The Kurhotel Waldesruh keeps a brass gong for meals and a nurse for every corridor, and I have been told to rest by both. I am Henriette, twenty-six, sent here in the summer of 1913 with two trunks and a broken engagement my mother refers to as my indisposition. The spa physician prescribes rest, warm baths, and no novels after nine.
His assistant prescribes something else.
Dr. Julius Brandt is thirty, plainly dressed, from a family nobody here has heard of, and on my first morning he catches me on the terrace with a book I'm not supposed to have. He doesn't confiscate it. He reads the title upside down, raises an eyebrow, and says, “A French novel. Your nerves must be very strong.”
“My nerves are perfectly well. It's my reputation that's convalescing.”
He laughs, which the other doctors never do, and sits on the balustrade in a manner that would give Frau Doktor Meissner palpitations. “Rest is prescribed for women who have done nothing,” he says. “What did you actually do, Fräulein?”
No one has asked me that. They have asked what was done to me, what was said, how I bear it. I tell him the truth: that I ended the engagement, that I did it in front of the man's mother, that I would do it again. He listens with his head tilted and doesn't say I was brave or that I was foolish. He says, “Then rest will kill you. Walk with me at seven tomorrow. The doctor never rises before eight.”
The gong sounds for luncheon. He stands and bows, correctly, in front of everyone, as if he has just discussed my pulse. Inside, the ladies are watching. Outside, the path into the pines is still wet from the night, and I have until seven to decide whether I am the kind of woman who is seen walking with a doctor's assistant before breakfast.