The Kommandant's Mistress

by Alexandria Constantinova Szeman

  "We have to talk about it some time."

  "I've got too much on my mind and I have a terrible headache."

  "You've been having a lot of headaches lately, Rachel."

  "I don't want to argue."

  "Neither do I," said David. "Having a headache whenever I want to talk isn't going to solve anything."

  I picked up my fork. The scrambled eggs were done just the way I liked them. I chewed a spoonful. I spit them back out.

  "The eggs are cold."

  "Don't blame me. I called you for breakfast twenty minutes ago."

  I stood up.

  "I'll make more."

  "There aren't any more eggs," said David.

  "We're out of eggs?"

  "You didn't go to the store yesterday. Like you said you would."

  I picked up my cup, went to the stove, and poured myself some fresh coffee. I drank some of it. It was hot. Strong.

  "Why won't you have a baby, Rachel?"

  "Not again, David."

  "We love each other."

  "This has nothing to do with love," I said.

  "I want you to have my child."

  "This world is no place for a child. Especially a Jewish child."

  "If everyone felt that way, then there'd be none of us left, and the Nazis would've won."

  I came back to the table. I spread some jam on my toast and took a bite. I drank some of the coffee.

  "I think a better revenge against the Nazis would be to have lots of children," said David.

  When I said nothing, he leaned toward me, laying his hand on mine. His eyes were very bright. He looked very young. It was hard to believe that he'd been there. Harder to believe that he remembered.

  "Think of it, Rachel. We'll have lots of children, and we'll raise them devout Jews. That's how we'll defeat the Nazis."

  I closed my eyes. My head was pounding. Now my coffee was getting cold.

  "I don't care if it's a son or a daughter," said David, "as long as it's ours."

  "David, after the war..."

  He released my hand and slumped back in his chair. He shoved his emptied plate away.

  "I don't want to hear another war story."

  "After the war, David, I went to a doctor."

  He sat up straighter. He said nothing, but I hated the way he was looking at me. I got up from the table and dumped the coffee into the sink. I poured myself another cup and drank some of it. It was hot, bitter. I poured it out. David sat quietly at the table. I stared out the window over the sink. Most of the leaves had fallen from the trees, and the yard looked bare, cold. David stood up and came over to me. I could feel the heat of his body behind me, but I couldn't move: he was standing too close. A slight wind stirred the dried leaves, revealing the ground beneath them. The grass under the leaves was dead.

  "Who did it?" he said.

  "It wasn't in the camp. It was afterward. Not in the camp."

  When he touched my arm, I pulled away.

  "Don't," I said. "I hate pity."

  "They pity us," said the Rabbi, and my parents nodded.

  "No," I said, shaking my head. "They mock us."

  "That's not true," said the Rabbi. "They wear the yellow roses in their lapels to show their solidarity with us."

  "To mock us."

  "To show their opposition to the Nazis," said the Rabbi.

  "Opposition? What kind of opposition is that?"

  I threw down my dishtowel and faced the Rabbi. His big belly had shrunk a little during the Occupation, but he was still rotund. Bits of cake were tangled in his sparse beard, and his nose and eyes were reddened. His black coat was patched and faded.

  "Will they wear the yellow rose in the prison cells for us?" I said. "Or in the labor camps?"

  "To Rabbi Aharon you talk like this?" said my father. "Ask his forgiveness."

  The Rabbi shrugged his shoulders.

  "She's young. She's upset," he said.

  "Don't dismiss me like that," I said.

  "This is how we taught you? This is respect for your elders?" said my father. "You shame me."

  "Papa, you worry so much about the most inconsequential things," I said. "And you do nothing about the important things, like opposing the Germans."

  "Those people with the yellow roses do oppose the Nazis," said my mother. "I know the sister of one of the men who's wearing a yellow rose, and both of them..."

  "If they oppose the Nazis, why do we have to live like this, crowded into a single room, sharing our house with five other families?"

  "Jewish families," said the Rabbi.

  "Shhh, they'll hear you. You'll hurt their feelings," said my mother.

  She glanced anxiously at the doorway to the parlor.

  "Samuel, tell her to calm herself."

  "Apologize to the Rabbi."

  "If there's so much opposition to the Nazis, why can't I go to school? Why can't Papa work?"

  "My own daughter," said my father. "This is the way she talks, in my own house."

  "Try to understand," said the Rabbi. "It's moral resistance."

  "The Nazis will get tired," said my mother. "They'll leave us alone. That's the way it's always been. You'll see."

  "It's moral opposition. That's important," said the Rabbi. "You'll see, when you get older."

  "Moral opposition," I said. "How blind can you be? We're the ones who'll suffer from their so-called moral opposition."

  "My own daughter, talking like this," said my father. "What's happened to her?"

  "The Germans have already taken everything away from us," said my mother. "What else can they do?"

  "Yes, what else can they do?" said the Rabbi. "Kill us all?"

  "You're going to kill somebody with this thing," said David.

  I looked up from the bed, where I was reading. David lifted the gun from the top bureau drawer.

  "And it's loaded," he said. "Rachel."

  He frowned at me. At the gun. I turned the page of my book. He marched over to the bed, holding the pistol out to me.

  "This isn't the first time I've asked you to get rid of this thing."

  I wrote some notes in the margin of the book.

  "You know I don't like having it here."

  David leaned closer.

  "You say you want to forget everything that happened, but you keep a German pistol in the bureau drawer."

  "I'll take care of it tomorrow," I said.

  I turned the page. He thrust the gun forward, over the book.

  "I said I'll get rid of it tomorrow."

  "But you won't, will you?"

  I looked up at him. He was pale. His face had a strange expression. I took off my reading glasses, and put down my book. When I held out my hand for the gun, he pulled it back.

  "Now what?" I said.

  "This was his, wasn't it?"

  He threw it on the bed.

  "That's why you keep it around. This was his gun."

  He rubbed his hands roughly against his pants legs as he paced beside the bed.

  "I won't have his gun in my house."

  The gun lay there against the bedclothes. My fingers were very white as they slid down the long barrel.

  "If you don't get rid of it, I will. If it's not out of this house, by tomorrow..."

  David paced, his fingers combing repeatedly through his hair. I put the gun in my lap. I picked up my book and put on my reading glasses.

  "Get rid of it."

  "I'm not your prisoner," I said. "Don't tell me what to do."

  "Get rid of that coat. Quick," said the woman prisoner in the sorting-hut in the camp. "Unless you want to catch it bad."

  "It's not mine," I said.

  I let the ermine coat slide down my arms to the ground.

  "Someone gave it to me," I said. "Even the coat I arrived in wasn't mine. Someone took my coat, days ago."

  "Who cares? Get rid of it, before the Kapo... too late."

  A brutal-looking woman shoved herself into the hut, through the crowd of n
ewly arrived Jews. She wore a red triangle over her left breast: she was a political prisoner, not a Jew. She marched in, glaring at us. My head was pounding, and my body was aching. My legs were sticky and wet. I wiped my thighs with my slip.

  "What are these prisoners doing still dressed?" said the Kapo.

  She cracked one of the women near her with a whip.

  "Get undressed, you filthy Jews."

  She strode over to me, sneering at the coat. With her dirty boot, she kicked at its white fur.

  "Whose is that? Yours?"

  "No. Someone gave it to me."

  She cracked me across the face with the handle of the whip. The skin burst, and blood trickled out. The Kapo passed on to her next victim.

  "That was stupid," said the woman inmate who had told me to remove the coat. "Why didn't you just keep your mouth shut?"

  The Kapo marched around the hut, staring lasciviously at us while we undressed, striking indiscriminately with her whip. Whenever one of the women cried out, the Kapo lashed her harder. I wiped my bloody lip on the hem of my dress. I stood there, looking around the hut, holding the dress.

  "Drop it. Go on," said the woman working in the hut as she began to gather up the discarded clothes.

  The Kapo shouted us into the next room. Some of the women gasped, and fell back against the others who were entering the room. Great piles of hair littered the floor: curls, braids, waves; red, blonde, brunette. Stony-faced women grabbed us, and forced us onto hard benches. Several of the new arrivals protested when clumps of their hair began to fall to the floor, joining the great pile. The Kapo hit them. The women with the shears hit them. Some women said nothing: they only cried. They were hit. Some whimpered. They were also hit. They yanked hard on our hair, and the blades gouged our scalps, making them bleed. I didn't say anything and I didn't cry, but I got hit anyway.

  We were pushed off the benches and into the next room. We stared, open-mouthed, at each other, at our new selves: naked and shorn. Some of the older women began to pray. Some of the younger ones held hands. I did neither.

  In the next room, female inmates shoved clothes and shoes at us, without even glancing at us to see our sizes. I knew by looking at the shoes that they wouldn't fit. The grey dress I was given was so thin I could almost see through the material. It was the middle of February, with six inches of snow on the ground, and the dress was almost threadbare. There was a hole in the center of the yellow star stitched over its left breast. There was a brown stain around the hole. It wasn't dirt. My stomach heaved.

  "This has blood on it," I said to the women passing out the clothes, "and these shoes..."

  The Kapo bashed me so hard that I fell into the wall. I hadn't even seen her. The room spun. My ears roared, and my nose was bleeding. I hadn't even seen her. I dropped the shoes to pull myself to my feet. The other women stared in silence at me, clutching their garments to their bare chests. The Kapo kicked the shoes away from me. She hit me with the whip.

  "See how you like going barefoot in the snow," she said, hitting me again. "Or naked."

  I dragged the dress on before she could take it away from me, before she could hit me again. My hands were shaking, and I was unsteady. I put one hand against the wall so I wouldn't fall. I could taste blood as it ran from my nose to my mouth. The blood dropped onto the dress, beside the star.

  "One more word out of you," said the Kapo, "and it's into the gas with you."

  "Not one word. Not one word," I said to David as I put dinner on the table.

  He put down his book to pour us some wine.

  "Not anything? All day?"

  "No. Nothing. Not even one word. I can't write anymore."

  "You're trying too hard."

  "I've lost it. I can't write."

  "Oh, it's not that bad," said David, and he tore off a piece of bread. "It's only one day."

  "It's not only one day," I said as he drank some of his wine. "It's a whole month of days. And not a single word."

  "It's just a dry spell. It happens to all of us."

  "I'll never be able to write again."

  "Don't be silly."

  "I can't write."

  "You're a good writer. You know that."

  "I can't write anymore."

  "This, too, will pass. You'll see."

  "You're making fun," I said. "You never listen."

  David put down his silver, wiped his mouth with his napkin, and sat, looking at me.

  "All right. I'm listening."

  I picked at the hem of my napkin. My throat scratched. I took a sip of my water, of my wine.

  "Well?" said David. "I'm listening, so tell me."

  "I haven't written anything since the first book."

  "You've been trying."

  "It's been over a year."

  I put the napkin in my lap. I drank some more wine. I looked at David.

  "Write about the camp," he said.

  "What?"

  "The camp," said David. "Why don't you write about that?"

  I sighed.

  "I wasn't in any of the camps," I said. "How many times do I have to tell you that?"

  "They're sending us to one of those camps, aren't they?" said my father, and he held my mother tightly as I opened the letter.

  "You've been ordered to report for relocation," I said.

  "When?"

  "Day after tomorrow."

  My father staggered to his chair, his face pale.

  "This is the end of us," he said. "I knew it was coming."

  "What will we do, Samuel?"

  "What can we do?" said my father. "We'll do as we're ordered: report for relocation."

  I put on my hat and coat. I folded the letter and put it into my pocket.

  "Where are you going?" said my mother.

  "To headquarters."

  "It's after curfew."

  "I know that."

  "Don't be foolish," said my mother. "They don't mention you in the letter."

  "It's too late to do anything anyway," said my father. "And what can you do? You're just a girl."

  "Samuel, don't let her go down there."

  "Do you think I'm going to let you be sent off alone, without me?" I said.

  "We should've gone with Uncle Jacob," said my mother.

  "You're right, Hannah," said my father. "She told us to go. We should've listened to her."

  "It's too late to talk about that now," I said.

  "The things that happen at Gestapo headquarters," said my mother. "The things we've heard. Samuel, don't let her go."

  "As long as we're not separated, everything will be fine," I said.

  Then I hugged them to me, as tightly as I could.

  "She's separated from the rest of us," said Sharón. "She doesn't think she has to help us."

  "She doesn't know what it's like for the rest of us in this camp," said a man without teeth.

  "She's living a good life, there in his office," said another.

  "Maybe we should show her what the camp's really like," said Sharón, grabbing for my arm.

  "She knows," said Rebekah.

  When she held out her hand to prevent Sharón from touching me, the others glared at me.

  "She's not deaf. Or blind," said Rebekah. "She can smell. She knows what's happening to us. She doesn't care."

  "That's not true," I said.

  "You don't do anything for us," said Rebekah. "Not even the simplest thing."

  "You don't even bring us any of your food," said Sharón, poking me in the chest with her finger.

  "I don't get enough to eat myself," I said.

  "You have an obligation to us," said Rebekah. "You're one of us."

  "None of you has ever helped me," I said.

  "Helped you what?"

  "Eat all the food he gives you?"

  "Stay warm in his office?"

  "Wear his wife's clothes?"

  "No, help her with the Kommandant," said Sharón.

  She thrust her hips forward as she grabbed her o
wn breasts, rocking her pelvis as she moaned and closed her eyes. She rolled her head back. She gasped and shuddered as her hands disappeared between her legs. The others made disgusting noises as they pinched my arms and legs, as they grabbed me. Some of the men slobbered against my throat and cheek as their hands groped for my breasts. I slapped at them. I dug my broken nails into their exposed skin until they cried out and released me.

  "Oh, no, Kommandant," said Sharón breathlessly, her hips pounding. "Please don't torture me this way."

  "You have a responsibility to us," said Rebekah. "We're not going to let you forget that."

  "I have a responsibility to myself," I said. "No one watches out for me."

  "You're worse than he is," said Rebekah. "At least the Kommandant has principles. You're just a whore."

  "And if you leave one more message," I said, "maybe I'll just let him find it."

  Chapter Three

  "Did you find it?" I said to my father. "Is that the letter?"

  "What does it say?" said my mother. "Is Jacob all right?"

  My father looked up from the letter, his eyes glistening.

  "They broke all the windows of his shop. Of all the shops owned by Jews."

  "I thought they painted Jude on the windows," I said, "to keep people from buying their groceries there."

  "They broke all the windows, of all of the shops."

  "Is Jacob all right?" said my mother. "And Naomi?"

  "They locked Jews in the synagogue, and they set fire to it."

  Tears began to roll down my father's face, and my mother went to him, her hand on his arm.

  "What about Jacob? And Naomi?"

  "They shot the Rabbi," said my father, "when he tried to keep them from touching the Scrolls."

  My mother took the letter from my father and read it herself. My father covered his face with his hands. He looked very small, and very old.

  "Jacob and Naomi are safe," said my mother.

  "They burned the synagogue," said my father, and his shoulders shook with his weeping. "They killed the Rabbi."

  "Thank God we didn't emigrate with Uncle Jacob," said my mother.

  I went over to them. I took their hands in mine.

  "We're going to have to look out for ourselves now, and protect each other," I said. "No one else is going to do it."

  "This is a Protective Custody letter," said the young man standing on the platform in front of one of the train's emptied boxcars. "Where's your Kommandant? Get me your Kommandant."