This is the second part of my new story CINDERELLA AND HER SISTERS. I still stumble a little bit here and there, and do apologize for that. Underneath, the written part in case you want to read along…
II
“The soldiers who come to this hospital, or whatever you want to call it—hospice? Mortuary? come here to die,” the cook was quick to tell Anna on her first day. “There’s little that can be done for them here, but they don’t know that we have nothing we can give them. There’s little in the way of supplies here, or medicine. The morphine’s almost gone; the bandages have been used and re-used so many times, they look like gauze; while the gauze is so thin, it looks like cobwebs. What little food we have, well, we feed ourselves first. Not very life-saving, is it?”
Anna was shocked to hear it, and refused to believe the woman.
She was right, Anna tells herself, wiping the wash tub dry as the snowflakes fall heavier. Some are as large as rose petals.
Anna tried to give the soldiers the comfort they needed in spite of what the cook told her. She still folds the thin woollen blankets around them snugly—like swaddling clothes—knowing it won’t keep them any warmer; she cleans up the blood and vomit after the doctors and nurses leave; she empties the bedpans with their bloody stools, and all the while telling herself she won’t let them into her life as she washes their grimy, angelic faces. As she changes the sheets after they die, again, she tells herself she won’t allow herself to become a part of their lives, however brief it may be. But it’s already too late for that; it’s difficult separating herself from the pain and suffering. She sits with them and holds their hands as they stare blindly into the darkness of the ceiling above. She leans in close to hear their whispered confessions, wipes the soft tears that streak into their ears as they stare up at her. They’re frightened, she can see that, and still, they face that fear with a constraint she knows she’ll never understand.
They have letters from home they ask her to read—and she does. Letters from mothers, and sisters, and from wives, and lovers; letters they’ve kept hidden in their pockets, unopened, thinking perhaps the words will protect them like a shield of armour; letters covered in blood, or else washed clean by the mud and the water they lay in, as they lay waiting to die; words that are impossible for her to read for the heartache she finds on the blank pages. They ask her to write letters for them, because they’re unable to, or else unlettered, and as they die they listen to the rhapsody of her voice; they die as they weep out their words, and beg forgiveness—they ask her for forgiveness—and as she watches she feels them take a piece of her heart with them—like they’ve stolen another part of her soul—until she thinks there’s nothing left for her to give, and she doesn’t know how to feel anymore.
All the hopes and dreams Anna once had as a young girl of seventeen are the same hopes and dreams these men had. As much as she dreamed, they dreamed; hope has long since deserted her, she feels. Now, there’s an emptiness inside of her that she can’t explain. A hollowness. Everything she ever had in Vienna, is now lost; that life she once knew, has vanished. Everyone expects her to be stronger than she is; they expect her to be stronger than they are: her step-mother, the children, her step-sisters—even her father.
When the War first started, Anna was dedicated to the Empire. They all were. She was a volunteer because her husband said it was her duty to help. And inwardly, she agreed. It was something everyone did, he told her. It was more than just patriotic fervour and it was sweeping across the Empire. As the young wife of a General, she felt she had to give more. As the young men went off to the Front lines with dreams of glory, she felt a certain pride in thinking she might even be an inspiration to them.
For the Motherland! they cried out, and they paraded to the train station as the sound of military marches resounded through the city. Church bells pealed in the distance. The soldier's boots echoed across the cobblestoned streets of the Ringstrasse like the sound of thunder. The people along the streets cheered, and held up portraits of the Emperor like they were holding up sacred Icons; they invoked the memory of the Empress, and made martyrs of the Prince and his murdered wife. Women pressed flowers into the arms of soldiers, and children wept as their fathers marched away. How could they not be victorious, she’d wondered? With Germany as their ally, no one could stand in their way. Fear the Cossacks? The Cossacks would run from them.
She’d thought of becoming a nurse when the war began, but her first encounter with death was too much for her; the haunting memory a constant nightmare that dogged her sleep. Once the battles were fought, the numbers of wounded and dying men seemed too great for her to comprehend—too great for anyone to comprehend—and as the war ground to a halt it seemed as if the trenches had become giant meat factories spitting out youthful men like chewed up gristle. She was unable to steel her heart against the sights and sounds of death like so many of the others did—the real nurses—so she turned to the women’s auxiliary clubs instead. She joined sewing circles, and wrapped bandages, telling herself—like the others—that she was a more than just a volunteer, she was a patriot; but it was hard to believe in a Cause that destroyed everything it came across.
With her husband’s death in the first months of the War, whatever influence he might have had over her, was gone. The power and prestige of his name evaporated like an early morning mist, and Anna felt as if she had been placed aside like a used toy. Her step-sisters gathered around her. When she lost whatever properties and holdings she had, her father began to rant and rave about the countryside. Suddenly, leaving Vienna seemed like the easiest thing to do.
They were all willing to try “the great experiment” as her father so ably put it. They’d learn to be farmers, he said, and live off the land. Anything was better than what Vienna had to offer. There was an old family estate with lands they could go to; they’d raise chickens and have fresh eggs everyday. There’d be meat. They’d have orchards to pick from, and acres to grow whatever they needed. And the way he made it sound, the conviction of his beliefs, and his stubborn refusal to take no for an answer, made it all sound possible. It would be idyllic. There was nothing in the city they couldn’t find in the country, he added.
They knew nothing about growing food; they knew nothing of life without servants. It was Anna’s stubborn nature and new found self-determination that forced them to survive. There was no one to help with the harvest. Anna read books, and begged for assistance from the local farmers, but they were unable to help. They worked the land themselves. She made her sisters pull the plow through the fields, but they were only able to carve a single curved line in the soft earth. Their soft hands hardened with calluses; their white skin burned in the sun; their muscles ached so that they crawled into bed every night exhausted. Within a year and a half, they had learned enough to subsist.
But coming out to the estate had been a shock. The house stood deserted. Boarded up. The caretakers had left almost as soon as the War began. Cobwebs hung with dust, strung up like ghostly decorations. The estate overlooked Lake Belaton, and stood on the outskirts of Basdoscony, which lay to the north. They were only one hundred kilometres from Pecs, and the garrison there. There was every possibility the War might come to them. There were some nights she was sure she heard the distant rumble of guns sounding in the distant mountains. And with the war going on as bad as it was—and going on for as long as it had—there were reports of more deserters.
She shakes herself out of her short lived reverie, and looks at the sheets hanging limp in the snow. The flakes are larger now, tumbling through the soft afternoon light. She sees ice forming on them and knows she'll have to pull the sheets down and take them inside once the water drips out of the last ones. She'll have to hang them in the kitchen and work around them; there's still dinner for her to help prepare. There will be puddles on the floor, and she knows the cook will complain. But if she sits with the door open long enough, she knows she'll see the wet tiles steaming. It's a comforting feeling to her. The light, the warmth, and the shadows, all remind her of a different version of home—or perhaps what she thinks a home should be like. She walks to the first set of sheets she hung up three hours earlier, and begins to pull them down.
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