After the meal, the Obersturmführer walks stretching to the riverbank, where he sits and dangles his feet in the current. Anna pictures the black hair on them undulating underwater, an odd form of seagrass. The Obersturmführer turns his face toward the sun and twitches a hand in time to the Brahms. As the music swells, he sings along; he leaps up to conduct, waving his arms wildly. Trudie stares at him, mouth open. The Obersturmführer pretends not to see her. When the movement reaches its crescendo, he falls solemnly, face-first, into the river; he surfaces snorting and blowing like a horse. Trudie screams with laughter. The Obersturmführer crawls toward her. The child climbs onto his back and he carries her into the river, pawing the water and whinnying.
As she watches, Anna shreds blades of grass in her lap. On occasion, she still finds herself drifting into the solace of her simple daydream, the walk along the broad city avenue, the sojourn at the café for a cool drink beneath the trees. And during the long evening sessions with the Obersturmführer in Mathilde’s bedroom, the fantasy has evolved: After the café, Anna and her husband push their daughter in her pram back to their hotel. Theirs is a modest room, paneled in dark wood, heavy drapes layered over curtains of lace. The girl is bathed and settled for a nap; they will rest for an hour and wake refreshed for dinner. Anna will linger by the window in her slip, shaking talcum powder onto her skin. She will gaze at the linden trees outside, the quiet street, as her husband sheds his clothes and pulls back the coverlet for sleep.
The dim little room is so real to Anna that she wonders if she stayed in a similar place as a girl, if she might once have been the child, listening to her parents going about a pre-evening routine. Either way, memory or invention, the vision has always been there for her whenever she needs it, comforting and mundane. Now, however, she realizes that the husband has at some point become the Obersturmführer. His face remains obscure, but she knows his grunt as he sinks into the mattress, that the clothing discarded on the room’s chair includes an SS tunic, that it is his small feet that twitch against the cool sheets as he dreams.
Anna presses her fingers to her mouth. The willows weep into the grass. The Obersturmführer shouts and Trudie splashes and shrieks. The child flails in the river, the Obersturmführer ’s palm balanced beneath her round stomach.
Take her out of there, please, Horst, Anna calls. She’s too young to learn to swim.
Nonsense, he says. Children are born swimmers. They’re like tadpoles. They learn in the womb.
As if for emphasis, he swings the child by the arms and releases her into the Ilm. She paddles wildly, spitting water.
Please! Anna says.
All right, all right.
The Obersturmführer wades to the bank. Come out, he orders the child. You heard your mother.
Trudie splashes into the reeds, yelling for him to catch her, but when she realizes she has lost his attention, she stands in the shallows, staring entranced at her submerged feet. Perhaps there are minnows at her toes.
The Obersturmführer, his white shirt transparent, stands over Anna and rubs his hands through his hair, showering droplets onto her dress.
Don’t, she says.
He flops down beside her, grinning.
Why such a sour face on my birthday girl? he asks. Is it because I didn’t get you a cake? I could hardly have had you bake your own, you know. It would have spoiled the surprise.
I’m quite content without cake, Anna tells him.
The Obersturmführer reclines, crossing his arms behind his head and squinting into the crown of the tree. Shadows dapple his face.
Listen to that, he says, that beautiful andante. I’ve always preferred Brahms to Bach; Bach is so mathematical...Well, there must be something else you want, then. What is it, Anna?
He plucks playfully at her skirt. Come now, don’t be too shy to tell me. A diamond? Perfume, perhaps? A string of pearls for that lovely neck?
He presses a finger to the pulse in Anna’s throat.
Anna swallows. During the afterlife, if there is such a thing, she will have to pay a heavy penalty for her intimacy with this man. During this life, then, she might as well try to make it count.
There is something, she murmurs.
I knew it!
Horst, she says, and puts a hand on his. It’s a bit strange, but what I really want—
Tell me.
Could you— I wish you would spare the lives of twenty-three prisoners. That’s not so many, is it? One for each year I’ve been alive.
The Obersturmführer ’s grin widens; then he laughs. You have such a quirky sense of humor!
Anna rips at another stem of grass.
The Obersturmführer sits up. You’re serious, he says.
Anna says nothing.
Look at this, the Obersturmführer says. Feel this.
He pulls Anna’s hand to his right bicep. The muscles bulge beneath the skin, thick as a mature rattlesnake coiled around the bone.
You know how I became so strong? he asks. Manning the machine gun. In the Einsatzgruppen. Shooting Jews.
Anna wrenches her hand from him and wipes her green-stained fingers on her skirt.
Like this, the Obersturmführer says.
He lunges for his pistol so suddenly that Anna feels the breeze of his movement against her skin. The report of the shot makes Anna’s ears ring. She covers them and screams. The Ober-sturmführer empties the chamber into the Ilm, five bullets in all. Blue smoke hangs in an acrid haze over the water.
You see? says the Obersturmführer, tossing his pistol onto the grass.
Anna jumps to her feet, crying her daughter’s name. Trudie runs toward them and Anna stoops to catch her. He fired without even a preliminary glance; the child could be drifting lifelessly downstream—
She turns to say as much to the Obersturmführer, but he has gone away again. He stares blankly at the river, mouth drooping.
Then he scowls.
What else can I offer you? he asks, with cold formality. Perhaps you would like me to resign? To denounce myself as a traitor? No, I have it: We could go to England. We could vacation on the white cliffs of Dover. Would that please you better, Anna?
Anna clutches Trudie to her midsection.
No, she says. No, no. This is fine, Horst. This is fine.
The Obersturmführer raises an eyebrow, his chest heaving. The Brahms is in its final movement, legato as a lullaby.
40
THE OBERSTURMFÜHRER FOUNDERS. HE SWEARS. HE SPEEDS up in compensation, hammering away. Anna, gripping the sheets, locks her legs around his buttocks: sometimes this encourages him enough to finish. Not this time. She feels him wilting. After a moment, he slips out. He slumps atop her, his breath a gale in her ear. Then, with a sudden shove, he propels himself from the bed.
He storms naked around the room, his flaccid penis flapping. Under other circumstances, this might be a comic sight, but not now. Anna can barely see him in any case; the blackout curtain he insists on pulling even in the daytime screens out most of the light. The room is dim, stifling. No matter how often Anna washes the bedclothes, which are now more hole than fabric, they retain the sour yellow smell of nightmares and copulation. She takes small sips of air through her mouth. The odor reminds her of the juice in a jar of pickles. Her stomach gurgles.
She knows what will come next, but she still flinches when the Obersturmführer punches the wall. He has hurt himself; he flexes his hand and shakes it, staring at it in mild indignation as though it has insulted him. Yet this doesn’t stop him from pivoting to slam the same fist down on the bureau. The washbasin and pitcher shudder against one another, affrighted.
What is it? Anna asks softly.
Nothing, the Obersturmführer mutters.
Nothing! he yells.
But Anna knows better. This has happened before. It occurs more and more frequently as things worsen for the Wehrmacht. In fact, Anna has noticed a direct correlation between Nazi impotencies and the Obersturmführer’s personal ones. The first inc
ident was in January, just after the bombing of the Schweinfurt ball-bearing factory. The Allied landing at Normandy spawned further inadequacy and fits of rage. In July, when France started to topple, the Obersturmführer was unable to perform for three full weeks. And Anna has anticipated that he would be bad today, for she has spent the last two nights huddled in the cellar with Trudie while the unlit ceiling bulb swings on its wire and cement patters from overhead. It is not the city of Weimar the Spitfires are after.
Although she knows it will make the Obersturmführer angrier, Anna shrinks from him as he stamps back to the bed. She has learned to dread his failings. Not only does he grow violent at such times, but he must degrade her to achieve his satisfaction, subjecting her to ever-greater perversions. Her muscles clench against the memory of outraged tissue, his brusque exploration of orifices never meant to be invaded, the humiliating sensation of fullness and the need to move her bowels.
The Obersturmführer throws himself onto the bed.
Let’s get back to business, he says. I haven’t much time.
Is it the air raid? Anna ventures. If she can only keep him talking. Did they hit the camp?
Hit! Destroyed would be a better word. The prisoners running for the forest even though it was in flames, the idiotic little trolls. And the fucking Ukrainian guards shooting every which way, hitting my own men, a bunch of hysterical schoolgirls. You’d think they’d never held a gun before. The Slavs are imbeciles, worse than the Poles. Why we don’t liquidate the lot of them is beyond me.
He grabs Anna by the shoulder.
Was there much other damage? Anna persists.
The Obersturmführer snorts. Oh, no, not much, if you don’t count the Gustloff armament works, the radio factory, the stone quarry, the political department. The records, the years of paperwork! I don’t know where the bombers got their information, but it was all too fucking accurate.
Anna thinks of the rolls of film waiting in their prophylactic packaging beneath the flat rock near the quarry.
That’s awful, she tells the Obersturmführer, making a long face. But surely you can set things to rights. You’re so clever, you—
Don’t be a nuisance, Anna, the Obersturmführer snaps. When I want sprightly conversation, I’ll ask for it.
He pushes Anna’s head down.
She expels a sigh of relief: so this is what it’s to be. It could be worse. Mechanically she takes him into her mouth. She is dull with lack of sleep. Her vision grays out. She stands in front of the silverware drawer, unable to remember why she has opened it. When she speaks to Trudie, she often forgets what she is saying mid-sentence. And she is delirious with hunger. Last year’s birthday picnic: how could she have wasted the jam, the bread, even the beer? That ham, a fat pink haunch. What she wouldn’t do for even a shred of it! She wouldn’t chew and swallow, heedlessly. She would wedge it into her cheek like tobacco, sucking the meat until the last of its salty flavor had gone.
The Obersturmführer ’s hands fall to his sides. As usual, he has propped himself up against the pillows to watch, his eyes agleam in the false dusk. His face is empty; he might be waiting in a queue at the bank. His chin, a hanging bladder of fat, folds into dewlaps and wattles. He is not wanting for nourishment, not he. Where is he getting the food, all the food, now that even the black market is defunct? And why doesn’t he bring her any? Anna has a constant low-level headache. Her eye sockets throb with hunger. She is cold no matter how warm the weather. At night she runs her hands over her body, taking stock of the new concavities and protrusions. Her stomach is a depression ringed by ribs and hips and pelvic bone. The squares of sponge she once inserted before the Obersturmführer ’s visits are no longer necessary; her flow dried up months ago. What if it never returns? Anna eyes the roll of white flesh above the Obersturm-führer ’s pubic hair with hatred.
The Obersturmführer is still at half-mast, sticky and malleable. Even the smell of him makes Anna’s stomach growl: the bacon-smoke sweat, the damp globes loamy as mushrooms. She frees her hands to pull at him like a milkmaid, forcing him deeper into her throat. She has learned not to gag. When she does, he corrects her with a sharp rap of knuckles to the skull. She envisions pork chops. Lamb chops. Veal. One morning this week, Anna discovered the front lock forced, the bakery window shattered. The burglars found nothing, of course; there is nothing to be found. When the noncom from the camp brings her supplies, an increasingly rare event nowadays, they are of the poorest quality: scant salt, no yeast, government-issue flour wriggling with maggots. What do they think, these women Anna must turn away, their hands empty but for their useless ration booklets? Can they not see that Anna too is starving, that any bread she makes now goes to the child? Which one of them broke in?
The Obersturmführer groans. His eyes are closed now, his breath harsh. Good. Good. Perhaps it is almost done, then. Anna shakes her arm to relieve the cramp in her elbow and reapplies herself to her chore. She hears Trudie singing in the dooryard: Backe backe Kuchen, der Bäcker hat gerufen . . . Butter und Salz, Zucker und Schmalz . . . She chants this all the time. The only way Anna can keep from slapping the child is to remind herself that poor Trudie doesn’t even know what sugar and lard are, let alone cake. Milch und Mehl, und Eier machen den Kuchen gel’. Yes, milk and eggs, Anna thinks. Sauerbraten. Liverwurst. Bratwurst. Rabbit. Trudie’s pet, a longhaired angora that the Obersturm-führer brought her last month from the camp’s breeding hutch, was the only thing taken during the burglary. And Anna is grateful; a few more days and she might not have been able to resist eating it herself.
The Obersturmführer finally begins to thrust. Anna’s jaws ache from the effort of not clamping down. Mettwurst. Bock-wurst. Don’t bite, don’t bite! Her cheeks are wet with tears, her chin with spittle. She swipes it with a wrist before continuing.
A little faster, the Obersturmführer is saying, Ach, you’ve got me right there, right there right there—
He digs his nails into Anna’s scalp and hisses.
Weisswurst, thinks Anna. Or better yet, Blutwurst. Ah, yes, Blutwurst: blood sausage.
41
OCTOBER 1944. A CRISP FALL, THE NIGHTS SEARINGLY cold. From the east and from the west, the Russians and the Americans are closing in, squeezing the Vaterland between them like the pincers of a gigantic crab, and Anna is watching the Obersturmführer. She is always watching the Obersturmführer, whenever he is in close proximity, and when he is not, she thinks of him incessantly. She is as helpless to stop analyzing his every word, nuance, flick of the wrist, as a schoolgirl with her first crush. It is part survival tactic, of course; the more Anna knows about him and how he perceives her, the safer she will be. Yet she would like to take a circular saw to the top of her skull, scoop out her brains, and hurl them against the wall.
She has been his mistress for two and a half years now, longer than her friendship with Mathilde, more than twice the time she was allotted with Max, and in some ways Anna knows the Obersturmführer better than she has ever known anyone. She knows his vanity: how fanatic he is about his boots, his uniform; how he curries his dark hair with Mathilde’s brushes while practicing his smile in the mirror over the bedroom bureau. She knows that his appearance is crucial to him because his immaculate facade has carried him further than any true leadership ability. She knows that he doesn’t see himself as monstrous, that were he to be called before the Throne of Judgment to account for his infinite misdeeds, he would be honestly perplexed. To the Obersturmführer, his murderous work is merely a job, taxing at times but affording power and advancement. Not that he considers the issue much. When faced with self-reflection he shrugs his shoulders, giving it up as being too difficult a task altogether.
Yet in other aspects the Obersturmführer is an enigma to Anna, a study in contradictions. For instance, his zealous adherence to the twisted principles of Partei purity: a sham. He is married, as all top-echelon SS must be, and yet he keeps her, Anna, and seems to care for her. Or does he? This is what Anna puzzles over as she
watches him, trying to slot the disparate pieces of him into place. Is she cherished or a convenience? Would the Obersturmführer put a foot on her neck and shoot her in the head if she gave enough cause for offense? Will he do this anyway, when the end comes? Anna tries to envision herself from the Obersturmführer ’s height, from behind the cage of bone and pale windows through which he surveys the world. Perhaps, confronted with the matter of his own survival, the imperative of not leaving any evidence for the advancing armies, the Ober-sturmführer could quench his fondness for Anna as easily as turning off a faucet.
Tonight, All Hallows’ Eve, Anna is watching the Obersturm-führer from across the table in the bakery kitchen, at which she and he and Trudie are having dinner. These are, perhaps, more humble surroundings than the ones in which the Obersturmführer is used to dining, but Anna has tried to make it as nice as possible by spreading a sheet over the floury wooden boards in lieu of a lace cloth, using blackout candles as a centerpiece. She has done all of this to show her appreciation of the food the Ober-sturmführer has provided in response to her pleas that she and the child are virtually starving. And Anna is genuinely grateful for the venison, more gristle than meat but substantial enough to bring tears to her eyes; for the potatoes, the beetroot she has boiled and sliced into a dish, the lentils and—a marvel—the handful of desiccated peas.
Her appetite finally satisfied, Anna tries to shake off the stupor of unaccustomed satiation to resume observing the Ober-sturmführer. Despite being twice her size, he has eaten somewhat less than she; he has actually left a few small potatoes on his plate. His uniform jacket hanging on a peg near the door, he sits with his shirtsleeves rolled to his elbows, tipping his chair back on two legs and conversing with the child. He and Trudie are spinning a tale between them, some fable that seems to involve a family of rabbits living in a nearby Trog. The Obersturmführer nods quite seriously as Trudie chatters on, interrupting her only to insert the occasional question, and Anna imagines what the three of them would look like to somebody peering in from out-side: a happy little family—indeed, happier than most in these times, given the unusual presence of the patriarch—enjoying the end of a meal.