The memory triggered a snort of laughter, followed by an almost painful stab of loneliness and longing of the sort that Ilse thought she’d fully immunized herself against. You have nothing in common, she reminded herself, sternly. She is a Jew. Your real friends are your colleagues in the movement.
Which, while true enough, didn’t address her mind’s persistent habit of squirreling away thoughts and observations for later recitation to her former confidante. Nor did it change the fact that amid all of Ilse’s BDM and Landjahr companions there’s no one she can imagine whispering and laughing with for hours, sharing secret hopes and deepest fears and the occasional all-out pillow battle.
Sighing, she looked up at the office clock: it was already five fifteen. What was taking so long? If she didn’t get in soon she’d risk missing dinner at the Lager—a fairly serious infraction, especially given the Lagerführerin’s dual obsession with food and punctuality.
Clearing her throat pointedly, Ilse looked back at the secretary, now angling her barely covered bosom over the typewriter keyboard while angling a pencil’s eraser at the paper above it.
“It—it seems very busy today,” Ilse said brightly.
“Ach, ja.” Without looking up, the girl rubbed at a spot, licked the eraser, and rubbed a bit more. “Since the year started the Reich’s moved twenty new families from other areas near the border and settled them all right here in Dam-Großer. Twenty! You can’t imagine the paperwork!”
“A lot?”
The secretary rolled her eyes. “Housing permits. Building permits. Farming permits. Not to mention registering the children with the appropriate schools. And Mother above, there are so many children! Four of the women have the gold Mothers’ Cross, and eight of them the silver. The rest all have bronze or are working on getting it. Honestly, I don’t know how some of them are still walking…oh no.”
Dropping the pencil to the desk, the girl yanked the form from the typewriter’s canister and held it to the light. “Ripped again,” she pronounced in annoyance, tugging her shirt up once more from the back. “I don’t know why they insist on using such cheap paper.”
Tossing the disgraced sheet aside, she pulled a fresh one from a drawer and set about inserting it into the machine, her puckered brow and pursed lips making it clear that she had neither time nor patience for small talk.
Sighing again, Ilse settled back in her armchair, aware that her stomach was growling. Dinner was at six, a good quarter hour away by bike. Unless this was a very short meeting with the Hauptsturmführer she’d have to come up with a good excuse for her absence. Shutting her eyes, she tried to summon one, but what came instead was an image of all those gleaming maternal medals: four gold, eight silver, she’d said! It was like an exam question from Herr Kohler’s math class last year: If the Gold Cross is awarded to women who’ve had eight children or more, the Silver for six or seven, and the Bronze for four or five, what is the largest number of children the settler families might have between them?
Shuddering, Ilse pushed the thought from her mind. The three Michalski offspring were more than enough for her.
* * *
Twenty minutes, two ruined forms, and a curt intercom exchange later, the secretary stretched and stood up. “He’ll see you now,” she told Ilse, shrouding the typewriter with a boxy black cover and herself in a sumptuous-looking fur-trimmed jacket. “Just knock before going in.” Checking her face in a compact mirror, she added casually: “How old did you say you were?”
Ilse hadn’t. “Seventeen,” she said.
The secretary looked her over assessingly. Then she snapped her compact shut and nodded.
“You’ll be fine,” she said reassuringly.
It was a comment Ilse would look back on later and ponder, wondering how it was meant to have been taken. Was it merely an assurance to an obviously nervous young girl, one who’d been waiting for this meeting for over an hour? Or was she trying to reassure herself that it was sufficiently proper to leave that young girl alone, in that office?
Either way, the worker left. And gathering her courage and her satchel, Ilse stood and made her way to the heavy wooden door, upon which—after a deep breath—she knocked.
“Herein,” came the response, both authoritative and graveled.
Opening the door, she slipped in.
* * *
Inside, the Hauptsturmführer sat at an enormous desk, directly below a portrait of the Führer that was quite unlike any Ilse had ever seen. It showed Hitler in full Party attire, which in itself was not unusual. What was unusual was the fact that on top of his crisp uniform was an unexpectedly rumpled tan trench coat. Even stranger was the background, composed of the sort of luminous landscape sometimes found in Italian Renaissance paintings: rolling hills and shining rivers. A breathlessly blue sky filled with puffy white clouds. The Führer stood, hand on hip, beneath a pink flowering tree that seemed somehow at odds with his stern and solemn expression.
“I see you like my painting.”
Ilse dropped her gaze, realizing that while she’d been taking in the odd portrait, Hauptsturmführer Wainer had been taking in his young visitor. Fighting back a wave of shyness, she studied him in return. A large man in his forties, he had the sort of face she associated with Party posters and Hollywood stars: bright blue eyes, square jaw divided by just the faintest hint of a cleft. A little like an older Rudi, in fact. Reni would swoon, she found herself thinking reflexively.
“Yes,” she replied. “I’ve—I’ve never seen our Führer portrayed that way before.”
The Hauptsturmführer nodded, as though this were the answer he both expected and wanted. “Very few have. I like it that way. Too many people simply stick up the standard photograph and then forget about it. I like to make things more…personal.”
Lifting one large hand, he beckoned Ilse over. She obeyed hesitantly, noting that the ring on his middle finger might or might not have been a wedding band. As she drew nearer his features seemed to soften the way bread swells in humidity, weakening the initial impact of his handsomeness. She noticed, too, that one cheek bore the silvery mark of a Schmisse, one of those university dueling scars that her parents’ generation considered high-status for some reason. There was a heavy layer of cigarette smoke in the room, and beneath it the distinct scent of some sort of Schnapps.
“I understand,” he said, “that you are here with a complaint.”
“Ja, Hauptsturmführer.” Ilse cleared her throat. “I don’t know whether you know it or not, but two of my fellow Service Maidens were recently attacked in town. In broad daylight, in the village.” She cleared her throat again. “By—by Poles.”
“Ah.” He shook his head regretfully. “I hadn’t heard of this incident. I have to say, though, I’m not surprised. Poles are practically animals—barely a notch above Jews, in terms of evolution.” Leaning back in his chair, he folded his hands over his belly. “In fact, the farther across the border you go, the more interbred the two are, to the point where they become almost indistinguishable from one another. Did you know that, Fräulein von Fischer?”
Ilse did not. But she also had no interest in an impromptu eugenics lesson—she was late enough for dinner as it was. She decided to get to the point.
“I’ve been told,” she said carefully, “that the mayor has spoken to these young men’s parents. But a number of us—myself included—worry that without more serious repercussions, these—these incidents might be repeated.”
The Hauptsturmführer tipped his chin up thoughtfully. “You have the names of the culprits?”
Ilse nodded. “Yes.”
If it came out with conviction, it was because she’d thought this part through. It was true she had no proof that the boys who’d trailed her to the butcher’s were the same ones who’d knocked Marita and Lies down. Nor did she know for sure that the names the butcher had written down were the
actual names of the boys who’d bothered her. Logically speaking, though, it seemed far more likely than not that there was some overlap between the three categories. And even if these weren’t the exact same Poles who’d knocked two girls off their bicycles, they were Poles nevertheless, and someone had to pay for the transgression. One way or another (she reasoned) the point had to be made—even if it meant that one or two of the boys might be wrongly disciplined in the process.
It was as she’d told Renate the day she’d fetched her back to Herr Hartmann’s class: Sacrifices have to be made. Anything that gets in the way of what we are trying to do has to go.
“Yes,” Ilse repeated now. “I have the names.”
Reaching into her pocket, she retrieved the folded page upon which the butcher had carefully written down his list. Unfolding it, she placed it on the commander’s desk. Lips pursed, he picked it up, perused its contents. Then he set it back down, leaned back again.
“I am impressed by your resolve, Fräulein,” he said. “But can you tell me if either of your lovely Maidens were assaulted in a way that—how do I put this—compromised their purity?”
It was a straightforward enough question. But something in his demeanor made her stomach tighten uneasily. It might have been his bemused smile, which seemed to imply less concern for Marita and Lies than titillated interest in the details of their abuse.
“No,” she said, feeling herself flush again. “No, they weren’t. But given the current environment—and your own observations about the Polish nature—such things certainly can’t be ruled out in the future. That is, not unless proper measures are taken. As I’m suggesting.”
“No,” he said, “they certainly cannot.” He chuckled a little. “I’m curious. What measures do you believe would be ‘proper’?”
Ilse blinked again, again taken aback: wasn’t it his job to know these things?
“I’m not certain,” she said slowly. “But whatever it is, it should be well publicized. In the paper, and on the bulletin board and such.”
“How about a whipping?” He said it almost gently, tenting his fingers under his chin. “Would you like me to have them whipped?”
This left her even more flustered: “Perhaps,” she stammered. “Or—or perhaps a day or two in detention. Or perhaps they could be assigned to work one of the German farms without pay.”
“You’ve thought about this quite a bit, I can see.”
“I have,” she conceded. “Out of concern for both my fellow Maidens and the future of the Labor Service here as a whole. You see, I believe some of these—some of these hooligans are actively trying to discourage us from our purpose. I think some of them even want us to leave. And if they succeed, who knows what will happen to the poor Volksdeutsche in this town? They’re practically outnumbered as it is!”
It came out in a rush; impassioned, almost accusatory. For a moment she worried she’d gone too far. But the Hauptsturmführer just nodded again, still smoking, his bright eyes still tightly trained on her face. He kept them there for what felt like an uncomfortably long time.
At last, stubbing out his cigarette, he stood. “How about this,” he said. “I’ll have my men round them up tomorrow. Then you can come back and decide for me what should be done with them.”
“Ich?” The proposal caught her so fully off-guard that she actually took a half step back. “I—I believe it would be more advisable for you to make that decision, Hauptsturmführer,” she stammered.
“And why would you believe that?”
“Well, you obviously—you obviously have more experience in these things.”
Almost sadly, he shook his head. “Ah, Fräulein von Fischer,” he said. “The problem with experience is that it’s very hard to get it without committing to action. But I’m more than happy to help you with that.”
As he spoke, she saw that he was opening a drawer in the desk, from which he pulled out a bottle and two small glasses. He filled one, tossed it back, then filled both of them and picked them up. As he circled out from behind the desk with them, there came a pulsing sense of disorientation, as though the solid ground she’d thought she stood on revealed itself to be the floor of a moving train. As he drew even with her, she fought a foolish but intense urge to turn on her heel, to bolt breathlessly toward the door.
“It strikes me that you just might be headed for great places,” he was saying. “And I believe that I can make that journey both shorter and more…comfortable for you. What do you say?”
He was slurring slightly, and she realized that he actually seemed somewhat drunk—a fact she found less worrying than infuriating at first. For here he was, this man sent to represent the Reich to the village! Here he was, taking meetings on the safety of his people, on the needs and concerns of Germany’s vulnerable new settlers. And he was tipsy! It struck Ilse suddenly that he might not even remember their discussion later. In which case the entire endeavor—the hard-earned list of names from the butcher; the hour wasted with that idiot of a secretary; not to mention the fact that Ilse would need some sort of excuse to explain missing dinner (and by now she’ll certainly have missed it)—all of it, apparently, was for nothing.
“Bitte,” he was saying. “Let’s toast.”
“No thank you.” She shook her head. He pretended to be shocked.
“Why not?”
“I am here to work,” she told him tightly. “Not to drink.”
“Oh, come now,” he said, chuckling again. “You’re a city girl, aren’t you? You must be. All you Arbeitsmaiden are. I’m sure you have all sorts of decadent habits.”
He was standing very close now, and still holding the glass out so that it was practically beneath her nose. Because she could think of nothing else to do, Ilse finally took it from him.
“Good girl,” he said. “Prost.”
They clinked; he once again tossed his back. After a moment, holding her breath, Ilse did too.
“There,” he said. “That wasn’t so bad, now. Was it?”
In fact the liquor tasted like petrol and felt like fire against her throat: she immediately started to cough. Still chuckling, he took her glass back and set it on a coffee table by the couch against the side wall. For a moment he seemed to study it, and Ilse felt her pulse leap in a warning she didn’t have time to fully decode. But he turned back again and started walking toward the door.
That was it, she told herself, with a silent sigh of relief. All he wanted was a drink. And now, he’ll tell me that I can go.
But when he got to the door, the Hauptsturmführer neither held it open nor ushered Ilse out.
Instead, he closed it firmly and turned the bolt.
As he strode back toward her, Ilse found that she could neither move nor breathe. “Hauptsturmführer,” she gasped, trying frantically to think of something to say to distract him, to bring the situation back to something even approaching normal.
But by that point he was upon her. And without another word, he took her into his arms.
What she’d remember most of what followed was not the meaty feel of his fingers against her neck, or the tobacco-and-Schnapps smell of his breath. What she’d recall was the icy shock of it: the abrupt recognition of the bizarre, colossal chasm between what she’d thought her purpose here was and what he’d probably seen it as from the start. The stinging realization that such things can happen with such speed, and with such irrevocable force.
That in the end, it really only takes a few moments.
* * *
In the Lagerhaus kitchen the cuckoo clock above the icebox chirps once, to mark the half hour past four. Blinking up at it, Ilse realizes she’s been staring blankly at her letter for something approaching thirty minutes, and that she needs to get back upstairs before the rest of the house wakes. After missing dinner last night she barely avoided outhouse duty by arguing that she’d had to walk
her bike all the way back from work. Which was only half untrue: Ilse had had to walk it, though not, as she’d claimed, because of a flat, but because while the bleeding hadn’t lasted for very long it had still been too painful for her to perch upon the hard leather saddle. Dazedly, she wonders whether this will still be the case today, and if so, how she’ll get herself to the Michalskis’.
For a moment that strange, moving-not-moving sensation from the Hauptsturmführer’s office returns. Squeezing her eyes shut, Ilse waits for it to pass before setting her pencil tip back on the page.
Do you remember when you were with Rudi, our pledge to share with one another all the “juicy” details of our future love affairs? I finally have started one, though I will admit that it is not at all the sort of affair I ever expected to be sharing. In fact, it is with a man much older than myself, though of impeccable Aryan lineage and an impressive Party standing. It came about this evening, quite suddenly. So suddenly, in fact, that I will admit that I was somewhat shaken by it all. But as I lay in bed tonight, failing to fall asleep and finding myself instead writing this impossible letter to you, it occurred to me that perhaps what happened with Hauptsturmführer Wainer was like that moment in Herr Michalski’s field, when I pushed through the invisible gateway between tedium and pain and emerged with such overwhelming love for my country and its people. After all, he agreed to help me ensure the security of myself and my fellow Arbeitsmaiden in town. And he told me that he saw potential in me, and that he was going to help me realize it. Surely these two outcomes alone are worth the pain initial discomfort surprise of the Hauptsturmführer’s romantic attentions.
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