‘You love her then? You’d say you loved her?’
‘Yes.’
‘So what’s the problem?’
‘There is no problem.’
‘Oh, I get it … you’re that type.’
‘Who’s fond of his sweetheart?’
‘No, who wants to confide …’
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘Do you really think it’ll make her happy? Knowing what’s going on out here?’
She turns her face towards me, closes her eyes as if she is concentrating. She opens them again, and purses her lips.
‘You can confide in me. I know how it is … come on, Herr Polizei … open up … it’ll do you good. Then afterwards …’
‘Afterwards?’
She smiles, lips curled back over small, white teeth.
‘Yes, afterwards I can be … the one …’
Her head flies back but she makes no sound as the flat of my hand strikes her left cheekbone. I get to my feet, gather my things, and walk away. Her face is buried in her hands – one of her friends runs towards her as I turn my head to look back.
_ _ _
I am seething with rage and shame as I stop by the Nur für Deutsche and buy a bottle of Poire William, taking a swig even as I put the money on the counter. On Skzkolna Street I go into the Wehrmacht cinema in time for the early screening. The name NIRVANA can still be seen on the facade in Polish, Russian and Yiddish. The theatre is a hum of heat and boredom, flies. I drink, and skim through an abandoned copy of Das Reich before the film. Bulletins from Kursk. The push is progressing well in the south. Hoth has achieved the targets, new names for us to learn, new crosses on the map; on the Northern Front we are encountering fierce resistance. Generaloberst Model must have his work cut out. I drink as the curtain goes up to newsreel clamour, endless marching. A Turkish general admires German weaponry at the Southern Front as I drink. A partisan operation in Minsk. I drink some more. They have bombed the cathedral at Cologne – it gapes to the skies.
I try to read my letter in the dark, and drink. It will never get past the censor.
Do you really think it will make her happy?
I jump to my feet and stride out.
_ _ _
The light is fading by the time I get back to the park. The woman is gone, the windows of the civil commission are dark, but I know people are at work inside. I go over to the guard and show him my ID.
‘Telegraph service, I have an important message.’
Outside the telegraphists’ room I pause and scribble the rest of my letter.
She is sitting second from the window at an exchange; the room is only half full.
‘Send this,’ I tell her. I am standing behind her now.
She turns, startled.
‘You?’
She has a plaster across her eyebrow.
‘Just send it. The address is Dimpfelweg 6, Hamburg.’
‘Look what you did.’
‘Send it. Not for my sake, but for hers, for ours. Her name is Eline. Do it.’
She reads the letter through.
‘I can’t send this, you know I can’t.’
‘Just send it!’
‘I can’t believe you’re this naive – as well as beastly. You’ll get me into trouble.’
‘Do it now,’ I hiss through my teeth.
‘Or else you’ll do what: hit me again?’
‘No, or else I’ll …’
I hesitate, taking in her small, round face with the plaster above her eye. Blood has seeped through it, forming a crisp scab on the gauze; her upper lip is swollen, and there’s a bruise on her left cheek.
‘Or else you’ll what?’ she says.
‘Nothing. Nothing, I’m sorry!’
_ _ _
Down at the bridge over the pond, fifteen minutes later.
Obscure reading of the waters: broken brow in the mouth of night. I fling the empty bottle out across the water, hear the splash in the darkness. I briefly consider throwing myself in, to crumple, brow in mouth, and stand indecisive at the flat-bedded basin, but this is a half-hearted pantomime. I am reeling drunk when I arrive at the officers’ mess.
I have the veal tongue, and the Chablis.
Afterwards, my stomach begins to growl, a tight, squirming convulsion, intestines knotting together. I stagger outside, hook my arm around a lamp post, bend over and heave out the loam of my guts: speckled meat, and the yellow piss of the Chablis. My knees hit the ground, I am face down in my filth, stomach retching and pumping, out of control, spewing out my insides.
I see her there, in my vomit, in the barely digested meat, a face dissolved.
Etke.
_ _ _
Ach Bächlein, liebes Bächlein
Du meinst es so gut:
Ach Bächlein, aber weißt du
Wie Liebe tut?
Ah, brooklet, dear brook,
You may mean so well,
Ah, brooklet, but do you know,
How love casts its spell?
I wake up on my sofa to the crackle and stutter of the gramophone. I go over and lift the arm, turn the handle and place the needle at the point where the miller boy jumps into the brook. I do it again, listen to the piece over and over. I weep.
And then I begin to laugh.
Manfred is right. I lied to a little girl and coerced her into informing against her own family. As a result the family is killed, and now I cry over the girl; her small hands, her chubby face. The woman in the park was right. Confiding is a sentimental self-indulgence. I go over to the sideboard and remove the cork from the cognac with my teeth, and gulp it down.
I bellow:
‘Long live sentimentality!’
_ _ _
They are asleep. The girl has climbed into bed with Masja, snuggled her little head into Masja’s armpit, her arm across her abdomen, one leg dangling above the floor.
When I return from Minsk she will be gone.
I pull the door shut.
I will not speak her name.
I will never be able to tell Eline.
Truth is consistent. Without mercy.
I am already dressed for the journey. My car is waiting on the corner, engine running.
The night is still.
_ _ _
We drive along the highway to Minsk through thin darkness, the cold of night upon the landscape,
