Winter of the World

The University Hospital was in Mitte, the central area of Berlin where the von Ulrichs lived, so Carla and Frieda had a short bicycle ride. Carla began to feel nervous. The fumes from car exhausts nauseated her, and she wished she had not eaten breakfast. They reached the hospital, a new building put up in the twenties, and found their way to the room of Professor Bayer, who had the job of recommending a student for the scholarship. A haughty secretary said they were early and told them to wait.

Carla wished she had worn a hat and gloves. That would have made her look older and more authoritative, like someone sick people would trust. The secretary might have been polite to a girl in a hat.

The wait was long, but Carla was sorry when it came to an end and the secretary said the professor was ready to see her.

Frieda whispered: ‘Good luck!’

Carla went in.

Bayer was a thin man in his forties with a small grey moustache. He sat behind a desk, wearing a tan linen jacket over the waistcoat of a grey business suit. On the wall was a photograph of him shaking hands with Hitler.

He did not greet Carla, but barked: ‘What is an imaginary number?’

She was taken aback by his abruptness, but at least it was an easy question. ‘The square root of a negative real number; for example, the square root of minus one,’ she said in a shaky voice. ‘It cannot be assigned a real numerical value but can, nevertheless, be used in calculations.’

He seemed a bit surprised. Perhaps he had expected to floor her completely. ‘Correct,’ he said after a momentary hesitation.

She looked around. There was no chair for her. Was she to be interviewed standing up?

He asked her some questions on chemistry and biology, all of which she answered easily. She began to feel a bit less nervous. Then he suddenly said: ‘Do you faint at the sight of blood?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Aha!’ he said triumphantly. ‘How do you know?’

‘I delivered a baby when I was eleven years old,’ she said. ‘That was quite bloody.’

‘You should have sent for a doctor!’

‘I did,’ she said indignantly. ‘But babies don’t wait for doctors.’

‘Hmm.’ Bayer stood up. ‘Wait there.’ He left the room.

Carla stayed where she was. She was being subjected to a harsh test, but so far she thought she was doing all right. Fortunately, she was used to give-and-take arguments with men and women of all ages: combative discussions were commonplace in the von Ulrich house, and she had been holding her own with her parents and brother for as long as she could remember.

Bayer was gone for several minutes. What was he doing? Had he gone to fetch a colleague to meet this unprecedentedly brilliant girl applicant? That seemed too much to hope for.

She was tempted to pick up one of the books on his shelf and read, but she was scared of offending him, so she stood still and did nothing.

He came back after ten minutes with a pack of cigarettes. Surely he had not kept her standing in the middle of the room all this time while he went to the tobacconist’s shop? Or was that another test? She began to feel angry.

He took his time lighting up, as if he needed to collect his thoughts. He blew out smoke and said: ‘How would you, as a woman, deal with a man who had an infection of the penis?’

She was embarrassed, and felt herself blush. She had never discussed the penis with a man. But she knew she had to be robust about such things if she wanted to be a doctor. ‘In the same way that you, as a man, would deal with a vaginal infection,’ she said. He looked horrified, and she feared she had been insolent. Hastily she went on: ‘I would examine the infected area carefully, try to establish the nature of the infection, and probably treat it with sulphonamide, although I have to admit we did not cover this in my school biology course.’

He said sceptically: ‘Have you ever seen a naked man?’

‘Yes.’

He affected to be outraged. ‘But you are a single girl!’

‘When my grandfather was dying he was bedridden and incontinent. I helped my mother keep him clean – she could not manage on her own, he was too heavy.’ She tried a smile. ‘Women do these things all the time, Professor, for the very young and the very old, the sick and the helpless. We’re used to it. It’s only men who find such tasks embarrassing.’

He was looking more and more cross, even though she was answering well. What was going wrong? It was almost as if he would have been happier for her to be intimidated by his manner and to give stupid replies.

He put out his cigarette thoughtfully in the ashtray on his desk. ‘I’m afraid you are not suitable as a candidate for this scholarship,’ he said.

She was astonished. How had she failed? She had answered every question! ‘Why not?’ she said. ‘My qualifications are irreproachable.’

‘You are unwomanly. You talk freely of the vagina and the penis.’

‘It was you who started that! I merely answered your question.’

‘You have clearly been brought up in a coarse environment where you saw the nakedness of your male relatives.’