I wonder if these would fit you, the Obersturmführer says, dangling the shoes by the straps at Trudie’s eye level. What do you think?
The child nods. The Obersturmführer sets the shoes on the floor and ruffles Trudie’s hair. Then he turns to Anna, beckoning with two fingers. She hands his boots over in silence. They are three sizes too big for him, Anna knows. His masculine vanity won’t permit public display of his childlike feet.
Next week, he says, standing.
After Anna unlocks the door and latches it behind him, she draws the curtain aside to watch him go. She can barely make him out, a dark shape in the dark. Whenever he leaves, the night seems blacker than it is, a solid thing pressing against the windows.
She lets the curtain fall.
You must never come upstairs when the man is here, do you understand? she says to Trudie.
But Mama—How old is the child?Never! Because . . .Anna gropes at sudden inspiration. He’s Saint Nikolaus; do you remember what I told you about Saint Nikolaus? He doesn’t like to be seen.
Trudie frowns.
But it’s not Christmas, she says.
That doesn’t matter. Saint Nikolaus has magical powers; he can do whatever he wants. He travels the world year-round, looking for good little girls. And if you’re a bad girl and try to see him, do you know what will happen?
No more red shoes? Trudie whispers, gazing at them.
A rotten taste thickens Anna’s saliva to the consistency of aspic. This has always happened to her, periodically and for no apparent reason. No amount of throat-clearing can get rid of it; if she waits, it will usually disappear on its own. Yet now this feeling isn’t just in her mouth. Tainted gray jelly clings to her like a membrane. It is beneath her skin, inside and out, invisible and foul.
That’s right, she says to her daughter. She scrubs her arms with both hands, shivering, although there isn’t a hint of a breeze. No more milk. No more red shoes.
24
ANNA LEARNS A GREAT DEAL FROM THE OBERSTURM-führer, the first thing being that, postcoitus, he talks talks talks talks talks, a broken faucet from which words pour instead of water. From this, she conjectures that either superior rank precludes private conversation or that the Obersturmführer ’s peers do not like him well enough to listen.
She learns the difference between Hinkelmann and Blank, although she will never truly be able to separate them: in her mind, they remain a single murderous demigod, vaudevillian and double-faced, blithely dispensing death. In actuality, however, Hinkelmann is the taller fellow, while Blank is the squat bureaucrat, and the former has been considered so effective at his job that he has been awarded promotional transfer to a camp called Mauthausen, where there is a bigger stone quarry.
She learns that the quarry is considered the worst work detail, and that for this reason, to avoid mutinous dissatisfaction, the guards are rotated fortnightly. The prisoners refer to one of the current crop as Gretel because of his feminine prettiness, while another is known as Lard Ass, for equally obvious reasons; it is said that they have a particular friendship, though nothing of the sort can be proven. In any case, the Obersturmführer adds, one never takes such rumors seriously, as they are either fairy tales or downright malicious. He turns a deaf ear to the prisoners’ nicknaming the guards, though in other camps their doing so might be considered treason. It is good for them to feel that they have some modicum of power, he explains; this allows them to blow off steam and keeps them from perpetuating other, more serious mischief.
Anna further learns that the Obersturmführer was, before the war, a telegram delivery boy and then a police officer. That during the war, he served first at the front, during which he earned decorations for bravery and the craterlike wound in his right shoulder, and secondly in the Einsatzgruppen, the SS mobile death units in Poland. From his description of these glorious but trying days, she learns that the Jews there went meekly to their liquidation. How, the Obersturmführer asks rhetorically, can one respect a race such as that? We Germans, he says, we place a high premium on obedience, of course, but not at the expense of bravery.
She learns that the Obersturmführer’s mother, unable to stomach his father’s tyranny or perhaps simply faithless, ran off with a traveling salesman of wigs; that the Obersturmführer reported his father, his childhood nemesis, to the Gestapo as having had repeated sexual congress with a Jewish woman, which, although untrue, earned the man a prolonged stay in KZ Dachau. That the Kommandant of KZ Buchenwald, Koch, does have a Jewish mistress, but nobody dares say a word, of course. That the Ober-sturmführer sometimes suffers wretchedly from insomnia brought on by the stresses and contradictions of his work, and at these times, nothing but hot milk with pepper in it will soothe him.
Much of this information Anna discards, for it is useless stuff. The prisoners will not benefit from it, and as for herself, whom would she tell, and to what purpose? However, she does remember the SS designation for the crime she and Mathilde have committed: füttern den Feind, feeding the enemy, punishable, as has been made all too obvious, by death. Anna thinks of the phrase every time she delivers bread to the quarry, which she does every Wednesday evening. It is madness, of course, given her liaison with the Obersturmführer. Why, then, Anna asks herself, as she stuffs rolls into the trunk of the tree, does she continue to do it? Unlike Mathilde, it can’t be a subliminal urge toward suicide. If it were just her, Anna, the option might seem appealing, but there is Trudie to consider; everything Anna does, including yielding to the Obersturmführer ’s demands, is for Trudie. Except for these Special Deliveries: they are less for the prisoners than a way for Anna to convince herself that she is more than a whore, a whim, a plaything; they forge a link with the recent past, during which, though it was unpleasant in many respects, she at least felt human.
So, on Wednesdays, Anna gives Trudie some of the Ober-sturmführer ’s narcotic milk, which she has been careful to store in the icebox from the week before, and she makes the Special Delivery to the quarry and hurries back to the bakery to cook the drowsy child’s dinner. Thus far, everything has gone like clockwork, but on this particular Wednesday, Anna is late. She has lingered overlong at the quarry, hypnotized into stupid reverie by the sight of the prisoners, hoping against hope to find Max among them. Her flight back through the woods thus takes place in the dark, and as Anna runs, the phrase plays over and over in her mind: füttern den Feind, füttern den Feind, like the opening bars of a catchy waltz, The Blue Danube perhaps. Clumsy in her haste, she snags a foot on a root, wrenches her right ankle, and falls headlong into the dirt.
And when she finally limps through the back door of the bakery, calling reassurance to her daughter, Anna sees to her horror that the Obersturmführer is there. He stands with his arms crossed in the center of the kitchen, a monolith, while Trudie sits red-faced and crying in the corner. Anna hobbles to the child and lifts her. My God, is it Thursday already? How could she have made such a fatal mistake? It can’t be; Frau Buchholtz came for her weekly bread this morning, as she does on Wednesdays, always on Wednesdays, or has she altered her schedule? Or has the Ober-sturmführer acted on uncharacteristic impulse and changed his instead? If it is indeed Wednesday, what is he doing here?
Not that this matters: he is here, impassively watching the maternal scene.
Where were you? he asks, when Trudie’s squalling has trailed off into snuffles and hitches.
I? says Anna idiotically. I was— Well, the child is sick, you see, with stomach pains, she’s been complaining of them all week, so I— I ran to the doctor for medicine.
The Obersturmführer eyes her from head to toe, his scrutiny doing a much more eloquent job of indicating Anna’s torn dress, her scratched and dirt-stained hands, than if he had pointed at or touched them.
Flushing, Anna turns away to help Trudie climb onto her chair.
I tripped and fell, she says; I was in such a hurry that I caught my heel in a grate, and I—Because her back is to him, Anna doesn’t know the Ober-s
turmführer has crossed the room until she feels his gloved hand on her neck. His kidskin fingers dig into the soft troughs behind her ears, making Anna’s arms instantly numb. She gasps.
I won’t stand being lied to, the Obersturmführer says, shaking Anna by the nape as though she were a puppy. Her teeth clack painfully together. I won’t tolerate falsehoods, Anna, do you hear?
I—wasn’t—lying— Anna stutters between shakes. She pulls at his hands, but his grip is like a manacle. I went—to the doctor— I swear!
In her peripheral vision, Anna sees Trudie watching quietly from the table, which upsets her more than if the child had been screaming.
The Obersturmführer releases Anna and she stumbles, the wounded ankle sending up a flare of pain.
Get upstairs, he says.
Please—can I at least give her the medicine—some milk—
Now.
The Obersturmführer seizes Anna by the arm and half propels, half drags her toward the staircase.
It’s all right, little rabbit, she calls gaily to Trudie over her shoulder. You stay here. I’ll be down soon—
In Mathilde’s bedroom, Anna backs to the window. Despite the time of year, the weather is still deceptively hot; the curtains hang limp as bandaging, and Anna wishes like a child that she could hide behind them. The Obersturmführer closes the door quietly, with finality.
Get undressed, he says.
Please, Herr Obersturmführer, the child truly is sick, you heard her crying when you came in, she—
I don’t have time for this, the Obersturmführer says. Your clothes.
He flicks a finger and sits on the bed, watching as Anna obeys. Inept with fear, she has trouble undoing her garters. When she dares glance up, the Obersturmführer is leaning forward, the familiar greedy look in his ghostly eyes.
He gazes at the red indentations the garters have left on her thighs. He likes these.
I’m a busy man, he says petulantly. It’s hard enough for me to take time from my schedule to come here. If you should require something in the future, you ask me first, understand? I expect you to be here at all times, whenever I need you.
Anna nods.
The Obersturmführer gives her a grin: all is forgiven, for now. He draws her to him; he cups her breasts and lets them fall, cups them and lets them fall.
Lovely, he says, such delicious bouncy breasts, the very ideal of breasts.
He pinches a nipple, then rubs his fingertips together, blinking at them.
What’s this? he says.
Anna flushes. Downstairs, Trudie is crying. Although the child has been weaned for months, Anna’s body still responds to her pleas for food.
It’s milk, she mumbles.
What?
Milk! snaps Anna, humiliated past caring whether his tone is one of surprise or disgust. Perhaps, if it is the latter, he will take himself away.
The Obersturmführer laughs.
Really? he says. And the girl nearly two. Well, Anna, you’ve just made my evening easier: I can have my dinner here. Kill two birds with one stone, as they say.
He takes her nipple into his mouth, drawing milk through the aureole in thin threads. Anna closes her eyes, pretending that it is the child, only the child, but the sensation is wrong, he uses his tongue rather than his lips, and his stubble prickles against her skin. Her hands, rising in instinctive quest to his dark head, encounter coarse, close-cropped hair; she knots them together behind her back, swaying for balance on her painful ankle, staring at the wall. She has learned another lesson from the Ober-sturmführer this evening: she will no longer make deliveries to the quarry. It is too dangerous to even contemplate. She has other mouths to feed.
25
COME HERE, ANNA, THE OBERSTURMFÜHRER SAYS.
Anna complies. She stands before him, as usual, as he sits on the side of Mathilde’s bed. This is how the game always begins. What Anna can never guess at are the middles or the endings. He will bring a phonograph player from the camp, place a forbidden jazz record on its turntable, and order her to strip to it. Ach, never mind, he will say, laughing at her artless burlesque. Or he will command her to stand on a chair, naked and blindfolded, while he circles her, touching her here and there with teeth or tongue or baton. He has poured bourbon onto her shirtwaist and suckled her through the whiskey-soaked cloth. Yes, the Obersturmführer is endlessly inventive in this wearisome schoolboy fashion. Has he gleaned these scenarios from the forbidden books in his father’s bedside drawer? Anna pictures the Ober-sturmführer as an adolescent, hunched over such a manual in the WC, the door barred, his shorts around his ankles, eyes bulging, and she feels the same cold revulsion as she would for worms writhing on the sidewalk after a rain. She waits now for some indication as to what he has devised this time.
Tonight he wants her passive, to remain still so he can mold her in his hands like bread. His breathing thickens as he undoes Anna’s blouse, unbuttons her skirt, rolls the silk stockings he has brought her down her legs. Anna moves only to kick them free of her ankles. Perhaps he will bind her with them, as he once did, then removing a straight razor from his pocket and shaving her all over: legs, arms, armpits, pubic bone. The hair grew back rough, in sharp bristles that reminded Anna of those on a pig’s hide. It itched for days.
Raise your arms above your head, the Obersturmführer commands. Then turn around. Like a ballerina. As a girl, did you want to be a ballerina? Of course you did; all little girls do. Yes, like that. So I can see you.
The Obersturmführer’s voice, while engaged in such play, drops to a deeper register; normally crisp, his consonants soften like chocolate melted in the pan. The tone makes Anna think of rich, dark cake, a too-sweet dessert that she would cram into her mouth, helpless to stop, until she vomited it up.
He pulls her to him by the hips, positioning her between his knees. Anna can’t contain a gasp: his hands are, as always, cold. He lightly bites the flesh above her bellybutton, shaking his head like a dog. Anna feels him grin against her stomach. But when he slides a finger into her, clinically, like a doctor, and pushes her away a few inches so he can watch her face, his expression is grave.
You are the most willing woman I’ve ever known, he says. It’s as though you have some eternal wellspring inside you—here.
He crooks the finger. Anna strains not to react with a sound, a blink, an arch of the back, a moan. She stiffens her spine against her head’s instinctive loll.
But the Obersturmführer knows. Yes, here, he says, this one spot, rough as a cat’s tongue. You like that, don’t you?
He wiggles his finger, as though beckoning to an adjutant, a prisoner, to her: Come.
How very strange to be a woman, he muses, springing himself free of his regulation briefs and pulling Anna onto the bed; poor women, everything hidden from them, on the inside. You see, he adds as he rolls grinning on top of her, I know you better than you know yourself.
Anna thinks that this is true. And that perhaps it is at these moments that she hates him the most, for robbing her of her own familiar flesh by making it respond in such a way, as though it is no longer hers to command.
Every time he leaves, after Trudie is safely in bed, Anna punishes her traitorous body with lye soap and a pumice stone. She fills the bath with water so hot that her skin, that white sheath with its dark freckles that the Obersturmführer finds so appealing, will surely peel off like that of a boiled tomato. Standing nude in the bedroom, she slaps her face, stomach, thighs, but this only reminds her of other activities the Obersturmführer enjoys. She digs her nails into her lower lip, drawing blood. She touches herself between the legs and examines her fingertips: dry when she does it.
One night Anna fetches the sewing bag from Mathilde’s bureau and sits naked on the toilet, a hand mirror placed between her feet. She licks the thread and slides it through the needle, her eyes already watering as she imagines pressing it against that ten-derest of flesh: how sharp it will be, how cold. Despite her rehearsal, the reality is more pa
inful than she imagines; tears spurt, and she drops the needle, hearing it land with a tiny clink! on the mirror. She is too cowardly; she can’t go through with it. Instead, she contents herself by picturing the Obersturmführer ’s reaction to finding her sewn shut, the stitches black and clumsy against the dark pink folds.
But he steals even this poor comfort from her through a story he tells her one December evening, after returning from a trip that has prevented him from visiting the bakery for two weeks. Anna doesn’t know where he has been, but he is particularly insatiable, having been deprived of his pleasures for so long. Dispensing with the scarves and razors, the whiskey and the gimmicks, he takes her three times, always from behind. Anna wonders, as she braces her palms against the wall to keep her head from being bashed into it, whether this predilection is peculiar to the Obersturmführer or if all men have a secret fondness for this position, the woman anonymous, merely a back and jiggling buttocks and a hank of hair, the man pumping like a dog.
When he has finished with her physically, the Obersturmführer again begins speaking, as though resuming a conversation. Anna has become accustomed to this; she should even welcome it, as nothing more is required of her than that she nestle against him with her head pillowed on his chest. But dear God, he is so boring! Complaints about the starchy food; the trivia of his domestic routine—particularly laundry, the Obersturmführer has a fetish about the whiteness of his shirts; indignant analysis of whether his adjutant’s smile is insolent; on and on. When Anna envisions hell, she suspects it will look just like this: a gray box of a room in which she is trapped with this man while he talks and talks and talks for all eternity.
Sometimes, if the Obersturmführer appears sufficiently caught up in what he is saying, Anna dozes. At other times, such as now, she mentally lists the maternal chores that have yet to be ful-filled: Trudie must be fed, bathed, tucked in, and lied to. Every night the child poses the same question, making a sort of game out of it. Where is Tante Mathilde? she asks, and Anna patiently repeats a version of the same story she has told the bakery’s pa-trons: Mathilde has been placed by the Work Bureau in an officers’ dining hall in Hamburg. Some men needed her to come and make bread for them by the sea, Anna explains to Trudie, and each time the child gazes at the ceiling, says Oh, rubs her blanket against her cheek, and falls asleep. Just like that.