It occurred to her that this was where they were now retreating to and where they would end up one day – a day she would like to live to see.
*
“Would you mind if I had a short sleep?” the captain asked.
He was full of that tranquillity which comes only after sex. That was how sleep, death’s sweeter sister, came to a man when he had tired himself with what he’d wanted to do. Perhaps one day the captain would wish to die the way he now wished to sleep. He thought of the dignity and indignity of death, of not having to ask when his hour would come. It was with him all the time.
“You look after the stove meanwhile, or else have a nap yourself. Or if you don’t want to, wake me after an hour or so. You can look at my watch. Just shake me by the shoulder.”
The captain was dozing already, only vaguely aware of her unease. She had been uneasy ever since he had arrived and he had attributed it to her inexperience and her youth, and to his rank. He noticed her relief when he told her he would sleep. It neither irritated him nor gave him particular pleasure.
The fire in the stove and in the flue lit up her face and shoulders, her breasts and hands. He liked her. Captain Hentschel thought sleepily that she was young and that he would be able to train her given the chance.
He fell asleep thinking of Auschwitz-Birkenau, where she had been sterilized. He had spent the night there out of necessity. It was not a place he was curious about. He accepted that it was one of those historical inevitabilities, the primeval face of war – of this war, which was a total war. For a moment he wondered how his wife was managing without him, and what his children were doing. Thanks to the family’s considerable assets he did not have to worry too much.
The captain’s face brought back a memory. A woman, the mother of four Wehrmacht soldiers, had been brought to Terezin from the Reich the previous year. Her four sons, one after the other, had been killed in battle. When the last one fell she had lost the protection of the law. The young men had mixed blood on their mother’s side. They had all worn the same uniform as Captain Hentschel. They also wore the same uniform as the two Wehrmacht officers who were brought to Terezin when it was discovered that they had Jewish grandmothers, and who were sent east inside a week. Like the mother of the dead soldiers, they had dissolved in the Jewish ocean, in the ocean of ashes from which Skinny had escaped to No. 232 Ost, so she could gaze on the purplish, sleeping features of Captain Daniel August Hentschel. She looked at his huge hands, his neck, his greatcoat on the door, at the flashes of his rank.
She waited fully an hour, and then he began to cough a little. Her father had coughed just like that when he woke from his afternoon siesta. She could see him in her mind’s eye, returning from the Aschermann café on Dlouhâ Street with the news that the Germans were beginning to transport Jews to Terezin.
At that time mobile x-ray units were making the rounds of the schools. On the pretext of the fight against tuberculosis, the Germans were collecting data on the racial composition of the population of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia – on the percentage of the population suitable for Germanization and subsequent assimilation. The family had been almost glad to escape by being sent to Terezin. S S and SA men were photographing girls aged from thirteen upwards in the nude. Later the photographs were sold in nightclubs.
“Dropped off for a while. What’s the time? How long did I sleep? Come to me. Why are you so far away?”
The captain was wide awake. It was after midday. She returned to the bed. His body and the bedclothes smelled of sleep. He sweated a little. If she understood his expression, she knew what it meant.
“Are you here?” he asked after a while.
“Yes,” she answered.
“I wouldn’t swear to it.”
She lay down by his side, closing her eyes. He could do with her whatever he wanted to. She didn’t want to have a part of it other than with her body. She heard him say that she was looking at him as if she were looking into water. But she was anxious not to make him angry.
“Do you always keep your legs together so tightly? Do you never relax? Or have you got cramp?”
He didn’t like the way she pressed her lips together either. Her youth he accepted; but stubbornness, or what he thought might be stubbornness, he would not. He couldn’t and didn’t want to admit that she might feel an aversion to him and he could see no reason why she should be afraid of him.
He wanted her to sit on him. It was pleasant to look into her face.
A few cinders dropped, spitting, through the grate.
“It’s warm here,” he said.
They heard the door of the next cubicle open and close. The captain got up as he was and walked over to the window. The blizzard had moved off beyond the river. She looked at his huge body.
“Soon we shall be defending ourselves on the Oder,” he said. “An hour or two from Berlin. Many hounds – death of the hare. We’re a tough nut; they haven’t got an easy run with us. But we don’t have an easy run with ourselves. We’re a big country, even if we’re small. A mere ninety million Germans. But we’re our own worst enemies. I could explain to you why we’re withdrawing, if you’re interested. As Frederick the Great said: He who would defend everything will defend nothing.”
He knew that army whores didn’t concern themselves with the technicalities of warfare. They did not care about strategy or tactics, positional fighting, or defence in trenches protected by minefields, let alone about Operation Barbarossa or the Blue Plan which replaced it because the original Blitzkrieg did not allow for retreat. It was ancient history by now that at the beginning of the campaign the men didn’t get winter clothing or boots because it was believed that they’d be home before the winter. Was it true then that pride came before a fall? If you want to know what winter means, he thought, you should spend a day in the east. That’s what the pious old women on his mother’s side used to say. Wer andern eine Grube gräbt, fällt selbst hinein. He who digs a hole for others will fall into it himself. He smiled.
“War or no war, millions of women throughout the world get pregnant each day. More than those killed on all fronts. Added to this there are five times as many men crippled as killed. Think how many broken families that means. Good manners command the cripples to make room for their rivals and withdraw with their tail between their legs. I see them terrified of dusk, of the approach of night, of the expectations of their wives.”
He was watching the wolves in the half light.
“The worst thing is the frosts.”
For her the worst thing in Poland had not been the frosts.
He turned away from the window to face her.
“You’ll have pretty hair when it grows again. I like redheads. Do you get it from your mother or your father?”
She took a second to think of a reply. “From my father’s mother.” Captain Hentschel began to dress. “Light the candle, will you? I can’t see my boots.”
He was thinking that the enemy had approached within artillery range. Today it was heavy guns; tomorrow it would be machine guns. Gone were the days when they’d advanced with the wind behind them. Now they were retreating. They were being chased back to where they had come from.
“The fog is at home here.”
She noticed that he had not put his pullover on. It was lying on the chair.
“Keep it, I have another.”
“Thank you. Shall I get dressed?”
“Put it straight on next to your body. That’s what Lilo used to do.”
From the pocket of his greatcoat, which he had put on but not done up, he produced a flask. He unscrewed the cap. His holster was still on the hook.
“Yes, you can get dressed,” he answered, “but you don’t have to if you don’t want to. You’re a feast for the eyes when you’ve nothing on. You haven’t got much of anything.”
“No,” she said, almost against her will.
Again she thought of her father. If he were to see her like this, with a Wehrmacht c
aptain, and this enormous pullover over her naked body … It went down to her thighs. Would this be a greater dishonour to her father than if he saw her dead? It was her body she had killed, not the religion of her ancestors. To her father, as a whore she would be as good as dead. Should she be glad that her family no longer existed? She felt the coarse bulky wool on her; she was warm and realized how welcome the pullover was. Did she know where the captain had got it? She knew where he had got his greatcoat. She might make the excuse to her father that she had not been with the captain; he had been with her. Would her father believe her if she lied and said she would rather be dead? It would only be half a lie. Had she committed a sin by wanting to live?
“Will you have a drink with me?” the captain asked.
He poured himself a thimbleful and drank it in one go. He poured out another. She expected him to drink that too, but he handed it to her. He was treating her as no-one in the brothel had treated her before.
She stood by the bed in his pullover, no longer wondering whether it came from the store at Auschwitz-Birkenau. She knocked the drink back in one gulp, like the captain, and started coughing. The captain laughed, it was a chesty laugh, deep and grating like his voice.
He poured himself a second shot and drank it in one gulp.
“Yesterday I killed a Russian who’d killed a comrade before my eyes. I grabbed a rifle and struck his head, perhaps 15 times. You can’t control yourself when your blood is up. What can be worse than seeing a comrade killed at your side?”
Did he assume she was on his side? The S S men in the camps had expected total submission. They believed that the conquered should feel honoured, should appreciate and admire their conquerors. It was the only glory, reflected glory that could fall on them before they perished.
Beneath his greatcoat she could see an Iron Cross. Who knew what he’d got it for? He had been to Auschwitz-Birkenau for a share in the loot held in those huge stores of everything that her father, mother, grandmothers, aunts and uncles and untold others had regarded as indispensable to life, and of which they had been stripped. That, in her eyes, made something cling to him, as it would cling to Germany to the end of all time.
As he poured his third shot he said: “Even a German sometimes forgets that he is a German.”
She did not know what that meant.
“Do you have a shop here for the troops? They do at some brothels.”
“Not here.”
“I’m leaving you a few marks. 30 enough?”
She was overcome with shame. The same kind of shame as when she stood before him naked.
“You’ve already given me your pullover.”
“So?”
“We’re not allowed to ask for money.”
“As far as I know you’re not under orders to refuse it.”
He put three ten-mark notes on the chair. It was obvious that he didn’t want to offend her. He didn’t say what had been on the tip of his tongue: Anyone going with a whore is a bit of a prostitute himself.
“Next time I’ll bring you a bag of millet. Your stomach must be rumbling. I’ve no intention of cooking food for myself.”
She was thrown by the words “next time”. He smiled. He touched the tip of her nose. If it was possible, he said, he would come again.
She dressed quickly.
He put on his belt, closed the buckle and adjusted the holster. Her eyes were tired and worried, as they had been when he arrived. If he stood up straight the ceiling was too low for him. He touched one of the beams. He might come at Christmas.
“Would you like to see the New Year in with me? I’ll let off a red signal flare outside the estate. To let you know I’ve arrived.”
He looked at her more carefully.
“What is that in your eyes? Hatred?” He bent down to her, his legs wide apart, his face very close.
“We’re not allowed to kiss,” she said once more.
Suddenly he didn’t look so huge or so polite as he might have wished. He said he didn’t care what he was or wasn’t allowed to do. For a few seconds, before he pulled himself together, he looked at her more as he would a lover than a prostitute. She didn’t recognize this. She had had over 70 experiences as an army prostitute but not a single one as a lover. She dared not pull away from his hand behind her neck, kept there so he could kiss her.
“I must stoke up the fire or it will go out,” she said.
She did not find it agreeable to be kissed by him. Every touch reminded her of who he was.
He was still putting off his leaving. She was getting impatient. He produced a cigarette case from his pocket and with his lighter lit a slim Juno.
“Alight and drawing,” he said. “At least something’s functioning. Do you smoke?”
“No.”
“Never tried it?”
“As a child.”
“Would you like one?”
“No, thank you. Really.”
He looked at the hot flue as if he was seeing it for the first time in his life. He was reminded of something, and smiled.
“You won’t believe this. In our camp we have a stove with a flue just like this one, and in the flue there’s a mouse. When we stoke the fire, the mouse hides. It’s got some hiding place in the wall, no-one knows where. As soon as the flue cools, the mouse begins to scratch. Bound to be a Jewish mouse. It’s not enough to have a will to live, or to dodge being burnt. This mouse must also be clever and lucky, or else it wouldn’t survive. Should humans learn from mice?”
He saw her blush but went on.
“I like it when you blush. As you can see, I find it hard to say goodbye to you. I’d love to take you out for a beer to the railway pub. I’ll see if they’ll let you out with me. They have Czech beer there. Tell me, are you corresponding with anyone?”
“No.”
“Would you like me to take a message to anyone? Give someone news of you?”
“Thank you, but no,” she said.
She dropped her eyes. She felt herself trembling. Why had he said “a Jewish mouse”?
He put his finger on her lips. He saw her alarm, her sudden start and her step back, but he didn’t show it. He didn’t want to frighten her even more. He was asking himself why it was so important to him to make a prostitute whom he had already had like him. Did she think that every Wehrmacht officer reported to the Gestapo?
“Would it break one of your private rules if you were to kiss me goodbye?”
She did so.
Then he said: “Anyway, it’s all schüssegal. Farewell.”
He picked up his yellow, elbow-length fur gloves. These probably hadn’t come from the Auschwitz-Birkenau store. He was suddenly irritated. He pulled on the gloves. So he was not going to shake hands with her? Had he gone too far? Had it just occurred to him how many dozen soldiers this thin, mournful little whore would lie with tomorrow, and then again, and after her Sunday break, on Monday, Tuesday and so on? Was he already thinking of his armour plated Horch? Of the provisions in its boot? Today he was here, tomorrow who could tell? That was the fate of an officer in wartime. To live from one hour to the next, from one day to the next. Exactly the way a whore lived.
She shrank. Her shoulders and head drooped. The hollows in his cheeks reminded her of how he had come to her cubicle, frozen. He was, she could see, already somewhere else in his mind. Before he closed the door she experienced a moment of panic at the thought that he might still trap her, surprise her or accuse her of something.
But he just said: “You’ve got lovely green eyes.”
He must have told Madam Kulikowa that because it remained with her. At No. 232 Ost they called her Lovely Green Eyes.
*
Fresh snow fell during the night. Black flakes were floating down to the ground; in the morning they would be white. Who could tell how Captain Daniel August Hentschel would get back to his unit in his bullet proof, four-seater Horch with chains on all its tyres? The snow glistened in the darkness. The water in the tubs no longer melte
d. The wood began to spit in the stoves.
Five
“You’re crying?” Skinny asked.
“Not because of that,” Beautiful said.
This was the third day that Beautiful had diarrhoea. It was the first time she hadn’t talked about her mother.
“I’m thinking the same as you,” Skinny said.
“I’m thinking of my mother,” said Beautiful.
Twelve: Erich von Eicken, Albrecht Domin, Karl Osten, Varin Arp, Horst Torberg, Theodor Eisenbach, Herwart Kopf-Eschenbach, Hans Seidel, Endos Bredel, Berthold Wupperthal, Berndt Uhlstein, Max Edell.
They could tell the voices of the guards apart. The deep and even deeper ones, and the high and higher ones, like a children’s choir. Was it a sin that she thought of her young brother?
There had been a snowfall. Ginger and Maria-from-Poznan had started yard duty at 5 a.m. to clear the drifts around the latrine.
Skinny and Estelle climbed into one tub at the end of the corridor. Skinny sometimes had the impression that Estelle was avoiding her and at other times that she was seeking her out. She leant against the side of the tub, feeling the rotten wood against her back. Her body was aching, she felt as if she had been run over. Absentmindedly she splashed her face, then licked her lips.
“Don’t drink it,” Estelle said.
It was almost dark.
“I’ve had enough of it,” Estelle continued. “Haven’t you? Did you have that officer yesterday?”
Surely Estelle knew who she’d been with? Why did she ask? She had learned to lie. Her voice was matter-of-fact, but she was keeping something hidden.
The soap was coarse, rectangular double bars for laundry work, with grains of sand. The soap repeatedly slipped through her fingers and she had to retrieve it from the bottom of the tub. The Oberführer had told them that it was the same as was used by the troops. She got a splinter in her hand and immediately pulled it out. They were large splinters, and the larger they were the easier they were to get rid of.
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