The Whistlers' Room by Alverdes Paul; Creighton Basil; Mayhew Emily

Author:Alverdes, Paul; Creighton, Basil; Mayhew, Emily
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Casemate Publishers
Published: 2017-11-20T22:42:52+00:00

VII

One morning, not long after his arrival, Benjamin went for a walk through the halls and corridors of the hospital. At that time he was still quite voiceless. He wished to visit a comrade with whom he had been at school. On his way he mistook the door and found himself in the ward of the blind. They sat in a green half-light on their beds or on chairs, many with bandages as in blind man’s buff, and all with faces slightly raised in the always-listening attitude peculiar to them.

“Well, comrade, who are you? and what have you got?” Sergeant Wichtermann said after a moment, from a wheeled chair by a window. Sergeant Wichtermann had got the whole burst of a bomb in front of Arras. Nevertheless he was not killed, for, as he said, he had a strong constitution. But he was blind and had not a limb left but one arm with two fingers, and in these two he held a long pipe.

Benjamin was very much frightened. He drummed at once with his hand on the door behind him, so as at least to give a token of his presence; and at the same time he looked anxiously round, in the hope of discovering a man with one eye who would be able to explain why he preserved so unfitting a silence in the ward of the blind. But there was not one to be seen.

“Well,” Wichtermann growled, “can’t you open your mouth? Are you making fools of us?” “I’ll soon put him in tune,” promised another, getting down from his bed in a rage and showing his fists. A well-aimed slipper came hurtling through the air and struck the door close behind Benjamin’s head. Benjamin delayed his departure no longer.

By good fortune he found Landwerhmann Ferge, whom he knew already, just outside the door. Ferge was a good-natured Thuringian with a pasty-coloured moustache on his sallow face, but he was not well received among his fellows. It must be explained that he bore an evil nickname. A bullet had gone right through his seat and torn the bowel. In order to give this very susceptible organ time to heal the doctors had made for him another temporary orifice in the region of his hip, and this unfortunately was always open. For this reason Ferge was forced to wear on his naked skin under his shirt a large india-rubber bag. This condemned him to a lonely existence and doubled and tripled the bitterness of his peculiar plight. For Ferge all his life long had had a passion for card play—that is for watching others play with an interest all the keener because his stinginess prevented him taking a hand himself. In earlier days this had been his favourite Sunday pastime; and now he might have whiled away entire months in the indulgence of this passion. For everywhere indoors and out in the garden, the halt and the maimed sat in three and fours and played sheepshead, skat and

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