“How can I exist as the father in a life that requires me to behave as the soldier? I do not have the luxury of making choices for myself. I am a man who must submit, must endure. If I cannot obey, a trained officer, then what chance do we have as a nation? And yet I cannot move to act. I am not the superman. I am clutched by my weakness.”
Theatrice’s encouraging voice softened, adapting to his words.
“Then do not fight your conscience,” she continued and Blaz felt she would say anything, be anything to please him. “We are already fighting against one enemy, we needn’t fight ourselves.”
“Ourselves? What’s your secret inner struggle?”
Theatrice bit her lip. She was on the verge of telling him something, her eyes filling with tears. Her mouth opened slightly but then closed again. She sighed.
“Whatever you do it will be the right thing.” She was crying now, her eyes pleading as she kneeled beside him. She took his hand and kissed it, as a servant would a king. When he did not pull away she held it to her cheek and rose up on her knees. With her free hand she touched the back of his neck and pressed her forehead against his. Blaz was breathing heavily, his eyes closed as she gave him a gentle kiss. Blaz let out a choked sob and she kissed him again, slowly and fully. His hand reached up to touch her face and her hair. But it was not the hair he knew. The wave and texture was strange and he gasped as he pulled away.
“What are you doing?” He demanded, rising so suddenly his chair toppled and slid across the floor.
“I love you,” she said rushing to him as he backed against a wall. “I know you love her. But you have so much to give. You could love me, too. Lots of officers take a mistress, some take a dozen,” she argued.
“I won’t.” Blaz was breathing hard, his eyes stung from the tears he had been crying only moments before. “I belong to my wife. Do you understand?” He pushed himself away from the wall and grabbed Theatrice around the throat, forcing her back to the table. “Touch me again and I will have no choice but to throw you out into the street.” He shoved her hard into her chair.
“You kissed me back,” she accused. “You can’t belong to anyone and kiss me like that.”
“Stop it. We are all living under the weight of loss and I cannot hold you accountable for your actions in what I can only assume is a grieving state of mind.”
“Don’t you dare. Don’t you dare try to make my love for you into some sort of coping mechanism. I don’t give a damn what you do with that thing upstairs! Keep him, kill him, love him while you send him straight back to hell! Do whatever you like only love me! You just can’t admit the truth, Blaz. I know what men need and your wife is hardly fit to give it you. But I am beginning to wonder if you even have desires. All the time we’ve known each other you haven’t even noticed I’m a woman. I live in your house and I hold you and I caress you and you haven’t noticed.”
“That’s ridiculous, of course I have.” His defense was thin and he knew it but he had to say something. “You’re here to offer a womanly healing touch.”
“That’s what I do as a nurse. But have you seen me as a woman?”
Blaz considered her, her soft features and shining eyes. He did notice her as a woman. But he could not do what she wanted of him. He could not allow himself to be swayed by seduction, by any sort of feeling.
“No, Theatrice. You are not a woman to me. You are a guest in my wife’s house.” He tried to speak calmly as he righted his chair and started to leave.
“And if she dies?” Theatrice asked coldly. “She might, you know. She lost a lot of blood. She would be dead already if it weren’t for me. I saved her for you.”
“Then why are you doing this? If you know what she means to me, what would even make you think I would betray her?”
Theatrice moved towards him again, her voice low.
“You already have. You tell me things you would never tell her.”
“About the camp, yes. But it’s not as if I keep secrets from her.”
“Don’t you?” Theatrice was close enough to touch him. “Did you tell her how we met? Did you tell her how I touched your wounds? How you, in turn, saved me and held me. Did you tell her that while she slept you held me against your body?”
“I was trying to be a gentleman. You were upset.” Blaz was shaking his head, remembering the things she was telling him, seeing it the way she was describing.
“I was all but naked and you pressed yourself against me.”
She was in front of him, her body touching his. He swallowed.
“It wasn’t like that.”
“You’re lying,” she hissed and found his mouth again. His chest seemed to fill with cement, hardening as he tried to keep from kissing her back. But he was so violently angry, so desperate for release. He had been a victim for so long. He had been taunted by Dieter. Guilted by Grey, Claus, Cora and even Giselle. No one in his life understood him, knew the pain he endured day after day and night after night. No one but Theatrice. He hated her for that, hated that she had infiltrated his world. But it was too late to drive her out, not without consequences, not without losing a part of himself along with her. And here she was, in all her bewitching glory, feeding on his panic and his desperation. She, too, would prey on him and make him a victim all over again. But he was a Sturmbannfuhrer, a prince of the Aryan race. He was lord over his home and master of those beneath his roof. Theatrice could not have him. But he could have her. He could take from her. He could control one single thing in his life.
He drove his hands into her hair, pulling it, twisting it in his fists. He kissed her harder, his arms rigid as he forced her around and pushed her against the wall.
Her hands were all over him. On his shoulders, his neck, his face before sliding down his stomach and pulling his shirt out of his trousers. She started undoing the buttons, frantic but determined. Blaz kept her head back with one hand as he untied her robe and spread it open to reveal her silk nightgown and the curves that writhed inside it. He let go of her hair and grabbed her hips and shoved her against the wall again, forcing his body into hers so hard he thought they might burst through the wall. The family portrait shook and fell, shattering as it hit the floor.
Blaz stopped. He was coming to his senses again but Theatrice would not stop. She kept her hands on him, clawing at his open shirt and kissing his neck. Blaz recoiled, shaking his head, his eyes glittering with confusion. He backed away and Theatrice tried to close the distance between them but he held up a shaking hand and she stopped. Blaz slowly made his way to the door, breathing heavily and struggling to walk as if he had just been saved from drowning. Theatrice was panting, pleading in her want of him. When she realized he wasn’t coming back her eyes narrowed into slits.
“I hope she dies,” Theatrice spit after him.
He halted in the doorway, seeing the snake he had been warned of and wanting to break her. But he was too ashamed of what he had done.
“Then you will respect her memory.”
He let the door swing shut and left Theatrice standing beside the plate of uneaten sandwiches.
He hid in his bedroom upstairs, hoping to find solace but it was unfamiliar. His wife lay in what he knew was his bed, surrounded by his things, but it was foreign. She was foreign. The room was supposed to be filled with the scent of lavender and rose water. For all their years together, Blaz had barely noticed it. He was aware of Giselle’s evening rituals, but only vaguely, the way one is aware of a dog turning circles before lying down. There was always a bowl of water that she would crush rose petals into and wash her face and neck and arms. Blaz pictured her doing it but the memory became Theatrice, her arms as they constricted around him. He shook his head, intent on thinking of his wife. He tried to think of when she opened her armoire for a nightgown and fluttered it as she slipped it on; how the sachets of lavender would weave their scent all over the room. Without the rose water and lavender, the room was trapped with the smell of the sick. His lungs contracted with a gr
eat heave and he tasted the metallic bloody air, licked the roof of his mouth and found he was longing for water.
The light was wrong, too. There was a tall lamp in the far corner casting an oily glow on everything. It should have been silver and hazy in the night, the lace curtains casting flecks of moonlight all over the brown carpet. But new curtains, strange heavy things as immoveable as the wall and windows behind them, had been put up by Theatrice. He wasn’t sure why, something to do with privacy he supposed. But Theatrice was a stranger now and for the first time since Giselle had given birth, Blaz was alone with his wife.
He had hoped to find her lying with dignity, like a princess in a fairytale. But she did not appear to be sleeping in elegant repose. She looked dead already and the thought made something in his stomach lurch, like a fetus kicking its mother’s belly. And even this thought sent his head spinning until he had to sit down, facing away from his corpselike spouse. His thoughts were transmogrifying, phasing into different things, folklore come to life in his massacred brain. He loved, he hated. He longed to hold Giselle, to be held, to be forgiven. He longed to run. He breathed deeply until he caught that metallic taste again. Slowly, eyes closed, he turned his body to face the bed again. He sent up a silent prayer for strength as he opened his eyes and looked on his wife. Even if he could learn to look past the infant’s deformity, could he ever forgive what it had done to his beloved? What it had almost done to him in the dining room? It seemed to prove in an instant that what he did at the camp, everything he was working towards was the right thing. These creatures he helped dispose of were dangerous. Whether they were Jews or liars or homosexuals or mongoloids, they all carried with them the disease of evil. Wherever they went there would be pain and suffering. Whomever they touched would be scarred, spiritually if not physically. This was his answer, he realized. This was why he had ventured into their bedroom tonight. He had come penitently, praying for an answer and in her horrifying state she had given it to him. He nodded to her; nodded his agreement, his solemn vow.
Beneath his nightstand was a wooden box, long and black with silver ornaments of lightning and stars. A stranger may assume these were emblems of the SS, but in fact this box was given to him long before when he was a boy. It was the only heartfelt thing his father had ever bestowed upon him and Blaz had kept it with all the reverence of a holy relic.
He turned the key which had never been removed from the lock and the lid made a slight pop and creak as the forgotten wood gave way. He lifted the top shelf, containing a collection of letters from Giselle, a bone carved chess knight he had traded Grey for a cigarette once and other random novelties of his youth. He picked up one of the letters written in a fine hand, the ink turned brown and the flower petals tucked into the envelope dried and crumbling as he slid out the letter. He read a few lines, instantly recalling the events described and even the dark green common room where he had read it over and over. He brought the page to his lips, kissing the musty page and smelling the remnants of edelweiss Giselle had dried and tucked in with her love notes.
He was crushed with guilt and suddenly wanted to reach out for her. He knew his wife was only feet away, sleeping in their bed, but the woman he loved so earnestly was miles away, somewhere beyond space and time, waiting for him to save her. He replaced the letter and lifted the shelf, revealing a black velvet cloth glittering in the radiance of the lamp. He breathed the metal scent again and grasped the cloth with both hands, pulling it smoothly into his lap as he kneeled over the box. There, in the bottom was his most prized possession, his father’s pistol. It had not been a gift, but it had not been stolen, either. When his father passed away, Blaz’ mother had allowed him and his sister to look through his things and take what they wanted. His sister had chosen a watch and some paintings along with his pipe that she always loved the smell of and his journal. Blaz had taken only two things: his father’s partei pin and the Luger pistol his father had taken with him the night of the Beer Hall Putsch. The pin he kept in Giselle’s jewelry case, the pistol stared at him from the bottom of the box.
He picked it up and ran one thumb over the slick metal. He had expected it to be cold, but it was very warm to the touch. This pistol made him executioner. He couldn’t use his SS pistol, partly because ammunition was rationed carefully. The more important issue was that, deformed or not, this child was his blood. Blaz could not allow him to die a nameless and summary death, shot with the same weapon and in the same vulgar and detached way as those from the camps. He would wrap the boy in his green blanket, take him into the woods; give him a name and an honorable death with a family weapon. He would bury his son and mark his grave. Blaz rose from his kneeling position, the box still open the gun in his hand. He kissed Giselle’s hand and went to fetch the babe.
CHAPTER 17
October 1944
Cora
A crash had woken Cora. She sat upright and stared fearfully into the dark. Had she imagined it? If it had been real wouldn’t it have woken the baby? She didn’t hear him crying. Cora didn’t like being woken, but she would have been even more irritated if the baby was being ignored. What if he was hungry or cold? What if he was sick?
Now that the threat of being usurped had gone, Cora found herself falling in love with her little brother. She even regretted her jealousy and longed for the opportunity to make it up to him some day. She began to imagine outings as she lay in bed. She pictured them on a sandy bank along the Rhine, tossing rocks into the water and seeing who could throw the farthest. Then in the blueberry patches that grew along the western border, tasting the fattest ones and showing each other their blackened teeth. She pictured a mountain peak where they could sled for miles down to a rocky gorge, made safe by the layers of snow. Of course she would have to hold onto him, his arm would make it impossible to hold on himself. In all these fantasies, she and he were both smiling and happy and bonded for life. Cora got up from bed, suddenly anxious to see him. She began to prepare a lecture for Theatrice, chiding her for her neglect and assuming responsibility for the baby herself. She could feed him and bathe him. She could learn to change him when he was dirty. She would even sing him to sleep.
As she entered the hallway a door shut downstairs. Cora wondered who could be down there at such an hour. She tiptoed down the stairs and saw the door to the dining room swinging closed. When she peeked in there was no one there, so she crossed to the kitchen. Through the window she saw a figure walking away from the house, their shoulders hunched against the cold. Was her father going walking again? She opened the door and tried to call out to him, follow on his midnight excursion but a gust of wind caught her voice and carried it somewhere else. She wouldn’t let it bother her. Her father’s neglect was familiar to her and she had her baby brother to see. She hustled inside and upstairs found Theatrice standing in the nursery doorway. Maybe she finally decided to tend to him. He was still quiet. He must be sleeping, she thought as she approached the crib, careful not to let her feet touch any squeaks in the floor. But the crib was empty.
Without thinking Cora asked, “Where’s the baby?”
Theatrice ignored her, still in the doorway, staring into space.
“Theatrice!” Cora barked causing Theatrice to finally look at her. “Where is he?”
Theatrice licked her lips and without turning her head, looked down through wet eyelashes at Cora. For a moment, Cora was waiting for an explanation. But then it hit her, the realization she must have had already or she would not have felt such urgency to get Theatrice’s attention. Her father had been leaving with something. He had not been headed to town, but into the forest. His shoulders had been hunched, not against the cold, but under the burden of what he was about to do.
With a cry, Cora was running downstairs, her bare feet thrown out from under her as she slipped halfway, the back of her legs slamming against the hard wooden staircase. She didn’t have time to feel the pain or think about the giant purple bruises that would inevitably follow. The horrors she had be
en hearing about in hushed tones were now brought to the frontline of her young mind, images of prisoners being shot and babies being burned. She ran faster, sliding once more in the kitchen, but catching herself on the door handle before she could fall. She stuffed her feet into her mother’s boots and pulled on whatever coat was hanging there. As she opened the door she realized there were too many immediate footprints leading into the woods: steps to fetch wood and some to go walking, others the markings of teenagers who would pass their house to go into the trees. But which were her father’s? She tried to picture him as he left only minutes before, which direction he faced, which tree he passed. Did he pass by the shed to the left or the right? She said a silent prayer as she followed after the largest and deepest prints.
Long tendrils of hair whipped her face as her braid fell apart, beating against her back and shoulders. She felt the lashings synchronize with her strides like beats of a drum as an army marches toward battle. Her breath came out in rushes, the lyrics of the strange song her body sang as she ran. She could feel the air starching her lungs. The bruised muscles of her legs throbbed as more blood rushed to them. Her right leg cramped and she fell headlong into the snow.
Cora stayed where she fell and broke into sobs. What was she thinking? She was too small, too inconsequential to do anything. She could not have stopped her father anyway. What could she have done? She could do nothing, like all the other people who stood by and let things happen. Why should she be any different? She was only a child after all, no one could blame her. No one would judge her. The only person she would have to face would be herself and she could do that, couldn’t she?
Sitting up she rubbed her bare leg, feeling the swollen calf as it rose behind her knee. A memory stirred of being touched there before. It had been years ago but Cora still felt the man’s hands on her, the way her stomach turned when he smiled. She wished she had been brave enough to say something, to do something. Who knows how many girls he hurt after Cora? But he’d gotten away with it. There had been a houseful of people just on the other side of the trees and he had gotten away with it. Cora swallowed the lump in her throat before it could choke her. She had been so little, so helpless. No one was there to protect her. Now she had a little brother. Now he was helpless and being borne to his doom. She would not be afraid to act this time, would not waiver. She would protect him. But where to go from here?
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