“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?
She would never know whether she would have shot him through the heart if she had pulled the trigger. He didn’t bother to take out the magazine.
“Maybe you’d make a Brown Nurse,” he said. “You’d have to volunteer for the support units. You’re a different clay from us.”
He spoke with contempt. He caressed his gun. If he had a bullet in the magazine he might still shoot her. Her fear had not left her, but shame had joined it, not only because she was naked.
“I must see to the fire or it’ll go out.”
“If you’ve got some more fuel, why not?”
She got up. Relief had made the blood course through her veins again. She crammed what was left of the firewood and coal into the stove and raked the grate. The gale howled in the flue. She did not look at the Obersturmführer. She was aware of how close he was without seeing him. She wondered how much longer he would stay.
“No-one reproves a victor. I’ll bring you some soap next time. Come over here. Sit by me.”
As she sat next to him she involuntarily touched his sweaty hand but she did not want to move away. She sat motionless, her legs crossed, her arms crossed over her breast.
“I am by no means the worst,” he said. And then seeing her drawn face, “I don’t want to hurt you. You’re still a lamb. You need time to grow into a sheep.”
She mistrusted his friendliness.
“You’re trembling, or am I imagining it?”
She remained silent.
“Am I imagining that you’re trembling?”
“I’m cold,” she said.
“Perhaps you should dress now?”
“Perhaps.”
“Die Sonne bringt es an den Tag”
She kept her knees together as if she were sitting on a bench at school, her hands were still folded over her chest, and she was red with fear and shame.
“Maybe you want to tell me something you haven’t told me yet?”
“There’s nothing.”
Evidently he had not yet finished with her. Would he let her dress now?
“You keep surprising me with one thing after another,” the Obersturmführer said.
She did not understand. She was afraid of diarrhoea. She realized that this did not depend on the degree of danger. Fear was corroding her inhibitions, her judgement. It probably was not just cowardice. She felt sick again, but did not want to throw up.
“You are neither rose nor thorn,” he said.
A pity no-one saw him here, he thought. He was Knight’s Cross material; indeed the Knight’s Cross with Oak Leaves, Swords and Diamonds. He would bet his right arm on it.
He got up. She had to move to make room for him. He began to put his clothes back on. He complained, just to keep the conversation going, about a commission that was due to arrive. They didn’t like the killing of the circumcised. Damned snoopers, sticking their noses in where they had no business. He pulled on his tight, wool-lined gloves. On his hands they looked like artificial limbs.
Obersturmführer Stefan Sarazin strode out in his hobnailed boots. He slammed the cubicle door behind him.
Seconds later, still in her black underwear, Skinny stepped into the icy water of the tub, with the suds and the dirt of the officer, goose-flesh all over her, and a heavy weight in her stomach and guts.
Part Three
Nine