Arnost Lustig - Lovely Green Eyes

“Here I am.”

Skinny did not reply. She could see he was there.

“I like being pampered,” he said. “Future German children will be born as giants.”

She did not know why he said that.

“I don’t like ducking,” he said. It was obvious that he had come in from the cold.

He straightened up. He had come in as if expecting a servant to follow him. He had walked across the yard and down the corridor with his hands in his pockets, but now he took them out and let them hang down. He still wore the air of superiority he had displayed when the guards helped him with the tarpaulins for his car.

He was her second officer.

“Stefan Sarazin, S S Obersturmführer, Einsatzkommando der Einsatzgruppen,” he said by way of greeting.

He enjoyed the fact that the first six letters of his rank, Oberst or colonel, suggested what he might still rise to during the war.

Was he waiting for her to introduce herselfby her name or only her nickname? For a week now, since Captain Hentschel’s visit, she had been called Lovely Green Eyes. He glanced about the cubicle, noting what she had done to it. She was young and healthy, just as he had been told, but it was hard to judge her experience. Perhaps she did not have a lot, he would see. He decided to put his cards on the table. He had not been able to manage a lot with her ginger colleague on his last visit, nor with the whore with the high ankles who reminded him of a foal. It didn’t occur to him that the fault might be his. The rôles were clearly defined. One knew from the start who the prostitute was and who the client. The military character of the brothel made no difference; on the contrary. And it was not a matter of merit in serving the troops, the army, the Einsatzgruppen; it was a privilege. In the meantime, a lot had happened on other battlefields. He could not guarantee that the girls wouldn’t all be shot in the end. He could tell himself that he wouldn’t only have sex here, but have it with a living corpse. Ginger had disgusted him by talking of her vaginal blood. Later he had, out of that disgust, written a poem about it.

He knew very well in what aspect he was sensitive and why he could not overcome his revulsion at certain things. He felt driven by an impulse not to beat about the bush, but to come straight to the point.

“I’ve never slept with a Jewess,” he said. ‘Tm fussy. I don’t mate with dark-haired, dark-eyed or inferior women, or with those who are shorter than myself. I’d appreciate it if you could tell me that you have never slept with a circumcised one either.”

His smile did nothing to lessen the tight feeling that enclosed her like a hoop around a beer barrel.

“You aren’t going to answer me?” Obersturmführer Sarazin asked.

She had got used to the way the soldiers eyed her all over. She knew the path of their gaze, the way it mapped out what more or less made up a girl, at least from the outside — hair, chin, eyes, breasts, hips, buttocks, legs and crotch — assessing her in a hundredth of a second usually, though sometimes lingeringly. She had grown used to the fact that the men regarded her as a piece of colourfully decked-out flesh. Sometimes, when their glance intensified or became detached, she saw a moment of recognition in their eyes, as though she had reminded them of someone, or they had failed to find in her something that they were looking for. Then she would know that they were comparing her to someone in their memory, or in their imagination, and she had no wish to know who it was — a wife, a mistress, a sister, a whore. At times she felt that a soldier’s glance was casting a shadow, or a different light, over the cubicle. On one occasion, with a corporal engineer, it occurred to her — with a terrible shock — that he might recognize her because he came from Prague and might have seen her in the rolling stock workshop or by the Harmanze lake. She was glad that he was a corporal in the Wehrmacht and not in the SS. It had only been a moment, but it produced a greater fear than she had so far experienced. Under the gaze of the Obersturmführer she felt like a false coin that he was examining before tossing it so that it would flip over and reveal its reverse.

To the Obersturmführer she was a new girl. A novice, as he had said to the Madam.

“No,” Skinny answered absentmindedly. “Yes,” she corrected herself, “I am answering you.”

“Wake up!”

“I’m here …”

“You can sleep when I’m gone. There’s a time for everything.”

“Jawohl.”

“Suppose I made you swear?”

“Swear what?”

“On your race.”

“I’d swear.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” the Obersturmführer said.

She must pull herself together.

Last time he had played games like this with Ginger and with that tall prostitute. She had got on his nerves with her height, her big breasts and her moistness. But he had liked her nose — a large, straight Aryan nose. Should not prostitutes also be informed of the importance of race? Of what it meant? What far-reaching consequences it implied, here and now, for everybody? He swept his eyes over her as he spoke. He’d see. Soldiers like him should be offered if not princesses then at least virgins. Or perhaps not? Virgins with fairly extensive experience. Or girls with a quick grasp, quick learners, those who anticipated what was expected of them. There was more to it than just simply lying down and opening their legs. Better still, girls who understood even the unusual.

He had already summed the girl up. He was startled by her childish appearance. He wondered what she knew about him. He looked around the cubicle, hoping there wouldn’t be rats here. In the corner he caught sight of a cobweb, but the spider and the flies had gone. He realized that he was cold, and glanced at the stove. She had built a good fire. A good mark. He wanted her to understand that she was not irreplaceable, even before he convinced himself of it. He warmed himself by the fire, ignoring her. He scowled at his watch, as if planning his time. He tried to visualize what was happening at his unit, who was doing what while he was here.

The fact that he was an officer made her nervous. Not that she would have preferred NGOs, but his being an officer increased her fear. She did not worry too much about having to lie; but she was afraid of committing the sin of carelessness or of anything happening which was beyond her control. At least she could see that he was pleased with the fire in the stove.

He listened to the howling of the gale, separating it from the roar in the stove. The elbow of the flue radiated heat. He liked its red-hot colour. At moments it would turn white, blue and red again, sometimes all colours together. I have a taste for unusual beauty, he told himself. I am able to find it in the most unexpected places. This prostitute was probably still in training. Probably not a mistress of her profession yet, but he could handle that. Did not everybody have to learn all the time?

“I hope you’re not like my former neighbour’s cat,” he said when he had warmed himself. “The more friendly I was to her the more she withdrew.”

“I’m not withdrawing,” she said.

He was accustomed to people being afraid of him. Nothing to be said against that. It was better to count on the fear of the people one was dealing with than to rely on their meekness or humility, which might, at an unguarded moment, undergo an incredible change. He had seen what became of escaped prisoners in the forests and among the rocks — frenzy was too weak a word. It had happened countless times. He wished to prove to himself that he was strong not only in being part of the group, but also by himself. Sometimes he thought of himself as one of the wolves in the wasteland. Be oneself towards oneself and also towards others, he thought.