled down. I could have stayed and welcomed him but instead walked away.

Gerda caught up with me in the hallway. “Friedrich, I need your help with the new patient.”

“Why is he so nasty?”

“He was blinded in a gas attack. We are so understaffed. It would be great if you could help feed him and help him navigate the halls.”

“I’m not qualified to be a nursemaid. Besides, why was he sent here if he has problems with his eyes?”

She put her hand on my arm. “It’s not my job to question why. Now, please, do this for me?”

As it turned out . . . I should have said, “No.”

I remember that date as if it were yesterday: October 21, 1918.

*

Reluctant to attend to an unpleasant blind man, I stayed away from my ward the rest of the afternoon playing cards. Gerda found me two hours later. “You can’t hide here all day, Friedrich.”

I grinned, tossed my cards down, bid my adieu, and followed Gerda. The new man lay motionless with white gauze taped across both eyes. There was no way to know if he was sleeping or awake. I eased onto my bed, trying to be quiet; the bedsprings pinged.

“Wer geht Dahin?”

“It’s me, your neighbor.” While his German was flawless, I detected the slightest of accents.

He spoke without affect or turning his head. “My world is black.”

At that moment, Dr. Karl Kroner entered the ward. I often saw this doctor examining new patients when they arrived at Pasewalk. Kroner was a thin man with a handlebar moustache, with gold, wire-rim glasses that made him appear serious. He was a Jewish neurologist, awarded the Iron Cross, First Class. Like the patient in the bed next to me, I later learned that Dr. Kroner was recently the victim of a gas attack and temporarily blinded, too.

Dr. Kroner introduced himself, helped the patient to a sitting position, and removed his bandages. After examining the patient’s eyes through an ophthalmoscope, Dr. Kroner scrunched his face into a quizzical, I-am-not-sure-about-this, look. Then he placed new bandages over the patient’s eyes and stood tall.

“You have remarkable blue eyes,” Dr. Kroner said.

“Will I see again, Herr Doktor?”

Dr. Kroner shifted his weight. “We have the best doctor in all of Germany here to treat your problem. I will arrange for Dr. Forster to examine you.”

The blind soldier groped for Kroner’s hand. “But will he help me see again?”

“If anyone can, it is Dr. Forster.”

The man let go of Kroner. “Then I will place my fate in this man’s hands.”

I was startled that Forster, a psychiatrist, would treat this fellow’s blindness. “What happened to you?” I asked once Kroner left.

In hushed tones, he explained, “I am a regiment message runner.”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“We run from the commanders to the troops in the field, dodging shells and bullets to deliver their orders. I am one of the longest-lasting runners in the war,” he said with pride. “Most get killed.”

“How did your injury occur?”

“I was attached to the 16th Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment. The List Regiment. We were in the trenches at Wervicq-Sud, in northern France. The other runners and I were about to eat breakfast when we heard the telltale plopping of nearby shells. In moments, I started to cough and then choke. All of us did.”

“Didn’t you have masks?”

“It happened too fast. In moments my eyes turned into glowing coals; it grew dark around me. We all knew it was gasvergiftung.” (Gas poisoning)

I swung my feet over the edge of the bed and sat up. “And then what happened?”

“They cut the uniform right off my body, washed out my eyes, and sent me to Oudenaarde. It’s a town in Belgium. I stayed there five days before they sent me to see a specialist in blindness here.”

I did not have the heart to reveal that his soon-to-be-treating physician was a psychiatrist.

We stopped chatting when a nurse brought my new companion his meal. I cut the food and helped him stab the pieces, which he ate sitting at the edge of his bed. When he finished, he mumbled his thanks. I took the tray, said good-bye, and left for the dining room. By the time I returned, he was fast asleep.

“Help me! Help me! Will someone help me?”

I awoke with a start.

“Won’t someone show me mercy and take me to the W.C.?”

No help was in sight. “I’ll be right there.” I assisted him to his feet. He was all bones. I led him to the toilet and opened the door. “It is right in front of you.”

“Is the door still open?”

“It is. I want to make sure you don’t trip and hit your head.”

“Am I standing in the right place?”

“You are.”

“Then please close the door. I am capable of doing this myself.”

I shrugged. The worst he could do was soil himself. “The cord is to your left. About shoulder high. And the paper—actually old newspapers—are piled on the right.”

I heard the tank flush, but the door remained closed. I knocked, heard nothing, and yanked it back. I was surprised to find him standing toe-to-door, his face in mine. He held out his hand for me to guide him back to his bed.

“You are very kind. What is your name?”

“Friedrich Richard.”

A bright smile creased his face. “You have parts of each of my two most favorite people in your name: Friedrich Nietzsche and Richard Wagner. It is an honor to make your acquaintance, Herr Friedrich Richard.”

“The honor is mine. And what should I call you?”

“The men in the regiment call me Wolf.”

The next day Wolf returned from his first session with Dr. Forster. Patients did not question each other about private sessions, but Wolf volunteered.

“I cannot believe that speaking to a doctor will make my eyes better. He didn’t even examine me the way Dr. Kroner did.”

“Perhaps he needs to know you better before he can help you.”

“I don’t see how. I told him that I was an artist and that I needed my eyesight to paint.”

“What do you paint?”

The muscles on his taut face relaxed. He ticked off a series of themes. “I paint scenes. Beautiful scenes. Churches. Plazas. Landscapes. And faces.” Then his face hardened. “Not a word about my painting. Instead Doktor Forster asked about my parents and if I had been a happy child. What does that have to do with my eyes getting better?”

I tried to reassure him. “After a time, I’ve learned that there is a method to the Herr Doktor’s questions.”

Wolf’s second night at Pasewalk introduced a trait that remained as long as I knew him: Wolf suffered from insomnia. He would pace back and forth for hours on a route he memorized, while the others slept. And then, when the hospital was abuzz on its early morning schedules, Wolf would sleep ’til noon.

Between conveying him to the toilet, his nocturnal pacing, and feeding him, I had a substantial job.

As the days passed, Wolf continued to report his talks with Dr. Forster, including intimate details about his childhood. “I told Docktor Forster that that I hated my father and was glad when he died. The lout beat me. The times he didn’t beat me were when he was too drunk to raise his arm.” Wolf said this sitting with his head straight, unmoving.

“Didn’t your mother try to protect you?”

“When she did, he beat her, too. When he finally died, his pension sustained us for a time. Then my mother got sick and the money ran out. Breast cancer. I can’t tell you how she suffered.” As he spoke, the gauze covering his eyes grew moist, and he wiped his runny nose on his sleeve.

*

I had my own sessions with Dr. Forster. “Tell me, Friedrich, what have you learned about your friend, the one they call Wolf?”

“Is it correct for me to discuss another patient with you?”

“I don’t see why not,” Forster answered. “You would be helping me understand him better.”

Dr. Forster saw I was skeptical.

“Let me share what I can,” Forster said. “Wolf came from a dysfunctional family. His father was a cruel, brutal man incapable of loving his son or anyone else. A drunkard and a wife beater who openly philandered. When he died, Wolf experienced a great sense of relief. But this respite was short-lived. Soon after, his mother became sick. She had a most painful death.”

I tried to remember something Wolf had said. “He did mention a Dr. Bloch to me. He said that the doctor did everything he could to make her comfortable, but that nothing worked.”

Dr. Forster leaned closer, a conspirator sharing a secret. “That is part of his problem, Friedrich. On the one hand, this Jewish Doktor Bloch was the kind father Wolf never had. Indeed Wolf continued to have an emotional tie to Bloch long after his mother passed. He sent Dr. Bloch paintings—street scenes—that he painted when he moved to Vienna.”

I was impressed. “He didn’t have to do that.”

“Ah . . . but there’s another side to this. Subconsciously, Wolf also resents the doctor because he could not relieve his mother’s pain.”

“I don’t see how any of this bears on his blindness after a gas attack.”

“Before I explain, there is something else you should know. Wolf recited a poem from memory that he claims to have written in homage to his mother. It’s a touching poem. It talks about a mother growing older and what used to be easy for her now takes a greater effort. The poem goes on to describe that as the mother travels on her last journey, growing weaker and sicker, she may no longer be able to understand what her son says anymore, but the son should remain joyful until the last, bitter hour.”

“That is how he described his mother’s death to me. But, Dr. Forster, what does this have to do with the fact that Wolf cannot see?”

Forster grew animated as he explained. “Don’t you see? Wolf has linked Germany losing this war to his mother’s slow death. As a result he transferred his mother’s pain to his eyes.”

“How can you possibly connect his blindness to his mother dying and Germany’s defeat?”

“Because it’s not real.”

“What’s not real?”

“The poem.” Forster tapped the side of his head. “That’s not how I meant to say it. The poem is very real. The sentiments are beautiful.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

“Wolf didn’t write the poem. Georg Runsky wrote it more than a dozen years ago.”

“I don’t understand. What are you saying?”

“It means that Wolf’s problem is more difficult to treat than I first imagined. He suffers from hysterical blindness. A French physician—Paul Briquet—first described a syndrome seventy years ago in which the mind can do strange things in order to cope with emotional and psychological stresses. Wolf has never gotten over his mother’s death and now he is challenged with Germany’s metaphorical death. This dynamic translates into Wolf shutting down a sensory organ. In his case, it’s his eyes. And to make matters worse, he has taken a poem written by someone else and convinced himself that he is its author.”

I followed Dr. Forster’s explanation as best I could. “Is there nothing you can do for him?”

Before answering, Forster struck a match and said through a stream of smoke, “Wolf will remain blind for the rest of his life . . . unless something gives him permission to see again.”

“Could my memory loss be a variation of what Wolf is experiencing?”

Forster shook his head. “No, it’s different. His issues are deeply personal and psychological. Given the head trauma you received, yours appears to be organic. I haven’t given up on you. There are still treatments available to try.”

*

Dr. Forster began a different approach to help me regain my memory. He read popular children’s books out loud to see if any sounded familiar. When that did not work, I read the books out loud. Still nothing. Next he showed me pictures of city after city, to see if I recognized a street, a building, or a monument. No image meant anything to me.

Then he tried music. We listened to Mendelssohn, Brahms, Pachelbel, Strauss, Offenbach, Schumann, Wagner, and more.

“Do any sound familiar?”

I nodded. “Many do.”

There was excitement in his voice. “Which ones?”

“Actually, they all do.”

“Can you picture where you listened to them? Was it in a theater? In your house? Maybe you played an instrument in an orchestra? Who were you with at the time you heard them?”

Try as I might, I could not picture listening to this or that music in any given place, only that I knew each piece well enough to anticipate chords. Dr. Forster assured me that one day something would catapult my lost memories from its recesses to the forefront of my brain.