She turned to the newspaper rack behind her, tore a piece, and jotted down something. “Here. The consulate’s address in German. When you take a taxi, you give this to the driver.”
Lola was helpful. I thanked her and tucked the slip into my handbag. But the men around me were growing rowdy; some had their gazes fixated on Lola—those were not friendly gazes.
“Ignore them. The times are strange, but as we Austrians often say, the situation is helpless but not entirely serious.” Lola held a menu, ready to order coffee.
“Well . . .”
“Our country has gone through some violent times, Grace. When Chancellor Dollfuss was assassinated four years ago, many of us feared the National Socialists would take over the government, but the party’s leaders were executed, and Schuschnigg was elected. Now he’s been arrested, and the National Socialists have seized power. But they won’t be in charge forever. Vienna will always be Vienna.”
The ease, the confidence in her tone. There was no reason not to trust her. “They have thick beards.” So thick they could hide an entire brood of birds from Dickinson’s household.
“Don’t be intimidated by those beards. It’s a Viennese thing. The Austrian men have a love affair with music and facial hair.”
I laughed. I hadn’t laughed like that since I left Chicago. And it felt good. I was thinking about what to say when suddenly the window near me exploded. A loud crash burst in my ears; instinctively, I slipped below the round table. A shower of cold shards rained on my head and neck. I shrieked.
“Grace, Grace? Are you hurt?” Lola’s voice came a moment later.
I pulled myself up, my knees weak. “I’m fine . . . What’s going on? What happened, Lola? Oh my God. What happened to you?”
Blood gushed on Lola’s face; a shard had cut deep in her cheek, just below her left eye. Half an inch higher, it would have pierced her eye. “Someone hit me with a coffee cup. It struck the window.”
I turned around. The Brownshirts were pointing at me, blustering in German. My brain froze.
“Let’s get out of here, Grace.”
I tried to walk but bumped into a table. A cup fell, splashing my wrist with black coffee. Lola turned around, grabbed my arm, and prodded me along. When we finally made it out of the door, all I could see were the cars driving by and the pedestrians with curious looks. I should have listened to Fengshan. First, the arrest in a park and now an assault in the coffeehouse. Was it me? Or Lola? Or Vienna?
I heard Lola say something but could barely understand her. Then suddenly, Lola’s face seemed to explode. Thick blood streamed down her chin, to her pendants, to the front of her dirndl—she had drawn out the shard.
“You’re bleeding! Oh no. Oh no.” I fumbled in my handbag—lipstick, bills, the slip of newspaper, Tiger Balm, and finally, my monogrammed silk handkerchief. “Here, take this. Do you want to take this? It’s mine. You can use it. You need to go to the hospital. Do you know any hospitals, Lola?”
She pressed my handkerchief onto her face; in an instant, red bloomed on the silk. “Vienna General Hospital is nearby.”
“Oh good. Let’s go there. Wait. Let’s take a taxi. Do you want to take a taxi?” And then, because she didn’t speak and I didn’t know what else to do, I hailed a taxi.
The ride was excruciatingly slow, passing the grand opera house, the Hofburg palace, and the equestrian statues in the Heroes’ Square. By the time we reached the hospital, my handkerchief was soaked, and the front of Lola’s dirndl dress had turned black, but the blood continued to ooze endlessly, and she had to borrow my glove. When we entered the hospital’s lobby, a stout man wearing glasses greeted us. He looked at me and then Lola and said something in German. One hand on her face, Lola dug into her wallet with the other, perhaps searching for an identification card, and fired away some German phrases rapidly. The pain must have been unbearable; her words were slurred. But the man nodded in understanding. I was relieved. Fengshan had admired Viennese hospitals greatly, praising their advanced equipment, well-trained physicians, and good care.
But something was not right. The man should have gotten Lola a seat or taken a look at her wound—the bleeding had fortunately just been stanched, and her entire face was swollen. But he, and the white-gowned nurses milling around the lobby, did nothing other than talk. In the end, Lola turned around. “We need to go to another place, Grace.”
“What’s wrong?”
“It’s a new law. The hospital is prohibited from accepting Jewish patients.”
“What? Are you sure? It’s a hospital. It’s supposed to treat all patients. And you need stitches and some morphine.”
She was trembling. “Let’s go to a Jewish doctor’s office.”
Had I been an eloquent diplomat’s wife, I would have questioned the staff in the hospital about the law and pleaded with them to make an exception to treat Lola. Instead, I bit my tongue and hailed another taxi—Lola needed stitches.
Soon we arrived at a clinic in an apartment on a narrow cobblestone street. Lola looked relieved. I held her arm—she was growing pale, her face a ruined orb of swollen purple, and her hands were as cold as ice.
Inside the Jewish clinic, two men in tall black hats spoke to her. Again, Lola showed her identification card, and again, a rapid exchange in German ensued. The men looked at each other, then called out, and a doctor in a white gown stepped into the room.
Finally.
The conversation between the doctor and Lola sounded promising; this was a Jewish clinic, after all, and the doctor looked sympathetic, his tone soothing, soft, but then Lola turned around. “Let’s go, Grace.”
“Wait. Are they going to give you stitches?”
“They can’t.” She stumbled outside and nearly crashed into a pot of red geraniums at the door. She steadied herself, leaning against the wall. The narrow street was quiet, without the sun.
“Why?”
“They are not allowed to accept half-Jewish patients. It’s another law.”
“What?”
Tears welled in her eyes, exhausted and bloodshot, and in an instant, they were tinged with the blood near her brow, but she looked up, and those tears didn’t fall, and her voice, even though intelligible, was the same, fearless and forceful. “I’m a Mischling.”
I actually remembered what that meant—she was like me, a woman of mixed blood. So a woman of mixed blood, Lola, was declined at a Christian hospital for being Jewish and declined at a Jewish clinic for being only half-Jewish.
I wrung, and wrung, the strap of my handbag. “This is unexpected . . . What are you going to do, Lola? You need stitches. What can you do, Lola?”
“Let’s try another clinic.”
“Yes, yes.” I held Lola’s arm and walked by her side. She was different from me, a weeper, and how many times had Mother shaken me, her hands on my neck, screaming, trying to instill in me some steeliness that she believed would do me good—Have some grit, Grace. Learn from your father, Grace. Yet I was never my father, a hero, a man who had the backbone to save her from five gangsters.
We left the narrow lane and came to a broad street with traffic lights. Nearby, a group of women, picking at flowers in a florist’s cart filled with white tulips and red carnations, frowned at us, and in front of a news kiosk, three men in double-breasted summer suits turned to watch us and mumbled something in German.