K Jeter: The Kingdom of Shadows

The liquor’s sharp taste ignited her anger. She was about to hurl the glass and what was left of its contents to the floor when the drunken SS man caught her arm. “ Na, na -” He laughed, clasping her against his chest; the dregs of his glass spilled on her dress. “Plenty of others. What’s one more or less, when you’re having a good time?” He bent down to nuzzle her neck, his breath hot and wet.

She leaned back, hands pushing against his shoulders but unable to break free of his grasp. The alcohol fumes were still inside her head, thick and dizzying above the column of fire in her throat.

The radio’s music had started again, louder and faster this time. More couples came out on the floor, their laughter louder as well. The drunken SS officer swayed, eyes closed.

Over the heads of the crowd, she could see the stairs. One figure stood there, her hand timidly holding onto the banister, as though the sight of the dancers had frightened her from taking the last few steps down into the room.

The drunken man hugged the breath from her, his arms locking behind her back. He swung her around, her feet grazing the floor. Through a swarm of black spots in her vision, Liesel saw Obersturmfuhrer Stoehr, his gaze cutting past all the dancing figures. And she knew where he was looking – toward that conniving little mouse, the shy, pretty girl on the stairs.

“I don’t know what to do.” Marte sat on the edge of the bed, her hands in her lap. The dress was the one Frau Hegemann had loaned her, that being the one thing her father had forgotten, a pretty dress, a special one. This one was pink, with a squared neckline fretted with lace. She closed her eyes and remembered, though it had only been yesterday or a century ago. The mirror, and Frau Hegemann smoothing the dress in place, then stepping back to judge the effect. A pity your hips aren’t broader, the older woman had said. You’ll have trouble when the baby comes.

Marte opened her eyes. The girl in the mirror had been wearing this dress, that she wore now. So this must be her, sitting on a bed in a small room with a man in it.

“I don’t know,” she said again. How white her hands and her bare arms looked. She could imagine them floating, drifting in a river, caressed by the green tendrils of water weeds.

“That’s all right.” The man draped the jacket of his black uniform upon a chair. His shining boots stood against the wall. He stripped off his undershirt. “I do.”

Then everything would be as it should. She didn’t have to try to be anything. As long as he knew what to do next, she could watch what happened to the girl sitting on the bed, from inside, and it wouldn’t matter where she really was. If she was anywhere at all.

He stood in front of her. He pushed the dress off her shoulders. She looked up, past his bare chest, to see if there was any reflection of herself in the dark centers of his eyes.

“You bruised me.” Liesel lifted her arm and looked under the curve of her breast. There were big darkening marks on both sides of her ribs. She slapped Heinrich, not playfully. “Bastard.”

He laughed, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. He took another pull from the bottle he’d filched and brought up to the room. Liesel had had some of it, too, pouring fuel onto the fire that had leapt up inside her when she had seen the prize slipping out of her fingers. It had seemed then that the schnapps had no effect on her, that her anger burned it way as fast as it could be swallowed – but then the room downstairs had tilted and swayed sickeningly, and the faces of the other girls and the men with whom they had paired off had turned to laughing animal masks, laughing at her. Her hands had felt thick and swaddled as she had clutched at Heinrich, trying to keep from falling.

That was all she knew about him, his first name. Besides the fact that he was ready. He had been ready as soon as they had gotten into the room. He had slammed her against the door – everyone down the hallway must have heard – and started pawing her, his wet mouth at her throat, a hand rucking up her skirt to grip her thigh above the top of her stocking.

She had been able to push him away, stumbling backward with the bottle in his other hand. There was still enough of that coldly sober part awake in her, that she wanted to make sure this idiot didn’t tear her nice clothes. She had sat down on the bed – harder than she’d intended, her feet slipping out from under her – and had started undressing, while Heinrich goggled and drank.

“Come here.” She grabbed his belt and pulled him closer. She worked at the buckle, his trousers finally sliding down around his ankles. Men always looked so stupid and trapped like that – she had to keep herself from laughing. They hated that, she knew from experience.

“ Schei?…” Now he wasn’t ready. He looked as if he were about to topple over. The empty bottle dropped from his hand, his eyes rolling back in his head.

Liesel tugged him down beside her and kissed him, his jaw slackly open under her mouth. His flesh swelled in her hand. Nothing would interfere – she had been humiliated enough already, downstairs, in front of everybody. The infuriating memory came again to her, of the other girl’s face, shadowed by Obersturmfuhrer Stoehr as he had made a small, courtly bow to her. Liesel’s fingers tightened, the man’s blood encased in their grip.

Her foot touched something cold and heavy in the tangle of his uniform on the floor. She reached down and picked it up, holding it between herself and Heinrich. It took her a moment to even see what it was: his ceremonial dagger, the emblem of his membership in the SS. She tugged on the ornate handle, and the glittering blade emerged from the scabbard.

“No…” Heinrich’s smile soured. “That’s not… something to play with.” His clumsy tongue could barely get the words out.

She dropped the empty scabbard. The blade had words engraved on it. Meine Ehre hei?t Treue. “‘My honor is loyalty,’” she said aloud. And laughed – she couldn’t help it. She held the dagger up, close to her face, and looked at him. “Are you loyal, Heini?”

He watched, eyes half-lidded, as she licked the dagger blade, drawing her tongue slowly along its length. The sharp blade cut her tongue. She didn’t feel anything but the warmth trickling at the corner of her mouth.

She let him knock the dagger out of her hand; it clattered against the base of the wall. It didn’t matter. He was already on top of her, his hands pinning her wrists above her head, her blood smearing on his greedy face.

He lay against Marte’s side, head resting on her bare shoulder. He seemed to be asleep; the hand at her breast hadn’t stirred in a long time.

Warm under the blankets; she breathed slow and shallow, to not disturb the bedcovers snugged around the two bodies. Everything had happened the way her father had said it would. If the girl, the lace-trimmed dress gone now, looked in the mirror, Marte wouldn’t feel sorry for her. No one could say that the girl hadn’t done what was expected of her.

And even so… there had been one moment, like a spark of light falling in a sky without stars. When she had been falling beneath him. But she hadn’t been frightened, and then that moment had flared and enfolded her, and she had felt – she herself, no one else – the grasp of her thighs and bent knees against his sweating torso, and her arms had reached up and pulled him down to her.

That, and everything else, had passed. The man took his rest, his duty performed.

She was almost afraid to touch him now. He lay with the back of his head against one forearm, a dark-blue mark revealed on the skin above his ribs. A tattooed letter B was visible beneath the sheen of his sweat. Slowly, her outstretched fingertip trembling, she reached toward it. The symbol reminded her of the stigmata etched upon her father’s wrists, that he had tried to remove, and upon the wrists of all his brethren who had remained true to the secrets of their faith.