Her grandfather had been Professor of Mathematics at Marburg. Her father was an instructor in metallurgy in the College of Physics. If it had not been for the War/National Socialism (which were in Gisella’s mind interchangeable) , her father would have been Professor of Metallurgy. And three years ago, Gisella would have become Gisella Dyer, D.Med.
But with National Socialism, there had come “Party considerations.” In addition to one’s academic credentials, one needed the blessing of the Party in order to be promoted to a distinguished position. Prof. Dr. Friedrich Dyer’s academic credentials were impeccable, but he was not in good standing with the National Socialists of Stadt und Kreis Marburg. Quite the reverse.
Professor Dyer had been opposed to the Nazi Party from the days when it had been just one more lunatic, amusing fringe party. He had thought then—and worse, said—that it was more dangerous than other batty groups primarily because of its intellectual dishonesty. The National Socialist belief in “Aryanism” and “Aryan Purity” especially aroused his contempt.
In the fall of 1938, he had made unflattering remarks about Professor Julius Streicher, the Party’s virulent anti-Semite intellectual, in the presence of some people he innocently thought of as friends. They had promptly reported him to the Sicherheitsdienst. In the course of the investigation that followed, it was discovered that he had illegally transferred funds to Switzerland and was planning not to return to Germany after a seminar to be held in Budapest.
The Sicherheitsdienst officer who conducted the investigation was SS-OBERSTURMFÜHRER Wilhelm Peis, a former Kreis Marburg policeman whose Party affiliations had led to his duties as deputy commander of the SS-SD office for Stadt und Kreis Marburg.
Peis summoned Gisella to his office, offered her a glass of Steinhager, and then outlined to her the severe penalties she could expect her father to suffer. The least of these was punishment under the criminal statutes. But it was more likely that he would be tried under the “enemy of the state” laws before a “People’s Court.” If that happened, he certainly—and she herself more than likely—would be sent off to a concentration camp. On his release he would be permitted to make his contribution to the New Germany with a forester’s ax or a laborer’s shovel.
Peis then matter-of-factly let Gisella know there was a way out of the predicament: She would undertake to keep her father on the true National Socialist path; she would report regularly to Peis treasonous or defeatist statements made by their friends and associates; and she would come, when he wished, into his bed.
Gisella gave only passing thought to refusing him.
If Peis wanted her, he could have taken her right there and then, ripped her clothes off, slapped her into submission, and done it on his office couch. To whom could she have complained? The SS-SD was the ultimate law in Stadt und Kreis Marburg an der Lahn, and Peis was the number-two man in the SS-SD there. The question she faced was not whether Peis would have her body, but how to make the circumstances most advantageous to her and her father.
She went that afternoon to Peis’s apartment, allowed him to get her drunk, and fell into his bed.
An honorable man after his fashion, Obersturmführer Peis lived up to his end of the bargain. The charges against her father remained “unconfirmed, under investigation.” As long as she behaved, her father’s well-being was assured.
After the initial novelty passed, Peis required her to perform only infrequently. He had other young women similarly indebted, plus a small harem of others who considered it an honor to share the bed of an SS-Obersturmführer. Whenever he did send for her, it was less a hunger for her body than a desire to humiliate her. He made sure she was aware of this.
Gisella now realized that if she had been clever enough to pretend that she welcomed his attentions, he would more than likely have grown bored with her. But she hadn’t been able to do that, and Peis sensed her contempt. This he repaid with humiliation.
Six months after he originally called her into his office, she became a kind of occasional gift from Peis to his friends or else to someone he wanted to watch. By then, he had been given command of the Marburg SS-SD.
One evening he “invited” her to take dinner with him at the Kurhotel on the mountainside south of Marburg.
The Kurhotel, a small, recently built, Bauhaus-style building, was the nicest place around and Peis liked to be seen there in the company of “re-spectable” young women. He had “invited” her there before; after supper there would be a session in a room set aside by the management for Peis’s use.
He was not there when she arrived, so she took a seat alone at one of the tables in the barroom to wait for him. When the waiter appeared, she ordered a glass of white wine. When the waiter returned, he had a bottle of Gumpoldskirchner ’32 wrapped in a towel in a basket.
"Compliments of His Excellency, Fräulein Dyer,” the headwaiter smirked.
“I beg your pardon?”
He nodded toward a table across the room. Three men sat there, an Arab, a Nordic blond, and a huge Negro. She had seen them before both here and at the university, where they were known, somewhat derisively, as “the Arab Prince and his boyfriend.” The boyfriend, a rather good-looking young man—a very young man—caught her eye and raised his glass. She quickly looked away.
“Thank you, no,” she said to the waiter in a rage. “Take it away!”
She might be forced to prostitute herself to Peis, she thought bitterly, but she was not available to be picked up in a hotel barroom.
“His Excellency may take offense, Fräulein,” the waiter said.
“Not nearly as much as Hauptsturmführer Peis will,” she snapped.
She was still humiliated and angry when Peis came in. When he sat down, she told him what had happened. But he was not, as she expected, furious that someone was making advances to one of his ladies.
“Which one has the yen for you?” he asked. “The Arab or the Baron?”
“The Baron?”
“The young one is the Baron von Kolbe,” Peis said.
“I thought he was the Arab’s ‘little friend,’” she replied.
“That’s what I thought at first,” Peis said. “But they are apparently not homosexual.”
“You seem quite sure,” she said, now annoyed with him too.
“My dear Gisella,” Peis said, “of course I’m sure. It is my business to be sure.”
“I don’t think I understand you,” she said.
“Among my duties is the surveillance of people of interest to the Berlin headquarters of the SS-SD,” Peis said, obviously pleased with the opportunity to reveal his importance. “One of these is the Arab, actually a Moroccan. His name is Sidi Hassan el Ferruch. The other is Eric von Fulmar, the son of the Baron von Fulmar, as in Fulmar Elektrische Gesellschaft.”
“And they are being watched? Why?”
“Reasons of state, of course,” he said. “I can’t get into that, of course.”
“Naturally not,” she said, hoping he thought she sounded very impressed with him.
“But I can tell you something rather interesting about them,” he said.
Whatever that was would have some sexual connotation, she knew. He liked to embarrass her.
“Really?”
“They like their women shaved,” Peis whispered.
“What?” Gisella asked, but then she understood. “Wilhelm,” she said, somewhat surprised to realize she was really quite curious,“how could you possibly know that?”
“Frau Gumbach told me,” he said, “that when His Excellency sends his bodyguard for girls once or twice a week, payment is generous and in advance, but before the girls can leave, they have to show N’Jibba, the bodyguard, that they have shaved their most intimate places.”
“I don’t believe that,” Gisella said. “Why?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea,” he said. “But I’m going to find out.”
“How? Are you going to walk over there and ask him?”
“No,” h
e said. “I’m leaving. You’re going to find out for me.”
“I don’t think this is funny, Wilhelm,” Gisella said.
“I’m not teasing you, if that was your question,” he said. “I’ve been trying to think of a way to meet both the Arab and the Baron. Socially, I mean. And I just worked out how to do it. I’m going to go over there with your apologies for refusing their wine. I’m going to tell them you are a respectable girl who didn’t know who they were. And then I’m going to leave.”
"I told you, I don’t think this is funny,” she said.
“I told you I wasn’t teasing you,” Peis said. “Let me phrase that another way. I want you to get to know one or both of them intimately. Preferably the Moroccan. And I hope you can do that with discretion. Because if you can’t, Gisella, the next time N’Jibba fetches whores from Frau Gumbach, one of them is going to be you.”
She fought back tears. He was obviously serious, and besides, her tears only pleased him.
“Will you tell me why you want me to do this?”
“I will expect a full report from you,” he said.
“About what?”
“About anything interesting they do,” he said.
She watched in her compact mirror as Peis bowed and clicked his heels at their table. When she saw them glance in her direction, she quickly snapped the compact closed and studiously looked away. Peis then walked across the room, but stopped just outside the door and nodded his head to signal that he had arranged things.
Three minutes later, with a triumphant smirk, the waiter brought the bottle of Gumpoldskirchner ’32 back to the table.
“Compliments of the Baron, Fräulein Dyer,” he said.
“Thank you,” she said.
Then von Fulmar was standing beside her.
“I thought perhaps, since you are alone, I might ask to sit with you,” he said. There was sarcasm in his voice.
He was quite self-confident, which was strange and even a little funny. He was not a day over twenty, if that, despite the well-tailored English suit. She was twenty-five. Quite a gap as far as she was concerned, but he seemed oblivious to it.
“Please do,” she said, and gestured to a chair.
The waiter immediately produced a glass. Fulmar waved it away.
“I’m drinking the cognac,” he said. “Would you fetch my glass, please?”
“Jawohl, Herr Baron,” the waiter said.
An odd combination of sophistication and boyishness.
“Where’re your friends?” Gisella asked.
“They were already engaged,” Fulmar said. Gisella was sure this boy and the Arab had decided between them who was coming to her table. Perhaps they had even flipped a coin over her. And this boy had won.
"And Hauptsturmführer Peis was called to duty,” Gisella said.
"What’s going on, Fräulein?” Fulmar asked.
“I’m not sure I know what you mean, Herr Baron,” she said.
“Why do you call me that?” he asked, turning unfriendly. But after a moment, she also realized he was not acting like a young boy making a play for an older woman.
“I was told your father is the Baron von Fulmar.”
“Well, true. But I’m an American, and Americans can’t be barons.”
“Your German is perfect,” she said. “You could easily pass for a German.”
The compliment rolled off him quickly. “Languages come easily to me,” he said matter-of-factly. "I even speak pretty good Arabic. But what I asked is ‘what’s going on, Fraülein?’”
The waiter returned with the brandy glass. Von Fulmar sniffed at it, sipped at it, and set it down. Then he looked at her for her reply.
“I really don’t know what you mean,” she said uncomfortably.
“I know who Peis is,” he said, almost impatiently, and with obvious contempt, “and I know who you are. Why is the local Sicherheitsdienst thug offering me his girlfriend?”
Gisella felt her face flush.
She blurted what came into her mind. “You can get in trouble calling him a thug,” she said.
Fulmar dismissed that with a wave of his hand.
“Do you work for him?” Fulmar asked.
She met his eyes but didn’t say anything.
He shook his head. “What does he want to know?” he asked.
She was frightened now. This was not going at all the way she had expected it to.
“Just fishing, huh?” Fulmar said.
Gisella blurted,“I’m not his girlfriend.”
“I thought you were,” he said matter-of-factly, and she believed him. And that meant that he really was unafraid of Peis. He had sent the wine to her without caring whether Obersturmführer Wilhelm Peis would like it or not.
“I think I understand,” Fulmar said. “He’s got something on you, right?” She nervously, softly, licked her lips before she spoke.
“I think he wants to be friends with you and your friend.”
Fulmar laughed unpleasantly.
"I’ll bet he would,” he said. "That sonofabitch!” Then he looked at her curiously. “What’s he got on you?”
When she didn’t reply, he shrugged. “Sorry, none of my business. I shouldn’t have asked.”
“Please,” she said softly,“don’t make trouble for me.”
He looked at her again, and she realized she liked his eyes.
“No,” he said. “Of course I won’t. We’ll sit here and have a couple of drinks and dance. If he has somebody watching us—the goddamned waiter seems very curious—he will report that we seemed to be getting on famously. ”
She smiled.
“You have a very nice smile,” he said.
“Thank you,” she said, and realized that her face was warm, that she was blushing.
“How do you know who I am?” she asked, a moment later.
"You were pointed out to me at the university,” he said. “I’ve had a couple of lectures about tungsten from your father. I’m studying electrical engineering. ”
Then he stood up.
“May I have the pleasure of this dance, Fräulein Dyer?”he asked with exaggerated courtesy.
While they were dancing, he seemed determined to keep distance between them, and after a moment she understood why: He had an erection. Uncharacteristically—but on purpose—she moved her midsection close to his for confirmation.
When they were back at the table, his knee brushed hers and then quickly withdrew. A moment later, her knee found his. This time his did not withdraw.
“Is that on orders, or not?” he asked, looking into her eyes.
Shamed, she withdrew her knee.
“I didn’t mean I don’t like it,” Fulmar said.
She averted her eyes from his, but moved her knee against him again.
“Would you care to see my etchings, Fräulein Dyer?” Fulmar asked. She smiled. “It would give the waiter something interesting to report.”
“Where are your etchings?” she asked.
“Here. Upstairs. I live here.”
She picked up her wineglass and drained it, and then stood up.
“Shall we go, Herr Baron?” she asked.
As they waited for the elevator, the waiter came to the dining room entrance to see where they were off to.
She took more pleasure than she expected to from coupling with Eric von Fulmar. That was probably because he was kind and straightforward, and enthusiastic. Peis made a point of looking bored as he pumped away at her.
When Peis phoned the next day to ask how things had gone, she replied:
“It made me feel like one of Frau Gumbach’s whores.”
“I asked you,” he said, obviously taking pleasure from that, “how things went, not whether or not you liked it. For instance, did you have to shave?” He let that sink in for a moment, and then added: “You went to Fulmar’s room at seven-thirty. You came back down at quarter to nine and had dinner. You went back to his room at half past ten and stayed there until three in the morni
ng. He drove you home then in the Arab’s Delahaye.”
She was stunned.
“I’m happy for you, Gisella,” Peis went on, “that you have formed this new relationship. And I would be very unhappy if it were broken off.”
“Wilhelm, he’s twenty years old!”
“I don’t care if he’s fourteen,” Peis said.
“Damn you!”
He laughed and hung up. But what was really funny was that she had outwitted him. As long as von Fulmar stayed at the university, she more than likely would be able to exchange sleeping with Peis, and whoever else it amused him to offer her to, for a really decent kid, with nice eyes, who didn’t treat her like a whore.
The only thing that finally went wrong with Gisella Dyer’s relationship with Eric Fulmar was that it had to end.
And after it ended, of course, she went back to her role as whore-on-call.
[FOUR]
Gisella Dyer was distressed.
It was bad enough that on the Eve of the New Year she had to charm and then sleep with a complete stranger, who, since he was a Standartenführer, would almost certainly be in his fifties. But what made it really bad was that she’d just about allowed herself to believe she no longer had to be one of Peis’s whores-on-call.
She had not jumped at this hope without reason: Because of her father’s knowledge of titanium and other exotic alloys, the Reichsminister Albert Speer had sought him out—personally sought him out—when he had come to the Fulmar Werke in his private train a month before and had installed him, at a flattering honorarium, as “consultant” to the Fulmar Werke.
Her father was obviously now rehabilitated in the eyes of the government. And that should have been clear to Peis.
Despite the virtually limitless power Peis had as the local SS-SD officer, he was a peasant, very much aware of who his betters were. And very much the servant in their presence. After the Reichsminister’s departure, her father told Gisella that Peis looked like he was wetting his pants every time Speer spoke to him.
It just seemed logical that Peis would leave her alone, would probably go out of his way to avoid her in the fear that her father would get him in trouble with Speer.
It had been nice to think about. And then as the days and weeks passed and Peis didn’t call her, it began to seem possible that she was free of Peis for good. She had not been “invited” to any of the pre-Christmas parties he staged for his close friends. Or, until just now, to a New Year’s Eve gathering.
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