––––––––
‘Monika, my name is Monika. Does it matter?’
‘It’s not her that’s injured, it’s my brother,’ added Martin.
The corridor bustled with people; a pair of stretcher-bearers pushed pass them, carrying a small girl huddled in blankets. ‘Make way,’ they shouted as they zigzagged their way along. Somewhere, someone screamed. The doctor pulled on his goatee. ‘You can see how busy we are. There’s no way I can leave.’
‘But he’s in too much pain to move,’ said Monika, trying not to lose her patience.
‘Then there’s nothing we can do. Now, if you’ll excuse me...’ He turned to leave, tucking a clipboard under his arm.
Monika and Martin looked at each other. Martin shrugged, obviously prepared to accept the doctor’s last word. Monika however was not. She ran after him, sidestepping a man on crutches and two women sitting on the floor, leaning against the wall, both quietly crying, one soothing and stroking the hair of the other. ‘But tell me, what can I do? He could die there.’
‘Look, young lady, I don’t know how else to tell you. The hospital is heaving with injuries, half the staff have disappeared and I haven’t slept for three days. We’ve run out of all medicines, antibiotics, chloroform, disinfectants, you name it, everything. We’re operating without anaesthetics and for every patient we send home, another five take their place. And you’re asking me to leave all this to traipse two kilometres there and two kilometres back to see your boyfriend. In the time I do that, we could lose another twenty. I’m sorry, truly I am, but what do you suggest I do?’
Monika knew she didn’t have the answer. The doctor pondered her silence for a few moments. More people passed. Nearby, the two tearful women held on to each other. The doctor scratched his goatee and threw her a look that said this time he didn’t expect to be followed. She didn’t.
Martin took her hand, ‘We did our best.’
She shook his hand off. ‘I did my best. I didn’t hear you protest.’
‘Oh come on, Monika, look at this place. The doctor’s right, you know he is.’
‘So what do we do then?’
‘Go back to him, keep him warm, keep his spirits up. I’ll hunt around the pharmacists and try to find something.’
Another pair of stretcher-bearers rushed by. Monika and Martin leant back against the wall to allow them through. This time, the victim was a middle-aged man, his leg blown off leaving a congealed mesh of bloodied rags.
Monika had seen enough. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Let’s go.’
*
It felt as if someone was pressing down a huge pile of bricks onto the side of his face. The pressure was unrelenting, the torment constant. Occasionally, a spasm of pain washed over him leaving him exhausted and afraid. The inside of his mouth felt like a cavern as he probed with his tongue, feeling the irregular and alarming contours on the right side. He could still talk but the effort was too much. Swallowing was painful and he hadn’t eaten, drinking only water through a straw that Martin had found in a deserted café. He was frightened – frightened of what was going to happen to him, how he was going to get to the hospital. Frightened of the pain to come, frightened of how he looked. The future loomed ahead of him, filling the quiet hours as he lay on his back, staring at the ceiling, and it was no longer a future he could envisage, not one he could look forward to. It had taken a second to shatter the certainties in his life. And nothing would ever be the same again.
He looked around him. He felt imprisoned in the living room that looked as if it could collapse on him at any moment. There were no lights, no glass in the windows, not an inch of surface free of powdery, snow-white dust. His body sunk into a bed of white dust within the patchwork quilt. Martin must’ve have manoeuvred the bed in from the second bedroom. An upturned crate served as a bedside table, bare but for the candles, a half-full packet of cigarettes, a box of matches and, hidden beneath it, a revolver – for when the Russians come, Oskar had said. Beside the bed a bottle as a bedpan and a chair frame – the woven seat having disintegrated. The curtain rail had fallen on one side, leaving a trail of curtain, once blue, now dusted and torn. The mantelpiece had caved in, ornaments lying on a heap in front of the grate. Pictures hung at peculiar angles, large chunks of masonry had fallen and were now embedded on the carpeted floor. And everywhere, shards of glass and this all-pervading layer of white dust.
A whole series of needs plagued him, none urgent but together forming a mesh of discomfort and self-pity – the need to urinate, to eat, to drink, to escape this cold. And above all, to rid himself of this pain, this clawing pain that refused to disappear. And lingering beneath it all, the desire to know where Monika was, what was she doing, was she with Martin?
Martin. Never again would anyone confuse the two of them. No longer the need to differentiate the two by the extra mole, the extra smattering of freckles. The difference between them was now as marked as black and white, as beauty and the beast. And he, Peter, the one with the soft heart, the forgiving nature, cast as the beast, the gruesome one. But all the time, his former looks were there to see, to admire. For the rest of his life, he knew whenever he looked at Martin he would see, not his twin, but his own face as it should have been. Whatever was about to happen, he knew that once it was over, he had to escape, to finally break away from his other half, to pretend he’d never existed. He couldn’t bear the thought of staring at himself sitting on the other side of the room, bagging the pretty girls that wouldn’t give him a glance, enjoying the life that should have been his to share.
A shaft of light stretched across the room, shadows, a familiar voice. She was back. Please God, let her have brought help, something to make this pain go away.
‘Peter,’ she said, her feet crunching over the shattered glass and masonry.
He wanted to smile but couldn’t. Something inside him told him he would never smile again.
‘Peter.’ Her voice oozed sympathy and concern but within it he could sense the very emotion she was trying so hard to suppress, but he felt it nonetheless, the pity. She sat on the chair without its seat and took his hand and stroked it. ‘Oh, Peter, we tried but they won’t come.’ She told him of the doctor with the goatee, the corridor of distresses, the lack of medicines.
‘But Martin is still out searching,’ she added, raising her voice to emphasise the optimism she lacked. ‘You know Martin, he’ll find something.’
Yes, he thought, he knew Martin.