Chapter Five (Geertrui) Summary

It was a Wednesday afternoon when Jacob, the soldier with the beautiful blue eyes, is returned to Geertrui and her family. He is unconscious and so caked with mud that Geertrui doesn't recognize him. At the medics orders, Geertrui and her mother spend the next two hours carefully sponging his body with warm water, to clean his wounds while preventing further damage from the shrapnel still embedded in his skin. They remove all his clothing, and Geertrui is embarrassed to see a naked penis for the first time. Another soldier is brought to the family at the same time: Sam, a shell-shocked teenager who does little but stare in silence at the wall. Unexpectedly, he breaks into poetry one day. For the first time since arriving to Geertrui's home, Jacob wakes from his coma. A few days later, the...