The Kommandant's Mistress

by Alexandria Constantinova Szeman

  New York, New York

  Two months later, she said she was 99.99% sure that my novel was going to be sold to HarperCollins. She told me to expect an Advance of between $5,000 and $7,500, but she'd try her hardest to talk them up to $10,000 (warning me not to expect any more than $5,000 because it was my first novel and because I wrote literary fiction. "The only thing harder to sell than literary fiction," she said, "is poetry."

  I jumped into a rented car the next day (mine had 180,000 miles on it, and I didn't think it would survive the trip), drove to New York with my agent's approval, stayed at the recommended (i.e., cheapest) hotel in the Village, where my agent's office was located, to meet my agent and editor.

  (One famous, relatively wealthy author I met years later made fun of me, to my face, for having done that. Apparently, having grown up in New York, she thought I was "innocent and naïve" for driving all the way to Manhattan just to meet my agent and editor. I've never understood her reaction. After all, she'd met her agent and editor. I didn't feel "innocent and naïve" when I went to New York after having sold my first novel, and remember it as one of the happiest times of my life. I loved New York. Still do. In fact, I'd recommend that any author who has a book accepted by a NY house go to the Big Apple to personally meet his agent and editor.)

  As I was on my way, the sale was confirmed. The book sold late on a Thursday afternoon, and I was in a motel room in Pennsylvania when I got the news. It was raining, the motel room was gloomy even with the curtains open, the weather was chilly despite its being almost the end of July. When my agent called me back (she'd been getting the final contract details when I'd arrived at the motel and called her office), the first words out of her mouth were, "Congratulations, my dear. You're an author."

  I dropped onto the bed, crying.

  "When you're finished crying," she said, "I'll tell you the rest of the good news."

  "There's more?"

  "Don't you want to know how much you got?"

  (I would've given the book to HarperCollins just to have them publish it, and I'd told my agent that when she'd told me they were definitely interested. She'd laughed and said it was a good thing I had an agent.)

  After I stopped crying, she filled me in on the rest of the contract details.

  "You got 25," she said.

  "25?"

  "25 thousand."

  "Dollars?" I said.

  "You were expecting something else?" she said, laughing.

  I began sobbing again.

  "They want to sell the foreign rights, too."

  "What does that mean?"

  "It means, the Vice-President and Director of Foreign Rights loves the book as much as your editor, and she thinks she can sell it overseas. They'll get 50% of every sale they make."

  "Is that okay?"

  "It is with me," said my agent. "They'll be doing all the work to sell your first novel to foreign publishers, and we'll be making 50% of anything they make. That's a pretty good deal for a first novel in literary fiction. Hey, why are you still crying?"

  "It's HarperCollins…"

  "And?"

  "You told me only to expect $5,000."

  "So," she said, "be five times happier."

  I had just turned 36, sold my first novel to one of the most prestigious publishers in the world, and gotten enough money from the Advance (after my agent's commission; Federal, State, Local, and Social Security Self-Employment taxes) to pay off almost the entire remaining balance of the loan I'd taken out to write the novel in the first place (I netted approximately 49¢ on each dollar, so I got about $12,000 out of the Advance, divided into two payments: the first half of the Advance about 4-5 months after the book was sold, the second half approximately 3-4 months after the book was published).

  The next morning, I would arrive in New York, where I'd always wanted to live.

  That was twenty years ago.

  I was the happiest person in the world.

  The fact that I was crying the entire sixteen hours it took me to drive from Ohio to Manhattan did not mean I wasn't happy, trust me.

  On My Name

  My parents didn't name me "Alexandria Constantinova." They wouldn't have known how to spell it. They named me something I hated, and when I went to high school, I started using the nickname "Sherri" because I didn't like my given first name. When I was 17, after I read Lawrence Durrell's The Alexandria Quartet, I fell in love with the name "Alexandria" and immediately wanted to change mine to that. I felt I deserved a more exotic name. After all, I'd wanted to be a writer since I was 6-years-old, and writers had more interesting names than either the one I'd been given or than my high-school nickname.

  My family not only vehemently disagreed, they obstinately insisted that only criminals changed their names, were insulted that I disliked the name they'd given me, and wondered who I thought I was wanting a weird-o name like Alexandria. They'd never even addressed me as "Sherri" so there was certainly no chance that they'd ever call me "Alexandria". (They also didn't understand why I wanted to be a writer, and throughout my life, did everything in their power to discourage, insult, and prevent me from writing.)

  Still, "Alexandria" is the only name that I ever felt fit me, so I did change it common-law once I decided to ignore anyone who didn't like it, and legally once I thought of a middle name to go with it.

  On Why I was Originally Published as "Sherri" Szeman

  Because my first editor said my name wouldn't fit on the cover of the book.

  It's as simple and stupid as that.

  The editor also said she wanted an "easy" first name to go with my "hard" last name, so she balked at publishing The Kommandant's Mistress under Alexandria Szeman. My agent didn't say anything to contradict her. I was too naïve to realize that any name can fit on any book cover, too happy to be published by HarperCollins to feel anything but disappointment, and too inexperienced to insist that the book be published under the name I wanted.

  When I got my next agent, for my second novel, and my next publisher, I asked to have Only with the Heart published under Alexandria Szeman. My agent and publisher were horrified. It seems they were terrified that they'd "lose the name recognition of The Kommandant's Mistress." Same thing with the third book, Mastering Point of View: How to Control Point of View to Create Conflict, Depth, & Suspense. That editor and publisher also didn't want to lose the "name recognition of The Kommandant's Mistress". Stuck again with "Sherri". I was not pleased, to say the least.

  When my two poetry collections were accepted, at the same time, by UKA Press, I asked the publisher about the name issue. She laughed, saying that, of course, we could publish Love in the Time of Dinosaurs and Where Lightning Strikes under my name: we'd just add "formerly writing as 'Sherri' ". She also reminded me that authors write under different names all the time, and everybody knows it. Thank God for Andrea Lowne of UKA Press.

  Revised, updated, and expanded Anniversary Editions of my first three books are being re-published under my name, Alexandria Constantinova Szeman, with the

  caveat "formerly writing as 'Sherri' " so readers understand that it's the same person, and my new books are being published under my real name. I'm so much happier. (Excerpts of all my other books [so far] are at the end of this one.)

  Special Notes to Readers

  Spoiler Alert:

  If you read this before reading the novel,

  please be aware that it reveals plot elements

  when answering questions posed by readers

  since the novel's publication.

  Please do not feel morally obligated

  to read this section

  of the Revised Edition

  if you only want to read the novel itself.

  Thanks, Alexandria

  On the Three Different Endings

  There are three different endings to the novel, and all three of the endings are true at the same time. (Trust me on this: I wouldn't have written a novel with three different endings only to then tell yo
u to ignore two of them.) Also, on a subconscious level, you already know how all three endings can be true all at the same time.

  Often readers express disappointment that Part 3 is fictional: I'm not sure why; none has ever told me. The situation in the novel, unfortunately, is not "fictional" per se: Many women and men were forced into sexual servitude in the camps, either as prostitutes for the guards or as individual "slaves" for the SS Officers.

  The "biographies" of Part Three are entirely fictional. Over the years, many scholars and reviewers have written that I "fictionalized" — in Parts One & Two — the "real people" whose "biographies comprise Part Three". I thank those writers most sincerely for the compliment on my writing style in that third section as I apparently succeeded in imitating the countless number of biographical encyclopedia entries on in/famous or historical persons that I read to learn the style of such entries.

  In the third section of the novel, the ostensible biographical encyclopedia entries — which, again, are entirely fictional — the "biographer" (whom I've always thought of as a man) does not seem very objective. For example, he consistently calls Max by his last name, yet calls Rachel/Leah by her first name. The biographer also presents statements of fact about Max in a more negative light by not providing any interpretation of Max's actions. For examples, see Discussion Questions on The Three Endings.

  The biographer also presents information about Rachel in a more positive light than others might have seen it either during or after the War. In fact, the biographer of Leah Sarah Abramson does not even seem to know that she did, indeed, survive the camp, and changed her name to Rachel.

  Closer examination of Part Three, which serves as a commentary on history and historians in general, reveals that these entries must be fictional since no single person, Nazi or Jew, could possibly have done everything I say that Max and Rachel did.

  Max

  I didn't want Max to represent only one Nazi but, rather, all the Nazis so I could show all the atrocities they committed against the Jews. Thus, he's at virtually every Nuremburg rally where Hitler, Himmler, or Goebbels spoke [1:1:3], [1:3:2], [1:6:3], etc. (the hyperlinks here refer to the Part: Chapter: Scene being mentioned).

  Max participates in the Night of the Broken Glass [1:3:3]; in the Night of the Long Knives (the purge of the BrownShirts, also known as Storm-Troopers, or SA; whose members were the precursors and competitors of the Schutzstaffeln, SS, who wore black uniforms) [1:6:4]; and in the Wannsee Conference, where the "Final Solution to the Jewish Problem" — killing them "more efficiently" with cyanide gas rather than with the carbon monoxide trucks which had been in use [1:5:1].

  Max heads a Mobile Killing Squad (Einsatzkommando) and instructs the soldiers on the correct way to shoot prisoners in the forest [1:9:2]. He serves alongside the Army — as a member of the SS — at the Eastern Front, where he's wounded by German fire after he mistakes fellow soldiers for partisans [1:10:2]; he meets Himmler [1:5:3] and is promoted through the ranks of the SS until he becomes Kommandant of a Concentration Camp [1:3:1].

  No one Nazi could have done all that. Though Max is a "real person" as a literary character, he is a representative, symbolic Nazi; his career and life reflect everything the Nazis did to the Jews in Germany and in the other conquered territories.

  Rachel

  Likewise, Rachel is not modeled after any single Jewish person from that period, though I did interview many survivors. I also read memoirs, diaries, letters, autobiographies, and biographies of camp inmates who survived and of those who perished. Rachel is symbolic of what all the Jews in Europe experienced (hence, her family's moving from country to country in an attempt to escape the encroaching Nazi destruction and persecution).

  Rachel is at the Goebbels'-organized Book Burning with her father and uncle [2:9:10]; she and her family are in Czechoslovakia when Jews are deprived of their citizenship [2:1:3]; she passes as a non-Jew ("Aryan") in order to get food for her family [2:8:8]; she is in the Warsaw Ghetto [2:3:6], [2:3:10], [2:4:7], [2:5:6].

  Rachel has encounters with the Gestapo [2:8:2], [2:8:4]; with the Camp's Underground [2:1:8], [2:2:1], [2:2:10], etc. She is in the Camp proper [2:7:5]; builds roads with the labor crew supervised by the Camp's Kapo and Nazi guards [2:4:3]; is in a "Selection" upon her arrival at the Camp, where Jews are cursorily inspected by a Doctor (the most infamous being Josef Mengele at Auschwitz-Birkenau) and arbitrarily assigned to go to the "Left" or to the "Right", one of which will immediately be gassed, while the other will remain as laborers in the camp [2:6:7].

  Just as no single Nazi could have possibly done everything that Max does in the novel, no individual Jew could have experienced everything that Rachel does. She, too — despite being a "real person" in literary terms — is representative and symbolic of all the Jews persecuted, enslaved, imprisoned, tortured, killed, and systematically exterminated by the Nazis.

  On Rachel as the Kommandant's "Mistress"

  Note on novel's title: The title of this novel was originally The Kommandant, since I viewed it as three different versions of Max. One of the Vice-Presidents at HarperCollins, which originally published the novel, wanted to put the novel's focus more on Rachel, and suggested the new title, The Kommandant's Mistress, based on the "most persistent rumor" of what happened to Rachel/Leah in the camp, and modeling the title after John Fowles' classic The French Lieutenant's Woman, where the "woman" of that title, though considered a whore and virtually a prostitute by everyone else in the novel, is actually a virgin who never had intimate relations of any kind with the French Lieutenant, with whom she was in love, who had promised to marry her, and whom she discovered to be unfaithful to her before she slept with him.

  Historical note: Like Rachel in this novel, many of the Jewish women who were raped, whether in the camps or not, and inmates (male or female) who were forced into prostitution or unwilling sexual servitude in the Nazi Concentration Camps were considered "collaborators" by their fellow inmates and treated brutally after the liberation.

  (In fact, one inconsiderate borrower of a library's copy of The Kommandant's Mistress crossed out the word "Mistress" on the title page and wrote "Whore, more like it" in ink beside the title; that reader was behaving exactly as did the inmates who judged and condemned, then punished, tortured, or killed any fellow inmates who were raped or forced into sexual situations/prostitution by the Nazis.)

  Rudolf Höss, the Kommandant of Auschwitz, for example, who lived with his family on the Concentration Camp's grounds, had a "mistress" who bore him a son. The day before SS-Head Heinrich Himmler was to "visit" the camp to investigate the allegations, the "mistress," the son, and the guard who'd reported it all disappeared. I can only assume that, since such behavior went against Nazi principles and would have resulted in more than a mere reprimand for Kommandant Höss, the three were all sent to the gas-chambers.

  (For Discussion Questions concerning the relationship between Max and Rachel in the camp, see Rachel as the Kommandant's "Mistress."

  )

  On Rachel's Poems & Books

  Many people over the years have contacted me, looking for Rachel's books and poems. They do not exist, unless they are my own poems, dissertation, etc. The Dead Bodies That Line the Streets is the name of one of the poems in my Holocaust collection Where Lightning Strikes, while Survivor: One Who Survives is not only a poem in that volume, but also the title of my dissertation. "First Day of German Class", from which Marta reads aloud [1:1:7]; "Cutthroat: A Player who Plays for Himself", a portion of which is excerpted in the novel and which Max reads [1:8:8]; and "Little Birds" are also in my collection of Holocaust poetry, Where Lightning Strikes.

  Rachel's poem "In the Bedroom of the Kommandant" does not exist, though the scenes upon which the poem was supposedly based do, in the novel itself [1:7:6], [1:8:4], [2:7:9]. Her poem "Bitter Herbs", which she is shown revising in the Kommandant's office [2:5:5], does not exist but is based on the Ghetto Seder (Passover) [2:5:6]. (Max's poem "Love Song for Klaus", abou
t the death of his illegitimate son by his mistress Dianne Braun [funeral, Part Three, Max], to which Marta alludes [1:8:8] and Rachel sees in his middle desk drawer [2:5:1], also does not exist.)

  Her book The Kommandant, mentioned by the grocer when Max claims he searched for the girl [1:9:6], is the book she's writing about the camp during David's absence [2:10:6] and which she tells him not to read yet, after his return with Althea [2:10:8]; it is, in fact, Part Two of The Kommandant's Mistress. (Max's version of the story, Part One, is the document alluded to when he is asked to sign the transcript-verification document [1:9:10].)

  Some of my non-Holocaust poems, "Cain's Lament" and "Ahab's Wife", which appear in my poetry collection Love in the Time of Dinosaurs, serve as the titles of Rachel's pre-War poetry books which are mentioned in Part Three [Rachel/Leah]

  .

  On the Camp's Underground

  There were Underground Resistance members in many of the camps and, in the case of Auschwitz-Birkenau, in the woods surrounding the camp; members of the Sonderkommando did blow up the crematoria in Auschwitz-Birkenau, after which the camp in this novel is most closely modeled.

  The Underground in Auschwitz-Birkenau, however, did not move about as freely as they did in some of the other camps. I've used artistic license in this instance, giving them more freedom of movement so they could interact with Rachel, and so readers would be aware that there were Resistance movements inside and outside the actual camps.