Lovely Green Eyes

by Arnost Lustig

  Die Sonne bringt es an den Tag. Du weisst nun meine Heimlichkeit, So halt den Mund und sei gescheit…

  He wished that he had written such a jewel himself.

  With his right arm raised he saluted the Oberführer, who was watching some men unloading boxes of books, covered in snow. It was enough to make him sick. The army were retreating, and Berlin was sending them literature via Cracow.

  Obersturmführer Sarazin disappeared into the building.

  The Lebensborn and the field brothel – two related institutions, the former giving way to the latter as the requirements of the Herrenvolk and its army changed. For the Party and the army high command, Sarazin had the gratitude of a son, a closer filial relationship than he had enjoyed with his own father. He was filled with warm recollections of the Lebensborn. His seven days there had given him, day by day and night by night, the self-assurance a man has when he has impregnated a woman. That deep, irrepressible primitive feeling. The triumphal attitude of a man who has conquered a woman or to whom a woman has submitted, a woman he has helped to have a child, his child. The sense of immortality a man has when he looks up at the stars. He remembered a few of the women’s names, mostly just their first names. He was never quite sure he remembered those names correctly, but that was unimportant. It was part of the rules of the game not to ask to whom he was giving a child, just as the women did not ask who he was. All that was needed was mutual attraction and orders from above. The authorities would deal with everything else. The future of the Reich was being laid down, and from the best material. As the German children would be, so would the nation. As the children were brought up, from swaddling clothes and dummy, to kindergarten to elementary school, and from there to secondary school and university, then to the army – so would the country be in the years to come. This knowledge was enough for inspiration and arousal, for a sense of satisfaction. Added to this was the secrecy, like the secrecy of the night, the lure of a woman’s body in the cubicle with its curtains drawn to ensure that the combination of darkness and light stimulated the participants. It was wonderful not to know who that woman was. The Lebensborn, the Spring of Life, was an island in a white snowy sea, a silver moon with its invisible side in a deep-blue cradle.

  He listened to the sound of his boots on the floor, the impact of 38 steel nails in each sole and the metal edge around the heel. For a moment his memories of the Lebensborn – the first steps towards a Germany without frontiers, towards a vast territory running from the Rhine to the Ural – merged with the prospect of having an unknown young whore, one he had ordered for himself. The Madam had told him her name, but he had forgotten it.

  Obersturmführer Stefan Sarazin didn’t like Big Leopolda Kulikowa. Stout women always reminded him of cows. He had reconciled himself to the fact that he couldn’t eliminate all the people he did not like. He had his vision of an ideal world. A slightly arrogant one, perhaps, but wasn’t arrogance beautiful? If it were up to him, the world would already look different – something like an overpopulated paradise.

  He sniffed the air to see whether Madam Kulikowa, in her eagerness to please him, had sprayed too much perfume. He didn’t care for it, and he had warned the Madam in advance. Perfume gave him migraine. He found it repulsive, as he did mushrooms in potato soup. But what he smelled, more than perfume, was the stench of rats. Hideous creatures. The stench of rat poison and of rats – how could he forget that smell? He could not even stand the perfume they used for spraying the gas chambers at Auschwitz-Birkenau, at Treblinka, Majdanek and Sobibor, so the new arrivals didn’t panic but let themselves be gassed without struggle. It was a pity to waste a single bullet. He reminded himself that he was the bearer of a Reich secret, one of the initiates.

  Unconsciously he straightened his back. He wouldn’t have minded being three or four inches taller, but he had a reputation he could be proud of. Women never had him totally in their power, even if he needed them. His steps were guided not by Venus but by Mars. His military assessments noted his hardness, toughness and fighting spirit, by which he compensated for what he had lost after suffering a severe head wound. Few people knew that a grenade had struck his head like lava hurled from a volcano, turning him into a living torch, and that his comrades had saved him by dousing the flames. There were consequences, of course, both internal and external. His scalp had not escaped damage. Die Sonne bringt es an den Tag. He didn’t need to remind himself of it, the scar reminded him constantly. As for that other weakness, the army doctor had assured him that it was not life-threatening.

  He was filled with a sense of superiority which would have been appropriate in someone twice his age. This did not exclude, but on the contrary confirmed, a craving for brutality without which he probably would not be in the Einsatzkommando. As for proving himself, there was no stiffer test than the Einsatzkommando. At Treblinka he had forced a professor of mathematics to thank him in advance for sending him to the next world. After terrifying him by putting a pistol against to his head he gave the man the option of running along to join his own people. For his age he ran quite well. At the last moment he joined a column destined for the gas chamber. He did not enjoy his escape for long. There had been irony and drama in it; a piece of theatre with its dénouement. That Jew was said to have been an expert on differential calculus. He spoke German, English and French fluently and could make himself understood in Spanish, Italian and Portuguese. He played Bach on the piano from memory. He had been married twice. He had come with two sisters and three grandchildren. He was even able to bring his first wife with him. The impertinent Jew! To cap it all, he was called Faust and had studied in Heidelberg. Chutzpah, as the Jews say. What did a Yid know about blood, about Germandom, about pride or about soil?

  Obersturmführer S arazin knew that there were many people in the Einsatzgruppen who thought the same as he did. Life was a string of pearls of varying sizes. Everybody born of a good race was entitled to reach the highest level. Apart from the prostitute Ginger and that acrobat, Long-Legs, he knew in advance that even if he left having achieved what he wanted he would be unsatisfied. Sometimes a prostitute had a good body – the Madam, say – and a lousy nature. Or she might be good at her job but be unwilling to let herself go completely. He was looking for a girl who, without being told, could read from his eyes what he wanted. He did not believe that anything should be denied him. It was he who held all the cards – well, nearly all.

  He had read somewhere that everyone carried their own invisible baggage with them. He was not prepared to stop judging people by his own yardsticks.

  As he walked towards the cubicles he thought he saw a rat rising to its hind legs under a dangling lightbulb at the far end of the corridor. He did not change his pace. If he drew his pistol and fired at it he would rouse the soldiers from their mattresses and frighten the girls. Why shouldn’t they have a bit of fun? He was only a few steps from Cubicle 16. He had passed Number 13 on his left. Number 16 would be on the right, as in a bad hotel. His hands and forehead were perspiring, probably because he’d come indoors to the warmth from the biting cold outside. Sometimes a thought would make him sweat, no matter whether it was a decision, or a verse, or an even target in the sight of his gun. Barrel, sight, trigger. Load, fire, a Jew. He enjoyed the idea, if only for the fraction of a second, when – thanks to him -his enemies were meeting the mother of everything on that other side of existence. That most faithful mistress of existence. A gift only he appreciated. Palm, butt, barrel, sight, a Jew. In his mind he heard the echo of nearly all the shots he had fired, had indulged in. He perceived it all as a huge detailed picture. That was how poets saw things.

  Obersturmführer Sarazin had been preoccupied by numbers lately. Especially with two and three. He sought and found all kinds of connections. For the fifth day running (two plus three) he’d had a dream he’d first had at Treblinka. He had residential rights there; he had been a member and later the commanding officer of the guard detachment. The newly-raised Einsatzgruppen would be se
nt there to be tested, toughened up and tempered like steel.

  He could have chosen between Treblinka, Auschwitz-Birkenau and Majdanek. That was the number three. There remained Mauthausen and Sobibor – two and three made five.

  It would be silly if he had not dreamt it so often. He did not know whether it was a prophecy of the future or something that had happened to him in a previous life. It was about three Jewish women and a train with two engines. The engines uncoupled themselves and came to a halt in front of him. He tied the Jewish women to the near tender by their pigtails. Then he signalled the engineers to go full steam ahead. The two engine drivers sounded their whistles in unison. Three long blasts cut through the air, like horns playing some unknown music. Two engines, three blasts. Two engines, three women with pigtails. Then his numbers got confused.

  The advantage of the dream was that he could dream about Jews even if there were none left in the area. He saw this as a personal achievement. He felt himself growing, felt the invisible magnetic force contained in killing, as if he were cutting down tall grain with a scythe, the black earth under his feet and white, wind-tattered clouds against a translucent deep blue when he raised his arm towards the sky. He had killed in many landscapes, now along the banks of the River San, where cattle would one day feed on grass fertilized by countless dead Jews, Gypsies and Poles. Every lizard would be fat with Jewish blood, fish would grow from the nutrients he had provided for them. Blood to him suggested crimson and all kinds of aniline red. He had seen a river turn red. It was to his credit that on historic maps Europe would be marked judenrein, cleansed of Jews. He knew that the Jews were his obsession. He didn’t ask himself why. Poets were guided by their unshakeable intuition, that was how it was. He had one advantage over the circumcised: he saw what they could no longer see.

  He stepped into Cubicle 16. He looked about him in the dim light, then shut the door. The ceiling seemed low to him. The prostitute he had chosen and booked for the whole shift was standing by the window, facing the door. Snowflakes were swirling outside. He had no doubt that she had been waiting for him. He could tell at once, washed, with oil handy. She’d be all the more willing to do what he wanted after his self-assured entry. And, of course, because of his rank and unit. Was she taller than him? Perhaps he should will her to stoop a little. She had light, gingery hair. Good. She was better dressed than he had expected. That was probably due to the obliging nature of that cloying, ageing Madam. He noted the lit candle and the shadow that the prostitute’s head cast on the wall, like the shadow of a wounded bird whose head was drooping.

  “Here I am.”

  Skinny did not reply. She could see he was there.

  “I like being pampered,” he said. “Future German children will be born as giants.”

  She did not know why he said that.

  “I don’t like ducking,” he said. It was obvious that he had come in from the cold.

  He straightened up. He had come in as if expecting a servant to follow him. He had walked across the yard and down the corridor with his hands in his pockets, but now he took them out and let them hang down. He still wore the air of superiority he had displayed when the guards helped him with the tarpaulins for his car.

  He was her second officer.

  “Stefan Sarazin, S S Obersturmführer, Einsatzkommando der Einsatzgruppen,” he said by way of greeting.

  He enjoyed the fact that the first six letters of his rank, Oberst or colonel, suggested what he might still rise to during the war.

  Was he waiting for her to introduce herselfby her name or only her nickname? For a week now, since Captain Hentschel’s visit, she had been called Lovely Green Eyes. He glanced about the cubicle, noting what she had done to it. She was young and healthy, just as he had been told, but it was hard to judge her experience. Perhaps she did not have a lot, he would see. He decided to put his cards on the table. He had not been able to manage a lot with her ginger colleague on his last visit, nor with the whore with the high ankles who reminded him of a foal. It didn’t occur to him that the fault might be his. The rôles were clearly defined. One knew from the start who the prostitute was and who the client. The military character of the brothel made no difference; on the contrary. And it was not a matter of merit in serving the troops, the army, the Einsatzgruppen; it was a privilege. In the meantime, a lot had happened on other battlefields. He could not guarantee that the girls wouldn’t all be shot in the end. He could tell himself that he wouldn’t only have sex here, but have it with a living corpse. Ginger had disgusted him by talking of her vaginal blood. Later he had, out of that disgust, written a poem about it.

  He knew very well in what aspect he was sensitive and why he could not overcome his revulsion at certain things. He felt driven by an impulse not to beat about the bush, but to come straight to the point.

  “I’ve never slept with a Jewess,” he said. ‘Tm fussy. I don’t mate with dark-haired, dark-eyed or inferior women, or with those who are shorter than myself. I’d appreciate it if you could tell me that you have never slept with a circumcised one either.”

  His smile did nothing to lessen the tight feeling that enclosed her like a hoop around a beer barrel.

  “You aren’t going to answer me?” Obersturmführer Sarazin asked.

  She had got used to the way the soldiers eyed her all over. She knew the path of their gaze, the way it mapped out what more or less made up a girl, at least from the outside – hair, chin, eyes, breasts, hips, buttocks, legs and crotch – assessing her in a hundredth of a second usually, though sometimes lingeringly. She had grown used to the fact that the men regarded her as a piece of colourfully decked-out flesh. Sometimes, when their glance intensified or became detached, she saw a moment of recognition in their eyes, as though she had reminded them of someone, or they had failed to find in her something that they were looking for. Then she would know that they were comparing her to someone in their memory, or in their imagination, and she had no wish to know who it was – a wife, a mistress, a sister, a whore. At times she felt that a soldier’s glance was casting a shadow, or a different light, over the cubicle. On one occasion, with a corporal engineer, it occurred to her – with a terrible shock – that he might recognize her because he came from Prague and might have seen her in the rolling stock workshop or by the Harmanze lake. She was glad that he was a corporal in the Wehrmacht and not in the SS. It had only been a moment, but it produced a greater fear than she had so far experienced. Under the gaze of the Obersturmführer she felt like a false coin that he was examining before tossing it so that it would flip over and reveal its reverse.

  To the Obersturmführer she was a new girl. A novice, as he had said to the Madam.

  “No,” Skinny answered absentmindedly. “Yes,” she corrected herself, “I am answering you.”

  “Wake up!”

  “I’m here …”

  “You can sleep when I’m gone. There’s a time for everything.”

  “Jawohl.”

  “Suppose I made you swear?”

  “Swear what?”

  “On your race.”

  “I’d swear.”

  “I’m glad to hear it,” the Obersturmführer said.

  She must pull herself together.

  Last time he had played games like this with Ginger and with that tall prostitute. She had got on his nerves with her height, her big breasts and her moistness. But he had liked her nose – a large, straight Aryan nose. Should not prostitutes also be informed of the importance of race? Of what it meant? What far-reaching consequences it implied, here and now, for everybody? He swept his eyes over her as he spoke. He’d see. Soldiers like him should be offered if not princesses then at least virgins. Or perhaps not? Virgins with fairly extensive experience. Or girls with a quick grasp, quick learners, those who anticipated what was expected of them. There was more to it than just simply lying down and opening their legs. Better still, girls who understood even the unusual.

  He had already summed the girl up. He
was startled by her childish appearance. He wondered what she knew about him. He looked around the cubicle, hoping there wouldn’t be rats here. In the corner he caught sight of a cobweb, but the spider and the flies had gone. He realized that he was cold, and glanced at the stove. She had built a good fire. A good mark. He wanted her to understand that she was not irreplaceable, even before he convinced himself of it. He warmed himself by the fire, ignoring her. He scowled at his watch, as if planning his time. He tried to visualize what was happening at his unit, who was doing what while he was here.

  The fact that he was an officer made her nervous. Not that she would have preferred NGOs, but his being an officer increased her fear. She did not worry too much about having to lie; but she was afraid of committing the sin of carelessness or of anything happening which was beyond her control. At least she could see that he was pleased with the fire in the stove.

  He listened to the howling of the gale, separating it from the roar in the stove. The elbow of the flue radiated heat. He liked its red-hot colour. At moments it would turn white, blue and red again, sometimes all colours together. I have a taste for unusual beauty, he told himself. I am able to find it in the most unexpected places. This prostitute was probably still in training. Probably not a mistress of her profession yet, but he could handle that. Did not everybody have to learn all the time?

  “I hope you’re not like my former neighbour’s cat,” he said when he had warmed himself. “The more friendly I was to her the more she withdrew.”

  “I’m not withdrawing,” she said.

  He was accustomed to people being afraid of him. Nothing to be said against that. It was better to count on the fear of the people one was dealing with than to rely on their meekness or humility, which might, at an unguarded moment, undergo an incredible change. He had seen what became of escaped prisoners in the forests and among the rocks – frenzy was too weak a word. It had happened countless times. He wished to prove to himself that he was strong not only in being part of the group, but also by himself. Sometimes he thought of himself as one of the wolves in the wasteland. Be oneself towards oneself and also towards others, he thought.