14
Dear Diary,
Vicent has died.
My brother Vicent is dead, and I wasn”t even by his side when it happened.
I have been volunteering at the hospital blood bank for at least three months. When I arrived, they asked me what I could do. I answered that the only thing I could do well was sew, and they told me that my skills would be welcome in the operating room. I thought it was a joke, but it wasn”t.
In this time, I have seen suffering in all its forms. Bodies mutilated by shrapnel, gangrenous rotting limbs, grown men crying as they realized they would never return home or kiss their wives again. But nothing I have experienced prepared me for the horror of suddenly losing my twin brother like this.
The week dawned gray and seemingly quiet, but one thing I learned on my first day here was that, in times of war, quiet never lasts, and silence doesn’t always bode well.
One always thinks that misfortunes only happen to others. In war, we are all theothers, and death makes no distinction.
On Monday, my worst nightmare came true. Among the evacuees from the frontline was Vicent, badly wounded and unconscious. There were several others, some from the International Brigades. I thought they were Russians because of the way they sang as they spoke. Vicent had a deep gunshot wound in his side and had lost a lot of blood, but the surgeon assured me that he would heal and that he only needed rest and care.
I told myself that if fate brought us here together, it was because only I could save him. I would be by his side for as long as it took. My brother would live, as my name was Maria del Carmen. I spent every night by his side, holding his hand.
One night, I fell asleep at the foot of his bed and was awakened by the rhythmic tapping of a hard object on the floor. Alarmed, I jumped to my feet. Behind me, thin and gaunt, was one of the Russians who had arrived at the hospital the same day as Vicent. He was barely able to stand upright, awkwardly hanging on to a crutch he didn”t yet know how to use. The smile he gave me was twisted by the pain he felt with each step, and he spoke to me in a mixture of Spanish, Italian, and sign language.
“I can”t sleep,” he said.
“I”ll go see if I can find you some painkillers,” I replied, smoothing down my uniform with my hands.
He understood me but shook his head.
“No need,” he said and pointed to my brother. “Tuo fratello?”
“Brother. He”s my brother,” I answered, prompting him. “His name is Vicent. You were with him when he was shot, weren”t you?”
The man nodded and, in doing so, stumbled. I pulled up a chair for him to sit on. His leg didn”t look very good.
“Are you Russian?” I asked.
“Yugoslavian,” he corrected me. “My name is Jakob. And you?”
I never got to answer him because a second later, the antiaircraft alarms sounded, and panic took over the hospital.
“To the shelters, to the shelters!”
Nurses and convalescents shouted in unison as they ran in disarray, leaving behind those unable to fend for themselves.
I debated between running or staying with Vicent. I couldn”t leave him there, alone and unconscious, at the mercy of the bombardiers. I tried to get him out of bed by putting one of my arms behind his back and another under his knees, but he was too heavy for me. The Yugoslavian soldier saw me and guessed my intentions. He made a gesture to help me, but I refused his assistance. He was barely on his feet; it would have been impossible for him to carry Vicent as well.
“Get out of here!” I shouted at him, waving my hands. “Go downstairs, to the shelter!”
I continued to struggle with the inert body of my brother for a few seconds. They seemed eternal, as the first detonations could be heard like thunder in the distance. I wrapped my arms around his torso, holding him under his armpits, and the Yugoslavian man helped by carrying my brother’s legs. We staggered across the room as best we could and made it to the door. As we crossed the landing that led to the stairs, the explosions were getting closer and closer. We went down a couple of steps, breathing heavily; those who could run overtook us without looking at us. We hadn”t even gone down a floor when the Russian stumbled and fell flat on his face, almost tumbling down the stairs. The full weight of my brother fell on top of me like an anvil, crushing me to the ground.
“We need to keep going!” shouted the wounded soldier, helping himself up with the railing. “They”re here!”
I knew we wouldn’t make it to the shelter in time.
“I can”t do this,” I said. “He’s too heavy. You go on. I”ll stay here with my brother.”
The soldier raised his voice in anger and tried to convince me to run away. When he understood that I had no intention of abandoning Vicent, he sat down next to me and stretched his bad leg out on the steps to wait by our side.
I will never understand why he did it. Perhaps it was only because his leg would have prevented him from escaping anyway. In any case, I was touched by his solidarity.
“My name is Carmen,” I said in a trembling voice, reaching for his hand in search of comfort.
The next thing I remembered was the hospital windows exploding. Then, the anguished screams of the patients who couldn’t leave their beds while the building became a replica of hell.
* * *
When silence descended, I opened my eyes, dreading what I would see. A cloud of dust filled the air, and the ground was covered with debris and shards of glass as far as the eye could see. I coughed. Next to me, the Yugoslavian seemed to be in a deep trance, his back against the dusty railing and his gaze unseeing. I remembered how his hand had trembled between my fingers during the bombing, but he had never let go.
Vicent was still breathing, though the rumbling of his lungs was less frequent and sounded like the creaking of a gate at the mercy of the wind. Moving him from his bed had been a mistake, and I cursed myself for my stupidity.
Jakob kept squeezing my hand, tapping it as if playing a melody on a piano. He was a stranger, but his presence was the pillar that kept me sane in the midst of the chaos.
Gradually, the most daring began to emerge from the shelters, and footsteps could be heard on the stairs. Then, the sound of ambulances, people barking orders, and cries for help came from all directions.
“You need to get off the staircase,” a passing nurse shouted at us. “You’re blocking the way.”
“And where do we take him?” I asked in a quiet voice.
“If he has a bed, take him there. If not, lay him down in that corner of the landing for the time being.”
The hospital had withstood the attack well, but the wounded kept arriving, many of them critical. The Yugoslavian and I watched the scene in a trance, paralyzed, not knowing what to do or where to go.
“Why are you standing there? Don”t you have anything to do?” a doctor asked me.
I stood up from my brother”s side and looked at the man in the white gown.
“Stay with him, please,” I asked Jakob. “If he gets worse, please get help.”
Jakob nodded, and I was swallowed up by the turbulent field hospital and its inhabitants.
* * *
In the late afternoon, after a nightmarish day of pulling out shrapnel, I managed to return to the place where I had abandoned my brother and the Yugoslavian.
But they were no longer there.
I went through every floor looking for them, but they had vanished.
At last, I found Jakob, who looked at me and shook his head.
“I”m sorry,” was all he said.
Maria Pilar, my mentor since my arrival, entered the room at that very moment.
“He left us at noon while you were in surgery. I was looking for you to give you the news...”
“No!” I cried, feeling weak at the knees.
As I clung to the foot of a bed, my head was spinning. It couldn”t be; surely, they were talking about someone else. My brother was eighteen years old, and the doctor had said he would live. He had assured me so without hesitation. Maria Pilar hugged me, but I shoved her away.
“No, don”t hug me! Where”s my brother? It can’t have been Vicent!”
Maria Pilar offered me a painkiller and a glass of water, and I threw them against the wall, raging and blinded by the pain. Several people tried to hold me down as I screamed like a madwoman.
I felt someone take my hand, gently squeezing it with their fingers one at a time as if playing a melody on the piano.
Jakob.
Just as he had done during the bombing, his fingers brought me back to my senses, and I collapsed onto the floor in tears and exhausted. He sat down beside me, helping himself with the crutch.
“I understand you better than you think,” he whispered in a mixture of languages. “Cry, Carmen. It will do you good.”
I have seen many people die in a very short time, but the pang in my heart since I lost Vicent is the most painful thing I have ever experienced in my life. I feel the loss of my brother as I would if an arm or a leg was torn off me. I’ve thought about throwing in the towel and returning to Valencia to my mother and Teresa. But maybe I should stay here and serve the cause that my brother sacrificed his life for.