Chapter 11.
Amon's condition was getting worse day by day.
His fever was higher, he had chills and his frightening-looking seizures became more frequent. His shirt became so wet from his sweat that Helena had to remove it. It was no sense to have it dried and put it on him again, so she kept only the coat and his travelling rug on him as a cover and she wiped his chest dry regularly. Those travelling rugs into which the soldiers had wrapped him were thrown away on the first day.
Sometimes, when Amon didn't moan about the pain all over his body or when he didn't lie in delirium, he vomited water or twice some blood. Helena was eager to nourish him with fresh water to avoid his drying out and she hated being unable to ease his physical pain, but she tried to behave with him calmly. Sometimes she could have cried from disappointment and hopelessness, but she didn't want to upset the sick man.
The growing number of the swollen lymph nodes on his groin looked bigger and dark. Within twenty-four hours she counted five more new ones – one on his groin and four on the side of his neck. She wasn't disgusted by them anymore, she was just dead scared of the possibility of his dying.
Amon's condition bothered Helena far much more than her being cold and being hungry all the time. To tell the truth, she had so much to worry and so much to do around Amon that she had little time left for realising how much cold she actually was and how hungry she felt. She found some berries nearby on the wild bushes but that was all she could eat after the food she had packed for the journey was consumed.
Helena didn't lose her patience though she grew more and more disappointed and angry as the hours passed by. She hated that she could do nothing else for Amon but making him drink a little water when he was half-awake and able to swallow, and wash his body to make it cool and clean from sweat. She repeated it so many times within a day that she was getting used to the sight of his naked body and the act of touching him, and she was feeling less and less sick of it.
She was scared of losing him and seeing him die. She didn't want him to die – for the first time it was her biggest fear. She wasn't afraid of staying alone – she was afraid of staying without him. What frightened her more actually was the discovery that her feelings started to change towards him. She felt less sickness and less hatred for him. She thought it was only because of his helplessness. He is like a baby now, she thought, he cannot defend or take care of himself, and it makes me worry about him, it makes me feel like a mother for her child, because I want to defend him, to take care of him, to help him to heal. She could find no other reasons for her behaviour and for her emotions.
She couldn't understand herself.
I wanted him to die when we were in the camp, she thought bitterly sometimes, I wanted him to feel pain, to be tortured and to die, when he was beating me up. But now when he was so close to death, she didn't want him to leave at all. I don't need him, I don't even care about surviving the plague, then why don't I want to get rid of him so badly like I used to want it, she asked herself. She didn't intend to think about it much, she had enough tasks to do to keep Amon alive. But in the evening and during the night when he seemed to feel a little better and his fever was a little lower, her thoughts about him came rushing to her. She didn't understand her own feelings but she felt that there was something she didn't dare to face now. When she looked at him, she didn't see the cruel Herr Kommandant – only a suffering man. And when she remembered all the physical and mental cruelty she had received from him – for the first time she didn't feel how hatred and anger were filling her veins. It was another thing that made her scared.
On the third night another sudden thing happened that seemed to push Helena out of her mind. Amon was tossing around in his dream, fuelled by fever and pain, when suddenly he grabbed Helena's hand. It was by accident because he was unconscious and he had no idea what he was doing or saying. As an instinct, she didn't pull her hand away and when she realised whose hand she was holding, she didn't force his fingers off from her own.
She didn't feel any shame now that surprised her very much. She remembered how disgusted and ashamed she had felt when she had had to hold Amon's hand at the railway station. She remembered feeling like a traitor, a whore of a Nazi. However, those feeling were nowhere to be found now and she found the fact alarming. I just want to help him, she thought, trying to soothe herself, he needs it now, he needs me now. But when she obtained some courage to think about that deeper, she had to admit that somehow his touch now gave her a sense of security and calmness – another unbelievable change that she couldn't comprehend. She was so confused that she fell asleep, holding his hand all along the night.
She had insomnia since they had to leave the train, and she became so exhausted that she couldn't imagine how she was still able to stay awake, stay sane and take care of Amon. The astonishing fact that she didn't become ill of the plague, didn't surprise her at all while she found it shockingly disturbing that she could finally get some deep, dreamless sleep, with his long warm fingers intertwined around hers. Still, from that night she started to spend the nights holding his hand while she was trying to sleep and to have a little rest. For her surprise, it always helped her to sleep and calm down.
Once she even had a dream about her family – they all attended a delicious dinner in the garden of an unknown house and they had an amazing time together. Before she woke up from that beautiful dream, she could see Amon, watching her with a lovely smile, while leaning to an apple tree only a few meters from them. That smile warmed her whole body up and she felt something strange inside her heart – even after she woke up in reality. But she decided not to think about that feeling or about her dream – she refused to deal with emotions and dreams while Amon was on the edge of death and she was too busy to think about anything else but him, she told to herself.
On the sixth morning Amon suddenly opened his eyes and looked at Helena.
- You were my prisoner in Kraków-Płaszów but now I am your prisoner. – as soon as he pronounced these words, he fell asleep.
Helena didn't care much about what he said – she was scared that he had another, deeper and more dangerous kind of delirium. She checked his forehead and she felt that his temperature had risen since last night. She hurried for fresh water and then started the usual routine of the hourly bath of his body.
Days went by and Amon's condition didn't seem to improve, however, it didn't seem to be worse either. Helena felt that time had stopped and they were hanging in the middle of nothing together. She didn't know what to do and she had no one to turn to for advice or help. Her only companion was unconscious and she was left alone with her mind that tortured her with more and more questions. Sometimes she became so disappointed and so full of anger that she wished everything would end finally. But the next morning both Amon and she were alive again.
On the twelfth day Amon opened his eyes. His face was very pale, he opened his eyelids with great effort and he seemed to be dead tired. Helena didn't dare to believe that his fever had disappeared even though his forehead and his cheeks were almost lukewarm. When she caressed his forehead unintentionally, his eyes opened wide and he whispered her name softly.
Helena smiled and sighed a little. Deep inside she knew now that Amon survived the plague.
- Helena…
She leaned a little closer to him to be able to hear his words. Even his voice sounded so exhausted. He must have been very exhausted as he had been fighting with death in the last thirteen days.
- Herr Kommandant?
Amon took a deeper breath, then replied slowly.
- Thank you.
His sleepy, blue eyes expressed his gratitude deeper than his weak voice, and they made Helena tremble. She didn't give an answer and Amon fell asleep again at the following moment.
But this time she didn't need to worry. His fever had gone, and after she checked the swollen lymph nodes, she had to see that half of them disappeared while the others had become so small like a nail of her little finger.
The next morning, around at eleven o'clock a train arrived and stopped, seeing Helena standing on the rails, waving wildly with her white scarf. She knew that she had very few chances to catch a vehicle that would take them to Vienna where they could find food, accommodation and medical help.
Two soldiers got off immediately and without any questions they helped Amon get on the train, who was too weak to walk on his own feet. These soldiers showed him respect when they got to know who he was. Helena was glad that he was half asleep because she was sure how much he would have hated knowing that he was carried up on the train like a helpless baby or a suitcase.
In the carriage one of the soldiers brought some bread and cheese and finally Helena could eat. She cut the bread and the cheese into small pieces to feed Amon who was sitting next to her, forcing himself to stay in that sitting position with all his power. All he could do was sitting but he had almost no strength in his limbs. He felt really ashamed that he had to be fed like a baby, while Helena's fingers were holding the pieces of food in front of his lips, but he was terribly weak and it was already a huge task for him to sit straight.
They were eating together, she put the food into his, then into her mouth. She didn't even blush when her fingertips touched his lips and she could feel its warmness and softness. It was nothing after seeing and touching his naked body everywhere, several times a day for more than a week.
Suddenly Amon whispered while Helena was cutting a few more pieces of bread and cheese. She tried to eat as much as possible and she wanted to do the same with him. Both of them needed strength and stamina to continue their journey, and they needed food badly.
- Helena.
She stopped cutting and she looked at him curiously.
- Herr Kommandant?
- You saved my life.
The tone of his voice and his tender blue eyes made her tremble inside. She tried to reply confidently but her own voice sounded just weakly as Amon's.
- God saved you.
Amon kept his eyes on hers strongly, in spite of his condition.
- God wasn't there beside me, holding my hand, nourishing me with water, washing me, seeing my disgusting body, looking after me. You were.
Helena blushed and looked away embarrassed. She wished she had been somewhere else and that Amon would have forgotten everything about those days.
Amon was so polite and tactful that he didn't force to discuss the topic any longer, however he was examining her face carefully and he wondered how come she was able to take care of him, care about him, touch him, him, the monster whom she hated so deeply.
She didn't want to remember her undressing him, touching his naked body, and she didn't want him to be thankful. He had saved her from the concentration camp, from dying in one of the unhealthy barracks, from being shot by the guards and now he was taking her into the freedom. You don't need to feel thankful at all, she thought, because I just returned what you had done for me, I just paid my debt towards you and we are almost equal now.
She was trying to push those pictures of herself pulling his shirt apart, touching his chest and his soft warm skin, holding his fingers among hers, caressing his feverish cheek, away. Those ugly swollen lymph nodes were less embarrassing for her than those memories, than the feelings that they created now. They were free from abhorrence and repulsion, just as her heart showed no more anger or hatred when she looked at him. She felt a little angry with herself that a couple of days of physical intimacy with him and seeing him defenceless could turn her own heart against herself.
