In Germany, Grandmother took me to the pediatrician. Actually, she explained to me on the way, this was the real reason for our emigration: to finally be able to take me to an upstanding doctor for treatment, one who could give hope to me—and more importantly, to her—that I might survive into adulthood, even if it meant Grandmother would have a millstone around her neck for decades.
She had my medical files with her, they were bound in leather and looked like the rediscovered handwritten manuscript of a lost classic. The files were filled with diagnoses, glued-in blood and urine analyses, and unreadable notes from various specialists Grandmother had consulted and who had regaled her with conflicting opinions. Slips of paper or prescriptions sometimes slipped out of the files, and Grandmother quickly gathered them up and stuffed them back inside.
The German doctor’s office was colorful and bright, and the memory of the Soviet polyclinic, with its painted-over windows and hygiene warnings full of threats and commands, seemed like a fever dream. A mountain of toys rose on the worn carpet. I knew that I wasn’t allowed to touch any of them. Anything that Grandmother hadn’t personally disinfected was contaminated with germs. Still, I enjoyed just looking at them. The nurse weighed and measured me and gave me a smile that made the back of my neck warm.
To Grandmother’s indignation, we had to go back to the waiting room after that. It was full of children of different ages, all of whom were spreading diseases. One coughed, others sneezed, and Grandmother suspected the ones without obvious illnesses were hiding contagious rashes beneath their clothes. She pulled me frantically onto her lap, and I was definitely too old for that. Though she had publicly humiliated me so often that I felt immune to nearly any embarrassment.
“If I’d known about this chaotic situation, I’d have brought facemasks,” Grandmother said, trying to wrap her scarf around my mouth and nose, which suffocated me and itched horribly. “Now sit still, Grandma’s not a trampoline.”
“I’m suffocating,” I rasped.
“Asthma?!” She rummaged through her bag for the spray—she’d brought a large number of them across the border with us out of precaution—without bothering to free me from the stranglehold of the scarf.
Luckily we were called into the examination room at that moment. The doctor was a man, which my grandmother approved of enthusiastically, since she trusted men more, at least when it came to medical questions. She smacked my medical files down on the table. “Chronic bronchitis, chronic sinusitis, chronic gastritis, moderate myopia, vegetative-vascular dystonia, allergies, diminished growth, mumbles, decelerated reflexes, decelerated cognitive development, early childhood trauma. But you can see for yourself.” She spoke only Russian.
The doctor bent forward with a furrowed brow. With one hand he shielded himself from my grandmother’s stream of words while he stretched the other out to me. After a moment’s thought I took his hand. From the German words directed at me I was able to filter out some I knew, laid myself down on the examination table, and pulled off my T-shirt.
The doctor sat down next to me and listened to me with the stethoscope, holding up his hand every time Grandmother opened her mouth. He shined a light in my ears, pressed around on my throat, and knocked on my back. This last thing I took as an encouraging sign.
“What?” said my grandmother when he made a waving gesture in our direction. “What does that mean—Tschüß? What does gesund mean?”
I explained it to her when we were out on the street and she had stuffed the medical files back in her bag.
“How do you know that?” she asked. “Who taught you? We only just arrived, and you’re an idiot.”
I shrugged. In my fist I held the gummi bear I was allowed to take from the jar as we left.
“What a quack,” said my grandmother. “He didn’t take any X-rays. Even our drunken hags are preferable to that. What do you have in your hand? Can’t you see the bacteria stuck to that thing? Do you want to get sick? Give it to me.”
I handed her the gummi bear and Grandmother popped it into her mouth.