"Uris, Leon - QBVII" - читать интересную книгу автора (Uris Leon M)
'Yes, all right.'
'I'll wait.'
As he walked the long dim corridor, it was obvious Angela Brown's admiration was more than professional. It had been but a few short months that they had worked together in surgery. From the onset she was impressed by his skill and a kind of dedicated zeal in which he performed half as many operations again as most of his colleagues. His hands were magnificent.
It all happened rather plainly. Angela Brown, a commonplace sort in her mid-thirties, had been a capable nurse for a decade. A first short marriage ended in divorce. The great love of her life, a Polish flyer in the RAF, was shot down over the Channel.
Adam Kelno was nothing like her fighter pilot so it became a new kind of love. A rather magic spot in time the instant he peered over his mask and caught her eye as she placed instruments in his hands, his quick decisive hands, and the closeness of spirit as they worked together as a team to save a human life. The exhilaration of a successful operation. The exhaustion of a failure after a difficult battle.
They were so lonely, both of them, and so it happened in a very undramatic but lovely manner.
Adam entered the visitors' lounge. It was very late. The operation had lasted more than three hours. There was a look of stunned anticipation on Madame Baczewski's face. Afraid to ask. Adam took her hand, bowed slightly and kissed it, then sat beside her.
'Jerzy has left us. It was very peaceful.' She nodded, but dared not speak. 'Is there anyone I should call, Madame Baczewski?' 'No. There was only us. We are the only survivors.' 'I think we had better put you in a room here.' She tried to speak but her mouth went into a trembling spasm and tiny little grunts of agony emerged. 'He said ... get me to Dr. Kelno ... he kept me alive in the concentration camp ... get me to Dr. Kelno.'
Angela arrived and took charge. Adam whispered to have her put under.
'When I first met Jerzy Baczewski he was so strong like a bull. He was a great Pole, one of our foremost dramatists. We knew the Germans were out to destroy the intelligentsia and we had to keep him alive at any price. This surgery was not that difficult. A healthy man would have gotten through this, but he had no stamina left after two years in that putrid hell hole.'
'Darling, it was you that told me a good surgeon has to be impersonal. You did everything,...'
'Sometimes I don't believe my own words. Jerzy died a betrayed man. Lonely, his country taken from him, and a memory of unbelievable terror.'
'Adam, you've been in surgery half the night. Here, darling, take your tea.'
'I want a drink.'
He poured a stiff one, tossed it down, and poured another. 'All Jerzy wanted was a child. What kind of a damned tragedy are we? What kind of curse is on us? Why can't we live?'
The bottle was empty. He chewed at his knuckles.
Angela ran her fingers through that thicket of white hair.
Then she sat on the footstool before him and laid her head in his lap. 'Dr. Novak called me aside today,' she said. 'He told me to get you out of the hospital for a little rest or you're going to break down.'
'What the hell does August Novak know. Get me another drink.'
'My God, turn it off.'
As he began to arise she grabbed his hands and held him, then looked pleading and kissed his fingers, each one.
'Don't cry, Angela, please don't cry.'
'My auntie has a lovely little cottage at Folkestone. I'm going to stay with her next week and I'm sure there'd be a welcome for you too.'
'Perhaps I am a little tired,' he said.
The evening chill was dulled by a crackling fire that threw odd shadows over the old low-beamed ceiling of the cottage. The last lovely day had ended and tomorrow they would return to the hospital.
A sudden moroseness came over Adam. He drank rather heavily. 'I'm sorry it's over,' he mumbled. 'I don't remember such a beautiful week.'
'It need not end,' she said.
'Everything for me must end. I can have nothing that is not taken from me. Everyone I have ever loved has been taken from me. My wife, my mother, my brothers. Any who have survived are in virtual slavery in Poland. I can make no commitments, never again.'
'I've never asked for one,' she said.
'Angela, I want to love you, but you see, if I do, I'll lose you too.'
'What's the difference, Adam? We'll end up losing each other without even giving it a chance.'
'There's more to it, you know that. I am afraid for myself as a man. I have this deadly fear of impotence and it's not the drinking that does it. It's ... so many things that happened in that place.'
'I'll keep you strong, Adam,' she said.
He reached out and touched her cheek and she kissed his hands. 'Your hands. Your beautiful hands.'
'Angela, would you give me a child right away?'
'Yes, my darling darling.'
Angela became pregnant a few months after their marriage.
Dr. August Novak, executive surgeon of the Sixth Polish Hospital, returned to private practice and, in a surprise move, Adam Kelno was moved over a number of seniors to be named head of the hospital.
Administrative work was not what Adam desired but the enormous responsibilities at the Jadwiga Concentration Camp had trained him for it. Along with budgets and politics, he managed to keep his sure hand in as a surgeon.
It was so good to come home these days. The Kelno cottage in Groombridge Village was a few miles from the hospital at Tunbridge Wells. Angela's belly was filling beautifully with their child and in the evenings they would walk, as always, hand in hand in communicative silence up the wooded path to Toad Rock and take their tea at the quaint little cafe. Adam drank much less these days.
On an evening in July he signed out at the hospital and his orderly put in the groceries in the rear seat of the car. He drove to the centre of town and in the Pantiles Colonnade he bought a bouquet of roses and made for Groombridge.
Angela did not answer to his ring. This always gave him a start. The fear of losing her hovered behind every tree of the forest. Adam juggled the grocery sack and fished for his key. Wait! The door was not locked. He opened it.
'Angela!'
His wife sat on the edge of a chair in the living room, ashen-faced. Adam's eyes went to the two men hovering over her.
'Dr. Kelno?' 'Yes.'
'Inspector Ewbank, Scotland Yard.'
'Inspector Henderson,' the second man said, holding out his identification.
'What do you want? What are you doing here?'
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