Jerusalem, Austrian Hospice
Scene 5
Maille came down to a hospice that was a combination of a fort of the Teutonic Knights, a monastery and an administration block. The hospice keeper was a good 50-year-old lady clad in a white habit, who kept her hands firmly folded together on her rather Protestant little tummy. She was respectfully known as «the sister» and presided with merciless mercy over an army of young women with pale faces on which was writ the ambition to achieve loftier goals. Wherever one went in the hospice, one saw Virgin Mary standing by one's side or a cross hanging above one's head, sometimes with and sometimes without the Son of God on it. The hospice was occupied mostly by pilgrims with solemn faces: people who set the mood for the day even as they were seated at the breakfast table – spreading Austrian honey over Israeli toast – with their earnest talk about eye operations and catheters.