Olga Grjasnowa - All Russians Love Birch Trees

A doctor approached, smiling. He was tall and broad-shouldered. Hair brushed back neatly. As a greeting he folded my hand into his and held it just a bit too long. His eyes were brown and very alert. The smell of disinfectant, decay, and old people engulfed me. I gasped for air. The doctor put his hand on my arm and I was surprised by the intrusiveness of the gesture. He said something, but I didn’t hear him and had to ask again.

“Do you speak German?” he asked slowly, over-enunciating each word.

“Of course,” I answered.

“My name is Weiss. Resident Physician Weiss. Are you a family member of Elias Angermann?”

“I’m his girlfriend.”

“Then I guess I’m not really supposed to speak with you.”

“That shouldn’t be a problem, should it?”

He reflected for a moment. The decision seemed not to come easily. Finally he nodded and said, “Oh well. What is your name?”

“Maria Kogan.”

He regarded me from head to toe. “I’m not sure I would pronounce your last name correctly. Can I call you Maria?”

“No.”

He shrugged. His voice growing louder with each syllable, he explained that a nail had been inserted into Elias’s femur. An intramedullary fixation. That they had nailed metal plates to the thighbone and that Elias had lost a lot of blood. I noticed splatters of blood on his lab coat and wondered whether they had come from Elias or a patient before. I nodded and opened the door of the anesthetic recovery room. The recovery would be a long one, the doctor’s voice reverberated behind me. The room was empty, save a bed that was fenced in by monitors, tubes, and a single chair. The curtains were closed. I opened them just a little, so that a sliver of light sliced across the floor. I lay my hand on the bedrails. Elias’s face was wan, as if every last drop of blood had drained from his body. A thin white crust caked his lips. He murmured my name and looked past me. A surgical drain emerged from his thigh.

I bent down and the smell of cold sweat reached my nose. I kissed his forehead and stroked his hair. He moaned. I extended my hand to touch his, but then I saw the IV drip in the back of his hand, hesitated, and withdrew.

“I’m not doing so well,” Elias said so quietly that he couldn’t possibly have meant for me to hear it, and suddenly a memory came back to mind, of him remarking that there are only two schools: old school and the Frankfurt School.

I stayed until late. Feverish Elias hoisted his head from side to side. At times an “Are you still there?” punctured his restless sleep.

That evening I made myself an instant soup and called his parents. Nobody picked up. I thought about calling Elke on her cellphone, but I already heard myself leaving a voicemail. “Hi, it’s Masha. Hey.” I paused and bit my lip. “Elias slipped while playing soccer. He broke his thighbone. He’s in the hospital.” The sentences came out labored. It had been a decade since I’d struggled so much to speak German. Elke called back in the middle of the night. Was it bad? No, I assured her. She said she couldn’t leave the restaurant. Every night it’s busy. I told her that I’m here. Elke said she’d try to come as soon as possible. I told her not to worry, I’m here.

I packed a bag for Elias. I folded his underwear, T-shirts, and the sole pair of pajamas in his possession. Then I added his overnight bag, his camera, a sketchbook, and charcoal pencils.

His roommates were watching afternoon talk shows. TV sounds blended in with snippets of conversation and laughter, the rustling of candy wrappers and magazines, the squeaking of shoes, and the wheels of food trolleys in the hallway.

Elias was lying in the middle, his bed flanked by two other beds. Beside every bed was a little nightstand. His neighbors’ tables were piled high with chocolate bars, open packs of cookies, bags of gummi bears, Sudoku books, cigarettes, and magazines. I said hello to everyone in the room, but nobody paid attention to me.

Elias lay pale and dull-eyed in his hospital bed. I put on a smile and approached him. I sat the bag down next to his table and listed out what I had brought. Like Christmas, Elias joked, exhausted.

Elias spent most of the time sleeping, dazed by medication. Only breathing in and out. I sat next to his bed, peeled sour apples, pears, and a mango. The mango juice stuck to my fingers. I drank coffee and disappeared into the bathroom, where I splashed cold water onto my face to fend off tears and a headache. The morning and the afternoon passed. The sun set excruciatingly slowly. Outside the shadows got longer and Elias’s hand rested in mine.

By the next morning, he was already taking photos of the room, of his wound, and of me, who wasn’t able to look at his wound. The roommates also wanted to get some camera time. They were done playing cards and now forced us into conversation. He wouldn’t want to miss out on the opportunity to get his picture taken by a professional, Heinz said, when he learned that Elias studied photography.

Heinz had served in World War II and Rainer was a locksmith. There were some things they would do differently today. Though not much, of course, not much. The person in the bed to the left of Elias cleared his throat and said he had to pay me a compliment. That my German is better than that of any Russian Germans he’s met at the social services office. I had hardly said anything yet. Heinz started talking about his time as a prisoner of war — until Elias asked him to please be quiet. Then Elias asked me to be quiet as well.

It was hot and humid. The asphalt reflected the heat and even at night the streets didn’t cool. I got off my bike in front of the hospital and wiped the sweat off my forehead. The bicycle rack was filled to capacity, so I pushed my bike a bit. Then I spotted a free rack after all and squeezed it in. The green bike on the left fell and I laboriously brought it back to an upright position.

The hospital was an elongated low-rise with a stone facade that stood in the middle of a residential area — an edifice completely devoid of architectural ambition and solely intended to best serve its medical purpose. The resident physician who had removed Elias’s surgical drain the day before sat in front of the entrance to the orthopedic ward and smoked. He had dark circles under his eyes and unkempt hair. I had seen him yesterday afternoon in the hospital and he looked as if he had worked through the night. He nodded toward me and I slowed until I waveringly stopped right in front of him. He held out his cigarette pack, light blue with Arabic letters. I offered him a croissant. He breathed out smoke and reached into my bag. The skin of his hand was cragged, his nails had yellowed from the tobacco.

“Did you switch to filtered cigarettes recently?”

“Not really. Those are from a patient.” He looked down at the pack, turning it over a couple of times and running his thumb over the Arabic letters as if he’d just noticed them for the first time.

“I can’t read it,” he said.

I translated the text for him.

He sighed, never taking his eyes off the pack.

“The patient died yesterday afternoon. We’re finishing off his last cigarettes.”

I choked on the smoke and had to cough.

He turned the pack over a couple of times more, then put it back into his pocket. He took a bite of the croissant, crumbs falling onto his lab coat like dandruff. He alternated between looking at me and the croissant. “You’re with Mr. Angermann, right?”

I nodded.

“He had a spot this morning.”

“Excuse me?”

“A spot.”

“On his lung?”

“What makes you think that?” The doctor laughed out loud. “No, around his surgical scar. A little spot, not uncommon. Don’t worry.”