To Sing of War by Catherine McKinnon

Author:Catherine McKinnon [McKinnon, Catherine]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: 4th Estate
Published: 2024-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

34 Lotte

Aitape

The ward is a river of shivering pain. Lotte and Ness each carry a lamp as they move from patient to patient, damping down rash-covered bodies with wet cloths. Malaria is rife and they’ve got fifty-two patients in with scrub. Five have died from it in the last week. Some patients hallucinate, and from their fevered delusions come harrowing screams and tearful moans. The hospital has been erecting more wards, this time hut rather than tent, as the traditional building style is better at keeping out the rain. They’ll have six hundred beds soon, and even that might not be enough. There are plenty of battle casualties, but it’s infectious disease that’s taking most men out of action.

At midnight, Lotte takes a break. In a grove at the back of the ward, she and Ness have set up a target board. She hangs her lamp on a branch and practises her knife-throwing. The thwack as her knife hits a bullseye is deeply satisfying. Since her attack, the rational part of her that protects the irrational has cracked open, but if she can get three bullseyes in a row, she plasters over the crack. If she can do this every day then she knows she will not fall prey to her own hauntings.

From the dark, an American soldier appears, two sick New Guinean women in tow.

She walks towards them.

‘Is malaria, I think so.’ The soldier has a heavy Spanish accent.

The women are horrifically thin. Bruises on their arms. They look dehydrated. Lotte fetches water, puts her hand to the forehead of each woman. ‘Best take them to the native ward.’

‘Have been to that place. Other patients no like.’

‘Why not?’ Lotte asks.

‘Comfort women. Is no good in their culture, you understand?’

The two women keep their eyes to the ground, give no clue as to how much they are following the conversation.

‘Not their choice,’ Lotte says.

The soldier shrugs. ‘Is no matter to me, but for those in the ward, is big problem.’

Lotte puts out her hand. The soldier takes it.

‘Lotte Wyld. Sorry, I should have introduced myself earlier.’

‘Antonio Bugallo.’

Behind them, a patient cries in his sleep, great sobs that interrupt the night. In shadowy light, Ness goes to the man, strokes his arm.

‘I can’t put them in with the men,’ Lotte says.

The women have been rescued from up the coast, Antonio explains. They were found wandering along the beach; had been abducted from Tumleo Island, this before the Americans took Aitape. They’ve been away from their home for many years now. They are sick and have nowhere to stay, all because of the stigma attached to comfort women.

‘Is not my wish to abandon these womens,’ Antonio says.

‘I’ll take care of them,’ Lotte replies.

She arranges for an orderly to erect a small tent next to the ward. Riccard can assess the women tomorrow and then KB can decide what to do. She thanks the American soldier and takes the two new patients to the washing annexe.

‘Nem bilong mi, Lotte,’ she says to the first woman, who looks younger than twenty and so must have been very young when she was taken.

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