Willie set me up at the top of the palace. Because of his power, no one could touch me. He came to me almost every day. Once, he lay over my knees (by now they had some meat back on them) with his limp sex dangling between my legs, and told me to beat him with his pretty little whip. I whipped as hard as I could, feeling his sex growing and hardening. He was in heaven by the time he got on top of me. He said he loved me. Maybe deep down he thought he needed to be punished for killing Jews. I doubt it though. He just loved the pain. It became a regular part of our sex.
I knew nothing about sex. I didn’t know about my own clitoris until Willie showed me. He kissed and sucked and fingered it so much, I began to think I loved him. He was food and warmth, champagne and sex. The sex helped me escape my own head.
Then things got bad at Chelmno. They blew up the palace in spring of 1943 and tried to pretend it wasn’t a death camp.
Willie was addicted to me, and I was to him. He put me in a farmhouse outside of Lodz and came to me on weekends. The farmer’s wife was a grouchy old witch. The farmer liked me. The gleam in his eyes when he looked at me.
The wife loved vodka. The husband took advantage of this, and he plied her with vodka every night. If she ever wondered why, she didn’t let on. Then he came to me, the gleam in his eyes turning murderous when he threatened me into silence.
I played along. He was no Willie and probably knew as much about a clitoris as I did before Willie. I let him stick his smelly sausage into me, and it was over fast. Vodka, his wife’s sleeping pill, was my reward. Oh, and more food at the table. Not bad.
Then weekends were for Willie and the real sex. He had me screaming and crying and shouting for joy. I hoped the farmer and his wife had knocked themselves out with vodka. But I didn’t really care one way or the other.
Those Germans never gave up. They held on like Hitler’s German shepherd Blondie burying his teeth in a bone and refusing to let go. They reopened Chelmno in the spring of 1944, and Willie was back in business. They built new barracks, and Willie found a good room for me.
By then, I knew I was pregnant. I missed my period starting in October. I knew it wasn’t because of starvation. I was eating and drinking. My breasts and buttocks were rounded out again. By January, I was showing a little bit. By April, when we moved back to the death camp, my breasts were huge. I couldn’t see over them. My belly filled out.
It had to be Willie’s. I knew it. A love child. It couldn’t be the smelly farmer’s bastard.
It was crazy, but I was happy. New Jewish life. A Nazi father, but a Jewish womb meant a Jewish child. The child was kicking vigorously against the stretched walls of my belly. I was helping replenish the race. Right there in a death camp.
My happiness was short-lived. Jacob was born on June 6, 1944. I delivered him. Willie helped. A Nazi nurse was on hand. It was an easy labor and delivery. I named him Jacob, which means, “May God protect.” I guess I still believed in God a little bit. I don’t know. Maybe. Food was my god, really. And sex. But Jacob melted my frozen heart.
All hell broke loose beginning on Jacob’s birthday. It was D-day. They invaded at Normandy. They didn’t surprise the Germans, but it was the beginning of the end. We argued, and Willie changed Jacob’s name to a good old German one. Max. It sounded so cold and harsh. But he didn’t like the Jewish name even though he had just had a child with a Jewish woman.
Chelmno went in September. Destroyed. Willie let me keep Jacob until October. Then he gave him to his sister and her mischling husband. It didn’t sound like they wanted him. He was a bigwig art dealer. But would he be safe? Maybe. Safer than with me. My heart was broken, a glacier again, and a part of me destroyed. Jacob had taught me to feel again. I’m writing this on his tenth birthday. He is out there somewhere. My beloved son. A piece of me lost to me. Do I want another child? Max wants children desperately. He keeps pressing me. Isn’t it funny that I ended up with a Max, my son’s unwanted name?
The mischling was called Arnold Salzburg. He catered to the Nazis. Stole whatever art they wanted for them. Between his marriage to a Nazi’s sister and his insider art services for the Nazis, he was protected. Like me. I guess he did whatever he had to do to survive also.
Sophia stopped reading as one black fact penetrated her sorrow and regret that she had not been kinder and more understanding to her mother.
As survivor guilt wracked her soul, the one immutable truth froze her. Dirk must be her half-brother if his adopted father was the mischling Arnold Salzburg.
She was slow in putting it all together. But there it was. Irrefutable. Barth had looked him up. Arnold Salzburg, the mischling art dealer, was Dirk’s father. Dirk didn’t know he was adopted. Dirk didn’t know they changed his name from Max to Dirk. No wonder he had told her he didn’t think either parent wanted him. They probably didn’t.
The full import of what she had read descended upon her. She had found her half-brother, or he had found her, and they were lovers.
She sat back in her chair, exhausted, astounded, and wrung dry. She felt she would never move again.
Finally, she reached for her untouched brandy. As she sipped, stunned and numb, she heard the ding of a text coming through.
Dirk. What timing.
“I miss you. I want you to join me in Monaco for my seventieth birthday. The big seventy. Forever young. My birthday is June 6, 1944. Overshadowed by D-day! I won’t take no for an answer. Oh, the games we will play. Love, Daddy Dirk.”
She crawled into bed, aroused by Dirk’s message in spite of herself. And, her final thought before she descended into an obliterating slumber was that now she had a perfect excuse to spend time with him. He was her long-lost brother.
Time's Hostage: The dangers of love, loss, and lus (Time Series Book 1) Page 30