Stanislaw Lem - Hospital of the Transfiguration

“Please do your duty, as we have done ours, but do not speak to us,” said Pajpak in Polish, his voice surprisingly strong. He turned nimbly, drew himself up, and looked at the Ukrainian with his dark eyes.

“You!” murmured the soldier, raising his lumpy fist. The door flung open and hit the soldier in the back.

“What are you doing here?” growled Hutka in German. “Out!” He was wearing his helmet and held his automatic in his left hand, as if about to hit somebody with it.

“Silence!” he shouted, though no one had spoken. “Stay here until you get further orders. No one leaves. I repeat: if we find a single patient hidden, you all pay.”

He looked at them with his watery eyes and turned away. Sekułowski called out hoarsely, “Herr… Herr Offizier!”

“What now?” snarled Hutka. His dark brown face showed under his helmet. His hand rested on the doorknob.

“Some patients have been hidden in the living quarters.”

“What!? What!?”

Hutka rushed toward Sekułowski, grabbed him by the collar, and shook him.

“Where are they, you bastards?”

Sekułowski began to groan and tremble. Hutka called in the duty officer and told him to search all the apartments. The poet, still held by his coat collar, whined rapidly in Polish, “I didn’t want all of us to be—” His sleeves were pulled so tightly that he could not move his arms.

“Herr Obersturmführer,” shouted Staszek, deathly pale, “he’s not a doctor, he’s a patient, a mental case!”

Someone sighed. Hutka was stupefied.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” the German retorted. “What’s the meaning of this, swine of a doctor?”

Staszek, in his poor German, repeated that Sekułowski was a patient.

Niezgłoba slouched toward the window. Hutka looked around at them, beginning to understand. His nostrils flared. “What bastards these swine are, what liars!” he wailed, pressing Sekułowski against the wall. The bottle of bromine on the edge of the table teetered and fell, shattering and splashing its contents over the linoleum.

“Well, we will straighten everything out. Let me see your papers!”

A Ukrainian—apparently a senior aide, because he wore two silver stripes on his epaulets—was called in from the hall to help translate the papers. Everyone except Nosilewska had them. A guard accompanied her upstairs while Hutka stood before Kauters, examining his papers at great length and seeming to calm down.

“Ah,” said the German. “Volksdeutsch, are you? Excellent. Why did you get mixed up in this Polish swindle?”

Kauters explained that he had known nothing about it. He spoke harsh but correct German.

Nosilewska came back with her Medical Association identity card. Hutka waved her away and turned to Sekułowski, who was still standing by the cabinet against the wall.

“Komm.”

“Herr Offizier… I’m not ill. I’m thoroughly well.”

“Are you a doctor?”

“Yes—I mean, no, but I really can’t—I’ll…”

“Komm.”

Hutka was now completely calm—too calm. He stood still, nearly smiling, his raincoat rustling with every movement. He signaled with his index finger, as one would to a child: “Komm.”

Sekułowski took a step and fell to his knees.

“Mercy! Please! I want to live. I’m not insane.”

“Enough!” Hutka roared. “Traitor! You betrayed your poor, crazy brothers.”

Two shots rang out behind the building. The windowpanes rattled and the instruments on the shelves trembled.

Sekułowski, wrapped in the folds of his doctor’s coat, fell at the German’s boots.

“Franke!” Hutka called out.

Another German came in and jerked Sekułowski by the shoulders so powerfully that the poet, tall and fat though he was, snapped upright like a rag doll.

“My mother was German!” he squealed in a falsetto as he was dragged to the door. He grabbed frantically for a handhold, squirming and gripping the doorframe but not daring to defend himself against the blows. Franke raised his rifle butt and methodically smashed Sekułowski’s fingers.

“Have mercy!” howled Sekułowski in German, and then “Mother of God!” in Polish. Fat tears rolled down his face.

The German lost his temper. Sekułowski now had hold of the doorknob. Franke took him around the waist, leaned into him, tensed, and pushed with all his might. They flew into the corridor, Sekułowski falling to the stone floor with a thud. The German reached back to close the door, giving the doctors a last glance at his flushed, sweaty face.

“Disgusting!” he said and slammed the door.

Alarge clump of bushes blocked the pharmacy window. Further on, beyond scattered trees, a blank wall rose. The cries of patients and the rasping voices of the Germans were distinct, though muffled. The crack of rifle shots seemed louder, somehow solidified. First there was a thick volley, then a sound like soft bags falling. Then silence.

A strident voice called in German: “Twenty more!”

Shots trilled off the wall. Sharp, melancholy whistles marked the occasional ricochet. At one point an automatic rifle barked, but generally it was small arms. Another silence was followed by the scraping of many feet and the now monotonous cry: “Twenty more!”

Two or three pistol shots, high-pitched and terse, sounded like corks coming out of bottles.

One inhuman penetrating scream rang out. There was a sound of crying from above, as if coming from the second floor. It went on for a long time.

The doctors sat motionless, their eyes glued to the nearest objects. Stefan felt stuporous. At first he had tried to cling to something: perhaps Hutka, who made the decisions, might somehow… there was life even in death… but a German shout interrupted his last reflection. There was a crashing of broken branches, red leaves fluttered outside the window, and breathy sobbing and the sound of boots on gravel were heard quite close by.

A shot rang out like thunder. A scream rose and collapsed.

Fast-moving clouds, their shapes changing constantly, filled the fragment of visible sky. The shooting stopped after ten. A strange sense of torpor set in. A quarter of an hour later the automatic rifles chattered again, the ensuing silence filled with the howling of the sick and the raucous voices of the Germans.

At noon the doctors heard heavy footsteps moving around the building; a dog barked and a woman squealed briefly. The door suddenly opened and the Ukrainian soldier came in.

“Everyone out! Fast!” he shouted in Ukrainian from the doorway. A German helmet appeared behind him.

“Everyone out!” he repeated, shouting at the top of his lungs. Dust and sweat were mixed on his face; his eyes looked drunken, trembling.

The doctors filed out. Stefan found himself next to Nosilewska. The corridor was empty except for a heap of crumpled bedding right outside the door. Long black streaks on the floor led to the stairs. A great mass lay propped against the radiator at the bend in the corridor: a corpse bent double, a black icicle protruding from its smashed skull. A gnarled yellow heel stuck out from under the cherry-colored robe. Everybody stepped over it except the German bringing up the rear, who kicked the foot with his boot. The shapes walking ahead of Stefan danced before his eyes. He took hold of Nosilewska’s shoulder. He was still holding on when they reached the library.

Piles of books had been thrown to the floor from the two bookcases nearest the door. The pages fluttered as the doctors stepped over them on the way in. Two Germans waiting by the door entered last. They sat down on the comfortable sofa, upholstered in red plush.

Everything seemed to waver in Stefan’s eyes. The room throbbed and turned gray, then collapsed like a burst blister. He fainted for the first time in his life.