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A Familiar Touch
Mutti hurried to the train station, the scent of fish still on her clothes. She read the telegram again. “Son wounded. Tempelhof Field Hospital, Berlin.” She had no time to send a telegram to the Garden House. She barely had time to make arrangements for the next week’s auctions. Thank God for Frau Kochin and her son. Salt of the Earth. Volke you could trust with your life, thought Mutti.
Time moved slowly. Eight hours felt like sixteen. All Mutti could think of was a shattered boy watching his mother die. She arrived at Anhalter Bahnhof just as the clock on the platform strikes five. Today, day awakens. Tomorrow, night sleeps. The eternal cycle of life.
Mutti hurried to Tempelhof Field Hospital. The “hospital” is little more than temporary barracks built on a field. Until 1914, the field was a parade ground. Mutti can still hear the cries of the drill sergeants. She misses her husband.
Moving to the first building, Mutti is rebuffed. “Fritz Finkham?” she cries.
“No man with that name here. What is his wound?”
“I do not know.”
“We have separated soldiers by affliction. It heals their spirits to see other men with the same wound. Is he an amputee? Face laceration? Venereal disease?”
“I do not know,” said Mutti, worried.
“Ah, check at that main office. They have a list.”
Mutti ran.
“Fritz Finkham?”
“Ah the Big Man.”
“Yes. Big. Blond hair.”
“Ah. The Big Man of Verdun.”
“Yes. He was in Verdun.”
“This way.”
“She did not tell me his wound,” thinks Mutti.
Mutti was led to a small bed, bending under the enormous weight of a crooked triangle. It was Bella. His right shoulder rested in a sling. It was suspended midair from a pole. The rest of his arm was fixed in plaster of paris and held upwards. His hand was elevated. Scratching noises came from the cast.
In fear, Mutti counted. Two arms, two legs. No other visible wounds. No head trauma. Men can live with the discomfort caused by broken bones. Herr Finkham had. For the first time since receiving the telegram, Mutti breathed easy.
Bella’s eyes were closed. Mutti waited for them to open. They stayed stubbornly shut. She fell asleep. When she woke Bella was looking at her. His left hand rested on her head. Bella’s boyish face was gone, replaced with hard hunger.
“Mama, you came,” said Bella, adopting Sarah’s name for Mutti. The name could not fill the hole in Bella’s heart left by his mother when she died. He used it just the same.
“I did my son. Are you in pain?”
“No, I am in Heimatschuss,” said Bella, smiling. See that Mutti looked confused, Bella explained. “I am injured. I need a hospital. But I am not seriously harmed. Men in the Die Hölle von Verdun (English: The Hell of Verdun) shot off their fingers to be where I am.” He turned his head away as if in shame.
As she did with his father, Mutti stayed silent. Her quiet presence was enough.
Later, a nurse came in with a heaping tray of food. Mutti stared, thinking of the British blockades. “Such extravagance.”
“Nothing is too good for the Big Man of Verdun.”
Again, Mutti stared.
“You son is a war hero. He captured fifty French terrorists single handed.”
Mutti turned to Bella, staring. He smiled back and nodded. “I did Mutti. I am now a Leutnant, wounded in action. I now will spend the rest of the war at a desk. No more blood.”