Bimbo stroked her hair, wiped away her tears with gentle fingers, held her like a baby in his lap, his hand patting her buttocks. "Oh Bimbo, it was so awful, so dirty. And they watched me and laughed at me. Oh God, I hope I am not permanently damaged. I feel burning, as if I have had a red-hot poker in me. Bimbo, tell me you didn't watch. That was all I could think of, through the pain and awfulness of it. I can't bear to think that that brute has left himself in me. I can't bear to think of it. Love has always been so wonderful with you, and Lucien, and even that horrid Heinrich. This was the first rape I really hated."
She shuddered like a watch spring.
"It's all over," said Bimbo. "You will be all right. It's amazing what the human frame will take. I'm with you, and I'll look after you, and there are things I want to say to you, very serious things…"
Chapter Ten
A Peeping Tom who might conceivably have peered through the window of the schoolhouse that night would have witnessed a scene that by any standards must have been of the utmost rarity. Were he informed on such matters as cats, bats, black dogs and covens, he might reasonably have presumed some errant order of the Black Mass was around, from the sacrificial nature of the offering on the catafalque, and the startling rites being practised on it. A girl, nude, lay on a table, her body mottled in great hideous bruises. Pulleys were attached to her ankles and wrists, spread-eagling her like a starfish. Two men and a woman, all fully clothed, were giving her all their attention. The woman sat on the table, cradling the girl's head in her lap, stroking long blonde hair that spilled in a silky sheet almost to the floor. A thick block had been placed under her buttocks to raise her hips above the level of her head. The men appeared to be performing a surgical operation between her parted thighs with razor blades, and a bowl had been placed below her to catch the flowing blood.
There could have been no anaesthetic since the girl's pain was obviously quite horrifying. Her body jerked convulsively, sometimes impelling her pelvis upward, so that the full weight of her head was pressed into the woman's lap. She screamed and sweated, her belly clenched and unclenched like a fist. The woman looked down on her, spoke soothing words, wiped her forehead with her handkerchief, or bent over to kiss the fever of her lips. The men, meticulously working on her flesh with their razor blades, were paying such close attention to their work that no outsider could possibly have seen what they were actually doing.
* * *
"When the war is over," said Amanda later, in the darkness, "we can move to Switzerland, and we will say you are Swiss, so that nobody will think I have married a German."
"Thank you," said Bimbo drily.
"The children can have milk and eggs and those delicious Toblerones instead of the terrible rationing we have in England. Are you badly rationed in Germany, darling?"
"I suppose so."
"It's a pity, though, that Daddy won't be able to marry us. the Church of England does not acknowledge divorce. I suppose we can become Lutherans or something."
"I am a Lutheran."
"How marvellous. I mean, how much easier that makes it."
"And my mother would not permit only a civil wedding either."
"Your mother!" Amanda exclaimed. "I never thought of you as having a mother. Where does she live?"
"Berlin now. She used to live in East Prussia, but got out when the Russians came in. It wasn't that she was prejudiced against the Russians. She merely felt they might be prejudiced against her."
"I bet I shall adore your mother," said Amanda. "I can't remember mine at all. She died having my younger sister, Jennifer. I know one thing." Amanda spoke with deep feeling. "I shall never introduce you to Jennifer. Never. Never."
"Why not?"
"Because she would get you in to bed with her before you could spell her name. All she thinks about is sex, the little bitch."
Amanda put her hands under her head on the pillow and looked luxuriously up into the darkness. "Frau von Bernstorff. Mrs. Max von Bernstorff."
Bimbo stopped kissing her throat and permitted himself a certain embarrassment. "Countess," he said. "I am Graf von Bernstorff."
"What?" Amanda was taken aback despite herself. Then, delighted, she covered him with kisses. "Oh Bimbo! I'm so happy! I mean, I knew we would have no problem socially, because I knew you came from a good family, but I am so glad you are like us. It's not that I'm snobbish or anything, quite the contrary. I mean I adore Erika, but it does make things so much easier. I really am happy, darling. I really am. I mean to say, one day I may even be able to introduce you socially in England."
"Thank you."
"But life will be so much nicer in Switzerland anyway."
Amanda held him very tightly. "I have never been so happy in my life. I regret only one thing: that this is our last night together and you can't make love to me properly, on account of my bandage."
"There are other ways."
"Oh, indeed," Amanda sang, lyrically, "and you know them all. I never realized that girls had so many available apertures until I met you and Heinrich."
"Are you in much pain?"
"Gad, it hurt me!"
"Well, it was partly your fault," said Bimbo. "I mean, you wanted it so long. All I was going to do was а В and an A and a heart with an arrow through it."
"No, I prefer it the way it is," said Amanda, "even though I suffered the tortures of the damned. The sentiment is a splendid one. It has a precision which I think the German language often lacks." She sighed. "I glow with the pride of authorship. Kiss my breasts, darling. I have a feeling I am about to explode like a hand grenade."
Amanda held Bimbo's head. "To think," she said, "I am branded for life with the name of the man I love. I suppose, symbolically, it is like an engagement ring. I can't wait for the inflammation to go down, so that I can read it properly, through mirrors."
A sudden thought occurred to her, something that Lucien Schneider had said to her before he left. "L'absence diminue les médiocres passions et augmente les grandes…" like the wind that blows out the candle but lights the flame. She pulled Bimbo's face up to hers and she looked startled. "We may be apart for a long time."
"I doubt it. The war is almost over."
"How is it that you are such an expert at tattooing? Have you done it to other girls? Oh, Bimbo, please don't say you have done it to other girls."
"Oh no," said Bimbo hastily. "We just use it to carve identification numbers on Poles and Jews and so on and so forth."
"Oh, that's all right," said Amanda, relieved. "If I thought you had done it to other girls, I would die. I would simply die. Darling, promise me one thing."
"Anything."
"Promise me to be faithful until we meet again."
"Naturally," said Bimbo.
"I mean if I thought, when I got back to England, you were sleeping with other girls, I simply could not stand it. Please promise me you won't."
"Cross my heart."
"It's not that I'm jealous or anything, but there are all those girls in Paris with no inhibitions at all and completely available."
"Not a chance. They get their heads shaved if they sleep with Germans."
"Oh, that Mueller! But just as he said, there are a lot that don't care. When I say faithful, I mean even Erika. In fact most of all Erika. If I thought you made love to Erika, after all the pain I've gone through on your account, I would break the whole thing off, honestly."
"Never Erika, she's crazy about Scappini. Listen…" From the next room came the sound of rhythmic bedsprings and groans. Amanda laughed, mollified. "So you promise you won't sleep with Erika again."
"It goes without saying."
Amanda said excitedly, "I really can't believe I'm going to spend my life in the state of constant pain and stimulation that I feel now. I love you wildly. What do you want me to do? This is going to be something for you to remember me by, so you simply won't want to go to bed with Erika and all those other girls in Paris, etcetera…"
Chapter Eleve
n
Bimbo took off his stopwatch and laid it on the windowsill. In the twilight the luminous digits had already started to glow. He took Amanda's hand and pulled her to him. "Keep to the side of the window but follow my pointing finger. They are there. Your friends are there, by that clump of trees, about two hundred and fifty metres from here."
Amanda looked out into the silent, motionless countryside. The only movement came from high swallows which dived and wheeled, stitching the darkening sky.
"How can you tell?" she asked, whispering for some reason she could not understand.
"I can tell. They are waiting for nightfall and for O'Donovan's flashlight in the window. Now listen to me very carefully. You will go to Erika's bedroom. Very slowly you will open the window. You will climb out and drop to the ground. Then you will run to that hedgerow over there, thirty metres from the school. You will wait there for exactly one minute, looking around you as though you were running away. You will then run to that poplar which I am indicating and again go to ground, for thirty seconds. After that it is open country and you must run. You must run and run without stopping no matter how tired you become, until somebody, no matter who, stops you."
Amanda looked out over the shadowy fields. "Suppose there is no one there. I can't see any sign of life whatsoever."
"They are there," said Bimbo. "I can smell them."
She stared at him, and his face was completely different from any she had seen before. It was not merely that he was a stranger. He was no longer human. His face was all eyes. His stillness was the stillness of animals which freeze motionless for protection against enemies. He had become formless, grey, invisible against the wall. Bimbo had re-entered his skin as a soldier.
He continued. "I shall come out and pretend to look for you. The moment you reach them, establish your true identity at once. Then tell them to get out as fast as they can, because within half an hour this place will be infested with soldiers. Tell them that the Wehrmacht planned it so that they, your friends, should be here first. The trap was sprung after, not before the prey was in the cage. Next, if you seem in danger of getting caught again, shoot yourself, because you will be finished and so will we. We have exactly three minutes for farewells."
Amanda had never heard Bimbo talk so much or so lucidly. The four of them were gathered at the darkened window, all dressed except for Bimbo, who wore a sweat shirt over his army trousers, and jackboots. Amanda was in her teacher's tweeds, Scappini and Erika in uniform, collars open at the neck. But there were to be no farewells. Nobody seemed to want to say anything. They just looked at each other, strangely, in a kind of fear, looking from one to the other as if in search of an answer to a question they could not form.
"Go," said Bimbo.
* * *
In later years the torrent of experience which Amanda had been obliged to absorb in these few days and hours were of such choking intensity that she lost all count of how and when, of who did what to her, what she said, how she behaved, in front of whom, by pressures of what. But as she turned from her friends and fled, she did recall a remark of Scappini's, muttered under his breath, not in his own cynical way, but sadly and softly, like a child too good to cry when his toy is taken away; and yet it carried the Scappini imprimatur of derision. When the remark first came back to her, it brought to mind the extraordinary repast she had shared with the other three on the night of her torture, and then she realized it could not be so. When, several years later, she was doing The Times crossword puzzle, she suddenly cried out, "Of course!" and was full of happiness and love. Scappini's little joke was directed inward toward himself, and she could not help but love him for it, and laugh. What he had said was, and this was just her guess: "We are finished with the groaning bawd."
Amanda turned now. Without looking back, her heart giving her pain, she ran down the dark corridor to Erika's room. She opened the window with difficulty, and clambered out awkwardly. She stumbled to the hedgerow, sank down and counted with a tight throat, one, two, three, four; but she was overcome by an almost uncontrollable panic. She longed to run back to the womb of the schoolhouse, to suck the warm tit of Erika.
Where the world before had seemed deserted, now, in the brackish twilight, it was all eyes, unseen eyes all around her. The bushes glowered at her, assuming the shape of beasts, crenelated castles, and spired churches. Fifty-eight, fifty-nine. Oh God, if only she could stay just where she was. Sixty. She knew that, behind her in the schoolhouse, Bimbo was counting. She must not let him down. She rose, and ran and ran, to the poplar and beyond. It seemed as though she was being choked by a rusty nail in her throat and her heart was swollen to bursting. She ran and ran, heard — she was certain she heard — the click of safety locks going back on carbines. She went on running, past poplars and birches, past the whispering leaves or men, through knots of bushes which felt like the nests of snakes, tripping over twigs or shadows, hearing the melancholy swish of nightbirds' wings, or men's clothes, hearing warnings muttered in French, or German, or English, or Russian, or perhaps it was a badger's call. She ran, her shoes saturated and disintegrating in dew, her hair flying, her breath coming in grunts. The pain in her thigh under the bandage was agonizing. Twigs snapped as she crashed through the hedgerows; thistles and the thorns of wild roses ripped at her skirt and cut into her flesh; she still ran blindly, cold tears streaming from her eyes, her shin-bones screaming to her to stop, her feet like dead weights, her heart struggling to escape from her tormented body; running, running until slam!
A hand closed over her mouth and a rough arm locked around her neck, an arm in a peasant blouse. She struggled to tear the arm away so that she could gasp for air before she fainted.
"Taisez-vous," she heard a voice whisper. "Taisez-vous."
A terrible relief covered her exhaustion. The French language! She could hardly believe it could sound so beautiful. And French smells, the smell of garlic and Gaulloises. She was among friends. The unnatural relationship with the Germans — it was unnatural, dear though it was — was over. She was in the Resistance where she belonged. She was among friends. She had escaped from the Valley of the Shadow of Death, from the looming Gestapo and the S. S. She tugged the hand from her mouth, and relishing the language, whispered, "Je suis Yvette. Il faut de tout urgence que vous me conduisez à Lucien."
No one was listening. There was a hissing of sibilants down the line and soft calls of "Georges! Georges!"
Amanda saw a big shadowy form approach, moving silently in the darkness. The Frenchman who now confronted her had a submachine gun over his shoulder, a big peasant-like man, with puffy constipated eyes, and a nose like an eggplant. But even before she could repeat her message, an urgent voice called, "Georges! Viens vite! Regarde!"
The sound of the French language was music, like some mighty cathedral organ. A Frenchman was pointing in the direction of the schoolhouse, from which she saw Bimbo emerging. The line of Maquisards hit the earth at the sight of him, dragging down Amanda. Bimbo had a carbine in his hand and looked this way and that. Weary to the marrow of her bones and terrified by the enormity of her adventure, Amanda was still able to smile to herself as she watched. Bimbo was overacting outrageously. He put his hand to his forehead like a sailor on the bridge of a ship, scratched his head in perplexity. He came to within fifty metres of the thicket in which Amanda and the Marquisards were hiding. "En bas!" Georges whispered in agony. "En bas!"
Bimbo zigzagged aimlessly, still putting on his act. He gave a deafening belch that made Amanda giggle. That was for her benefit, a secret between them to which the French were not privy. Perhaps not inappropriately — certainly it would have appealed to his not oversubtle sense of humour — it turned out to be the last sound that Count von Bernstorff, known absurdly to his friends as Bimbo, ever made. He started walking back to the schoolhouse when a shot banged in Amanda's ear. Deafened, she saw Bimbo stagger, go down on his knees, and then fall on his face. She did not scream. She did not know what she was doing. Actual
ly she was vomiting silently, over her chin, down her blouse and tweed jacket. The next thing Amanda saw was a second figure, flitting out of the doorway of the schoolhouse, as light as a moth; and a stream of submachine bullets tore the hedgerows around her, zipping into the trees and raising clouds of dust. Scappini, with a soldier's skill at making himself almost invisible, ran ten metres, flung himself down, fired again. Each time the Frenchmen ducked he gained ground.
Amanda began to struggle desperately but strong hands held her down. Heinrich reached Bimbo and, from one knee, fired into the hedgerow. Amanda, even in her state of horror and shock realized he was firing high so as not to hit her. With one almost incredibly powerful move, he threw the inert Bimbo over his shoulder single-handed, and sprinted back toward the schoolhouse; stopped to turn and fire, then ran again. He was almost at the doorway when a submachine gun made shattering burps in Amanda's ear, and Heinrich fell. He fell so crisply, so quickly, Bimbo on top of him, that Amanda knew he had died instantly, and she became like a madwoman. She broke the Frenchman's grip and gave a howl like a dog. In a hideous way she seemed to overflow at all her vents, vomiting and streaming mucus from her nose. She urinated over the men trying to hold her down, broke wind loudly. Her eyes were white circles of madness. Georges, the leader of the group, watched the scene in disgust. He gave an order and Amanda, sobbing, was carried away.
* * *
In a pool of quiet, Bimbo lay on his back, in his blood. The stars of the night were in his open, unseeing eyes. Leaves had dappled his sweat shirt, making him look like the great god Pan, the father of all the gods, the god whose lustful nature symbolized the spermatic nature of the world, although most of his offspring were stillborn. He lay under a kind of dome of quiet, against which the noise of tanks, trucks, men's voices, laughter beat without penetrating. He was quite alone in death.
Commander Amanda Nightingale Page 14