Swastika Night

by Katharine Burdekin

  “Sit down, Ethel,” Alfred said, seeing her begin to shake as well as cry. “You’re not well yet.”

  Ethel sat down. Alfred looked at her, and thought of the German girl in the photograph.

  “I shall find it easy enough to leave you alone till you’re quite strong,” he said, more to himself than to Ethel.

  “Master, I am ashamed,” Ethel sobbed.

  “It’s not your shame,” said Alfred. “It’s ours.”

  Ethel didn’t even try to understand this, but she felt a little happier. Alfred had not touched her armlet yet.

  “Woman,” said Alfred after a long silence, “where is my daughter?”

  Ethel stared at him. Alfred had used the form of words spoken by a father fetching his holy male child, and had applied them to a girl!

  “Well, where is she? You haven’t drowned her, I hope?”

  “No, master. She’s asleep in the bedroom.”

  “Fetch her.”

  “You—you want to see her, master?”

  “Ethel, if you don’t get up and fetch my girl quickly I’ll clout you one over the head. If I get her myself I may break her.”

  Ethel threw herself on her knees before him and clasped her hands.

  “Oh, master, I am a shameful woman, but I have borne two sons. Do not hurt the girl, oh, do not hurt her!”

  “You want to have one to keep, eh? I’m not going to hurt her. I want to see her.”

  Ethel, completely bewildered but obedient, went to fetch her baby-girl. She hesitated half inside the door of the living-room with the little bundle clutched in her arms.

  “Bring her here,” said Alfred.

  Ethel came a little closer.

  “Put her in my arms.”

  “Master, oh please——”

  “I’m not going to hurt her. There, that’s right. Is that the way to hold her? She seems quite placid. Is it a strong baby?”

  Ethel hovered near with a terribly anxious look in her eyes, like a bitch whose new-born puppies are being handled.

  “Yes, Master. For a girl. Please, could I—could I have her now?”

  “No, sit down. She’s quite happy with me.”

  Ethel sat down. Her anxiety was beginning to abate. Alfred’s actions were wholly incomprehensible, but she was at last aware that he did not mean to hurt the child. Alfred sat with the little ugly still new-born thing in his arms, thinking very strange thoughts. The baby had quite a crop of dark brown hair, which would, of course, fall off, to be replaced by baby down. Then, when she was older, and had some real hair, it would be shaved off and kept shaved like Ethel’s ugly little head. This was the only skill the women were allowed to acquire, shaving each other’s heads with a safety razor, because of course no man would undertake such a humiliating job. But it had to be done under supervision, and the women were not allowed to keep the razors. They might use the little blades in fights. Alfred was thinking, if I took this baby away from Ethel and from all other women and never let her see a man or a boy and brought her up by myself, and taught her to respect herself more than she respected me, I could turn her into a real woman. Something utterly strange. Beautiful perhaps, like the Nazi girl, but something more than just being beautiful. I could make a new kind of human being, one there’s never been before. She might love me. I might love her. Or would she by heredity be like Ethel? No, because Jim and Robert aren’t like Ethel, dull and stupid. It’s not in the womb the damage is done. Ethel can’t despise the child in the womb because she doesn’t know what kind it is. This little thing could be made into a woman, but it’ll grow up to be exactly like Ethel.

  “Ethel,” he said, “how would you like it if I took this child away and brought her up myself, and she turned into something quite different from you?”

  Ethel only understood that Alfred was for some utterly incomprehensible male reason threatening to take her girl away from her.

  “Oh, Master, no,” she whimpered. “I am a shameful woman but not wicked. I swear to you she’s only a girl. I can keep her, dirt though she is.”

  “No more dirt than you are,” said Alfred sharply, and of course stupidly. But he was upset. The feel of the baby in his arms, its very tiny weight, its placidity (it was still sound asleep), and the queer longing he had to give it a different kind of life from all others of its sex made him feel almost as if he and his little daughter were a unit, belonging together, while Ethel was an outsider.

  “Of course, Master, no more dirt than I am,” said Ethel, in meek apology. “We are all dirt.”

  “Well, I can’t really take her away,” Alfred said regretfully.

  He sat silent again, very still on his hard primitive wooden chair, in order not to move his arms and wake the baby. He was thinking about family life. In past times he might have been sitting as he was now, with this little thing——

  “Have you called her anything yet?” he asked.

  “Edith, Master.”

  And there would be Fred and Jim and Robert, as well as this very small Edith, and Ethel, all sitting in one room like Christians. Alfred could not imagine it. Even now, though he liked to hold the baby, he was feeling restless at being so long in the same room with Ethel. A man could sit with a dog quite indefinitely, but he cculd not stay with a woman except to satisfy his natural needs. When the boys had been old enough to recognise him and take some notice of him he had always taken them out into the open or sent Ethel away somewhere while he played with them. He had never thought of the unfairness of robbing a woman of precious half-hours of the short time she could keep her sons with her. He wondered why women made men restless. They did not criticise any more than a dog would. They were quiet. They never spoke unless the man spoke first. And yet one couldn’t stand it. One had to get out by oneself or go back to man’s company. “We are all ashamed,” he thought. “We don’t know it, at least only the Knight and I know it, but all of us are ashamed of this low vile pattern that has been set them to live. Their appearance and their manner are criticism as loud as if they screamed at us, and we can’t stand it. Men could perhaps have sat with that Nazi girl without wanting to rush away. But even that was only a pattern, not women themselves. I could take notice of Edith when she gets a little older. Play with her like I did with the boys. Then Ethel wouldn’t despise her so much, and she wouldn’t despise herself so much, and she’d be bound to grow up different. Different. Unfit for the Women’s Quarters. Unfit for the cage. Oh, God, I wish I’d never had to think about women! I can’t do anything for her at all, if I ever take any notice of her it’ll make her consciously unhappy. It doesn’t matter holding her like this because she’ll never know about it. It is the same as with the boys. The women may love them so long as they’re young enough to forget about it. I can love Edith—love Edith—love a little girl? How strange that is! As long as she never knows. I couldn’t love Ethel. No. It’s impossible to love women as they are. But this thing isn’t anything yet. It’s just Edith, my child. Ah, von Wield, a million years in the Christians’ fiery lake wouldn’t be too long for you.” Alfred unconsciously gripped the child tighter at the thought of von Wied, who had driven girls like the Hitler maid off the face of the earth and had made it impossible for a man to love his own daughter. Edith began to whimper, then burst into a little thin angry cry like the impatient mewing of a cat.

  “Master!” said Ethel, jumping up quickly in spite of her weakness.

  “Sit down!” Alfred said sharply. “She’s quite all right. She’ll stop in a minute.”

  But Edith did not stop. She went on mewing, and waving her small arms about in feeble protest. Alfred rocked her gently, as he had seen Ethel do with the boys. Edith went on crying.

  Ethel stood it in silence as long as she could, then, with agonising audacity, gasped, “Master, forgive me, but I think she’s hungry. She’s been asleep a long time. If I might have her—just for a little while. She doesn’t take very long.”

  Alfred surrendered the baby. He walked up and down the room
while Ethel fed her. He could not bear to see this natural process. He was in a fantastically upside-down state of mind. He ought to have taken no notice whatever of Edith; he ought to have been disgusted at her sex. In the morning when he heard she was a girl he had been disappointed, but then all the afternoon he had wanted to see her. And now he was far more advanced in his unmanly doting, for he was furious with Ethel for being able to do something for the baby he could not do himself. Edith, he felt, was entirely his, no one else ought to touch her. For he alone knew what Edith was now, not dirt at all, but the embryo of something unimaginably wonderful. Ethel was not fit to touch her.

  “Master,” said Ethel presently, “do you—do you want to have her back?”

  But Alfred’s mood had changed again. A black despondency had come over him, and he wanted now to get away. He put his finger into Edith’s palm, and the baby’s hand curled itself round weakly, but with a noticeable little pressure.

  “You keep her now. Look after her well, Ethel.”

  “Yes, Master. And you will not take off my armlet?”

  “What?” thought Alfred, “have some other man coming in here and making Ethel neglect the baby because he wants her so often and for so long at a time? Not likely!”

  “No,” he said. “I’ve nothing to complain of.”

  “Oh, thank you, Master. I am not worthy, but I swear our next child shall be a son.”

  “It shan’t then!” snarled Alfred. “I’ll see you don’t have another child at all till Edith’s three years old. I know how the girls are kicked about and neglected when a boy comes along.”

  “Master, how can it be otherwise?” asked Ethel, in such amazement that she even dared to seem to argue with him.

  “I don’t know !” shouted Alfred, “but it’s bloody well got to be otherwise some time, and if you don’t take proper care of Edith I’ll beat you till you can’t stand up !”

  “Master, I will. I—I will care for her always as if she were—were a boy,” said Ethel, greatly daring.

  “All right then,” said Alfred more gently. “I’ll come again soon.”

  He went out, and crossed the now dark and empty playground towards the gate. There were a few lights, not on the playground, but between the little rows of houses, and as he passed a certain small street, or rather a little square, for the houses were built round an open space as broad as it was long, he saw a Knight leave a house and cross the square towards him. Alfred saw his face for a second under a lamp. It was one of the Army Knights. The most vigorous and healthy of the young girls were picked out for the Knights, and become Knights’ women. After that, when the Knights were tired of them, Englishmen could have them, or they could go to the Nazi house. Knights’ women carried a small swastika on their white armlet, and it was very perilous for any Englishman or Nazi to interfere with them. But few girls really liked to go to the Knights’ square. They could not have children, and they were more afraid of their noble lusters than of common Germans or Englishmen. They lived in a terror which was spiritual as well as physical, because the Knight they lay with at evening, might bellow and storm at them in the morning in church, if it was the right day of the month.

  When Alfred saw this man striding across the Knights’ square towards him he fell into such a reckless rage that he trembled and the blood sang in his ears. Here was the enemy who had done all this to him and Edith, here was the descendant of a man who had helped von Wied to put his filthy plan into action, here was Germany, to be loathed now for a new reason, one he had never dreamed of before he had started to think seriously of women and had held in his arms a girl of his own. The Knight came closer and Alfred grimly waited for him. He even moved towards him, into the Knights’ square. He forgot about the book, and that he had not yet told a soul in England where it was; he forgot all old von Hess’s solemn warnings about the stupidity and evil of violence; he forgot even his own genuine inner conviction that the forceful way is not the way to get good things done. He had no thought in his mind except that the Knight was alone, and that he, Alfred, could, if he were quick and clever, severely mangle him, perhaps even kill him, before help would come. He gripped his stick and waited. But as the Army Knight came swinging along towards him, Alfred was reminded, with deplorably weakening effect, of that other Knight, who wore a tunic like this Knight’s with silver swastikas gleaming on the collar, whose cloak had shaken so gracefully back from his shoulder when he played the violin. Alfred groaned inwardly in despair. “Now, even their clothes, the clothes that mean all that is bad to me, must remind me of him.” Alfred sank his stick to the ground. It was almost as if old von Hess were standing behind him, saying in his pleasant way, “Alfred do not get so heated.” The Army Knight, who seemed preoccupied, suddenly looked up and saw Alfred standing quite close to him, inside, well inside the Knights’ square.

  “What are you doing here, Kerl?” he asked harshly. “Are you a stranger?”

  “No, highly-born.”

  “Get out,” said the Knight, and with no more words passed on his way. He never looked round to see if Alfred followed him, so certain was he of instant obedience. Alfred did follow him with no more thought of violence, much relieved now that he had been saved from committing so vast and irremediable a folly. “It’s this place,” he thought. “Once you’ve started to think about women, it’s intolerable. It has the atmosphere of a stinking bog, heavy and evil and sickening. And Edith must live here all her life. I hope she’ll die.” But he felt better when he had passed through the gate and was in the men’s world once more. He realised how little and unimportant was his personal emotion about the baby girl compared with the task von Hess had set him. Truth, first guarding it and then spreading it, must come before everything. “All this woman business will be broken up once the German idea, the force idea, is smashed. I must be more careful when I go there again and try to think straight.” He went home, thinking now about Hermann.

  When he reached his home, Jim, the thirteen-year-old, had gone to bed. He worked long hours in the Technical School and was generally very tired at night. Thomas had gone out somewhere. He never went to the Women’s Quarters. His whole sexual and emotional life was lived among men. No stigma attached to it, and the German government had nothing to say against a whole-time homosexuality for Englishmen. If they had no children it was their own lookout. Alfred, who was as normal as it was possible for a man to be in such a society, had never blamed or envied Thomas for his way of living, but now when he came into the kitchen and found Fred alone, reading a book on engineering, he did suddenly wish he had grown up like Thomas. He wouldn’t be in the sickening atmosphere of the Women’s Quarters, worrying about his baby daughter and being sorely tempted to beat up Army Knights. He’d be off with the friend of the moment, free to go where they would, with the whole clean night-country before them. But then as he looked at Fred, studious, absorbed, patient, with only his father knew what a solid gritty character behind his intelligence, he ceased to envy Thomas entirely. A son like Fred was worth any frets and difficulties.

  “I suppose a Red German didn’t turn up while I was out?” Alfred asked, sitting down.

  “No. Have a cigarette, Father.” Fred pushed one little cigarette across the table.

  “Where did you get it?”

  “A fellow gave it to me.”

  “Nazi?”

  “No, English.”

  “Smoke it yourself, lad.”

  “No, do have it, Father. I meant to try to buy some for you but I simply couldn’t save the money. Thomas doesn’t manage the food like you do. We went pretty short at times. Jim always had enough, though. Now smoke it, Father. I don’t really care about it.”

  “Thank you, Fred. Well, it’s nice to have a whiff.”

  “What do you mean by a Red German?”

  “A German in a red uniform. A Permanent Exile.”

  “I’ve never seen one.”

  “Well, you’ll see one soon. It’s Hermann. Do you remember a Nazi, a you
ng soldier, who used to come here a lot about five or six years ago?”

  “I remember Hermann, of course. What’s he done?”

  “He hasn’t really done anything. But we’ve got to pretend that he has, because no decent Englishman would have anything to do with a man who tried to ruin a boy for life maliciously.”

  “But what did he really do?”

  “Oh, he really killed the boy. But I’d better start and explain properly. Shut the door.”

  Alfred told his son about Hermann, the chorister, von Hess, the flight in the aeroplane, and the book. Fred was utterly absorbed. He made no comment at all, but occasionally put a question.

  “When can I see it?” he asked, when Alfred had given a very concise résumé of his adventures, and had stopped to get a drink of water.

  “To-morrow I must go and see Andrew, the foreman up at Long Barrow farm. He’ll be glad to do me a favour if he can. I want him to take Hermann on. He’s got a bargain in that boy. He can work any two Englishmen to a standstill. Then, though I may be allowed for sentiment’s sake to keep a disgraced Nazi who was once a friend of mine from starving to death on an old woman’s ration, after that we mustn’t see him, not publicly, I mean. Of course we shall see him. I must do that to-morrow, because Hermann may turn up any time, but the night after to-morrow we can go up to Stonehenge and you shall see the book. But at present I shall have to read to you, translating as I go, because you can’t manage the black letter or grammatical German yet. I can see I’ve got to get out of my sleepy ways. There’s another fund of information I haven’t half worked properly yet and that’s the Christians. I was interested in them, but I always thought their old tales were primitive superstitious nonsense. But now we shall be able to compare their legends with what von Hess says. We must go down to Amesbury one night and see my old friend Joseph Black. You know I used to think he and his family were called “black’ because they’re so dirty, but it isn’t, it’s a surname like a Knight’s. We all had them once. Now only Knights and Christians have. Hullo, is that Thomas? “