Lovely Green Eyes

by Arnost Lustig

  “It’s hard to go to sleep with cold feet,” Long-Legs said to Skinny.

  “Mine too,” Skinny said.

  “I feel as if I have a brick in my belly.”

  Long-Legs began to tell Skinny that she had once been with an Italian who wore puttees. Then she said: “The first day I came here I saw wolves gnawing a naked body in the snow. What the wolves didn’t eat, the dogs did.”

  The Madam did not cry when Oberführer S chimmelpfenning hit her with his walking stick. He had struck her elbow so hard that she couldn’t bend her arm. She would have to massage the major with one hand. A few tears did freeze on her cheeks and she wiped her face with her sleeve. An echo of the 60-year-old lover she’d had when she was 14, who had never hit her, drowned in her silent lament. She cursed the Oberführer.

  During the roll-call he had shouted: “I regret nothing. You remember that!”

  Three

  “No regular duty for you today,” Madam Kulikowa said to Skinny. She told her to have a bath, tidy herself up and wait. It would be an officer – Wehrmacht Captain Daniel August Hentschel. She was to put a saucepan of water on the stove. She would be issued with perfume, oil, fresh clothes, underwear and shoes. She would have extra time for him.

  The Madam examined her for a while with knowing, grey eyes.

  “You’re still like a cat who’s afraid even of the person who feeds her. If you weren’t in a camp you’d see the Germans like the rest. Anyway, when it comes to it, from the waist down they’re all the same.”

  “You haven’t got much light in here,” said Captain Hentschel. “We won’t even have to put it out.”

  As he walked in she thought that he had a slight limp in his left leg. The flame of the candle flickered and almost died in the draught from the open door. He saluted with gloved fingertips at the peak of his cap, then took it off. She glanced up at him. An officer, she thought, what did this mean? She must not betray how nervous she felt. He had a thin but big face, a narrow aquiline nose and widely spaced, deep blue eyes. Dark brown hair.

  “Absolute hell, driving here, my word! Like skidding on snow and ice into hell.” He sensed her reserve and put it down to shyness.

  “Last week the car in front of my Horch ran over a mine,” he continued. “I was half-conscious and I saw a nurse bending down over me. She couldn’t have been any older than you. I was dying with my eyes on her throat, her breasts, and her cleavage. When I came to, another nurse was bending over me, one with glasses, older than my mother.”

  He was talking to her easily, as if they knew one another. She breathed in the smell of his greatcoat with its sheepskin lining and thick fur collar, the smell of mothballs, gunpowder, sweat and wet snow. She imagined his weight on top ofher. He was broad-shouldered, tall and looked strong. He had shaved before setting out; his hair was cut short, lighter at its ends, like the hair of the soldiers she had known during her past six days of service. She had a few seconds to look him over. With each soldier she felt like one animal assessing another. She did not want to stare at the captain, the way Fatty would, nor kneel in front of him like Ginger or Maria-from-Poznan.

  He was frozen through. With a stiff hand he closed the wooden latch, then pulled off his gloves. His glance swept over the iced-up window. He carried a pistol in a holster. If he knew that he was here with a Jewess he might pull it out. Or kick her out into the corridor. Then they would hang her. On her chest they would pin a notice that read I concealed that I was a Jew as they did at Auschwitz-Birkenau.

  She reminded herself to be careful. She lacked the coquetry of Ginger and the Marmalade Cat, and she was incapable of offering what Maria-from-Poznan, The Toad, could offer.

  “How are you?” he asked.

  “Fine, thank you,” she replied.

  “You look sad to me,” said the captain. “Are you?”

  “No.”

  He glanced at his watch. It reminded her of the morning at the ramp at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Her first, girl’s wristwatch. She had lost it within an hour, like all the things they had to leave behind in the train. They had arrived at four in the morning and by eight nine-tenths of the transport had their lives behind them.

  The captain had tears in his eyes from the cold. He stood, legs apart, waving his arms awkwardly like a frozen bird. His holster seemed tiny on his massive body. Although he had kicked the snow from his boots in the corridor outside, he was leaving marks on the floor. He might be 30 or 35.

  He stepped in front of the stove, rubbing his hands. He was speaking with some difficulty, his jaw still stiff with cold.

  Captain Hentschel believed that war changed a woman. That she became part of the man she was with. That a man in wartime needed his body to fuse with a woman’s soul – that this excited and satisfied a man. At that moment nothing would repel the woman. He could come to her before or after battle, caked in mud, sweaty and dirty and with blood on him. With burnt or tattered clothes, worn-out boots, a torn undershirt or no shirt at all, stubble-faced, ragged and dishevelled, reeking of sweat and gunpowder and blood and mud, smeared with enemy guts. She would restore his confidence and strength. She would give him a sense of achievement, which he could find with her alone. He would straighten up, grow in his own estimation, discover again what he’d feared he had lost. At this moment a woman regarded a man like a child, like a mother capable of giving her life for her child.

  She felt that he was taking stock of her. For her part she was weighing up his words. Puffy snowflakes were settling on the window pane.

  “Can you imagine what the first people here must have felt?”

  The window was almost opaque. A whitish dusk filled the room.

  She would have been glad to change places with those first people.

  “You’re a pretty girl,” he said.

  Snow was still clinging to his eyelashes, eyebrows and chin. His face was purple from the wind and the cold.

  “I could have driven here blindfolded.”

  The wolves were howling, answered by the barks of the dogs in the kennels. They would come right up to the walls of the estate.

  She breathed in the smell of his greatcoat again, his uniform and boots. Shadows played on the floor of the cubicle, on the walls and ceiling beams, twisting with the flickering flame of the candle. Its wax ran down into a small plate on the table. There were stains on the walls: the tiny remnants of insects not eaten by the spiders, frozen in what was left of their webs.

  “I hope you’re not mute,” the captain said. “Or are you still learning to talk?”

  “I used to believe in dreams,” he said into the dusk. “Now I’m afraid of them.”

  He was not the first to murder whatever came within reach in his dreams. These were the dreams he feared. He tried to forget them. He did not think of himself as a murderer: he fought because he had to. In its way it was beautiful. He had also dreamt he was dead. He was not afraid of that dream. He woke from it alive.

  “Do you know the country here?”

  “I’ve never been further than the railway station.”

  “Have you ever been to Festung Breslau?”

  Why had he asked her that? Did he know about Festung Breslau, the “Hotel for Foreigners”? She waited for him to ask her about Auschwitz-Birkenau. She hoped that as a Wehrmacht officer he would not know about it.

  “What question would you say yes to?” He smiled at her with his frozen lips.

  “I don’t know.”

  As soon as the captain had warmed up a little, the cubicle with its ceiling beams and walls with blackened plaster seemed cosier to him. He could make out the cars arriving and departing in the courtyard. The fire roared in the cylindrical stove. He was studying his new prostitute, enjoying her slender girlish throat, with its swanlike whiteness and her gingery hair, which had not yet grown back to its proper length. He wanted to have his pleasure, but he wanted to have a friendly talk as well. He did not want a bitch that just lay down and opened her legs. She had pale skin, he liked that,
and she had bloodshot, slightly scared eyes. He had asked for her especially from Madam Kulikowa and Oberführer Schimmelpfennig. For a change he wanted the youngest prostitute in No. 232 Ost.

  Was Madam Kulikowa trying to do her a favour by sending her an officer after only six days of full service, each day twelve men and on one occasion fourteen and on another fifteen? Did it mean she would have no-one else for the rest of the day? Would she be relieved of a further eleven bodies, faces, hands and feet? Hairy chests and bellies?

  “You look fine. You’re a pretty girl. Would you believe that this morning, as I was driving here, there was a red dawn? And look at the blizzard that’s come out of it.”

  She was thin, not surprisingly. They had a very strict diet here. Once he had seen one of their helpings on a tin plate – potato salad with carrot and kohlrabi; a thin slice of salami; and a little tub of jam the size of perhaps three thimbles – a breakfast ration for the troops.

  He was thawing out. And a good thing too, he thought. At least it was dry here and relatively warm. An idea came to him about the universality of women. Yes, universality, all-world-ness, was the correct concept. A little light in the gloom of the east. The fact that one half of humanity belonged to the same club as the other half – at least in a certain sense. He smiled. It was easier for the girl to adjust to him than for him to adjust to the girl. The war had not changed him in this respect. She was very young, which confused him a little. Almost too young. This was not India or Japan or some Pacific island. The commanding officer of the S S units in the region had spoken of the Kinderaktion, the Children’s Programme – though of course from the viewpoint of the SS.

  “Have you had a child yet?” The question caught her unawares.

  “No.”

  “Do you occasionally smile?” He was still hoping to hear a friendly word from this young prostitute – he intended to be friendly.

  It was not impossible, he thought, that she got here through some similar Kinderaktion.

  “You’re new here?”

  “My seventh day.”

  “Yes, somebody told me about you – the Oberführer, I think, or the Madam. What’s your name?”

  “I haven’t been given a new name yet.”

  “I see they’ve already tattooed a number on your arm.”

  “Yes.” She blushed.

  “I doubt they would have sent you here without a name.”

  She did not know what to say.

  “Do you like it here? Got used to the job yet?”

  “I’ve got used to the job.”

  “Am I your first officer?” She nodded.

  “Today?”

  “Ever.”

  She didn’t give the soldiers in her cubicle more attention than she had to. It was an indifference with which she armed herself and which deadened her. She was glad the officer was taking his time to get warm; she wouldn’t have liked him to touch her with frozen hands. She reconciled herself in advance to what he would want from her. What they all wanted. Twelve times a day, six days a week, making the most of their time.

  “How come you speak German?”

  “I learnt it.”

  “In army courses? At home?”

  “At home and at school,” she replied.

  “Everything’s a school,” he said. “Do you know any German proverbs?”

  “Like which?”

  “Unkraut verdirbt nicht. “ Weeds don’t perish. “Aller Anfang ist schwer.” Every beginning is difficult. “Ende gut, alles gut.” All’s well that ends well.

  She did not want to explain her knowledge of German. Her father and mother had gone to German schools under the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Besides, both were born in Prague, where every other person spoke German.

  “My favourite proverb is: Das Hemd ist uns näher als der Rock.” Our shirt’s closer to us than our jacket.

  Was he going to teach her German proverbs? He couldn’t hurt her with proverbs, could he? She blushed again. Maybe it would be better if the captain pounced on her and stopped asking questions.

  “Most of the foreign words I know I learnt in bed,” he said. “How about you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Have you got used to this place?”

  “I have.”

  “Where were you born?”

  “Prague.” The flush left her cheeks only slowly.

  “I know of one of your famous countrymen – Rilke. Life is heavier than the sum of all things. We keep only what we love. I have Ernst Jünger’s Marble Cliffs in my pack.”

  She had no idea what he was talking about.

  At last the captain began to unbutton his greatcoat. On his tunic she saw the Iron Cross. Candle wax was running into the plate on the table and as it cooled it stabilized the candle.

  He walked over to the table with his coat open, bent down and blew out the candle. A pale light still shone through the window.

  “Do you know why I did that?” She did not answer.

  “It’ll be cosier like this, we’ll be closer. Don’t you want it to be better rather than worse for you?”

  She was thinking – as so often, without really knowing why – of the bodies of the drowned that, together with other girls from the Frauen-konzentrationslager, she had pulled out of the mud of the Harmanze pond near Auschwitz-Birkenau, so they wouldn’t poison the air the Germans breathed. Of the girls in Terezin and their arguments about what was improper for a girl in relationships with boys. Of the girls at Auschwitz-Birkenau who would dress up as men in order to get past the sentries, so they could see their fathers, brothers, husbands or lovers, or sometimes just to convince themselves that they were still alive. She had seen many others who were worse off. The more courageous took considerable risks just to see their loved ones for a few seconds by the wire. The risk seemed greater because what they took it for was so little. At the Harmanze pond she had envied the wild ducks. She had collected gulls’ eggs for the S S men, as she watched the flight of the wild geese. The eggs had a brittle shell and some-times they broke in her hand. She had secretly eaten a few.

  The captain was listening to the blizzard and, distinct from it, the sound of artillery fire. The units fighting were not his.

  “Somewhere around here there’s supposed to be an officers’ mess. Also a distillery.”

  “I don’t know the area.”

  “I’ve driven here from Festung Breslau. There are a number of small concentration camps along the road. I stopped at the biggest one, at Auschwitz, to collect greatcoats like the one I’m wearing, for my battalion. Also boots, scarves and gloves, winter equipment. I stopped there for the night.”

  She pressed her lips together, not what Madam Kulikowa had advised her to do. It was part of her job to listen to the captain talking. She sensed danger. He had spent the night at the camp as if it were a hotel. Didn’t it worry him that his coat came from there? That his men would keep warm in pullovers, gloves and socks taken from murdered people? Perhaps he didn’t realize.

  He was looking at her clothes, which were tight across her chest.

  “You’re not exactly dressed in something light and airy.”

  She did not understand.

  “It fits all right.”

  She could see him assessing her breasts.

  “How old are you?”

  “18.”

  “When will you be 18?”

  “I am 18 already.”

  “Why not 30 or a 120?” Captain Hentschel laughed. “You look 15.”

  Again she blushed. She felt the blood in her cheeks.

  “I’ll soon be nineteen.”

  “You look 15,” he repeated.

  He was taking off his tunic. She almost felt relief. Soon he wouldn’t ask any more questions. There was a fresh noise outside. A larger unit had arrived, several cars, or perhaps buses. The captain unclasped his holster belt and hung it up, along with his tunic, on the hook by the door.

  “Don’t you want to take your things off?”

&
nbsp; “As you wish.”

  “Make yourself comfortable. With your permission I intend to stay here for quite a while.”

  She did as he said, feeling his eyes on her. In his voice and gaze she read something between condescension, contempt and curiosity. A girl was a bottle into which they emptied themselves. She did not want to go over what she had told herself a dozen times the previous day and a dozen or more times on each of the preceding days.

  Her gaze was full of fear. He had not come for anything that could threaten or hurt her. And it was one of his principles, where sex was concerned, to share his pleasure as far as possible in equal measure.

  “I don’t want you to be sad,” he said.

  “I’m not sad,” she said. She couldn’t pretend that he hadn’t put this very nicely. What would not be nice was what was to come.

  Was she pleasing him by undressing quickly? She was losing the last shred of her privacy. She was losing her sense of shame, and that sense of shame was different now. She ought to be glad that she was with a German officer. But her brother and her father were watching her from somewhere above.

  Skinny felt Captain Hentschel’s presence without looking at him. She was undressed now, her head hung as she looked at her toes. Was she clean? She had scrubbed herself in icy water. She knew that the captain was watching her in the way that soldiers looked at a girl, in admiration, with a touch of contempt, with a desire in which there was some condemnation.

  “I’d say you’re making yourself older, my girl, though in a few weeks or years you’ll be making yourself younger again.” He smiled briefly. “Are you concealing your age?”

  “No.”

  “I wonder if you’re doing this for your benefit, or for mine.”

  Instead of waiting for an answer the captain began to undress. He placed his clothes tidily on the chair, as if he were already thinking of his departure. He put down the items one by one. She closed her eyes, hearing the familiar sounds, the clink of his belt and buckle on his trousers, the rustle of his shirt. He wore double winter underwear, a white and a grey set, both clean. Underpants with a tie-string. She lowered her head again. This moment always embarrassed her. She was not just ashamed for herself, she knew that this was pointless. For some reason, as the soldiers undressed, she thought of the sick at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Of the four castrated boys her own age, on whom Dr Krueger had operated with the assistance of two Jewish doctors who knew perfectly well that before long they would themselves be turned to ashes. She had been aware throughout of what was going on, just glad that it did not concern her. She had collected the boy’s underwear in a basket. It was not ridiculous, it was pitiful. They would no longer need it.