Ambulanta E preko 4G

Ambulanta E preko 4G. The partisans surely gave it this name for a very specific reason, but I would rather not know it. I would rather keep thinking about it like this, as an unsolvable enigma, an inexplicable mystery, a magical succession of sounds that immediately evoke secrecy, risk, adventure. Yet that Ambulanta at the beginning, that Ambulanta from the Latin ambulare, to go, proceed, walk, already seems to reveal much more than a hint of meaning on its own. It seems to explain everything right away.

In the two and a half years in which it was active, from the beginning of 1943 to the spring of 1945, in order to not be discovered the Ambulanta E preko 4G hospital had to be moved countless times: from Vršič to Pokrovec, from Pokrovec to Javornica , from Javornica to Konjska Dolina, up and down the calcareous ridges of the Pokljuka plateau, between forests, pastures, again forests, becoming sometimes a meadow, sometimes a tent, others an animal shelter or a wooden shack, depending on necessity. The movements of the hospital seem almost to have followed the same centuries-old movements of the shepherds, moving the herds from the valley floors to the pastures halfway up and finally to the high pastures under the spurs of the Triglav mountain group. 

Today we are left with its last version, a construction entirely made of wood, composed of two rooms with five bunk beds which could host ten people each. It has a small entrance where Miloš Kermavner, son of Alojz Kermavner, a partisan and patient of Ambulanta E, is now intent on hanging some laminated sheets with additional information and photos along with those that are already on the walls. Because of my uncertain Slovenian, I don't trust myself to ask him the questions I have, and limit myself to writing down the names of some of the protagonists of Ambulanta E depicted in the photos: the political delegate Sergej, the doctors Matjaž and Borut, the cook Alenka, nurse Rosvita. “Rosvita is still alive, she’s 97 years old, she lives in a retirement home in the nearby Srenja vas” he tells me.

As we start to go back down to visit Rosvita, I notice how Miloš helps the journalist Vlasta Felc so that she doesn't slip on the icy path. He follows her from behind, jumping from one side of the path to the other, depending on which side is more exposed, moving his arms frenetically as if getting ready to push her back if she were to fall. His movements are as frantic as they are useless, and looking at it from the outside this contrast takes on something that is moving, poetic: for a moment Ambulanta E seems to still be alive, here, now, while it's starting to get cold and we are surrounded by a very thick forest of trees and snow.