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JAN COULD NOT BEAR waiting in the dark and doing nothing. He lit a lantern, circled the house, and found Talbert’s axe lying in the dirt next to a pitifully small pile of wood for kindling. He frowned as he picked up the axe.
Within a few minutes he had chopped an armful of kindling and laid it next to the back door. Then he went in search of the Beckers’ coal bin. It was nearly empty.
It is still cold at night and this family is in real need, Jan realized. He filled a bucket with what was left of the coal and set it on the back stoop next to the kindling. Later he would make a trip home to bring back more wood and coal.
He let himself into Talbert’s barn to check on their animals. In the lamplight their lone cow lowed mournfully, begging to be milked; their mule stamped in agitation.
Likely these animals have not been cared for this day, Jan surmised.
He filled a pail with water for the mule and looked for grain to feed him. As he neared the grain bin, holding the lamp before himself, the scurrying of mice caught his attention.
They do not have a mouser? Jan wondered. Ach! Not good for the grain or for healthy living.
Jan held the lantern aloft, opened the grain bin, and saw droppings. Mice had indeed been in the grain. He searched for and spied nesting material behind the bin. Had the Beckers been eating from this bin as well as feeding their animals?
Desperation fluttered in Jan’s stomach then crept up his back.
—
INSIDE, THE TWO WOMEN retreated to the kitchen. There they scrubbed their hands and forearms with strong soap and hot water. Since they had both been handling the children, Fraulein Engel inspected Elli carefully for fleas and then Elli did the same for Fraulein Engel.
They bound clean kerchiefs about their heads, taking care to tuck in all of their hair. Then they placed kerchiefs over their noses and mouths, tying them behind their heads.
Elli found the kindling and bucket of coal on the back step and built up a good fire to heat more water. When the water was boiling, they set to work cleaning the children and their bedroom.
To say it was difficult work would be an understatement.
Elli and Fraulein Engel stripped the children and their beds. In a few minutes, the women had the four sick, naked children huddled under a thin cover in the corner of the kitchen next to the stove. Then they scrubbed the bedroom’s bed, floor, and walls. Elli helped Fraulein Engel to remake the bed with the few clean bed linens they could find.
“Be careful,” Fraulein Engel admonished in German. She pantomimed to Elli her concern over the soiled clothing and linens. Through Fraulein Engel’s gestures, Elli understood that all the clothing and bedding were to be boiled.
“Ja,” was Elli’s sober answer. She bundled the filthy things in a soiled sheet and took them out the back door, making a pile several yards from the house. Jan watched her from the barn. He noted Elli’s covered head, mouth, and nose with concern.
“What does she say?” Jan asked.
Elli hesitated. It was now the middle of the night. She was exhausted and needed to re-wash her hands and arms in strong soap as soon as possible. There was still much to be done in the house. She did not have the energy to deal with Jan’s reaction.
Elli pulled down the kerchief covering her mouth. “She . . . thinks it could be some form of typhus, but I do not think she is certain because of how uncommon it is in these parts,” she answered softly. “But, in fact, the children are covered in flea bites.”
Jan stared across the distance between them. When he did not say anything, Elli turned toward the house.
“Elli.” Jan spoke her name roughly. She turned back. They stared at each other across the yard until Elli, shaking her head, walked back to the house.
She removed a large tin tub from a nail outside the door on her way in. She placed the tub on the kitchen floor near the stove and began to pour hot water into it. When the bath was ready, she and Fraulein Engel bathed the children, one by one, drying them and dressing them in clean nightclothes.
The children moaned and cried as they bathed them. Elli and Fraulein Engel scrubbed every inch of the sick little bodies with hot water and lye soap and afterward doused them with flea powder. Once they had cleaned a child, doused him with powder, and put him into fresh night clothes, Elli placed him on the other side of the stove where he would still remain warm. When all four children were bathed, they tucked them into the clean bed.
The night flew by in a blur of work and patient care for Elli and Fraulein Engel. Elli had built a fire in the yard and boiled all the soiled clothing and bedding. For hours she had toiled, scrubbing, rinsing, and hanging sodden quilts and clothes on a fence to slowly dry, while Fraulein Engel tended Talbert and Maria.
Fraulein Engel lectured Elli on eradicating the fleas and “flea dirt” (flea droppings). She emphasized taking care not to inadvertently breathe the droppings in—hence the kerchiefs over their mouths and noses.
It was the flea droppings that carried the sickness, the older woman pointed out. The scarcely visible droppings could carry the infection inside when breathed in or carry the infection into the bloodstream when flea bites were scratched raw.
Elli understood the gist of Fraulein Engel’s warnings from her gestures—and from the fear lurking in the woman’s eyes. They took care to clean themselves every time they touched a patient.
Jan went home and returned in the morning with coal, kindling, clean bedding, strong soap, and hot food prepared by Amalie. He also brought a burlap sack that struggled and yowled in the wagon bed.
Elli stepped out the front door. She hugged herself in the chill morning air and spoke to him across the yard. “Talbert is very sick now. Maria may be improving a little.” She looked down. “Fraulein Engel is unsure about the children. The oldest seems a little better but the other three . . .”
Jan licked his lips. “I sent Søren to the Andersons and Bruntrüllsens. They will pass the word to the church to pray. We are all praying.”
What he yearned to say—to shout and insist—was, Elli! Just come home before you become ill! Please! Yet he knew he could not ask it of her.
Elli stared at the ground. “Will you bury the baby?”
The horror of the request was not lost on Jan. “Ja, I will. Give me an hour.” He sighed, grabbed the burlap bag, and went inside the Beckers’ barn.
He untied the neck of the sack and released a scrappy orange tom cat Kristen had named Ginger. The cat shot across the barn, his tail standing straight up.
“Ja, you will have all you want here,” Jan murmured. He knew that to eradicate the fleas, one must eradicate the mice.
He milked the cow and left the pail on the back step, knocking to alert Elli of its presence. He pumped water into the trough and turned the cow and the mule out into the small pasture.
Then he sought out Talbert’s shovel and pick and trudged toward a lone tree to dig a tiny grave beneath its branches.
—
ELLI AND FRAULEIN ENGEL cared for the Beckers for three weeks. Fraulein Engel’s brother brought more flea powder and other remedies his sister requested. Jan came daily, as did other neighbors, to do Talbert’s chores and bring food and clean clothing.
No one in the community could believe it was typhus, and Fraulein Engel herself was uncertain. Jan attested to the mice in the grain bin and the fleas Fraulein Engel had uncovered in the house. It just didn’t make sense this far north, but the evidence was there, and the community took precautions accordingly.
Then in the last week, as though to prove Fraulein Engel’s diagnosis, Jan and Henrik buried the Beckers’ three younger children . . . followed by Talbert. Only Maria and her oldest child, a boy of about eight years, seemed to be on the mend.
Elli called to Jan from the Beckers’ front door. “Fraulein Engel says I am to go home tomorrow. She can manage without me now.”
She saw the hunger kindle in Jan’s eyes and knew her own eyes radiated her need for him. Oh, Jan! How I long to feel your arms around me! her heart cried.
“Before I can leave, I must bathe and wash my hair. Fraulein Engel will check me to be certain. It will have to be back there in the yard.” Elli waved in the direction of the fire pit on the other side of the house where the infested bedding and clothing had been boiled. “Then I must put on all clean things.”
Jan nodded. “I will bring everything you need. Amalie will help me. I will bring our tub, too, and build a fire to heat the water and keep you warm.”
He paused and chewed his lower lip. “Are you truly coming home, Elli?” Elli saw his pain and longing even as he desperately tried to mask it. “It has felt like . . . such a long time without you.”
“Ja, my husband. I am truly coming home.” It was all she could muster without breaking apart.
—
KARL CAME WITH JAN in the morning. Together they built up a large fire and set the Thoresens’ hip bath near it. Karl set a grill over the fire and began to heat water. Jan spread a folded sheet on the ground. On it he laid towels, a washcloth, soap, and the clean clothes Amalie had selected for Elli.
When Elli’s bath was ready, Karl retired to the other side of the house. Jan intended to stay and help Elli, but Fraulein Engel would not allow him. With gestures and many stern, unintelligible words, she indicated that Jan should still stay clear.
For Elli, the bath and precautionary flea powder were rites almost spiritual in nature. Fraulein Engel scrubbed every square inch of her body and, while Elli huddled in the tub, carefully combed through her clean hair. If Fraulein Engel had found any evidence of fleas at all, she would not have permitted Elli to leave.
Elli emerged from the now cool water and was pronounced clean.
As Elli dressed, Fraulein Engel dumped Elli’s soiled clothing into the large cauldron over the fire, grated soap into the pot, and stirred the bubbling mass with a wooden paddle.
—
ELLI WAS READY TO LEAVE; she knew Jan and Karl were waiting for her on the other side of the house. She and Fraulein Engel stared at each other across the sheet—across a divide they now dared not to cross.
They had battled death together and had prayed side by side on their knees over dying children, yet they now could not embrace. Tears sprang to Elli’s eyes and then to Fraulein Engel’s.
“Tusen Takk,” Elli choked out, her face awash in tears. A thousand thanks.
Fraulein Engel nodded and murmured, “Geh mit Gott, meine Tochter.” Go with God, my daughter.
Elli covered a sob with her hand and hurried away.
Fraulein Engel peeled off her kerchief, allowing her head and hair to breathe. She stood motionless for a moment before swiping away the unshed tears. The strain of the past three weeks had exhausted her—but she had grown to love Elli, and to have her safely returned to her family was a great relief.
She unbraided her own hair, picked up the comb she had used on Elli, and began to pull it through, from scalp to end, looking closely at it after each pass.
~~**~~
