Armageddon_ A Novel of Berlin - Leon Uris [150]
Chapter Seven
ERNESTINE BLINKED OPEN HER EYES. A wind blew at the canvas patch over the broken wall. Hilde sat on a wooden crate before a small mirror. Ernestine watched her sister pull on a silk stocking, holding out her slender leg to admire its shapeliness.
Hilde spotted Ernestine watching her through the mirror, turned, and said, “Good morning. How do you feel? Any better?”
“I’m fine,” Ernestine said.
“You don’t look so fine. You screamed again in the middle of the night.”
“I am sorry I disturbed you.”
“I’m getting used to it,” Hilde snapped. “Why don’t you put on a little makeup. The circles under your eyes would not show so much.”
“It does not matter.”
Hilde sighed, tossed down her lipstick, regretted her sharpness. She sat alongside the bed she shared now with Ernestine, ran her fingers through her sister’s hair. “It’s this living on top of each other. Erna, you’re your own worst enemy. Dr. Hahn has said so. You take life too grimly.”
“There is nothing to be joyful about in Berlin.”
“Fine, so make the best of it.” Hilde returned to the mirror.
“Hilde,” Ernestine said. “I want to talk to you about the things in your trunk.”
The younger girl was startled.
“It was by accident,” Ernestine said. “I was looking for your red sweater to borrow. The lock was open. Besides, where does one hide a trunk, or anything, in this place? Where did you get cigarettes, chocolates ... those stockings?”
“I made contact with some old friends.”
“I am your sister, Hilde. I will not be set aside.”
“All right.”
“We have been taught right from wrong.”
Hilde laughed bitterly. “There is no right and wrong in this place. There is only survival.”
“No matter what has happened, we still have our decency.”
“Decent? Are we decent? Have we ever been?”
“Hilde, you are getting yourself into serious trouble. There is no justice today, not even from the Amis.”
Hilde shrugged, and flipped the powder box shut “Your baby sister gets around. You could also make life easier for yourself.”
“Easy? It only looks easy.”
“Have it your way, Ernestine. I’ll leave something to eat for you on the table. Dr. Hahn should be here soon.”
“Hilde! You are only twenty years old. It is too soon to give up on life.”
“It seems that you are the one who has given up. I’m just trying to get along with a bad situation. Erna, you will promise me you won’t say anything to father about the trunk.”
“I promise,” her sister whispered in defeat.
“You’re a dear.” Hilde leaned over, kissed Ernestine’s cheek, and went out of the alcove.
In a few moments old Dr. Hahn arrived. “Well, how is the patient today?”
“I am afraid I am causing everyone a lot of trouble.”
He creaked to her bedside, pinched her drawn cheek. “If I could only put a little color back into that pretty face. Are the sleeping powders helping you?”
“For part of the night.”
The drugs had been obtained on the black market at great cost. He would find more, somehow. “I don’t want to keep you using it. It is bad to start at your age.”
Ernestine looked up to the same old grizzly face she remembered from earliest childhood. It seemed to her that Dr. Hahn was born old. She knew the touch of his hand as he examined her and she knew the familiar grunts of his meditation. He pulled the covers back over her shoulders, slipped the stethoscope from his ears.
“I am not going to lecture you, young lady. But you cannot get better until you help yourself.”
He packed his instruments into a battered bag, rummaged through for his almost diminished supply of drugs, and refilled a bottle at her bedside.
“Ernestine, someone came with me today. I want you to see him.”
“Who?”
“Your Uncle Ulrich.”
She rolled away, turning her back. “No,” she said shakily.
He went out into the hallway where Ulrich Falkenstein had waited. The two men had known each other for nearly three decades. Hahn shook his head. “Physically, she is in weak condition. Not enough to eat, overwork. It is the same as