Back from the Dead

Начало книги

Hess heard voices, but had to listen carefully, tune into the sound before he realized they were speaking English with a British accent. He hated the British and pictured Churchill in a newsreel, pontificating after the war, the fat man with the cigar, his righteous tone more righteous after defeating Germany. Hess opened his eyes looking up at the white blades of a fan slowly rotating above him. He was in a hospital ward, an infirmary, the last bed in a big white room filled with beds, Hess on his back, a lot of activity to his left, Negro nurses moving about, checking on Negro patients. Everyone he could see had black skin. For an Aryan who believed in racial purity this was hell, God playing a cruel joke on him.

It hurt to breathe, his lungs were burning and he had a pain in his upper chest. He touched it and felt a bandage through the hospital gown. He noticed there were IVs in both of his arms, which were badly sunburned. His last recollection was floating in the ocean, hanging onto a wood plank that had drifted by, a piece of wreckage, bobbing in the water like a wine cork, for a day at least, until someone rescued him. He remembered being pulled out of the water but his memory was hazy after that.

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