My heart was fluttering and my palms damp as I approached her threshold. I still limped a bit, but I had discarded my cane. I wiped my hands as I smoothed the rough wool of my tunic, and I knocked.
“Entrez-vous.”
Her voice was small, fatigued, and I opened the door and stepped inside the house and removed my cap. I stood in a small foyer. All about were dark, rough wooden beams, and a floor of polished planking seemed to lead from my boots and into distant chambers of a treasure I coveted. A single room was visible straight away and beyond, encompassing a kitchen corner, a dining area and a salon. High windows of white slatting were thrown open to the early-summer breezes, and the flames of two oil lamps flickered from the counters, and it all seemed so very small, like the house of a melancholy fairy tale.
There was a thick wooden table in the center of the room. At its distant head, a single, stiff and high-backed chair addressed the table, and I thought its posture mimicked that of Gabrielle’s spine. She stood beside the table, slowly cutting carrots into slices. She wore a long, cream-colored dress of burry cotton, and her hair was loose about her shoulders. The sound of the knife’s slicing stopped as she turned and looked at me.
“Good evening,” I said. Looking at her, I felt that my lips were trembling.
She placed the knife on the table and wiped her hands on a cloth. She turned fully toward me, and I watched her take in a long breath.
“Hello, Shtefan Brandt.” There was so much in her tone, so much that I could not discern, for I did not really know her. She tilted her head, peering behind me. “Where is Edward?”
“He’s not coming.” I stepped forward a few paces, shifting my cap from one hand to the other. “I’ve been sent for you.”
Her chin lifted a bit, and her expression darkened. She turned back to the table and picked up the knife and resumed her cutting.
“I am not going anywhere.”
I moved closer, placing my hands behind my back. “You must, I’m afraid,” I said as gently as I could.
“Hmf.” It emerged as a small snort from her nostrils.
“You must, Gabrielle. He wants you.”
Her shoulders stiffened. I watched her knuckles whitening around the knife hilt.
“He wants me,” she barely whispered.
“Yes.”
“And you want him to have me.”
I felt my cheeks burning, my scalp simmering beneath my hair. I moved toward the table and barely touched the wood with my fingertips, for I could not touch her.
“No.”
“He wants me.” She sliced a thick chunk of carrot. “And he sends you to bring me to him.”
“Gabrielle,” I stuttered. “It cannot...you cannot go on like this with him. He is angry. It is driving him mad.”
“Yes.” She nodded slowly as she sliced. “I am his whore, and you are his pimp.”
I said nothing, but only blushed even more deeply with my shame.
“What a hero you are, Shtefan Brandt,” she hissed. “But of course, you are only following orders.”
My heart sank, falling into an endless chasm somewhere below my rasping lungs. Whatever wonderful thing we had had together as I lay in hospital was surely gone. The realities of our lives had returned to both of us, the wall that had fallen away risen up again and impenetrable. There was absolutely no way for me to be with her. But at the very least, I could save her.
“Listen to me, Gabrielle.” I reached out for her elbow, and she half turned to me and looked down at her arm, as if my fingers were a scorpion. “I hate this,” I said. “I despise every minute of it. But you must do as he wants. You must be with him again. You are nothing to him if you are not his. Don’t you understand that?”
She spun on me then, tearing her arm from my fingers and slamming the knife onto the tabletop. Her blue eyes were wide and afire and shone with the flickering lamp flames, and her cheeks were pink with anger and her full mouth bared from her white teeth. She smelled of wildflowers.
“Do I understand?” she snapped. “Do I understand?!”
“Gabrielle...”
“Here in this house,” she said, snapping out one small hand in a wave. “Here, in this house of the Belmonts of Le Pontet, who were murdered by them. Here, where only I remain to remember my father and mother, where I have my only peace, and alone here in this place I think at least there is one who cares. There is one among them who lives a lie, lives it as I do, who will not surrender me.” She was nearly shouting now, her fists clenched and her neck roping. “And you come here to this place to take me again to be soiled like a pig, so that you can survive your meaningless life!”
“Gabrielle.” I raised my voice, trying to snap her tirade. “Stop it. You must stop this and...”
“Do you even know what I’ve been thinking?” Her voice cracked as she shouted, and she stabbed a trembling finger up at me. “Do you know why I’ve not been sleeping with him?” Tears welled from her eyes and coursed down her cheeks, and I felt my own throat choking with pity. “Because of you! Because of you, Shtefan! And your love is as pathetic as your courage!”
She slapped me. She slapped me very hard across my cheek. I did not move, my neck stiff and my face stinging with the lash of her fingers, and I watched her as she curled her hands into fists and pressed them together against her chest, and she looked down and sobbed as she shook her head.
I reached out with both hands, and I grasped the sides of her head and I kissed her.
She started and tried to pull away, yet I would not release her, and as firmly as I held her head was as softly as I kissed her. Her lips were like the petals of a burning rose, and I covered them with my own, feeling her hot and tear-glossed cheeks against my face and her breath warm and laced with her sobbing. She sank her fingertips into my shoulders and tried to push me away, yet I would not retreat, and with my heart pounding up into my throat and my legs trembling like the stalks of a newborn doe, I breathed my love for her into her mouth until at last her fury turned.
She sighed, and her hands rose to the back of my neck, and she opened her mouth and kissed me in return. She kissed me deeply, and I felt her small tongue twining with my own, and she covered my face and my eyes with quick presses of her lips, and then she suddenly pulled away and looked at me. I will never forget her eyes, as they looked on that night, as they still appear to me now.
She grasped my face in her small hands and kissed me with an urgency that weakened my thighs and sent a thunder of blood into my stomach, and the intense hunger for her that I’d suppressed for so long coursed so quickly into me that I thought my body would alarm her. Yet it did not, and as she felt my urgency pressed against her she fumbled for my tunic clasps and began to tear them apart. She kissed my neck and my throat, and in a moment my uniform was yanked from my arms, and she pulled my braces from my shoulders and gripped the flesh of my waist as her mouth crushed against my chest.
It was a struggle, a battle over who would taste and who would kiss. When I reached down for her dress, she stood erect and pulled it over her head. And when I saw the half-moons of her breasts heaving from her cotton bodice, I kissed her glistening skin and she curled her fingers into my hair and groaned. I lifted her onto the tabletop, and I turned to stand between her legs and glanced down at her loose white bloomers. She placed one hand upon the table, and with the other she pulled my head into her chest, and as I kissed her there again she pulled her bodice down and arched her back. The sight of her swelling breasts made me swoon, her nipples so pink and pebbled hard, and as I kissed them she muttered, “Oui, Shtefan.... Oh, oui.”
She reached out for my trousers, fumbling with the buttons. And as she dragged them from my hips, my hands slid up to her waist and I pulled her panties down and off of her and flung them away somewhere. Her eyes widened and her mouth opened as she took me in her hand, and I lifted my head and moaned as I fel
t her pulling me toward her.
She lifted her legs, high and wide, and she slipped her other hand behind my neck and pushed her forehead against mine and peered into my eyes. Her breathing was so ragged, and mine, I could not hear it for my heart. I dared not look down as she guided me toward her, closer, and nearer still. And when at last I felt her soft and urgent wetness, it seemed that my entire body was plunging into fire as we both yelled out, in phrases neither understood.
We clutched at each other, our mouths feasting on each other’s lips, my hands caressing her warm breasts and her fingertips digging into my buttocks. We both moaned deeply as our hips pounded together wildly, over and over again. I could not see. I was blinded by her scent and her tongue and her thrashing hair and her hot flesh sucking at my own, and as my body surged over the precipice of any control, hers did the same, and I was calling her name into her mouth and she into mine as we gripped each other’s faces and cried out something that I hear to this very day.
For many, many minutes, we remained motionless, but for our ragged breathing. We held each other so tightly, our noses warming each other’s flushed necks. Our skins were slick and fevered, our temples thundering.
When at last I managed to look at her, I searched quickly for sorrow. Yet I only found relief, and certain joy, and our eyes were mirrors, each to each.
“I will not come back with you tonight,” Gabrielle at last managed to whisper.
“No.” I did not want it. I did not give a damn for the consequences.
“What shall you tell him?” she asked. She was not frightened.
“That you were ill.”
“Yes.”
She kissed me, long and deeply.
“I love you, Shtefan Brandt,” she said.
“And I...”
She placed a finger over my lips.
“And you shall tell him,” she added, “that I promise him that when we get to Paris, I shall give him a night he will never forget.”
XI
IN JUNE OF 1944, I accepted the likelihood of my death, while secretly praying for my life.
If hope was the enemy of every good combatant, then I most certainly warred with that scourge courageously, while succumbing to its onslaught with every thought of Gabrielle. One must always remember, even in the twilight of one’s life, those precious and powerful gems of one’s first true love. For there is nothing quite comparable, no joy born of success or adventure or the climax of a quixotic quest, that returns to us throughout our lives and approaches that first virginal sting of passion. I was faint with it, I breathed it with every breath, it tortured my soul even as it lifted it up to soar in the cool blue heavens of dreams that could not be.
I had been frightened to death to face my master with empty hands, the very same hands that still twitched with the memory of Gabrielle’s skin. I shuddered at the thought of returning to his lair, offering lies from a mouth that yet tasted of her lips. I imagined with horror his tempestuous expression, as he would surely see through my deception, his nostrils flaring with her scent wafting from my uniform. As Blitzkrieg and I thundered over the pastures and streams and broken roads en route to the mansion, I strove to strike the glorious and fresh images of our lovemaking from my fevered brain. Yet the more I tried to slash my lover from my mind’s eye, the more her trembling body appeared before me, and even the pummeling of the saddle below could not prevent the libidinous reflex that pounded upward from my loins into my heart.
It was well into the night when at last we trotted onto the expanse of soaking grass behind the house, and taking in the scene before me, I looked briefly heavenward to thank my dubious deity. In the fierce and flickering glow of a brace of torches, the entire troop had abandoned the barn. All of their equipment lay in growing rows of metal and canvas humps upon the pasture, and the noise of clanking steel and hurrying boots was a welcome symphony to drown out my labored breaths of fear. The transport trucks had appeared and huddled close, their drivers fiddling with and tuning their engines, adding to the cacophony of hasty preparations. Captain Friedrich marched about the ranks, his fists on hips as he issued orders, and the men moved with rapid jerks in the flashing lights of the flames, their expressions somewhat gleeful in anticipation of a change of scenery.
I struggled down from Blitzkrieg, roped him to the water pump and hauled on the handle, providing him with a drink from the trough. And as he slurped the cold liquid over his snout, I joined him and sluiced palmfuls over my face, hoping to dissolve the scented veils of Gabrielle that certainly still clung to my cheeks. I dried my face on my sleeves, finger-combed my hair, straightened my uniform and marched into the house.
The mansion blazed with light. Every lamp had been lit, as if the rooms encompassed a crime scene and such illumination would aid the detectives in their search for clues. In fact, the purpose of such an atmosphere was similar, for Himmel was packing up, and he no doubt wanted to be sure that no wayward belonging might be abandoned in a shadowed corner. A large number of empty wooden ammunition crates were set out on the floors and tabletops, while Edward and Mutti hurried to pack them up with Himmel’s uniforms, his weapons, equipment and personal effects. Two of the crates were apparently designated for the Colonel’s favorite dining implements, such as his coffee mugs and silver cutlery. But as my master stood in the center of the salon, his hands on his hips and a frown curling his lips, he found it necessary to orchestrate each of these selections.
“Mutti, du blöder Hund,” he snapped, pointing at a large iron pot the cook was struggling to squeeze into a crate. “Leave that! We’re relocating to a château. Don’t you think the Parisians cook?”
“Jawohl, mein Standartenführer.” Mutti blushed and surrendered the pot, searching for smaller and rarer implements. Edward was the luckier of the two, having to make no decisions as he was packing up Himmel’s personal gear, none of which could be left behind.
The Colonel spotted me in the kitchen doorway, snapped his fingers and summoned me with a wave.
“Come, Brandt! I’ve left you all the files and orders and maps.” He gestured at three empty mortar shell crates. “No one knows this rubbish like you do, so order it as you will.”
“Yes, Sir.” I marched straight into the room and immediately began to sort the paperwork that remained untouched upon my desktop.
“We leave tonight,” said Himmel with certain satisfaction.
“So I gathered, Sir.” I began to sort the materials according to purpose, and as I packed the crates I recorded the contents with a wax marker on the rough wooden tops. I started as Himmel dropped a large steel ammunition box at my feet.
“In here, you’ll place the plans for our next mission.”
I looked up at him. Having only one eye, he could not effectively wink, but the brief flash of his single lid divulged his intent.
“I understand, Sir.”
“Good. You shall keep it with you at all times. Clear?”
“Yes, Sir.”
For a few moments, there was no sound save the rustle of papers and equipment and cookware as we three of his staff worked quickly. I knew the question was coming, and I braced myself for it.
“So?” Himmel said at last. “Where is she?”
I straightened up, offering an apologetic frown and an arching shrug.
“She was ill, Sir.”
Himmel’s expression began to slowly turn. I watched his one eye squint and his mouth turn down from the energy of action to the vexation of an insult.
“She was ill?”
“So she said, Sir.” I suddenly saw her mouth before mine, her lips open and wet and her eyes blazing as we slammed our bodies against each other. I quickly returned my focus to my work, and I heard the Colonel’s boots clipping the wooden floor as he began to pace. A long moment passed, and then another as his paces quickened and suddenly stopped.
“To hell
with her, then!” he roared, and something flew across the salon. “Dammit to hell with her!”
I flicked my eyes at him. His face was crimson, and he was waving a clenched fist. I felt Edward’s eyes upon me, but I dared not look at the corporal.
“She can stay behind, the foolish little bitch! If that’s what she wants, it’s fine with me. She can stay in this godforsaken pigsty of a town and starve to death with all of her precious brethren. I’m not good enough for her? Then she can have them all, all the rest, the Wehrmacht rejects and the skulking deserters. She can be worked to death and find her reward in the rapes of a hundred infantry. We’ll leave her to the support troops, the stinking Ausländer bringing up the rear. If that’s what she prefers, so be it!”
The Colonel’s helmet had been sitting upon the dining table, and with this last exclamation he swept it off and it clanged on the floor as he stormed off into his sleeping quarters.
I slowly raised my head, as if a volley of machine-gun fire had just died away. Edward and Mutti were frozen in midtask, staring after our departed master. Their eyes swung to mine simultaneously, their glares of accusation all too clear. I raised an upturned palm, about to attempt some excuse or explanation, yet they both shook their heads and returned to their labors.
I was in the grip of a complete panic. My God, I had to think quickly. Did I want Gabrielle to remain behind? Himmel’s fury was rife with horrible speculations, but in fact would remaining in Le Pontet be better for her? Who knew what sort of creatures might take our place here? She was clever, resourceful; she could certainly make her way. Yet she was beautiful, magnificent, cursed with her own attributes. At least, away from Himmel, she could not be his; she would not be defiled by him. And yet, she would not be protected by his power. And what of us? If I let it be, if I did not attempt to have him reconsider...
I might never see Gabrielle again.
The Soul of a Thief Page 16