6,000,001.

 

“You’re a nasty horrible man”. The nurse screamed at the crumpled up human being sat on the end on the damp single bed, “You have no idea what it’s like to look after so many desperate and demanding people. It’s old…bastards like you that make so many of us give up the profession, or worse go private”. The nurse spat the sentence at the man on the bed. Each word delivered with the fine precision of a well-sharpened surgical scalpel.

The sheets were filthy, sodden, wet. The man had soiled himself during the night and instead of calling out for one of the nurses in the building, he had laid there till it had dried on his skin, congealed with the aging tissue on his legs and on his back until the bottom part of him resembled one of those singers the nurse enjoyed watching on a Sunday night on the television, her reward for one night of pleasure; making this pathetic excuse of a man clean the congealed shit of his bony backside.

“What have I told you about wearing pyjamas when you go to bed, have you no shame Mr. Kitson”?

The young orderly looked up at the nurse, “It’s all too much, how do we feed them all? They just don’t seem to want to be helped, they are suffering from Typhus and those that aren’t are going to die anyway from malnutrition”. “Nurse” he thought to himself, she’s a young girl from one of the towns near here, she must have known what was going on, they all must have. The stink must have been hanging in the air from here to Berlin. Bastards the lot of them.

“Do you hear me Mr. Kitson? You’re a horrible bastard, it’s no wonder your family don’t come and visit you, and I’m willing to go down to the bookmakers with my old man and lay a crown on that they are ashamed of you.”

The woman turned away, in all her years of nursing, caring, and the vocation she had tended to with much ease since she first saw the wounded returning back, the spaces that held their own personal guard in the line of honour as the men were repatriated back from fighting abroad. Those men were heroes! She had admired the uniforms, smart, chiselled men who had spilled blood and in return were, in her eyes at least, the bravest of all. None had screamed in the night, scrabbling for a light switch, chasing a foe that deserved to be expunged from the face of the Earth. She sat delighted as she revelled in the stories the returning soldiers echoed around her, she worked overtime, triple time, all for the want of another story, a good story, the one where the Fascist’s always lost.

Not this miserable wretch, not the man who was an embarrassment to men. Pissing in his bed, shuffling around and what about when he was lucid enough to go into the community, what did the man do, he just found his way down to that school and would wander around, picking up bits of rubbish from the pavements, discarded dog ends, bits of chocolate wrapper and he would put them in his battered and tired looking shopping bag.

The orderly looked at the nurse again, no older than 17 surely, a child. Well if that’s the case, when I came here I must have looked the same. What was that, two weeks ago now, two weeks since we liberated the camp in April, liberated! This wasn’t liberation, the people, all those people placed into so many huts, the squalor, the disease, the inhumanity of it all. Oh so different when we marched underneath the gleaming iron signs that sat like imperial guards proclaiming their kings. We touched the devil that night and it was all filmed by Pathe News. His sister had written to him at the camp, the familiar black lines that had been placed through his brother’s letters were not as evident on the ones he received, he was able to see she was proud of him…she wouldn’t be now if she saw how many patients the camp had lost.

“Come on, get dressed, I know you can do it, look I’ve done the hard part for you, I’ve cleaned the mess of your backside and look who is going to have to clean the bed-sheets, well it won’t be me I tell you that for nothing Mr. Kitson, but I know it won’t be you either. No”.

The man went to sit back down again but the nurse caught him in time. “Look Mr. Kitson, it’s been a long day already and I’ve still got others to help, more deserving of my help to be honest and I thin…” she stopped, compassion returning to her usual demeanour as she noticed that the man was crying and mouthing that he was sorry. “Don’t worry Mr. Kitson, it’s not your fault, I know you’re not well. Look I tell you what, the doctors still say its O.K for you to go out, you’ve been a good man recently haven’t you, you’ve kept away from the school the last two times you’ve been out, so how about you go out for a couple of hours, you have the tag on you so you know what to do if you get lost”.

The man nodded, smiled briefly and shuffled over to his chest of draws and gently put on his clothes. The sun was struggling to come out from behind the dark clouds and he guessed it was threatening to rain.

“Oh Christ, that’s all we need when we have to watch those buggers dig a hole, bloody rain”. He heard the young soldier to his left mutter under his breath, then louder so the German prisoners of war could hear his coarseness, “Hey Hans, yep you down there in that buggering hole, tell me why we shouldn’t just leave you in there, get one of our bulldozers to fill in the Earth around you and just watch as you die like you’ve left them poor wretches”. The soldier pointed behind him and the orderly saw that he was pointing to the pile of rotting, dead corpses that had increased since the British and Canadian army medical corps had arrived. “Tell you what, stop digging Hans, the rain’s going to really piss down in a minute, you’ll have your own feted swimming pool in a while, you can drown in that”.

This last line caused a small chuckle from those guarding the German prisoners but not from the orderly, he was watching as a couple of women, not as malnutrition deprived as those he had seen when he first entered the camp admittedly, sat down not five yards from the pile of corpses that had been removed from the huts and began to eat their afternoon ration of bread. At least they were keeping it down he supposed. He turned his attention back to the men in the hole and then out of the corner of his eye saw Rabbi Hardman walking over to the first mass grave ready to bless the dead.

“Mr. Kitson, its o.k. there’s no need to shake like that, if you’re cold put on a warm cardi over that shirt, we don’t want you to catch your death”. The nurse took his hand gently; she noticed the temperature and wondered if the man was coming down with a chill.

For the first time that morning he spoke, quietly, his voice almost lost in the hubbub and cacophony of noise that was becoming audible throughout the hospital as its patients woke, screamed and then gently sobbed.

“I’m alright nurse, I was remembering a time when the rain fell”. He looked up at the sky again, it was black, and the sun wouldn’t shine today, not on him, not for the survivors.

The nurse nodded her head, not really understanding what the man was on about. She let go off his hand and went back to the bed and removed the soiled sheets. She dreamed of the life outside the hospital; she had met her husband in one, a dashing man, a hero, saved lives with his quick thinking but now reduced to staying at home after being given early retirement from the West Midlands Passenger Transport Authority. He had been useful to his country and she counted down the days till she could join him in retirement and move back to her home town of Trowbridge. This is the last job I do she thought to herself, a hospital like this, who would have thought I would have ever had to deal with wretches like these.

He remembered hearing about Richard Dimbleby’s famous report from inside the camp; the description of what he had seen there, the destruction of mankind. He remembered thinking only a week later how much he and the other members of the school volunteers had increased the problems in all those they found still alive. We were so under prepared; we caused so many more deaths, so much suffering. He remembered all this and he hated himself for it.

He hated those that made him hate, the local burgomasters who he had to stand watching as the photographers and Movie Tone news captured their images for ever, the commandant Josef Kramer who had overseen this debauched and sickening, vile display of man’s own destruction. Most of all though he hated himself for not having saved as many, barely a small percentage, of those they had found as they took in the sheer horror of it all. Only the thought of one decent human had stopped him from doing more damage.

“Luba”, he said out loud, shocking the nurse with the suddenness and desperation of his voice. She glanced over towards him, noticed he hadn’t moved or fallen down and went back to putting the clean, crisp, starched sheets on his bed.

“Are you ready, Mr. Kitson. Mr. Kitson?” She spoke to him as gently as possible but inwardly she detested the man. She had asked about him, what made him the way he was but hospital red tape and the lack of files on him had made it impossible to find out. He had been there since 1947 with only a short time out allowed in the community on an infrequent basis. 29 years he had been an inmate. There were no clues in his room, nothing to suggest that the white haired and saggy jawed and bony cheeked man was nothing more than a tramp that had wandered off the streets all those years ago and had decided to stay. She didn’t care anyway; not really, it just might have made an interesting story to her Bobby if she had found out. Her final job, four more weeks out of a six week placement to see her through to the end and when she went she would happily set fire to the grubby little man’s mattress itself, festering no doubts with tormented and infectious lice.

“Are you ready for the bonfire to end all bonfires lad”? That hut is going to up like Guy Fawkes’s trousers”!

“Are you going out then Mr. Kitson?” Go get some fresh air, have a cigarette, make sure you are back by four though, I don’t think they will send out many more search parties to find you”!

“Yes sir” the orderly said with some satisfaction in his voice. The stink had been grating and he was sure that no amount of D.D.T had truly eradicated the germs and typhus that had breed so easily in the camp. The glimmer in his eyes as he watched the flame go higher, the eradication of the nightmare that had begun the moment they had found how to deal with the hunger, the starvation and the depth of depravity they had encountered was now nearly, finally over. He had helped, Rabbi Hardman had assured him and Lt. Col Johnston had personally given him a letter of commendation and a hand shake that nearly broke the small bones in each digit.

So why did he feel so awful, he had come in to the camp, one of the first soldiers who doubled as orderlies for the medical staff to enter under the iron banner. He had smelled the camp first before seeing it from the roadside that ran straight through the middle of the made up and utterly unforgettable town whose residents didn’t cheer when they saw the British approach, some didn’t even breathe or move a muscle. Some were too weak, others were, well just…

“Death…”

“Pardon Nurse”?

“I said you’ll catch your death, you know, no coat on going outside, let me help you on with it, then you can perhaps make your way to Kings Heath or over to Selly Oak for a few hours, go shopping, buy (some soap) a knickknack or even have a meal”. She went to the plastic coat hook on the back of the room’s door and lifted the coat up and for the first time realised how heavy it was. It was just an ordinary mackintosh, faded grey and worn in several places but it was heavy, lopsided as if holding something within.

“What’s in this Mr. Kitson”? She asked sternly.

“What was it for Rabbi”? The orderly asked gently, the tears of regret congealing with the irritating smoke from the blackening wood of the burning hut.

Rabbi Hardman looked down at the floor and spoke gently as if addressing the dead that lay below ground that were still but forever restless, he answered in a mixture of accents that ranged from the Welsh stronghold he had been born into, to the light Liverpool twang that was developing from his time preaching there, “I don’t know young man”. For a moment he was silent as if contemplating the final part of the sermon to the unhearing. “All I know is that when I was asked to come here to administer comfort to my people, I never expected to be administering so many and so few”.

The Rabbi shook the orderly’s hand once more before saying, “Make sure you don’t become a casualty of this son, I see it in your eyes, don’t become a victim”.

With that the Rabbi walked off towards the burning hut and prayed as went.

“Pray tell me why you have a book in the pocket of your coat”! The nurse had in one swift moment gone into the pocket of the man’s overcoat and was holding a small Jewish Bible up, the black cover decorated only with a small engraved cross, glistened and stood out against the whiteness of the walls and of the door.

“That’s mine”! The orderly reacted with venom as one of the soldiers who had been billeted with snatched the book from him.

“You don’t even believe in a God you whelp, why are you carrying it around with you”? He flicked open the book and saw the Hebrew and Yiddish words staring back at him. “You’re not Jewish, why the hell have you got this? Did you nick it off one of the dead”?

“Answer me, where did you get this from”, the nurses voice becoming shriller, loud, commanding.

“It’s mine, I was given it years ago, and I carry it around because I want to remember what it was all for, I would like it back please nurse”.

It was the most she had ever heard him say in one go, something about his voice startled her, she called him a bastard for a reason, he was obnoxious, he didn’t do as he was told and he had no respect for authority but still he frightened her, she started to shake, her hand holding out the small black book to him.

“Please take it, remember me and what happened here, try to learn what’s inside”, the young girl said looking up at him from the floor of the hut. The cramped conditions he had found her in, the stench that poured from her soul had not stopped him from kneeling down beside her and trying to help her up. He had grabbed her hand and tried to place the other behind her back to support her but she was weak, so close to death that he was afraid she would snap like a twig if he attempted it. Like all the others he had found, they were all so close to the end, any help at all would come far too late. He had tried to leave her, to find the Rabbi that he had heard had joined the soldiers, orderlies, newsmen and doctors but with whatever strength she possessed she pulled him back, almost on top of her, their faces so close that he was only an inch from her mouth.

“If you don’t give it back you bugger I’ll smack you in the mouth, I’ll smack you so hard you won’t get back up again” He heard himself cry, other soldiers in the mess looked up from their rations to see what the commotion was and all they had time to witness was the shake of a head and the young orderly rise from his haunches and bring down the soldier in one flowing, dynamic moment. A tussle; a fist repeatedly being bought down on the face of the soldier, A momentary hesitation that saw blood being drawn before others acting in fear dragged the two men apart. It was hushed up but both men were confined to barracks and the orderly found himself doing extra K.P duties as punishment. It was worth the blood, nobody ever takes the book from me again he swore. There will be blood…

There was blood, the nurse was down on the floor holding her nose. The tiled floor was becoming spotted, unclean as more of her blood joined the pool. An alarm went off in the building, people rushed in to help, to see what had happened. Two orderlies, large and forbidding, wrestled the man to the floor and were shouting at him, demanding, interrogating. He held the book and fought as they tried to release it from his strong grasp.

Ian D. Hall