The One from the Other

EIGHT

Kirsten died just after midnight, by which time I’d had enough anesthetic for it to feel just about bearable. The trams weren’t running so I walked back to the hospital, just to prove that I could do it like a regular guy. I’d seen her alive; I didn’t need to see her dead, but the hospital wanted it that way. I even took our marriage certificate. I figured it was better to get it over with before she stopped looking like a human being. It always amazes me how quickly that happens. One minute a man is as full of life as a basketful of kittens, and a few hours later he looks like an old waxwork at the Hamburg Panoptikum.

A different nurse met me, and a different doctor, too. Both of them were an improvement on the day shift. The nurse was slightly better-looking. The doctor was recognizably human, even in the dark.

“I’m very sorry about your wife,” he whispered with what seemed like a very proper show of respect, until I realized that we were standing in the middle of the ward, beside the night nurse’s desk, and surrounded by sleeping women who weren’t quite as sick as my wife had been. “We did everything we could, Herr Gunther. But she was really very ill.”

“Flu was it?”

“It seems so.” In the light of the desk lamp he came up very thin, with a round white face and pointy red hair. He looked like a one-man coconut shy.

“Kind of odd, though, wouldn’t you say?” I remarked. “I mean, I haven’t heard of anyone else who’s got the flu.”

“As a matter of fact,” he said, “we’ve had several cases. There’s a case on the next ward. We’re very concerned that it will spread. I’m sure I don’t have to remind you of the last serious outbreak of flu, in 1918. And of how many died. You remember that, don’t you?”

“Better than you,” I said.

“For that reason alone,” he said, “the occupation authorities are anxious to contain the possible spread of any infection. Which is why we’d like to seek your permission to order an immediate cremation. In order to prevent the virus from spreading. I appreciate that this is a very difficult time for you, Herr Gunther. Losing your wife at such a young age must be dreadful. I can only guess what you must be going through right now. But we wouldn’t ask for your full cooperation in this matter unless we thought it important.”

He was giving it plenty of choke, as well he needed to after the master class in cold-blooded indifference exhibited by his stiff-necked colleague, Dr. Effner. I let him rev some more, hardly liking to intercept his continuing effusions of sympathy with what I was really thinking, which was that before being a spinner in the Max Planck, Kirsten had been a real blue, always drunk, and before then, something of a slut, especially with the Americans. In Berlin, immediately after the war, I had suspected that she was little more than a snapper, doing it for chocolate and cigarettes. So many others had done the same, of course, although perhaps with a little less obvious enjoyment. Somehow it seemed only appropriate that the Americans should have their way with Kirsten in death. After all, they’d had their way with her often enough while she had been alive. So when the doctor had finished whispering his pitch, I nodded and said, “All right, we’ll play it your way, Doc. If you think it’s really necessary.”

“Well, it’s not so much me as the Amis,” he said. “After what happened in 1918, they’re really worried about an epidemic in the city.”

I sighed. “When do you want to do it?”

“As soon as possible,” he said. “That is, immediately. If you don’t mind.”

“I’d like to see her first,” I said.

“Yes, yes, of course,” he said. “But try not to touch her, okay? Just in case.” He found me a surgical mask. “You’d better wear this,” he added. “We’ve already opened the windows to help air the room, but there’s no point in taking any risks.”