Midnight Train to Prague - Carol Windley Page 0,121

like something she wanted to hear. He suggested what he called a relatively simple pneumothorax procedure. It involved collapsing a lung, which would, for one thing, he explained, reduce the ability of the tuberculosis bacterium to replicate and spread the disease. She knew about this procedure from when she’d visited Julia Brüning at a hospital in Moabit, in Berlin. Julia was there for months.

The next time they saw Dr. Ferenczi, he had reconsidered the operation. He said they would continue for a while longer with bed rest.

Miklós was admitted to a tuberculosis hospital in Budapest. Dr. Ferenczi introduced him to a tuberculosis specialist from Sweden, Dr. Janssen. The Swedish presence in Budapest, which dated from 1943, interested Miklós. He and Dr. Janssen talked about the disappearance of the Swedish envoy to Hungary, Raoul Wallenberg, and his efforts to help the Jews of Budapest escape Adolf Eichmann, who had remained in Budapest transporting Jews to the death camps even as the Russians were approaching. Miklós wanted paper and a pen, but Dr. Janssen said no writing, no intellectual activity for now. Rest, he said. Miklós asked Natalia to bring him the things he had asked for. She said she would see what she could do, but she had no intention of going against the doctors’ orders. It scared her, seeing Miklós in that hospital bed. She forgot sometimes, or didn’t want to remember, that he was fifty-four years old. She didn’t want to hear, either, what the doctor told her: that tuberculosis was a more serious disease in people over the age of fifty. She didn’t want to know that.

In the early hours of the morning, while Natalia slept at her hotel, Miklós experienced a serious hemorrhage of the lungs. A nurse met her at the door to his room and said she must wait to speak with the doctor. How serious, she wanted to know, when Dr. Ferenczi came down the hall to see her. Dr. Ferenczi studied her over his glasses for a moment, and said they were not by any means giving up on the treatment. When he was studying medicine in Vienna, at the end of the Great War, he said, he had developed tuberculosis. Within a year it had cleared up spontaneously.

“So it can happen?” she said.

“In the early stages.”

Like God, he gave and he took away, that doctor.

She began to hate the hospital. It smelled of carbolic soap, boiled potatoes, medicine, the same as all hospitals. People came here to be cured or they died, it was that simple, and these days, after six years of war, and the deprivations that went with war, they mostly died. The nurses, when they had time, encouraged her to sit quietly in the hospital chapel. Pray, they told her, guiding her to the chapel door. Natalia did what she was told to do. She dipped her fingers in the font, genuflected, prayed wordlessly, having nothing to say. She was afraid of calling attention to herself, of forcing God to notice her, and thinking, Why should this one be all right, when so many are suffering? She prayed to Dr. Schaefferová. Magdalena, she said, I know you’re here with me.

Her child, this child, must not grow up without a father. It was a terrible thing, not to know your own father. She would not allow it.

At the hotel where she was staying, the staff and the other residents were nice to her, but their smiles irritated her, their inquiries about her husband’s health made her want to scream. She always said the same things: Thank you, he’s doing well. The nurses are wonderful. The hospital staff are wonderful. Thank you for asking. Yes, I am on my way to the hospital now.

She slept; she hated herself for sleeping, but the pregnancy made her want to do nothing except sleep. She fell asleep sitting up at the hospital; in the chapel; she woke and sat up, dazed, and went back to the hotel and tried to eat a piece of toast; she drank a cup of tea, which gave her heartburn. She walked back to the hospital. The sun shone, and there was a mild wind; the air smelled cleaner, less smoky, and the sound of hammers echoed throughout the city as buildings were being repaired. The Chain Bridge had been bombed and was going to be rebuilt. Budapest was being rebuilt. Even this soon after the end of fighting, it was being reconstructed. Was that a hidden function of