I opened my eye a little. I could see a candle light. My eye opened wider. I saw a woman coming toward me. I screamed and shut my eye. Again I felt the warm hand on my forehead. I was hardly breathing. I waited another eternity. The hand went away. As I lay there in fear, I wondered if it was a real woman or a vision. She was no one I had seen before. She came closer again and lifted a container of water to my lips, but I could not lift my head to drink it.
“Where does it hurt you?” she said in Russian, but with a foreign accent. I wanted to answer, but no words came. I pointed to my stomach and gagged a little. It was too much effort. I began to feel ill, writhing in nausea. I felt a thin slice of preserved lemon thrust through my lips. My lips smarted. I clutched them with my hand. There was something wrong with my lips, my left arm, my head, my ankle and nose. She had bandaged my abdomen. I was too miserable to care. The lemon preserve soothed the nausea. I sucked it eagerly but hardly tasted it, it was so washed with tears. I lay there stupefied as my eye fastened on the lighted candle. It was so frightening, so bewildering: the tomb, the candle, the woman. The flame flickered and almost went out as she moved.
Again startled, my eye moved around to find that once more the woman was creeping down the wall; a few steps and she was at my side. She lifted the candle nearer, placed it on the little table beside my bed, set down a basin of water, threw back my covers, and began to undo the bandage about my stomach. Without a glance at my face she washed my wound and deftly rebandaged it. Still without looking at my face, she unbandaged my leg, bathed and bandaged it again. She dressed my head wounds, washed my face and hands, picked up her basin and disappeared up the wall and through the ceiling.
Fascinated and yet horrified, I stared at the spot where she disappeared. Suddenly two feet appeared again, a skirt, a woman coming down. She was at my side and placed another thin slice of this rare lemon preserve to my lips. She looked at me for a minute. Then she climbed up the wall and was gone.
I did not know where I was, but now I could see a trap door and a ladder of not too many rungs leading up to it. I have a clear picture of the woman’s face as she nursed me. She had nice features, black eyes; the hair, perhaps dark brown once was now partly gray and pulled back tight into a knot at the back of her head. She seemed no older than my Mother. Her hands were long and slender; she was tall and thin. She did not look like a peasant, but her general appearance told me she was no stranger to hardship. She was confident and efficient but did not seem to be a professional nurse.
For a moment I forgot my aches and pains. I wanted to know who this person was. How did an utter stranger happen to be with me? How did I get here? How long ago had things happened? Perhaps several days, since I felt crusted dry blood on the left side of my eyebrow, nose and cheek. My hair was matted and stiff with blood, crumbs of dried blood covered my pillow. My left leg was so sore I could hardly move it. My finger nails were packed with stained matter. But where was my family? I was afraid to think. My head hammered, my jaws ached, my ears rang. Every little emotion—every motion—was an agonizing experience. I must have cried myself to sleep, for I awoke sobbing. Perhaps it was a nightmare. It could not be that I, the little one, always protected and spared could be alone. Now the woman was moving about near me. Were they, too, being cared for by strangers? I sobbed until sleep overtook me. There was no way of measuring time. I wept until I slept to wake up sobbing until I wept myself to sleep again.
After the sobbing a violent nausea seized me and the woman rushed up the ladder to bring me a drink of water. She sponged my lips and fed me with a spoon. All too soon I discovered why my lip was sore. My two upper front teeth were broken and driven almost through the upper lip. One of these front teeth had been filled in Tobolsk by Dr. Kostritsky who took care of Mother’s false tooth and Father’s teeth. Several of my teeth, in the lower left jaw, were also loose; they merely were in place. There was a small hole in my right cheek and a piece of flesh was missing.
Sleep was the only respite. Wakefulness brought nothing but horror and haunting thoughts. I welcomed sharp pain as it distracted my thinking. How long this orgy of weeping and sleeping kept up I have no idea. Occasional moments of composure wedged themselves in as I realized I felt better. Immediately desperation drove me into fresh weeping. I wanted to die. I was afraid to think.
All the time the woman worked tirelessly to make me comfortable. I could not help but feel sorry to see her climb up and down the ladder to bring me something when her efforts seemed to do me so little good. She was thorough but gentle. She changed my dressings often. While she busied herself with me, I kept my eyes closed—the sight of her accentuated my loneliness. She seemed cruelly impersonal as she worked over me. She wanted to do a good and thorough job. If she would only speak to me, give me some sign of sympathy, that I might know she felt friendly! She always avoided meeting my eyes, eyes that now squinted through smarting slits, so sore were they from constant crying.
Her care was faithful but she seemed oblivious to the hungry soul inside me. She washed my scalp wound but made no attempt to comb my matted hair. Each passing day there were fewer and fewer bits of dried blood on the pillow. Finally she cut my hair on the two spots of my scalp in order to keep the wound clean. The deep round hole in front of my ankle and the wounds in my back were still painful.