Arnost Lustig - Lovely Green Eyes

He paused.

“My mother believed that no woman got the husband she deserved. Her own mother died young. She hadn’t been married long. When a woman couldn’t find a husband the matter wasn’t discussed. And they all acted as if children were brought by the stork.”

She did not know yet that Wehrmacht Captain Hentschel’s visit would serve to erase any future negative reports from Madam Kulikowa’s book — complaints by rank-and-file servicemen, not by officers.

She tried not to look at his greatcoat on the door. The captain had thrown his khaki pullover with its suede-patched elbows over the back of the chair.

“You’re looking at my pistol?”

She flushed. “No. At your pullover.”

“Officers up to captain have a Luger; from captain up, a Parabellum. Would you like to hear about my first year in service?”

She tried to turn on her side, so she wouldn’t press the sore on her buttock.

“When one of my comrades is killed I go to let his wife know. One day, a fellow student from the Kriegsschule in Potsdam — he’d been mortally wounded — asked me to tell his wife how he fell. I rang the bell, she opened the door, and immediately she knew what had happened. She threw herself round my neck. Her child was with his grandmother in the Lusatian region on the Spree, and within a few minutes we were in bed together. It was an animalistic moment, the magnetism of the body — older than you or me.”

He was visiting some other corner of the world, even though he lay next to her. He was fitting the curves and hollows of her body into his memory — that childish body she had made older.

She could not guess what the confidences of a Wehrmacht officer could mean for her.

He was watching the skin on her temples. Her tired eyelids. The blue and purple veins on her breasts. The white frostbite patches on her cheeks. Her short, gingery hair. He could see her pulse on her temples. He watched the arteries on her throat, wrists and the inside of her thighs.

“We’re not allowed to kiss,” she objected weakly.

“You’re not much good at it. I’d like this a thousand times every day. Ten thousand times.”

What could she or should she talk to him about? About her twelve soldiers? Out of the question. Was she to tell him that, during the act, her blood hammered at her temples? That she had continuous pangs of conscience and moments of panic about being found out. That at each act of intercourse her father, mother and brother were present? They watched so that she should not forget them — and to judge her.

“Some things we ought to be grateful for,” said the captain.

He did not expect a reply.

“How often do you cut your toenails?”

“Every third day,” she lied.

“You scratch.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You’re good when you’re bad,” he said. “You’re good even when you draw the worst out of me.”

Then he asked her if she liked anything of what they were doing. The captain’s whisper was again becoming more intimate. He was stronger than strong, she thought. He did not himself deny what he had come for.

“My adjutant says, T kill, therefore I am.’ For me, my existence is confirmed when I am with someone like you. I do it, therefore I am.”

He was inhaling her smell. It reminded him of a little warm calf he had seen in a shack in Russia, tied to a post which held up the roof.

He was aroused by the girl’s youth, rather than by her skill. She must know that she was an incompetent whore. He savoured the slope of her shoulders, the arches of her arms when, at his request, she lay on her stomach, her breasts pressed against the sheet. Her concave stomach formed a curve which reminded him of his mother’s Venetian glass. He perceived her body as an ear of young grain, still growing, springy, soft and firm at the same time. When she half turned the way he wanted, her back was like the smooth shiny parquet floor in their drawing room at home.

She did what he wanted, it was more comfortable and less painful for her than lying on her back, rubbing her wound.

He kissed her wherever it occurred to him to kiss. It was shameless and, to her, unaccustomed; was it normal for him? She was terrified that she might not be clean enough. She curled up into a ball like a hedgehog, wishing she could retreat into a shell. He handled her like a new-born child. He could not get enough of her.

“Don’t we, in a whore, love what we love in ourselves?”

She felt what was bringing her closer to him and what made her hate him. Was it possible to admire him for one thing and to pity him for another? She was confused. She was afraid of something immediate that she could not overcome. He was the first person that had made her feel sorry for German soldiers killed in battle and for their wives, their children, one of them somewhere on the Spree, where barges and freighters were carrying coal. The captain was enormous, handsome, a stranger, and she wished he would remain just that. She wanted to keep a cool head. She did not move at all. The captain provided all the movement. He rolled away from her. He was relaxing, satisfied. He let her hand him the towel.

We’re all fools, he thought. He was lying there, still embracing her.

“Green eyes, ginger hair,” he said. “I know what I’d dress you in and from what I’d undress you again.”

“Do you know why a soldier most wants a woman before battle? Or immediately after battle? It’s a reward, or a token of a reward, the one thing that frees him from his bonds. You know, to his mother, his father, or to his children, his wife and family, his country and all his worries.”

From the army kitchen came the signal calling the guards to a midday meal — a spanner being struck against an iron bar like a gong. She was hungry; she had visions of food — hot soup with fried pieces of bread and bacon, boiled beef with gherkin sauce and potatoes.

“How did you get here?”

“Via a camp.” She thought it safer to tell him the truth. She held her forearm with the tattooed number out to him. “Where you got your winter equipment yesterday.”

“Is that so? Why did they send you there?”

“There were a lot of arrests in Prague after the assassination of Heydrich.”

“That was in ‘42.”

She froze, but kept her presence of mind as in all moments of danger. She knew this side of her temperament — she would tremble with fear up until the very moment of decision. At that instant some unknown force liberated her from it, from all unnecessary thoughts, hesitation or doubt. A fraction of a second when she made her decision. So far things had gone well. Now she had to wait for his reaction. She wondered if he was trying to prove her a liar. Had she already made a mistake that would cost her dear? She felt his questioning eyes on her. He was wondering.

“What happened to your parents?”

“I think they were killed. They took us to the camp and then they sent me here, along with my papers. They’re with Oberführer S chimmelpfennig. “

“What did you do at the camp?”

“They did x-ray experiments on me. They sterilized me.”

His expression told her that he understood. She came from that Czech region where, as Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich had declared, the Czechs had no business.

“Did your parents have anything to do with it?”

“No.”

“You’ll never have children,” he said slowly. “Maybe that’s a good thing. For them and for you.”

He was running his fingers through her hair. She hated those wandering fingers, but she lacked the courage to flinch.

“If war is a game, then we’ve lost already,” he said. “We started something we can’t finish — others will finish it for us. It will not be what we’d planned. If we had won, our victory would wipe out the mistakes and obliterate the crimes we have committed. As it is, we’ll be remembered only for our mistakes, our excesses. Only the complete picture determines the value of everything. We have sentenced ourselves to prolonged insignificance. Perhaps for ten, a hundred, a thousand years. Then we shall be known again for what we are good at. Manufacturing motor cars, cameras — anything. My father knew August Horch, I even think he named me after him. Horch began as a foreman at Benz & Cie. They entrusted him with the production of cars. You probably aren’t interested in a universal joint or in chrome steel gears. My Horch is a 1939 model. They no longer make it. If we’re blown up — my car and I — we’ll both end up in a museum.”