Tzili: The Story of a Life

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IT WAS A makeshift hospital housed in an army bar racks partitioned with blankets. Soldiers and partisans, women and children, lay crowded together. Screams rose from every side. Tzili was placed on a big bed, apparently requisitioned from one of the bombed houses.

For days she had not heard the throbbing of the fetus. Now it seemed to her that it was stirring again. The nurse sponged her down with a warm, wet cloth and asked: “Where are you from?” And Tzili told her. The broad, placid face of the gentile nurse brought her a sudden serenity. It was evident that the young nurse came from a good home. She did her work quietly, without superfluous gestures.

Tzili asked wonderingly: “Where are you from?” “From here,” said the nurse. A disinterested light shone from her blue eyes. The nurse told her that every day more soldiers and refugees were brought to the hospital. There were no beds and no doctors. The few doctors there were torn between the hospitals scattered throughout the ruined city.

Later Tzili fell asleep. She slept deeply. She saw Mark and he looked like the merchant who had taken care of her. Tzili told him that she had been obliged to sell all the clothes in the haversack and in the commotion she had lost the haversack too. Perhaps it was with the merchant. “The merchant?” asked Mark in surprise. “Who is this merchant?” Tzili was alarmed by Mark’s astonished face. She told him, at length, of all that had happened to her since leaving the mountain. Mark bowed his head and said: “It’s not my business anymore.” There was a note of criticism in his voice. Tzili made haste to appease him. Her voice choked and she woke up.

The next day the doctor came and examined her. He spoke German. Tzili answered his hurried questions quietly. He told the nurse that she had to be taken to the surgical ward that same night. Tzili saw the morning light darken next to the window. The bars reminded her of home.

They took her to the surgical ward while it was still light. There was a queue and the gentile nurse, who spoke to her in broken German mixed with Slavic words, held her hand. From her Tzili learned that the fetus inside her was dead, and that soon it would be removed from her womb. The anesthetist was a short man wearing a Balaklava hat. Tzili screamed once and that was all.

Then it was night. A long night, carved out of stone, which lasted for three days. Several times they tried to wake her. Medics and soldiers rushed frantically about carrying stretchers. Tzili wandered in a dark stone tunnel, strangers and acquaintances passing before her eyes, clear and unblurred. I’m going back, she said to herself and clung tightly to the wooden handle.

When she woke the nurse was standing beside her. Tzili asked, for some reason, if the merchant too had been hurt. The nurse told her that the operation had not taken long, the doctors were satisfied, and now she must rest. She held a spoon to her mouth.

“Was I good?” asked Tzili.

“You were very good.”

“Why did I scream?” she wondered.

“You didn’t scream, you didn’t make a sound.”

In the evening the nurse told her that she had not stirred from the hospital for a whole week. Every day they brought more soldiers and refugees, some of them badly hurt, and she could not leave. Her fiancé was probably angry with her. Her round face looked worried.

“He’ll take you back,” said Tzili.

“He’s not an easy man,” confessed the nurse.

“Tell him that you love him.”

“He wants to sleep with me,” the nurse whispered in her ear.

Tzili laughed. The thin gruel and the conversation distracted her from her pain. Her mind was empty of thought or sorrow. And the pain too grew duller. All she wanted was to sleep. Sleep drew her like a magnet.