Free The Crooked Maid by Dan Vyleta Page A

the bustle of the hospital.”
    She did not say that they only had five patients. Half the staff had been laid off.
    “Who are you here for?”
    “Herr Magister Seidel.”
    “You are the son?”
    They both noted the surprise in her voice. She had read in the newspapers that he was older. And in jail.
    “Stepson.”
    “I see. Come, then, visiting time is almost up.”
    They walked down the empty corridor together, the boy curious, catching glimpses through half-open doors. There wasn’t much to see: a handful of pale faces made paler yet by the starched radiance of their bedclothes.
    “Here.”
    She opened the door and stepped out of his way. He entered—hastily it seemed to her, a boy afraid to be thought a coward—then stopped dead in his tracks at the centre of the room. From where she stood, all she could see of the patient was the outline of his calves and feet. The boy, she noted, did not approach the bed. He stood breathing for some moments, his hands forgotten in his trouser pockets.
    “Is he always like this?” he chanced at last.
    “From the day he came. Once in a while it sounds like he is talking. But all it is is a sort of groan.”
    The boy tilted his head to one side, as though he could hear it now, his eyes turned inward, to the half-remembered past. “He used to sing in church,” he said distractedly. “A beautiful voice. Tenor, I think. Gloria in excelsis Deo . Afterwards people would line up outside to shake his hand. Or, you know …” He raised his arm briefly and indicated the Nazi salute, unselfconscious, still lost in memory. It was surprising how once so common a gesture now made her wince.
    The next moment the boy had shrugged off the past and moved on to questions of logistics. What he was puzzling over was: “How do you feed him?”
    “Sugar water. It goes in through that tube.” She pointed. “Thankfully, he can breathe by himself.”
    “He’ll die, won’t he?” The voice was quiet but firm.
    “It’s in God’s hands.”
    She was amused to find his hand mark a cross on chin, chest, and shoulders in response to her words. He kept facing her, unembarrassed under her gaze.
    “I’ve been away for several years. At school. I only returned today. My mother—” He paused, rephrased his thought. “They say my brother did it. But nobody told me a thing.”
    One of his eyes had been injured and retained a hardness quite at odds with the other. It was as though one half of him was grown up.
    “Come,” said the nurse. “We can talk in the tea kitchen.”
    It was a room hardly bigger than a closet. Her girth filled it, consigned him to a corner stool. She caught him staring at half a slice of buttered bread sitting on the table but ignored his silent appeal. There was an immersion heater plugged into the outlet. Turning her bulk away from him, she boiled a pot of water and made a flask of rosehip tea. He accepted a cup, drank, burned his tongue, then cooled it in the pocket of his cheek.
    It took him a minute to retrieve it and speak. “They told me—that is, Poldi did, his wife—that Wolfgang was arrested. Herr Seidel’s son.”
    She nodded, hid behind her cup. “All I know is gossip.”
    “Please,” he said again. “I must know.”
    “Well, then. What I heard is that he beat your stepfather and threw him out the window. And then your brother went running into town. Never even put on his shoes. Ran his feet bloody, telling everyone he’d killed his father. So they arrested him. The papers say he was SS.”
    “Poldi said police.”
    “Not what I heard.”
    The boy nodded as though he was unconcerned by her correction. “Why?” he asked at length. “Why did he do it?”
    She bristled. “How should I know? I wasn’t there.”
    He put a hand on her sleeve. It was so young and white and slender, it did not feel like an imposition.
    “There must be gossip,” he said, repeating her word, the grown eye flashing boldly in his boyish face. “It’s better I hear it