The Soul of a Thief

by Steven Hartov

  Indeed there was a single candle glowing on the dining table. The plates and glasses had not been removed, and a pair of empty wine bottles stood their posts. Closer to me, I saw the back of a small divan, and Gabrielle’s small fingers gripped the curved wooden molding there, while her head, facing me, hung down between her hands. Her flaxen hair was unfettered now, and it seemed to whip in constant, milky waves. She was kneeling on the sofa, and behind her Himmel stood, shirtless and sweating, gripping her naked waist and making the cheeks of her buttocks quiver as he slowly plunged in and out of her.

  My eyes bulged as I was rooted to the spot, and my heart began to bang so loudly in my constricted chest that I was certain it would be heard. I watched the rape in utter horror, only glad that I could see little of Gabrielle’s nude form, that I could not see her breasts below the divan’s back, surely swaying with each painful degradation of her body. A fury unlike any I had ever sensed rose up inside my bowels, I felt an overpowering urge about to propel me through the glass, and my hand twitched for my pistol, but it was not there. And then, at the very precipice of my rage, my mouth suddenly fell open. I slowly turned away from the window, nearly swooning, and I leaned my back against the frozen wood of the house and stared up at the moonless sky. For certainly, I had just seen Gabrielle turn her head to Himmel, as with one hand she reached back and gripped his thigh, helping him to penetrate her...

  * * *

  What awaited me thereafter was a week of numbness. All semblance of illusion had been stripped away, all fantasies of good and right and romance, merely a joke. The strong took what they wanted, and the weak resisted, if at all, only symbolically. My brief sense of shame upon Gabrielle’s initial vent of courage, and the urge to match it with my own, had been shattered, and I viewed her now with no more sympathy than for any other of my master’s whores. I was grateful for my life, which I might have easily lost in a split second of insanity, had my adolescent fantasies not been choked at the root.

  There were more such “dates” between Himmel and Gabrielle, all held now in his quarters, yet my empathic feelings for her had been supplanted by disgust. On these evenings, I slept quickly and well after my dismissal, the one remaining hint of my true emotions being a morning’s tender jaw, no doubt from a night of grinding my teeth in my sleep. On the morning after one such evening, I reported for duty to find the Colonel and his mistress taking breakfast at his plotting table. I bowed at her with studied manners, even offering a careful expression of welcome, then quickly turned to the business of carrying out my orders. At one point, Himmel rose and left the main room to fetch his dispatch case, and I felt Gabrielle’s studied gaze upon me. I looked at her, my face expressionless, while she sipped her coffee and regarded me with her stunning eyes. Her one small fist was clenched upon the tabletop, and I was sure that her eyes began to glisten, but then she looked away and stared into nothingness.

  She was now my master’s lover, or at best his concubine, and I fully realized that my dealings with her must be proper and polite, without a hint of my true opinions. Any careless word or even revelatory expression might reach the Colonel’s ear, and I was not about to risk my position with such carelessness. When occasionally Edward and I were sent to fetch her from her house or the field hospital, I spoke to her only when spoken to, and in studied and mannered replies, always accompanied by a pasted smile. I had returned to my very private war of survival, and principles were only for the doomed.

  Then, our period of respite ended, as operations were about to recommence. One evening, Himmel hosted a small conference of commanders slated to participate in joint operations. These were ten officers of equal rank, from the infantry, Luftwaffe and Panzer divisions, and after their three-hour strategic discussions, they dined upon a meal we had prepared for the previous two days. Edward and I, along with Mutti, were called upon to serve the men throughout, and as they opened their collars and loosened their breeches, supping on wild pig and wine, they became quite raucous and began to sing. Even we the staff were invited to drink, albeit from our removed positions as servants in waiting, and standing, of course.

  When it was over, and the officers had left, the pile of soiled dinnerware was too much for the country kitchen sink. Edward and Mutti piled the pots, pans, plates and saucers into a large washbasin, hauling it out to the farmstead well pump, where they began to labor by the light of a lantern. I remained in the kitchen, scrubbing at the wineglasses with a brush. Himmel was quite drunk, though jolly, and he placed a Strauss record on the windup gramophone and began to waltz with himself throughout the salon. His partner was a fresh bottle of Branntwein, delivered by a resourceful panzer commander.

  My back was turned to him as I sluiced cold water from the faucet, but I could see his reflection in the kitchen window, his open tunic swaying as he danced.

  “Do you think she loves me, Shtefan?” he called out as he closed his boots together, opened them, and spun.

  My spine stiffened, yet I continued scrubbing.

  “I beg your pardon, Herr Colonel?”

  “Do you think she loves me?”

  I had to respond quickly, for any delay would become its own answer.

  “I have only just lost my virginity, thanks to you, Sir,” I called back to him in a jolly tone to match his own. “Love is something I know nothing about.”

  Himmel laughed heartily, and he continued his waltz.

  “She does not love me, I assure you,” he said, yet without a hint of disappointment. And then he added, “Not yet.”

  I said nothing, but I somehow desperately wanted the exchange to continue, and I washed each glass very carefully.

  “She is magnificent, don’t you think?” He had crossed the threshold into the kitchen, and now he was improvising some new step certainly unimagined by the Viennese composers.

  “Yes, she is.” It was not something I could lie about.

  There was a moment’s pause. Then Himmel was just behind me, poking his finger into my shoulder.

  “Then why do you think she sleeps with me? Eh, Shtefan?”

  What then stabbed through my mind was, Because she’s an opportunist and a whore and she eats and drinks very well here, but I turned my head to him and smiled.

  “Well, you are obviously an attractive man to her, Sir.”

  “Ha!” Himmel threw his head back and roared, and I was grateful that he staggered away and recommenced his pirouettes.

  However, shortly he was beside me again, and this time he set the Branntwein bottle on the sink counter, steadying himself upon his elbows as he looked at me from very close. His one eye was shot through with pink lines, and his eye patch was askew.

  “I’ll tell you why she sleeps with me, my young corporal.” He waved a finger up and twirled it. “Do you remember that message I sent to the Gestapo commander?”

  “Yes, Sir.” I continued washing, glancing at him only briefly.

  “Do you know what was in it?” he asked, and I thought that he might actually giggle.

  “No, Sir.”

  He turned his back to the counter then and leaned upon it for further support.

  “It was a question. Only one question. ‘How many children, between the ages of eight and fifteen, and who are the orphans of former French Resistance fighters, remain here in Avignon and Le Pontet?’ Of course, that Gestapo bastard knew the answer right away, Shtefan. All of those secret police finks know these things.”

  “Yes, Sir,” was all I replied. I did not know where he was going with this. He moved away for a moment, then staggered back to his place beside me, now puffing on half a cigar.

  “So, do you know what my message to Gabrielle said, hmm? The one I delivered along with your basket?” He was very pleased with himself at this juncture, and his face was again too close for my comfort.

  “What did it say, Sir?” I ventured, although my heart was beating a bit too qu
ickly now, and I could feel the sweat gathering beneath my hair.

  “It said... ‘My lovely young woman. There are twenty-two orphans of former Maquis fighters still living in the environs of Avignon. Their fates are now in your hands. Please join me for dinner tomorrow evening.’”

  Not of my own volition, my hands froze in their activity, and the shock upon my face must have been comically apparent, as I turned to Himmel and blinked. His eye widened, and then he tossed his head high and roared with laughter, and he pounded the counter with a fist and snatched up the Branntwein bottle, taking a long swig as he danced away from me. I slowly returned to my task as I listened to the rest of his soliloquy.

  “Yes, my Shtefan Brandt! Yes!” he called out to me. “Mademoiselle Gabrielle Belmont does not love me, but she understands me, which is more than I can say for my wife! She has a heart and a soul, the poor wretched thing, and a magnificent figure, and I don’t have to pay her or force her. She fucks me, because she is a French patriot. Is that not poetry? Is that not romance?!”

  At this point, my blush of shame was so hot in my face that I felt it like lava rising up from my feet. My ears had pricked up like those of a bloodhound, hungry to take in every morsel of this new evidence. And Himmel returned to my side, bracing himself once more and wiping a tear of mirth from his eye. His voice quieted to a confiding tone as he raised a finger again.

  “Of course, Brandt, you will learn that love comes after. Yes, most of the time it’s all chemical at first, and whether you force it or buy it or seduce to get it, it’s all the same. She doesn’t love me now, no. But she might. She might! A woman’s completely different from a man. A woman has this biological reaction... It’s all in the textbooks... If you fuck her enough, she starts to think you’re her mate. Yes...”

  He trailed off then, and he dropped his head, as if something foul was rising up inside him and he had to cope for a moment.

  “You know what, Shtefan?” he whispered.

  “What, Sir?” I braced myself for some new revelation.

  “I think I’m going to have a good vomit and get to bed. In two days, we’re back in action.”

  He pushed himself away from the counter then, straightened up and marched off through the salon, skidding the gramophone needle from the record as he passed.

  I turned off the water and stood there in the ghostly silence, my arms quaking, as was my chin. A flow of emotions coursed through me then, and it took every ounce of composure to remain steady. I had had my world turned inside out, once again. And I was grateful, yes. I thanked a God in whom I had not heretofore believed.

  Gabrielle Belmont was not my master’s mistress.

  She was not his whore.

  She was not his lover.

  She was not the Princess to an Evil Prince.

  She was his hostage.

  VII

  IN MARCH OF 1944, I was mistakenly awarded the army’s Iron Cross.

  I should be quick, however, to counter the impression that the granting of this medal was, in any way, some typographical error on behalf of a flummoxed headquarters clerk. In fact, it was bestowed upon me as a result of a formal submission by Colonel Himmel to the General Staff, with all the appropriate requisitions and pomp in concert. And my description of the event as an “error” is less a result of modesty than of a clarified view of the events, as fermented by the passing years. Upon reflection, I have realized that with most soldiers, acts of bravery are often reflexive responses to the crises at hand. In short, I was awarded the Iron Cross not because I was thinking under fire. I was running, and I happened to be running in the right direction.

  Himmel often referred to the SS as “The Führer’s Fire Brigade,” and although he used the phrase with tongue in cheek, it was an apt description. The various divisions and battalions of SS rarely fought in static positions for very long, or even remained at the spearheads of successful campaigns. Once the effect of such elite troops had been felt by the enemy, the High Command would often pull these units out and send them off to where they were most sorely needed next. Our particular Commando was a small and mobile striking force, utilized as the tip of the blade on a surgeon’s scalpel. Thus, my master would monitor the progress of the war, and wherever things were going badly for the Reich, he would correctly assume that a visit to that hellhole would be shortly in order.

  “The Russian front is a total disaster, Shtefan,” he muttered to me through the haze of a hangover, on the morning after his commanders’ conference and personal confessions.

  “Shall I practice my Russian, Sir?” I queried as I poured him his sixth cup of coffee.

  “You are beginning to learn the game, my young adjutant.”

  However, in fact my deductions required no tactical brilliance on my part, for a pair of heavy transport trucks had arrived that very dawn. In addition to the crates of ammunition, hand grenades, antitank weapons and satchel charges, the trucks contained a full uniform of white winter camouflage anorak and trousers for every man. Further to that, for each squad came an unusual piece of equipment called a “Krummlauf.” This was a curved barrel extension that could be fitted to a Sturmgewehr 44 assault rifle. On the top of the extension was a mounted mirror, and thus the weapon’s operator could shoot around corners, while remaining behind cover.

  We were going someplace very, very cold, and we would be fighting house-to-house. This conclusion did not require the brains of an Einstein.

  I shall not pretend that this realization failed to cause me some alarm, as had all news of impending operations heretofore. Yet gone were the near mortal, coronary palpitations that had immobilized me in the past. My character had apparently undergone another subtle shift, somewhat like the skin of a chameleon, adjusting to new emotional hues. I think now, that observing the minute cracks in my master’s demeanor, his tiny weaknesses coming to fore like the crow’s-feet around an ancient’s eyes, somehow added proportionately to my own strength. As I accepted the fissures of his humanity, my own were shored up. Of course, what I would not admit to myself was the fact that Gabrielle Belmont’s sullied virtue had been repaired in my eyes, and there existed in my mind a sense of hope as yet undefined.

  That evening, a pair of Luftwaffe pilots and an army intelligence major appeared at the estate. They huddled with Himmel and his officers until midnight, poring over maps and peering at aerial reconnaissance photographs through stereoscopes that showed the detail in relief. The troop was sent to bed early that eve, and after clearing the dinner dishes and leaving the officers to their strategies, Edward, Mutti and I sat together in the carriage house, playing a game of cards upon a mortar shell crate. The two men, who usually fell quickly into competitions of bawdy jokes, were curiously silent. They smoked and swigged schnapps and squinted at their hands, while occasionally eyeing me from beneath furrowed brows. I recall the conversation was somewhat like this.

  “You shouldn’t be going on this one, Shtefan,” Edward muttered.

  “I shouldn’t?”

  “No. This one’s for the hard corps.”

  “You don’t say.” I bridled a bit, not really wanting to be thought of as genuine SS, while simultaneously offended at the exclusion.

  “Ja, das stimmt,” Mutti agreed with Edward. He slapped a quartet of useless cards on the wooden crate, swigged from the schnapps bottle and wiped his bearded mouth on the back of his hairy hand. “You look a little sick to me.”

  “I’m not sick. I’m fine.”

  “He looks sick, doesn’t he, Edward?” The burly cook poked the corporal’s shoulder.

  “Ja, very pale,” Edward agreed. “Maybe we should tell the Colonel he’s unfit for duty.”

  “Nonsense,” I protested.

  “You should stay home for this one, Shtefan,” Edward continued. “Be sick and stay here and just check up on Gabrielle for the Colonel.”

  The two men exchanged a c
ertain look, and small smiles, and I blushed very deeply and got up and went out from the carriage house to pee. I walked for a bit in the shallow snow under a pale moon, composing myself, and of course wondering if these men who had become my de facto uncles might indeed be right. Yet I managed to shake off the foreboding, for I did not know then what I know now. Youths are chosen for combat precisely because they are unable to fully imagine their own mortality. If armies were composed of the middle-aged, there would be no wars.

  When I returned to our quarters, the lamps were extinguished, and Edward and Mutti were curled up in their bedrolls. The cook was already snoring, but as I slipped into my woolen cocoon, I knew that Edward still lay awake.

  “It’s the Russian front, Shtefan,” he murmured after a few minutes of oppressive silence. “It’s not a fucking joke.”

  “I do not have a choice, you know,” I replied quietly. “He expects me to go.”

  “Well, then, this time stay right behind the old man and don’t let him out of your sight.”

  “I will,” I said, and I shivered in my blankets.

  “And maybe you should write a letter home,” Edward added ominously.

  And with that, the danger of this enterprise finally struck me, but I only managed to whisper, “I have no one to write to.”

  Edward turned over and went to sleep, leaving me awake and wide-eyed, staring at nothing but horrific images of my own concoction.

  Well before dawn, Captain Friedrich assembled a select platoon of thirty-two on the field before the barn. The white camouflage uniforms were issued, and the men, who had donned double pairs of stockings and their warmest underclothes, struggled into the bulky anoraks and leggings. I joined them in the ranks, pulling a new woolen cowl over my head, and while strapping on my helmet I was not pleased to see the commandos doing likewise. When they sought the protection of steel, it meant that steel would soon rain.