Colum McCann - Zoli

The nurse shone a flashlight in my eyes, took hold of my jaw and said in German: Keep still. She pushed my head back onto the pillow and whirled away saying: She bit me, the little savage. I did indeed and did it well, and I would do it again, daughter, if I had to. I was sure straight away that they would arrest me, beat me, send me back to Czechoslovakia. Three nurses gathered, I could smell their sharp perfume. One grabbed hold of my cheeks, the other used a brown stick to hold down my tongue, and the third shone the flashlight into the back of my throat. The fat one wrote on a chart. The tallest took a little jar of something from her pocket and they passed it around one to the other, inhaling the fumes. It has always fascinated me that the gadze cannot smell themselves, I find it strange that they do not know how unusual their soaps and foods and bad odor, but some people only have an eye for others and never themselves. They held the jar to their noses and coughed and said how much I stank. The nurses made a telephone call and asked for some assistance, then said: We're taking her down to the showers.

Believe you me, that is when hell's fury was let loose-all I had heard for a decade was talk of poverty, strikes, and persecution, of the ordinary people in the West beaten down, of how we were hounded, of how little had changed since the days of the fascists, of how the streets were strung with reams of barbed wire, and in my delirium it was possible to believe that in the West they had begun their showers again. Who would deny that if it happened once it would not happen again? There is nothing so terrible that they will not try to repeat it. I shouted in Romani that they would not take me to their showers, no! I would not let them take me! I pulled back the sheets and ripped the drip out of my arm. They whistled for the guard but I was already out of the bed. A siren went off. The tall white-haired nurse tried to stand in front of me, but I shoved her backwards, stumbled to the door, pushed it open, I do not know where the strength came from.

Three men in uniform appeared at the far end of the corridor. One banged his billyclub on the wall. I backed into a room. Light came through one small window. Outside, through the haze of glass, was a patch of green. I squeezed out and landed in the grass. A number of tents stood squat on the ground. Beyond them, a few wooden buildings where smoke rose from the tin-pot chimneys. I heard someone shouting in Hungarian and another language I didn't recognize. I ran down the dirt road, past the tents, towards the gate, but the men in uniform were standing there wearing white armbands. They put up their rifles and said, with half a smile: Halt. A single red-white-red wooden barrier lay across the road. I could see long flat plains and in the distance huge mountains, with clouds halfway up them, capped with snow against the blue sky-so this, then, was Austria and the West, what a strange way to see it, through an open gate, with nurses shuffling in the dust behind me, and a rifle pointed at me.

Along came a tall gray-haired woman with four soldiers trailing behind her. She had the air of a bureaucrat but she stood in front of me and said: This is a D.P. camp, don't worry.

Her voice was calm. We're here to help you, she said. She took another step forward.

Displaced persons, she said.

When I tried to break the line of soldiers, one of them caught me in the shoulder with the end of his rifle. The woman knocked his gun aside and said: Leave her alone, you brute. She bent down to me and began whispering that I would be all right, not to fret, she was a doctor, she would take care of me. Yet I did not trust her-who would? I pushed away from her, began to walk towards the red and white gate, my head held tall, my body straight.

Okay, said the woman, put her in cuffs.

They brought me to a gray building where the nurses undressed me. A few soldiers stood outside the shower room and although most of them looked away, one or two came to the small window and looked inside. I sat on a hardbacked chair under the stream of water, while the nurses rubbed me fiercely with hard soap and brushes on long broom handles.

I tried to hide my nakedness. On and on they went about how I wore no breast support, about how I smelled, and that there was no smell on earth like a Gypsy, but still I said nothing. Near the end of the shower one of the soldiers put his pink tongue against the glass and licked it. I curled into myself and closed my eyes. They threw me a towel, then led me to another hospital room where they razored my hair. When I looked down on the floor there were some white larvae moving through the clumps. I had no feeling. It was my hair, but so what? It hardly mattered, it was just another ornament. Since a young age I had cut it off many times, always against custom. They sprayed me with a white powder that made my eyes itch. I did not allow them to know I could speak a little German, but I understood their words and believe me they were not talking of me as a flower that had sprung from the earth.

I had escaped an old life and was caught in a new one, but I could have no sympathy for myself, it was of my own making.

I was brought back to the ward. The doctor put her stethoscope to my chest. She said I was being held for my own safety, she would look after me, I was protected under international treaties, there was no cause for concern. She had the confident voice of one who did not believe a single word she was saying.

Her name was Doctor Marcus, from Canada, and she spoke German like she had just shoved a fistful of stones into her mouth. She said she would give me medical quarantine for a month or two, but after that I would have to apply for refugee status and then I would be allowed the status of the other displaced people. On her desk Doctor Marcus had some of my possessions: my Party card, my knife, some paper krowns wrinkled from the lakewater, and the coin Conka had given me, still wrapped in strands of her fine red hair. I reached out to get my possessions but she dropped them in a large paper envelope and said that they would be returned when I began to comply. She spun the coin in her fingers, dropped it in the envelope, and closed the clasp. A hair had fallen onto the desk.

Are you willing to talk to me? the doctor asked.

I pretended again that I was mute. Doctor Marcus spoke into an intercom system, instructed them to bring in the translator, an enormous heap of a woman who asked me question after question, in Czech and Slovak both, who I was, how I got a Party card, what had happened to me, how did I cross the border, did I know anyone in Austria and, of course their favorite question, was I really a Gypsy? I looked like one, they said, I dressed in colorful rags like one, but I did not seem like one. I sat still with my hands in my lap. The translator told me to nod yes or no to her questions. Are you Czech? Are you Slo-vakian? Are you Gypsy? Why have you come in from Hungary? This coin is an unusual coin, isn't it? Is this your identity card? Are you a Communist? I sat still. The best way around her was silence. When they were finished, the translator threw her hands up in the air but Doctor Marcus leaned forward and said: I know you understand us, we only want to help you, why don't you let us?

I lifted the single strand of Conka's hair from the desk and they took me off to quarantine.

So much time was spent in the white rooms of the hospital that I began to think back on all that had happened. My voice is strong now when I recall this, but back then I was a weak and terrified thing, and I stopped in every corner I could find, real or not. I did not want the roads of my childhood to return, I attempted to put them out of my mind, but the more I did so the more they appeared.