On the Night of the Seventh Moon (15 page)

How strange that would be! I thought. I remembered the old days (good heavens! It was not two years ago) when I had been a pupil—Helena Trant who had always been in trouble through her irrepressible spirits and love of adventure. How strange that I might go back a mother.

I pictured Schwester Maria taking sly peeps at the baby and trying to spoil it, and Schwester Gudrun saying: “Where Helena Trant was, there was always trouble.”

Then sometimes I would think of those three days and my love was as strong as ever making the longing to see Maximilian unbearable. Only the thought of our child could comfort me and I eagerly waited for the time when I should hold it in my arms.

On a bright April day Ilse drove me to the nursing home. I was taken to a private room, apart from the other patients. Dr. Carlsberg had asked that this should be so in view of the circumstances.

It was a pleasant room, everything gleaming white, yet seeming clinical in its cleanliness. There was a window from which I could look down on a lawn, which was very neatly bordered by flower beds.

Dr. Kleine introduced me to his wife, who expressed concern for my comfort. I asked how many other mothers were in the nursing home and I was told that there were several. They were constantly coming and going.

On the first day I looked through my window and saw five or six women walking about the lawn—all in various stages of pregnancy. They were chatting together and two of them sat side by side on one of the wooden benches near the flower beds; one was knitting, the other crocheting. They were joined by another woman who took out her sewing; and they talked animatedly together.

I was sorry they had decided to isolate me. I wanted to be down there with those other women.

I had been told that I could use the Kleines' little garden to get some fresh air, but this was not the one where the women met. I went down
to the Kleines' garden and sat for a while on a garden seat but there was no one there and I wanted to talk about babies, to compare knitting.

While I was in the garden Frau Kleine came out to me and I told her I had seen another garden from my room. “There's a lawn and there were several expectant mothers there. I should like to talk to them.”

She looked alarmed. “I think the doctor doesn't feel that would be wise.”

“Why not?”

“I suppose he thinks it might upset you.”

“Why ever should it?”

“They all have homes and husbands. I think he thinks it might depress you.”

“It wouldn't,” I cried vehemently. And I thought then I would not change the father of my child for any respectable husband these women might have. Then I knew that the reason I could be so happy was that I still believed that one day Maximilian would come back for me and then I should proudly show him our child; and within me there flourished still my childish dream that we should live happily ever after.

When I went back to my room the first thing I did was look out of the window. The lawn was deserted; they had all gone back to their rooms. But I determined to go down to the lawn.

Dr. Kleine now knew my story (Dr. Carlsberg had thought it wise to tell him) but it had been agreed that for the purposes of preventing gossip—which would have been magnified in any case and no doubt distorted—I was to be known as Mrs. Trant, a widow who had lost her husband some months before.

It was early afternoon, the siesta hour, when I decided to find my way down to the lawn. The house appeared to have been built round the garden which contained the lawn, and the women I had seen there had come from a door completely opposite the wing in which I had my room. I would have to work my way round to it so that I could come out by the door through which I had seen the women emerge.

I opened my door quietly. There was not a sound in the corridor. I went swiftly to a flight of stairs, descended it and found myself on a
landing. I went along this in what I thought was the right direction and I came to a short flight of stairs which led to a door. As I approached I heard the sound of sobbing. I paused and listened.

There was no doubt that someone was in great distress.

I hesitated, wondering whether it would be better to find out if I could be of use or to ignore what I heard. Then, on impulse, I went up the three or four stairs and knocked on the door. The sobbing stopped. I knocked again.

“Who's there?” said a high-pitched frightened voice.

“May I come in?” I asked. There was a sound which could have been an affirmative so I opened the door and entered a room rather like my own but smaller, and hunched on the bed was a girl of about my own age, her face swollen with crying, her hair in disorder.

We stared at each other.

“What's wrong?” I asked.

“Everything,” she replied bleakly.

I approached the bed and sat on it.

“I feel so terrible,” she said.

“Should I call someone?”

She shook her head. “It's not that. I wish it were. It's long overdue. I know I'm going to die.”

“Of course you won't. You'll feel better when the baby comes.”

Again she shook her head. “I don't know what I'm going to do. Last night I thought of jumping out of the window.”

“Oh no!”

“It's different for you. You've got a husband and a home and it's all going to be wonderful.”

I didn't answer. I said: “And you haven't?”

“We should have been married,” she said. “He was killed six months ago. He was in the Duke's Guard and the bomb was meant for the Duke. He would have married me.”

“So he was a soldier.”

She nodded. “We would have been married if he'd lived,” she reiterated.

In the Duke's Guard, I was thinking. Duke Carl of Rochenstein and Dorrenig, Count of Lokenburg.

“Your family will look after you,” I soothed.

Again the doleful shake of the head. “No they won't. They won't have me back. They brought me to Dr. Kleine but when it's over they won't have me back. I tried to kill myself once before. I walked out into the river but then I was frightened and they rescued me and brought me here.”

She was small and very young and frightened and I longed to help her. I wanted to tell her that I myself had a future to face which might not be easy, but my story was so fantastic, so different from one of a soldier lover who had come to an untimely end.

She was only sixteen, she told me. I felt so much older and protective. I said it was always wrong to despair. I was of some use to her, I believe, because of my recent suffering. I could recall, because it
was
so recent, the terrible desolation which had swept over me when I had been told that my romantic marriage was nothing but a myth.

At least I thought this girl had a plausible tragedy to relate.

I made her talk and she told me about the town of Rochenberg, the chief city of Rochenstein, where she had lived with her grandmother who remembered the day the present Duke's father died, and he became the head of the ruling house. He had always been a good and serious-minded Duke—rather different from his son Prince Carl who was notoriously wild. Her grandmother had been a great loyalist and she would have welcomed a soldier of the Duke's Guard into the family, but if he had been one of Ludwig's men she would never have accepted him. But that made it all the more terrible because if they had not forestalled their marriage vows, if they had waited, they could have been respectably married in due course. But fate had gone against them. Their child was conceived just before the bomb intended for the Duke had destroyed her lover, leaving her desolate forever—and with a double burden for to her grief was added shame. She could not endure it, nor would her grandmother. She had no notion how she was
going to fend for herself and the child, and the river had seemed an easy solution.

“You must never do that again,” I told her. “You'll find a way. We all do.”

“You're all right . . .”

“I . . . I haven't a husband to go to.”

“Oh, so you're a widow? That's sad. But you have money I suppose. Most people who come to Dr. Kleine's have. I don't know why he has taken me in. When I was brought in half-drowned and they were scolding me about having done harm to my child he said he would take me in here and look after me.”

“That was kind of him. But I haven't any money either. I shall have to support myself and my child. I may be teaching English at a convent.”

“You are accomplished. I have nothing to recommend me. I'm just a simple girl.”

“What is your name?”

“Gretchen,” she said. “Gretchen Swartz.”

“I'll come and see you again, Gretchen,” I said. “We'll talk to each other. We'll discuss what you can do when you have a child and no money. I'm sure there's always a way.”

“You will come back then?” she said.

I promised.

We talked for some time and when I left her I had forgotten about the women on the lawn.

 

Dr. Kleine came to see me later that day. He was pleased, he said, that everything seemed to be going well. He thought the birth was imminent and we must be prepared for that.

I slept well and the next morning I felt comparatively well. After I had breakfasted in my own room I put on my loose dressing gown and went to the window and there were the women on the lawn again. I
immediately thought of Gretchen Swartz and decided to go along and talk to her.

I found my way to her room. I mounted the stairs and knocked. There was no answer so I opened the door and looked in.

There was no one there. The bed was made, and there was an impersonal look about it. The floor was highly polished, the window slightly open; the room looked as though it had been prepared for the next occupant.

Disappointed I went back to my room. Then it occurred to me that Gretchen must have been taken somewhere to have her baby. Perhaps at that very moment it was being born.

I sat at the window for some little time watching the women below and I could not get poor Gretchen out of my mind.

 

That afternoon my pains started and for the second time in a very brief period I suffered tragedy.

I can remember the agony. I can remember thinking: It will all be worth while when I have my child . . . everything . . . everything.

I lost consciousness and when I was aware again I was no longer in pain.

“How is she?” I heard a voice say.

There was no answer.

My first thought was for my child, and I held up my arms.

Someone was bending over me.

I said: “My baby . . .”

There was no answer. Then from a long way off I heard someone say: “Shall she be told?”

And somebody else said: “Wait.”

I was terribly frightened. I tried to cling to consciousness but it had gone again.

 

.  .  .

 

Dr. Kleine was at my bedside. Ilse was with him. I saw Dr. Carlsberg too. They all looked very grave.

Ilse had taken my hand.

“It was for the best,” she said. “In the circumstances.”

“What?” I cried.

“My dear Helena, in view of everything you will see in time . . . it will be easier.”

I could not endure the terrible fear. I must know the truth.

“Where is my child?” I cried.

“The child,” said Dr. Kleine, “was born dead.”

“No!”

“Yes, dear,” said Ilse tenderly. “All the horror, all the anxiety. It was inevitable.”

“But I wanted my child. I wanted my little . . . was it a boy?”

“It was a girl,” said Ilse.

I saw her so clearly—my little daughter. I could see her in a little silk dress—aged one, aged two—and then growing up and going to school. I felt the tears on my cheeks.

“She was alive,” I said. “I used to smile because she was so lively. I used to feel her there. Oh no, there is some mistake.”

Dr. Carlsberg bent over me. “The shock of everything,” he said, “was too much for you. We expected this. Please, do not fret. Remember that you are free now to live a happy life.”

A happy life! I wanted to scream at them. My lover you tell me never existed. I
dreamed
of my marriage. But the child was there—a living thing and now you tell me she is dead.

Ilse said: “We will take care of you, Helena . . .”

I wanted to cry out: “I don't need taking care of. I want my child. How dare you experiment with me! How dare you give me dreams that are without reality!” If I have been abused I want to know it. There is nothing worse than uncertainty. Oh, yes, there is. There is this terrible loss. The baby who was to have been my consolation has been taken from me.

I lay there limply. I had not known such desolation since they had told me that Maximilian, whom I had believed to be my husband, was a myth.

 

I was very weak, they told me. I must not leave my bed. I did not feel physically weak, only mentally exhausted and in deep despair.

All these months I had lived for my child. I had made a dream in which Maximilian came back to me and proudly I showed him the child. I had believed that, just as I had always really believed in those three days of perfect happiness. It was only when Ilse smothered me with her goodness that I wavered. But I was never convinced. I could not be convinced.

“I must see my child,” I said.

Dr. Kleine was horrified. “It would increase your distress.”

I insisted that I wanted to see my baby.

“We were burying her today,” said Dr. Kleine.

“I should be there!”

“It is a simple ceremony, and you must not leave your bed. You have to concentrate on getting well now.”

I repeated that I wanted to see my child.

Ilse came to see me. “Helena, dear,” she said, “it is all over. What you have to do now is forget. You can go back to your home. You can forget all this . . . nightmare. In a little while it will be as though it never happened. You are so young.”