At Auschwitz-Birkenau she could return to Block 18 at the Frauenkonzentrationslager, where she would find her mother and friends. Here she was alone, with no-one to appeal to, nor any wish to.
The water in the pot on the stove had been bubbling for a while.
“That’s for me?” the captain asked.
“We’re ordered to heat water.”
“You’re slim,” he said. He thought of the resilience, freshness and flexibility of everything that was young, like springtime grass, an autumn breeze or the smell of pine. His glance passed over her crotch.
He was treating her like an Aryan man would an Aryan girl. It changed her voice, made her more forthcoming without wanting to be. The captain was undressed now. She avoided looking at his body. He was big, everywhere. Big feet, hands, stomach and chest. In a moment he would begin to explore her with his hands like a blind man, or like an animal tasting the flesh it was about to tear off the bone. She was aware of his size, of his giant’s hands. His chest was overgrown with short fair hair. The skin around his genitals was reddish, almost purple.
“Do you like the dark?” the captain began to whisper.
“I don’t mind it,” she said softly.
“You can blame me for everything.” His voice was already a little hoarse, “fust do with me what you do with everybody.”
She straightened up so that she could look into his eyes.
She poured hot water into the basin, glad that she could do something other than what she was about to do. She added some cold water from the jug and tested the temperature with her fingers to make sure it was right.
“Do you want soap?”
“You think I should?”
“I don’t know.”
“How did you do it with my predecessor? How do you like to do it?”
She smiled to avoid an answer. Would he regard her smile as a promise? In matters she knew nothing about she was guided by instinct. Her mother had been right. She soaped him, washed him and dried him. She closed her eyes as if some soap had got into them. He let her wash him, not saying a word. He had not touched her yet; he let her touch him.
“You’re very young,” he said. “You’ve got good hands. Good fingers.”
She knew that this wasn’t true — she had calluses on her hands. But she couldn’t tell him what they came from. The ropes of the boats on the Harmanze pond, repairing the roads in the Frauenkonzentrationslager in Auschwitz-Birkenau, gravelling the paths to the houses of the SS.
Madam Kulikowa had urged her girls not to underrate the importance of the first touch of their hands. If a girl were nervous her hands would be sweaty and cold. Talking too much was also off-putting; to know when to shut up was an art.
His next question took Skinny by surprise.
“Where did you go to school?”
“In Prague.”
“When did you leave?”
“Three years ago,” she said.
“Did you sit at the back of the class?”
He was teasing her! Did he expect her to tease him?
“You’re tall,” he said.
“I don’t know about that.”
He looked at the bed. “Won’t you sit down?”
“If you wish.”
She sat down, folding her arms over her chest and crossing her legs. She was unable to cover her crotch.
“Are you ashamed in front of me?”
“No,” she replied.
“Not a little bit?”
“A little bit.”
She blushed. He thought it rather funny that she should be ashamed. The smell of the coal enveloped the cubicle. It was burning slowly because it was damp.
“You’re pale,” the captain said.
“I haven’t got any disease,” she said. “I’m healthy.”
“I hope so. Do they let you out to get some fresh air?”
“We sweep the courtyard and clear the snow by the gate.”
“Your skin’s almost translucent.”
“We don’t get much sun.”
“That’s for sure.”
He stepped up to her. He seemed like a giant.
“Permit me,” he said. He sat down next to her. Sitting, he did not seem quite so huge.
The captain touched her behind with the palm of his hand. She was afraid of crying out in pain. She had a festering sore there where she had been whipped by an SS man for not getting off the train quickly enough on the night they had arrived at No. 232 Ost.
“Who did this to you? Does it hurt?”
“Not so much now.”
“Looks like a wound from a whip. Or a cane. You don’t see what they flog you with?”
Could his mood change from one moment to the next? There was almost anger in his voice, a new shade, the irritation of a soldier who could not avoid seeing who was firing at him. He had not missed how she’d flinched. Had his voice become more severe? At that moment she could visualize him as a commanding officer or the father of an adolescent girl.
She was waiting for the captain to pull her to him and to roll on top of her. She almost wanted it now. She was not afraid of him, she was afraid of giving herself away. He had so many questions, and every one of them was uncomfortable because it meant too many answers.
The captain lay down beside her, although she was still sitting. Was he waiting for her to lie down beside him? She didn’t know what to do. He stretched and she could hear his joints click. He seemed to her like a tree, like a block of wood. He lay there as if he had known her for a long time.
“In the officers’ mess you’d look good at my side. You’re pretty.”
A little bony though, he thought.
She still had her arms crossed over her chest, rigidly. He let her sit there, legs crossed. Did he want her to uncover herself, to drop her hands and open her legs? Madam Kulikowa had said that she was all arms and legs. And it was true. The captain raised himself on his elbow.
“Permit me,” he said again and what she had thought an unfriendly tone had now disappeared from his voice. He gave her his enormous hand.
“You shouldn’t look at me like this,” he said hoarsely. Alarmed, she forced herself to say: “I’m not.”
She half turned so as not lie on her wound. The captain understood.
“Did they do this to you here?” he asked.
“I had a fall.”
“Where?”
She hesitated with her reply and was afraid the pause between question and answer might be too long.
“On the ramp, by the siding, when we got here a week ago. It was still dark. There was a rush.”
“They brought you here at night?”
“Yes. Loaded us up in the dark, too.”
“If you ask me, it looks like a hunting crop. At the Kriegsschule in Potsdam we had riding lessons. At home I was taught how to ride and handle a horse by my father and his groom. We kept horses. I don’t just drive a Horch or a tank.”
He told her in a whisper that her childish voice reminded him of a distant holiday in the Alps, when he was twelve and was seduced by his first prostitute. Then he told her of a prank at his officers’ school. As cadets they had blown pepper into the nostrils of Colonel-General von Lothar-Jünger’s horse. The horse, inevitably, had thrown him as soon as the general mounted. Later, over cards and wine, the cadets had argued about whether it was right to torture a horse like that.
The pillows in all but Madam Kulikowa’s cubicle were of tow-cloth sacking, filled with sand. The sand grated.
“That’s not the prettiest sound,” said the captain. “Know who you look like? Our first Hungarian maid. She was 14, getting on for 15. Heaven knows what’s become of her.”
“First they look at your feet, then at your eyes, and next at your breasts. It’s a good idea to stretch, that way they look fuller,” Madam had told her.
She was lying here with a German officer. Nothing to be proud of. A week ago it would never even have occurred to her to imagine this. Then she had been dead even though still alive. Since that day her flesh had proved to twelve soldiers each day that she was still alive. She thought of the engineer who had complained that she was lying there like a frightened cat. She did not wish to punish her body for what she could not change. She forced herself not to resist. She was nervous, and had forgotten the oil. He saw her glance towards the bottle. She tried to free her hand and reach for it.