Welcome back to Weekend Writing Warriors, where participants share 8 sentences from a book or WIP. I’ve been sharing excerpts from a hiatused WIP with the working title Malchen and Pali, part of an interconnected series that’s a spin-off of sorts from my Atlantic City books. All my European-born characters have some sort of ultimate connection to my Atlantic City characters, starting with Katherine “Sparky” Brandt’s old friends Isaiah, Lazarus, and Amalia (Malchen) von Hinderburg.
It’s Halloween 1952, and Pali Weiss has proposed to 19-year-old Malchen. She responds by saying that she loves him but can’t marry him, since she can’t have children. Pali wants to know just why she’s so convinced of her infertility when they’ve never even been intimate and she’s never been to a doctor. Painted into a corner, she tells him the brutal truth about why she can’t give him all those little Weisses he’s so eager to have. He knows she received a medically unnecessary surgery as a girl, but not what exactly it entailed.
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“That Polish doctor who saved my life told me the Nazi butchers had ripped out my womb and at least one ovary. He wasn’t sure if both were taken out, but I was under such a large amount of radiation that even if one had remained intact, it would probably never function. Even if it were still there, he was right about its uselessness. I’ve never menstruated. Even on the odd chance that it ever starts to work, if it’s even there at all, there would be nowhere for a baby to grow. I am a dead end, and you don’t deserve to have your family line end with you. You’re a good-looking guy, and can easily find anyone else, someone who can have children. It is a sin for a man to marry a woman he knows to be barren.”
Once the uterus is gone, ovaries don’t matter—at least, not during this time period. What a horrible thing! I can only hope the doctor was wrong . . .
So sad. The Nazis had so much to answer for.
Very tragic. I hope he’s going to be okay with all this – you’ve really made me care about these two characters over the weeks of excerpts.
God, so sad. Makes me want to cry. Also makes me ask why? So much of what the Nazis did made no sense. Why put a little girl through that? Also makes me think of my aunt, who got IUD in Germany that left her infertile.
Heartbreaking, given his expectations.
devastating for both of them. I too hopes she seeks another doctor and that the Polish one was wrong. But if he’s set on children and she can’t have them…well, I wouldn’t want him to blame her in the end if they married. Such a tragic snippet. But very well done.
Poor Malchen! Echoing everyone else’s sentiments: I hope the Polish doctor was wrong.
Aww… Poor Malchen. I wonder what Pali’s reaction is going to be.
Very heart felt snippet. I’ve been following this one right along. I wonder if Pali will care? Suggest to see a real doctor? Fascinating story line.
A sad snippet to be sure, but I will say, with all the attention given to the details on how she’s infertile, it makes me think that, down the line, we’ll find out she’s not. That would be my expectation if I were reading this book. Just sayin’.
How very sad for them both. Devastating news.