Page 31 of If You Were the Only Girl in the World
He put down his cup on her table and picked up his hat. He could hardly bear to look at her and yet, in herdéshabillé, her long golden hair swirling around her shoulders, her full breasts and hard pink nipples poking the thin fabric, he wanted to drink her in, take her up into his skin, let her live in him so that she’d be with him always.
He strode to the hall and made a point as they passed her bedroom not to view the shambles they’d made of her bed. He closed his eyes. Remember her, he would always. Her generosity in sex, her writhing sinuous body, her perfection.
He turned round at the door and opened his arms.
She rushed to him, his mate, his perfection. Her positive to his negative. Her light to his dark.
She slid up his torso and undid him with her lavish kiss. She still bore the fragrances of their mingling. The smell of their union made him hard and eager as a boy to get inside her—and keep her forever as his own.
But he had to be prudent and kind to them both. He smiled, poor actor that he was, pretending to be valiant, resigned to leaving her. “I will find a way to return. I’ve no idea when.”
“I am here. Always here.” She stood away and wrapped the kimono more securely around her. “Waiting for you.”
He put his hat on his head. “I want you. Always.”
Then he tore away, took the stairs down at a run and walked for a mile or more before he had sense enough to hail a taxi.
CHAPTER10
Falling in love for the first time in her life, Katrina had a different view of the world. Despite the daily anxieties that had so preoccupied her, she gave them less power over her attitudes. Her work in the wards was still rewarding. It always had been. A healthy patient was the finest reward. Now however she took the opportunities to find new ways to express herself and share what she loved.
She had always enjoyed a good novel and in one visit with the director of the hospital, she offered to establish a circulating library. Russell, as ever a penny pincher, worried about cost. But she suggested that if she asked each new patient to donate one of their favorites, other patients could have some entertainment as they recuperated. He agreed on condition that she set up the shelves and the rules for borrowing the books. When she set aside an unused coat closet, he came to offer suggestions that she replace the shelves and paint them. He, however, did nothing to help. She bought white wash and applied it, and asked a carpenter, a lady whose shop was on Rue Danton, to cut and install them. She tried not to be resentful of Russell’s demands and attentions that verged on inappropriate.
The other suggestion she made was for him to purchase a piano. Even an old one second-hand would do. He agreed but only if the price were affordable. She found an ad in the newspaper for sale of an old Pleyel of polished red enamel that the seller bragged was the twin of the one Chopin had owned. Russell complained to her that the seller boasted of that only to keep the price high. He haggled with the seller once, returning to the hospital and demanding that she go with him to visit the fellow. Still, he did not buy the thing. Yet he demanded the seller talk with him again and also required Katrina to return with him only to have another argument. At that point, she wondered if Russell were being obstinate simply to get her to go with him. She complained that she needed her sleep and she could not continue to do his bidding. He balked, affronted, poor thing. But on the fourth visit, he bought it and with the donation of fifty francs to the cause from Katrina, too.
Whatever its origin—or the fact she had to essentially bribe Russell to close the deal—the instrument was a beautiful addition to the conservatory. They put it in the grand room facing southwest where the rays from the late afternoon left a rosy atmosphere and the three lemon trees added a refreshing citrus fragrance to the air. Other staff, nurses and doctors, had learned how to play as children, just as she had. They liked the addition of the piece so much that everyone who was inclined dropped in throughout the day to offer their own renditions. The music drifted through open doors. A few patients hummed along or sang lyrics. The halls rang with a lighter air.
For Katrina, this was especially true. At the start of her evening shift, Katrina would go in, sit down and play one or two tunes from memory. Most of them came from Broadway plays she had attended with her parents when she was young or later, when she was in training. She especially loved rousing songs by George M. Cohan, “Give My Regards to Broadway” and “Yankee Doodle Boy”. When she played, many in the room joined in, recalling the words to the old favorites. Patients who had no voice or energy to sing came to smile or to keep time just by clapping.
Two weeks before Christmas, she had the idea to extend that same kind of experience to the Catholic orphanage housed at the church two blocks away from her flat. Not knowing the nuns or the mother superior, she asked Doctor Russell for a reference. She was surprised he agreed because he could be a surly sort when staff made requests. He even walked with her the next afternoon down to the church, spoke with the priest and very soon, she was scheduled to open a Saturday morning class for the children to sing.
She concentrated on Christmas songs in French. Her own abilities in the language were improving, and she’d always been able to get her meanings across to local Parisians. She did well in that regard with the children, who ranged in age from three to twelve. In a few lessons, they became quiet good and were eager to show off their skills. They asked the priest if they might sing after Christmas mass. To the delight of the priest and Katrina, after the event, the congregation voluntarily donated enough francs that the mother superior purchased new winter coats for each child.
For her own development, she’d written early in December to ask her mother to send her a few books she owned when in medical school about Freud’s work with patients. In Paris, books were quite expensive and most sold were, of course, printed in French. She wanted to refresh her knowledge of Sigmund Freud’s work.
The two references she did find in the medical library of a small hospital on the Left Bank were in German. When she had asked if she might borrow them, the librarian had looked at her with disdain. She’d been taken aback. It was one thing to have the French gaze at her oddly when she gave them her last name but to have them question her right to read a book set her ablaze. Her knowledge of German was excellent, having grown up with two parents and a grandmother who spoke it in the house each day. When she’d been required to read texts in German when she was in medical school, she’d had no problems understanding them. She quickly read the passages of the two books she wished and returned them to the disgruntled librarian.
By January, her reference books from her mother still did not come. Eager to carry on with her decision to learn more about Freud’s work and writings, she asked one of her own colleagues on staff to refer her to a friend of his whom he’d mentioned worked in Freud’s manner. Doctor Wilfred Lieberman was trained in Vienna as a disciple of the famous Freud, her colleague told her. She called upon the man and he was able to spend an hour with her in a cafe. Most helpful was a gift from him. He loaned her a few of his own notes of those patients he worked with who were in treatment for erratic behavior, what some British called ‘God Only Knows’ or the newer term, shell shock. She returned Lieberman’s notes with her thanks and a request that they meet again, if he had time to discuss his progress. In the past three weeks, he’d not been able to get away from his office. His caseload had nearly doubled, he told her, in the past month. But he suggested that she visit a chateau north of Paris near Chantilly where many soldiers convalesced from severe wounds to the face or amputations of limbs.
She had written to the administrator at Lieberman’s suggestion and with his note of recommendation. Days later, she received an invitation to meet the head physician and tour the facility. She took the train north and for once, the scheduled departure was on time.
The Chateau de Montmarceau had become a hospital only a year ago. The owner, the twenty-first Comte de Montmarceau, had emigrated to Quebec months ago and donated his ancestral home to the Third Republic as a hospital. The Comte’s younger brother was the facility’s first permanent resident and the direction of the Comte was to ensure that henceforth his gift to the State would remain one dedicated to the care and rehabilitation of those wounded unable to return to their civilian lives.
“How do you choose whom to admit?” Katrina asked the head physician, Doctor Frederic Brussard, as they walked the grounds around the circumference of the old castle walls. It was a cold February day but the stone walls clipped the wind.
Brussard was an older man, perhaps fifty, with twinkling grey eyes and the gentle demeanor of a true healer. “We take patients on the recommendations of the referring field hospitals. These are the cases which confound the medical officers. Most, as you may have heard, are reluctant to declare a man unable to recuperate. Every soldier is expected to rally from his wounds and yearn to return to the front. But of course,” he said with a tinge of anger, “that is not true. A man who has lived in a rotten trench under fear of gun and bayonet and bomb cannon always find it in his heart to rise to the cry of‘patrie’. The noise, the unpredictability, the knowledge of what happens to their comrades over the wall in the dead zone—you call it ‘No Man’s Land’—is enough to call forth the hounds of hell in one’s soul.”
“I marvel that any can return,” she said as they took the turn into the main house where the Renaissance mullioned windows threw a rainbow of colors against their bodies as they headed back to his office. Two patients, each with leather masks over their lower jaws, nodded and hurried on.
“As do I. They must summon great courage,” he said.
Inside, they passed the great room to enter the small salon that had once been the Montmarceaus’ breakfast room.
“Please, do sit and join me to warm yourself. The orderly should soon bring us our tea and refreshment.”
She took the chair he offered near the huge stone fireplace. In her introductory letter to him, Katrina had outlined her background and current position in Paris. “I studied briefly Sigmund Freud’s ideas but with the war and these casualties in particular, I am more interested. I wonder if you consider publishing any findings you have about treatments that help your patients cope with their challenges.”
“You know Doctor Lieberman, of course, and his work. Also that of Doctor Aurore Boyer and her work with facial masks. The two you saw in the garden wear masks she sculpted. Her work helps with the initial confrontation of the patient with his family and his village. We have written, she and I, and I understand she wishes to begin to work with us here. Lieberman’s work will require a more advanced diagnosis. And we will need much information and many studies of patients to truly find a method of treatment.”
