Rage of Battle

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Malle knew there was nothing she could do but submit to the corporal. Neither her daughter-in-law nor son had returned from the docks, and she, like everyone else in the Mustamae apartment complex, had heard the tearing sound of machine-gun fire down near Viru Gate, and feared the worst.

Unable to closet her grandson, Edouard, in any of the other apartments for fear of Party informers in the building — there was always at least one on each floor — Malle had tried to explain it to Edouard, telling him that for now, until the nightmare was over, whenever the corporal “called by,” he would have to be ready to go straight up to the crawl space above the double bed in her son and daughter-in-law’s room.

Malle had tried to lead the corporal away into her room, but he said he liked lots of room “to move about,” raising his eyebrows in unison like a gypsy, meaning to convey an all-knowingness and sexual prowess he did not have; his impatience, his ripping and slobbering whenever he mounted her and took his pleasure, reminded her of hogs she had seen out on the collectives. Above all, she despised his cowardice — not simply the bullying rape in exchange for not launching a search for her grandson, but the cowardice evident in his gasps for “Raza! Raza!”—his wife’s name. For Malle, it wasn’t that she was a stand-in for Raza that angered her— thinking of someone else while making love to one’s partner was a common enough thing, she thought. What did disgust her whenever he called his wife’s name was that it clearly wasn’t a cry of separation from his wife so much as a primitive ploy for absolution — that somehow the utterance of her name while he was raping another woman would lessen his culpability.

Before the corporal had “called by” the second time, Malle had sat down, feeling unclean, contaminated, but determined and with a sense of obligation to explain it all as best she could to young Edouard — yet how could he understand that she had no option?

To her surprise, he said he understood very well. Then, his eyes burning with hatred, he told his grandmother that next time he’d kill the corporal.

“No—” she begged him. “Edouard, no — no. Don’t you see he’ll — Edouard, he is the only one who knows you haven’t been taken in for questioning. He doesn’t care about searching for you as long as I—”

She was talking to him now as one adult to another, the hatred in his eyes having evicted the innocence of childhood forever.

“Edouard—” She clasped his hands in hers, his coldness frightening her. “Edouard, if you do anything—” She closed her eyes at the horror of it, shaking her head, wishing it away, holding him close. She felt him draw away from her. “If you do anything like that, they will kill you,” she told him. “And your mother and papa.”

“They already have,” said the boy, speaking in a tone so seemingly detached from his body that he seemed to be talking to someone else. It was a voice she had never heard before.

“We don’t know that,” Malle said quickly.

“You heard them outside,” he said evenly, looking straight at her. “You heard them screaming, Nana.”

Nana! She seized upon the word of endearment as a desperate soul grasps for the slenderest hope. “Edouard,” she pleaded, squeezing his hands, which were still cold and unresponsive. “They will take your Nana and you — all of us.” She tried to smile, the smile of the brave, showing that if she could accept it, then surely—

“Be patient,” she told him. “Soon they will find who it is they’re after and leave us alone.”

He said nothing for a moment, and his silence was thick with accusation. Finally she could bear it no longer, her head bowed, shaking from side to side, her age at once ashamed and prostrate before his youthful impatience. “You must see we have no choice. They would go to your school, your friends, until they found you, then—”

There was a knocking on the door.

Edouard, the muscles taut in his face, looked from her to the door and back at her from the precipice of decision. “Go!” she whispered hoarsely, then walked out into the hall through the kitchen toward the door, her eyes frantically searching again for anything that might betray Edouard’s presence in the apartment, catching her breath as she spotted one of his socks, having dropped from the dirty wash basket. She snatched it up and stuffed it back into the basket beneath slips and lace underwear — of various designs which the corporal had insisted on her wearing to make it “different” each time. He had complained bitterly of her “peasant” attire, and she had been forced to borrow some of her daughter-in-law’s more daring lingerie to keep him happy.

One hand at her throat, the other on the doorknob, she steadied herself for a moment. Putting on what she shamefully called her “collaborationist” grin, she opened the door.

He said nothing — the moment the door was closed, his hands were already under her skirt, bunching it about her waist, where he used it to pull her toward him, his lips smothering hers wetly, his garlic breath so strong, it made her want to throw up. He mumbled for her to try and stop him. She tried to push him away but couldn’t, his game becoming her panic, yet knowing she must yield. Backing her up against the hallway wall, he pushed against her so hard that the mirror of the hallway hutch shook, throwing their reflections in a quivering embrace. “Pull it!” he told her. She closed her eyes, buried her face into his neck, which he took as arousal. “You like it, eh?” He smiled, looking down at her, feeling her trembling. “Excited, eh?”

Surely, she thought, he must know how repulsed she was, that no amount of force could ever change her hatred for him and his kind.

“Come on, Malle,” he said, smacking her bottom. “To bed, eh? Turn around!” When she did as he commanded her, he grabbed her left hand and held it between his legs. “Pull,” he said. “Hey! — Wait!” He laughed roughly. “You don’t know your strength, Malle.”

No, you swine, she drought, you don’t.

“That’s better,” he sighed. “Whoa — steady, horse!” He made her stop by the small refrigerator, opening the door and peering in. “No beer?”

“No. We haven’t been allowed out to buy—” She had completely forgotten that he had brought two cans the day before and that in her distraction, she had put them in the small freezer section, so that now the cans were distorted.

“Ah—” he said, annoyed, taking them out and setting them on the small kitchen counter. “Soon they would explode. Like me, eh?” he said, laughing.

She didn’t hear him — her eyes riveted on the slightly opened cutlery drawer. She couldn’t be sure, but it looked as if the big serrated bread knife was missing.

“Hey, Malle!” he bellowed. “What is it?”

“What — oh, I’m sorry. They’re frozen.”

“What? — oh, the beer.” He pulled her close to him again. “But I’m hot, eh, Malle?”

She stopped. His expression had changed. He was looking high up in the kitchen. She felt her carotid artery pounding like a taut cable. Had he seen something? Oaf that he was, he had a natural animal instinct. But he was looking above the counter at the meagerly stocked shelf. “Like honey?” he asked.

Suddenly she thought she heard Edouard moving in the crawl space above the master bedroom only a few meters away to the right of the hallway. “Yes — yes I do,” she answered hastily. “Why?”

He let go of her hand, walked over, and brought down the small can of Danish honey, turning to her with a leer. “I’ll bet you do.” It took her a moment to realize what he meant, but didn’t know how long she could go on debasing herself. For as long as it took, she supposed, for as long as it took him and his barbarians to find whom they were searching for and leave the apartment block. For as long as she could prevent them from searching for Edouard. As he levered the lid off the can of honey, Malle moved back toward the single drawer.

“What are you doing?” he demanded. For a split second she saw suspicion in his eye. It was the same look he’d given her a day before when she’d tried to lure him away from the master bedroom.

“Why,” she said, “getting a towel. The bedspread’ll—”

“All right, but hurry. I have to be back by four. It’s already three.”

As she took the hand towel hanging on the small chromium rack beside the refrigerator, she glanced quickly in at the cutlery drawer. The knife was gone. She closed her eyes, her breath caught in her throat. No, she implored Edouard, as if by the sheer power of her mind she could forestall him from protecting her honor, from getting them all killed.

“Malle!” the corporal shouted impatiently from the bedroom. She could hear him undressing, the sound of his suspenders thwacking the bedside dresser. Taking a deep breath, she walked into the bedroom. He had a pillow