She reminded herself to be careful. She lacked the coquetry of Ginger and the Marmalade Cat, and she was incapable of offering what Maria-from-Poznan, The Toad, could offer.
“How are you?” he asked.
“Fine, thank you,” she replied.
“You look sad to me,” said the captain. “Are you?”
“No.”
He glanced at his watch. It reminded her of the morning at the ramp at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Her first, girl’s wristwatch. She had lost it within an hour, like all the things they had to leave behind in the train. They had arrived at four in the morning and by eight nine-tenths of the transport had their lives behind them.
The captain had tears in his eyes from the cold. He stood, legs apart, waving his arms awkwardly like a frozen bird. His holster seemed tiny on his massive body. Although he had kicked the snow from his boots in the corridor outside, he was leaving marks on the floor. He might be 30 or 35.
He stepped in front of the stove, rubbing his hands. He was speaking with some difficulty, his jaw still stiff with cold.
Captain Hentschel believed that war changed a woman. That she became part of the man she was with. That a man in wartime needed his body to fuse with a woman’s soul — that this excited and satisfied a man. At that moment nothing would repel the woman. He could come to her before or after battle, caked in mud, sweaty and dirty and with blood on him. With burnt or tattered clothes, worn-out boots, a torn undershirt or no shirt at all, stubble-faced, ragged and dishevelled, reeking of sweat and gunpowder and blood and mud, smeared with enemy guts. She would restore his confidence and strength. She would give him a sense of achievement, which he could find with her alone. He would straighten up, grow in his own estimation, discover again what he’d feared he had lost. At this moment a woman regarded a man like a child, like a mother capable of giving her life for her child.
She felt that he was taking stock of her. For her part she was weighing up his words. Puffy snowflakes were settling on the window pane.
“Can you imagine what the first people here must have felt?”
The window was almost opaque. A whitish dusk filled the room.
She would have been glad to change places with those first people.
“You’re a pretty girl,” he said.
Snow was still clinging to his eyelashes, eyebrows and chin. His face was purple from the wind and the cold.
“I could have driven here blindfolded.”
The wolves were howling, answered by the barks of the dogs in the kennels. They would come right up to the walls of the estate.
She breathed in the smell of his greatcoat again, his uniform and boots. Shadows played on the floor of the cubicle, on the walls and ceiling beams, twisting with the flickering flame of the candle. Its wax ran down into a small plate on the table. There were stains on the walls: the tiny remnants of insects not eaten by the spiders, frozen in what was left of their webs.
“I hope you’re not mute,” the captain said. “Or are you still learning to talk?”
“I used to believe in dreams,” he said into the dusk. “Now I’m afraid of them.”
He was not the first to murder whatever came within reach in his dreams. These were the dreams he feared. He tried to forget them. He did not think of himself as a murderer: he fought because he had to. In its way it was beautiful. He had also dreamt he was dead. He was not afraid of that dream. He woke from it alive.
“Do you know the country here?”
“I’ve never been further than the railway station.”
“Have you ever been to Festung Breslau?”
Why had he asked her that? Did he know about Festung Breslau, the “Hotel for Foreigners”? She waited for him to ask her about Auschwitz-Birkenau. She hoped that as a Wehrmacht officer he would not know about it.
“What question would you say yes to?” He smiled at her with his frozen lips.
“I don’t know.”
As soon as the captain had warmed up a little, the cubicle with its ceiling beams and walls with blackened plaster seemed cosier to him. He could make out the cars arriving and departing in the courtyard. The fire roared in the cylindrical stove. He was studying his new prostitute, enjoying her slender girlish throat, with its swanlike whiteness and her gingery hair, which had not yet grown back to its proper length. He wanted to have his pleasure, but he wanted to have a friendly talk as well. He did not want a bitch that just lay down and opened her legs. She had pale skin, he liked that, and she had bloodshot, slightly scared eyes. He had asked for her especially from Madam Kulikowa and Oberführer Schimmelpfennig. For a change he wanted the youngest prostitute in No. 232 Ost.
Was Madam Kulikowa trying to do her a favour by sending her an officer after only six days of full service, each day twelve men and on one occasion fourteen and on another fifteen? Did it mean she would have no-one else for the rest of the day? Would she be relieved of a further eleven bodies, faces, hands and feet? Hairy chests and bellies?
“You look fine. You’re a pretty girl. Would you believe that this morning, as I was driving here, there was a red dawn? And look at the blizzard that’s come out of it.”
She was thin, not surprisingly. They had a very strict diet here. Once he had seen one of their helpings on a tin plate — potato salad with carrot and kohlrabi; a thin slice of salami; and a little tub of jam the size of perhaps three thimbles — a breakfast ration for the troops.
He was thawing out. And a good thing too, he thought. At least it was dry here and relatively warm. An idea came to him about the universality of women. Yes, universality, all-world-ness, was the correct concept. A little light in the gloom of the east. The fact that one half of humanity belonged to the same club as the other half — at least in a certain sense. He smiled. It was easier for the girl to adjust to him than for him to adjust to the girl. The war had not changed him in this respect. She was very young, which confused him a little. Almost too young. This was not India or Japan or some Pacific island. The commanding officer of the S S units in the region had spoken of the Kinderaktion, the Children’s Programme — though of course from the viewpoint of the SS.
“Have you had a child yet?” The question caught her unawares.
“No.”
“Do you occasionally smile?” He was still hoping to hear a friendly word from this young prostitute — he intended to be friendly.
It was not impossible, he thought, that she got here through some similar Kinderaktion.
“You’re new here?”
“My seventh day.”
“Yes, somebody told me about you — the Oberführer, I think, or the Madam. What’s your name?”
“I haven’t been given a new name yet.”
“I see they’ve already tattooed a number on your arm.”
“Yes.” She blushed.
“I doubt they would have sent you here without a name.”
She did not know what to say.
“Do you like it here? Got used to the job yet?”
“I’ve got used to the job.”
“Am I your first officer?” She nodded.
“Today?”
“Ever.”
She didn’t give the soldiers in her cubicle more attention than she had to. It was an indifference with which she armed herself and which deadened her. She was glad the officer was taking his time to get warm; she wouldn’t have liked him to touch her with frozen hands. She reconciled herself in advance to what he would want from her. What they all wanted. Twelve times a day, six days a week, making the most of their time.