Arnost Lustig - Lovely Green Eyes

She reached out her hand and took the gun. He didn’t snatch his hand away. He didn’t fire. His arm sank down on the sheet. Her hesitation had made the gun heavy even for him.

His scar was swollen. The Obersturmführer was aroused. She felt more and more confused.

“Very well,” he said. “It would have been worse if you hadn’t taken it. Now I’ll turn you into a killer.”

She had never held a gun before in her life, never held such a piece of metal, shaped for just one purpose.

Only then did it occur to her that she could shoot him. And that perhaps this was what he wanted. Was the gun loaded? Had he used the last round when he was firing at the wolves?

“Listen to me.”

“I’m listening.”

Then she whispered “Yes,” although he had not said anything. Was the Obersturmführer letting her make a decision that was not hers to make? Was he treating her as if she were an Aryan? Should she shoot him? And what would happen then?

“I’m waiting,” she said.

“You know what I have in mind?” He was stressing every word. She tried not to move a single muscle in her face. “Die Sonne bringt es an den Tag.”

Could he read her mind? Was the pistol loaded?

“Are you afraid of me? Do you despise yourself?”

She knew that she must not reply. Did he want to be killed or did he know that the pin would strike an empty chamber?

“Speak up!”

“I don’t despise …”

She did not say who.

“You’re lying.”

“I’m not,” she said softly.

Her exhaustion muted everything inside her. She was telling the truth when she said that she did not know how to fire a gun. In her head she heard an echo of Die Sonne bringt es an den Tag . Squeezing the trigger would not be difficult. She thought of all those who had been shot before her.

“You can do what you want,” he said. “You’re holding all the cards.”

He was savouring the sound and meaning of each word. He associated with them images of which she had no inkling. Did some words, whose sound fascinated him, carry him to regions where no-one had ventured before him? Where only people like himself were admitted?

“I don’t want anything,” she replied.

“You don’t know what you want?”

“No.”

“Is there a heart in your breast? Or just ice?”

She weighed up his words.

“Hold the pistol by its butt. Like this.” He leant forward and reversed the gun in her hand. She needed both hands to hold it up.

“That’s it,” he said. “Release the safety catch.”

“I don’t know how to.”

“That’s your fault. If you thought you’d be bored with me, or that you couldn’t learn something from me, you were mistaken. Every one of us is only what he’s good for. We’ll see. You need to have one hand free. You might at least become a better shot than you are an army whore.”

She studied the black surface of the pistol. The butt was rough, grooved and cold. Her heart was thumping. Was the Obersturmführer, even without a gun, stronger than she was with one? His scar stood out, blood-red.

“I’m counting to five,” he said. “Today’s number is five. Do you believe in numbers?”

“Sometimes,” she said.

She was afraid his scar would burst and blood would stream from his forehead. She was holding the gun pointing down. She did not touch the trigger. She examined the stiff mechanism to find the safety catch, studied the granular surface, the shallow grooves, the black metal fingered and smoothed by many hands.

Her facial muscles were twitching. She held her breath. With her forefinger she probed the catch. She pressed upwards. It didn’t move. She pressed down, the lever moved. It clicked like a light switch.

“At last,” he said.

Did he want her to shoot him or to shoot herself? Or did he want her to shoot him and then herself? She no longer thought that he was mad. The mad ones were those who didn’t understand, like herself, her mother, her father, her brother. Those who let themselves be put on trains and taken to Auschwitz-Birkenau.

“Hook your index finger around the trigger.”

It would all make sense if there was a round in the pistol, even if the magazine was empty. She remembered how he had slipped the magazine in earlier.

“Finger on the trigger,” he repeated.

She slipped her finger through the guard. Trembling, she felt the most delicate part of the gun, the metal of the trigger. She dared not move her finger. Would she get cramp in it?

“Aim at me. At once. Can’t you aim?”

She steadied her wrist with her other hand. She dared not look into his eyes.

“Finger, trigger, aim. Eye, barrel, sight. Higher! At my heart!”

He pushed his chest out.

“Here,” he pointed where his heart was.

She raised the gun to a horizontal position, extending her arm, her wrist still supported by her left hand. With her eyes she measured the distance between the barrel and the Obersturmführers heart. She lowered her eyes to the sight. She no longer looked like someone who did not know how to handle a gun.

“Shoot!”

She raised her eyes. She met his clouded gaze, his eyes like watery milk, threads of blood in the corners. “Look at me. Shoot!”

“Fire! Squeeze it!”

Skinny’s eyes had become bloodshot. Her green irises were floating in a reddish sea. She was trembling all over. At the same time she was sweating. She was afraid diarrhoea would get the better of her. Her muscles did not feel strong enough to control it.

“I wasn’t born to kill,” she said. “I’ve never killed anyone.”

“Fire!”

“Why?”

“Because I command you to. Haven’t you got the strength to squeeze the trigger?”

“You want me to?”

“It’s an order.”

“I can’t.”

“Why?”

The Obersturmführer’s forehead and hair were wet with sweat. Did he want to prove to her and to himself that he disdained death? Or to punish her for what he could not achieve in bed? Sweat was trickling down his upper lip into his mouth, down his chin, into the hollow between his throat and his chest. She saw black before her eyes. The sweat coming from his hair was caught in the groove ofhis scar. She was aiming at the heart of Obersturmführer Stefan Sarazin on his orders.

“I give you five seconds. I’m counting.”

She counted with him.

“One.”

She was waiting for him to say five. She did not know what he would do then.

“You’re made of sawdust. I will decide what happens. You can’t miss. I’m your enemy, German blood. Fire!”

She sensed the pain in his voice, masked by willpower. For a moment it reminded her of Tight-Lips and the NCO who had shaved her crotch and laughed. She preferred not to think of what had happened afterwards.

He did not take his eyes off her; she was afraid he might hypnotize her. She felt in his eyes the blood of all those he had killed. She let her hand sag, so that the gun was now aimed at his stomach. And then lower still. In the end she aimed to the side, past him.

“There you are,” the Obersturmführer said after a while, but without his earlier determination or urgency. “You could never be one of us. It’s obvious you weren’t in the Bund deutscher Mädel.”

He looked at where the gun was pointing. He smiled slightly. Die Sonne bringt es an den Tag . The commanding tone had been replaced by geniality with a touch of contempt.

“I knew you wouldn’t fire. Now I know everything about you.”

Did he know she was Jewish? Had he seen the invisible, the place where there were no secrets?

“That wouldn’t have earned you the Knight’s Cross.”

He took his pistol back. Had there been a last round in the gun or had it been empty? Had he really run that risk or had he merely pretended? What part in it all had been played by the retreat of the German troops and by the Einsatzkommandos’ retreat from glory, which he was both admitting and denying to himself?