‘Her, for Christ’s sake … her!’
He looks scared when suddenly I yell:
‘I’ll shoot him!’
I thrust my boot into the crotch of the one on the floor. His eyes roll, I wave my gun. The others stare at me in bewilderment. They are children.
Hair cropped close.
Thin.
‘I was on the train, for Christ’s sake! SS!’ I shout at them. ‘Klaus …’
I choke on my own voice, the stutter of SS, it is not my voice, the thick accent of the Rhineland.
‘Klaus Maier … Idiots! If you’ve …’
I stop in mid-sentence, her voice again.
I glance around, but the woman from before is nowhere to be seen.
‘Psst … over here …’
But she is there, with her hands in her pockets, a bit further away, looking down at the floor.
She is still in her long coat.
And now an officer comes towards me, with long, purposeful strides.
Too thin for his uniform, like all the rest.
_ _ _
‘I can’t just give it to you …’ he says, a Leutnant with sun-bleached hair. He stands with my Soldbuch, unable to make up his mind. He looks me up and down.
‘I need that fucking Kübelwagen. I was supposed to have been in Neuengamme this morning.’
I throw out my hand at the chaos of corpses.
‘For Christ’s sake, man,’ I continue. ‘Look at this shit … two thousand prisoners …’
‘I don’t know …’
I go up and take hold of the woman’s arm, march her over to the car. The soldiers stand and look on. They step aside for us.
_ _ _
I put the head down on the back seat. It feels warmer now, there is a rumble in the air. The woman says nothing as I start the engine.
Who is she?
The Leutnant stands gaping as I tear off up the hill. A moment later we join a wider unmade road. I put my arm over the seat and look back. They are gone.
Neuengamme is twenty kilometres to the west.
‘Say something,’ I say.
Nothing.
I grip her chin with two fingers and turn her head towards me, but change my mind.
At the next junction I take a right and head south.
Shortly after, I pull off the road.
The car is quiet, the heather brushes against the undercarriage.
I can hear her breathing.
The house
We reach the Schlosser family’s country house in the early evening.
I leave the car a few hundred metres away, in the darkness of the fir trees.
The woman wakes as I step out and slam the door.
‘Come on,’ I say.
A few minutes later and we are up on the ridge behind the house. She stands with her hands in her pockets and shudders from the cold. I lie down in the grass and put the binoculars to my eyes: the white gable, half of the main house, the fence, most of the garden, the barred white of the greenhouse. The shutters are closed, the place unopened for summer.
The net was strung out between the two apple trees then.
Badminton and lemonade, chinking ice cubes.
Eline, engrossed in Malte Laurids Brigge on the swing seat, and me, smashing all the time in her direction just to go over and retrieve the shuttlecock. She, reading on, lifting her legs, looking the other way, her finger on the page.
‘Manfred’s friend needs to work on his badminton …’
‘Heinrich … I, we … it’s, ha!’
‘Manfred? … Maaaanfreed …’
‘Yes …’
‘You must help him, anyone would think he hadn’t a tongue in his head … it’s a shame, he might have something interesting to say.’
I change position, crawl forward. Now I can see the rest of the house, the shed at the back.
Nothing moves, only the windows glint in the dying sun.
‘We’re here,’ I tell her.
_ _ _
I hesitate for a moment on the wooden veranda and listen before breaking a small pane in the French window and twisting open the lock. I nod and she steps inside.
I light the carbide lamps on the tables and the windowsills, one after another.
I put the bundle with the head in it on the floor next to the fireplace and sit down at the desk. The professor’s desk. I put my PPK down on it.
‘Look at me …’
_ _ _
‘Who are you?’
She is thin as a dog.
She stands with her hands clasped in front of her, staring at the floor.
She wears a man’s coat, the cut is English, a trench coat from before the war, the belt pulled tight and tied with a knot, her waist no thicker than a fist, strangulated by hunger, but rather than hiding the fact she displays it, as if, perhaps, to deride me, der Reichsdeutsche?
She does not answer my question.
‘Come here.’
She stares at me.
‘Come here, I said!’
Nothing.
‘Sit down.’
She sits.
‘So you do understand …’
Still nothing.
‘Put your hands on the desk.’
They are scarlet, hungry. Her nails are dirty.
‘Look at me. Keep your hands on the table. Turn them over.’
Visible scars across both wrists, the right more pronounced: she is left-handed. I moisten my finger and trace her heart line, her fate line, the rough scar tissue.
‘Turn your head.’
‘Look at me again.’
‘Stand up.’
‘Show me your tongue.’
‘That’s it.’
‘Say aah.’
All the time I am staring at the knot of her belt. Now she looks at it too.
I stand up and face her.
‘Why did you speak to me? Why didn’t you just let me die?’
She raises her head, her eyes are completely dark, no more than pupils.
‘Look at me, for pity’s sake!’
I lunge forward. She recoils, terrified.
‘You’ve no idea what I’m talking about, have you?’
She hesitates.
‘You just want to live, right?’
‘Yes …’
A hint of an accent. What, Italian? French?
‘No matter what?’
‘Yes.’
_ _ _
We are in the basement. Her clothes are on the floor next to the bath.
She sits in the scummy water as I work the soap into her hair, her thin, thin hair, piling it up and massaging, working up a lather, smoothing out the strands.
I rinse it through with water from the jug on the washstand.
Her skin is unhealthy, starved of nourishment, sallow. Her breasts are small, nipples large and dark.
I nod and she gets to her feet, water dripping from her.
