The Matryoshka Memoirs by Sasha Colby

Author:Sasha Colby
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: ECW Press
Published: 2023-09-12T00:00:00+00:00

October 1943

Wetzlar, Germany

When Herr Leitz has his stroke, it is the culmination of weeks of tension. One moment he is in his study, raking through a list of people who might help, the next he is on the floor, the left side of his face a death mask. When he returns to the house from the clinic, he has recovered much of his physical and mental ability, but the shakiness and depression tell Irina things are still very bad.

Irina begins to spend her days off at the camp. She has the special pass that Frau Elsie gave her that allows her to come and go through the gates. She visits with her former roommates, bringing food from the house. Occasionally, she goes by the clinic to help the women she used to work with. One day, in early October, a trainload of male prisoners arrives and she is pressed into service.

“Doesn’t anybody ever check the ratio?” Doctor Braun mutters as he directs the clinic workers to soak gauze in cool water and apply salve and bandages. Irina washes down the ugly red blotches, the familiar acid burns caused by the disinfectant. The men sit in rows on the beds, and Irina moves from one body to the next, washing, dressing, washing, dressing, arms, legs, torsos. Confronted with a particularly badly burned back, Irina begins rinsing the wound with water. The man shudders and turns his head.

“Who’s going to kill me first, you or the Germans?” Chiselled in profile, the man speaks to Irina in Russian, which she understands from school.

Irina is about to say something curt when she sees the whiteness of his teeth and realizes he is joking through the pain. Irina is struck first by the smile and then the features around them, the fine jawline and nose, the laughing green eye.

“Hopefully you will live,” she says, keeping her eyes down, wiping down the tanned skin, taut with muscle, the edges of the burn.

The man looks over his shoulder at her as though she has said something funny.

“I hope so, too,” he says.

As quickly and gently as she can, Irina applies the salve. The man begins to hum, something old-fashioned in a minor key. Irina finishes and moves on to the next man. From behind her new patient, she looks back at the green-eyed man and sees him gingerly pulling on his shirt, joking with another of the men. As he turns to leave, he looks over at her and winks. Irina busies her hands with bandages.

At the house, Irina continues to do the marketing, grocery items which Frau Lichen transforms into meals the staff, Herr Leitz, and the children eat without pleasure or comment. Rations become more strictly controlled and there is less variety. Each day, Irina collects as many items as she can find from Frau Vogel’s list. The handwriting, which used to be direct and authoritative, becomes more spindly. In the afternoons, Irina polishes the silver and dusts the house. She brings tea to Herr Leitz, who sits on the loggia, staring into the garden.

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