David Gillham - City of Women

Sitting on the bedside, slipping on her shoes, she pauses at that image. “So why do you still take them?”

Preoccupied. Lugging his arms into his army blouse. “What?”

“You’re not in the field any longer, Kaspar. You’re at home. Why are you still taking pills?”

“You never know, Ivan could be hiding in the pantry closet or in the wardrobe, ready for an ambush. I have to stay vigilant,” he says, and then shrugs off the joke when he sees she’s not laughing. “They keep me going,” he confesses drably. Picking one from a pillbox on the dresser, he swallows it dry. “You know? Otherwise I might just keep sleeping one morning.”

Unlike Wolfram, Kaspar has not been eager to show off his wound. Even in bed, even during intercourse, he keeps his body hidden under the covers, and he never undresses in front of her. She has seen it only once really. A flash of scar tissue below the left hip, as if he had been clawed. He never complains of pain, but she can see it in his face. As he sits at the kitchen table or walks down the stairs. The minuscule hesitation before a pinch in his expression. No cane, but something in him has been no less crippled.

“So. When we married,” she hears him ask, without any particular emotion in his voice, “did you love me?”

The question stabs her. She blinks at his silent face, and then answers. “I thought I did.”

“And now? Do you love me now?”

Meeting his eyes. “I don’t know.”

Turning away, stuffing the tail of his blouse into his breeches. “Oh, come now, Sigrid. That’s not a soldier’s answer. A soldier’s answer is ‘yes, sir’ or ‘no, sir.’”

“I am not a soldier,” she says. Shoving her foot into her other shoe, she tries to escape the room, but Kaspar seizes her elbow. “Remember what I said, Sigrid? No secrets between us. Only honesty.”

She gazes into the face of the stranger inhabiting Kaspar’s body. “I feel sympathy for you. I feel grief for you. But I don’t feel love,” she says.

“Is there someone else?”

Her lips part before she answers, “Yes.”

For an instant, she is unsure what he is going to do. Strike her? Throttle her? He looks as if he is standing on a precipice, gazing downward. But then he simply releases her arm. “Now you see,” he tells her as he flops down onto the chair to yank on his boots. “That wasn’t so difficult.”

She is frozen in place. “Is that all you’re going to say?”

“What else would you have me say?”

“Are you going to divorce me?”

“Is that what you want me to do?”

“You’re not even going to ask his name?”

“You sound disappointed. It’s your business, Sigrid,” he says, and stomps his heel into his boot. “Just don’t lie to me.”

SHE IS RUNNING down the corridor. The train was delayed at the postbahnof, and now she is late. The noise of flat-heeled shoes reverberating off the linoleum, bouncing off the walls, filling her ears. She flings open the door to the stenographic room, and is met by Fräulein Kretchmar, standing like a stone monument.

“I’m sorry, Fräulein Kretchmar,” she quickly pants, but then words stick in her throat. The expression on Fräulein Kretchmar’s face is sculpted by a dismal finality.

“You are to report to Herr Esterwegen’s office, Frau Schröder.”

Sigrid feels eyes in the room stick to her, then peel away. She glances at Renate, who telegraphs her a wet blink of panic before averting her eyes back to the keys of her typewriter.

Eyes continue to follow her in the standard covert fashion as she passes through the lobby of desks that bulwark Herr Esterwegen’s private office. His secretary, an old white-headed biddy, offers her a bleak glare as she buzzes the intercom.

“Frau Schröder, Herr Esterwegen.”

Sigrid braces herself for the angry noise of a man known for his petty tirades, but all she hears over the intercom’s hash is “Send her in.”

“Come,” he calls when she knocks. The door opens and she finds Esterwegen’s pudgy red face scowling at her, chewing on the nail of his little finger, his eye popping behind the steel-rimmed spectacles. “ Sit , Frau Schröder. There’s someone here to see you,” he instructs. But it’s not the sight of Esterwegen’s anxiety that shortens her breath.

“Herr Kriminal-Kommissar,” she declares. It’s the Gestapo man from the cinema mezzanine. The same animal fatigue is entrenched in his face. The same sleeplessness fills his eyes. He does not speak to her, however, but turns to Esterwegen instead.

“I’ll need your office, Herr Esterwegen,” he informs the man.

Esterwegen blinks stupidly. “My office?”

“It won’t be for long.”

Another blink, before he gets the message. “Of course,” he says, his scowl deepening. Standing, he thoughtlessly stuffs papers into an already bulging briefcase, then nods to the Kommissar. “ Heil Hitler ,” he says, showing his palm, but the Herr Kommissar does not respond. He has already blotted out Esterwegen’s existence. Shutting the door, he fishes a packet of cigarettes from his coat pocket.

“You don’t smoke,” he says.

“No,” Sigrid answers.

“I’ve heard that about you. That and a few other things.” Lighting his cigarette, he breathes out a jet of smoke. He doesn’t use Esterwegen’s chair, but rather perches on the corner of his desk, one leg hooked over. “Please, sit.”

“Sit?”

“Yes. In the chair,” the Herr Kommissar instructs.

Drawing in a breath, Sigrid smooths her skirt and inserts herself into the chair facing the desk.

“ So . We have a problem, you and I,” he tells her.

She stares.

“It seems your young friend from the cinema has gotten herself into some very serious trouble,” he informs her.

Sigrid says nothing, swallowing back the sickly heat coming up from her belly.

“You know she’s gone missing, correct?”

“Yes,” she answers. “ Yes , Herr Kommissar.”

“But do you know why ?”

“ No , Herr Kommissar.”

“Were you aware that she was trading on the black market?”

“ No , Herr Kommissar.”

“So I can also assume you were unaware that she was also illegally sheltering criminals?”

“Criminals, Herr Kommissar? She was sleeping on a cot in a pantry closet. Where would she be hiding criminals?” Inhale, exhale.

A frown. “I understand,” he says, “your desire to protect her, Frau Schröder. It’s only to be expected of a woman such as yourself to have some maternal feelings for a wayward creature. You would not be a woman if you didn’t have such feelings. But as difficult as it may be, as unpleasant as it may be,” the Herr Kommissar says, leaning forward with an intimate lilt, “you must put those feelings aside.”

She stares frankly back at him. “I think you have made a mistake, Herr Kommissar.”

“Oh, no. No mistake,” he assures her, then leans over and lifts open the cover of a file folder lying on the desk blotter. Sigrid’s file from the office personnel records, she realizes. He scrutinizes it from an angle, brow furrowed. “Your husband,” he says, returning to the tone of a civil servant. “He’s been serving on the Eastern Front.”

“He was, but now he’s home. He was wounded.”

The Kommissar nods, expelling smoke. “No children,” he says.

“No,” she answers.

“Why not?”

A shrug. “Ask God.”

The man suppresses a cough of smoke. “Is your husband aware that you have implicated yourself in this ugly business?”

“ No , he is not, for I have not, Herr Kommissar, done any such thing.”