“I got a shower last week,” he volunteered.
“I got Pauli cleaned up a couple of days ago, but it’s been a while for me. An occasional sponge or wet cloth helps but not that much, and I haven’t been able to wash out my clothes. I’m not sure how you can stand being near me.”
“It’s not exactly a problem, Lis. Remember, I’m used to living in a bunker with a dozen of my closest and most aromatic friends.” Besides, nothing as trivial as body odor was going to keep him from seeing Elisabeth Wolf.
He looked forward to her company on the brief times they could be together. Finding a young and intelligent woman to talk to and think about was something totally unexpected in a combat area. It was a luxury to be cherished. Besides, she really was pretty and he really was fond of her. The handful of kisses they’d exchanged made him think they were beyond the stage of simply liking each other.
After the Russian attack, Jack had been sick with worry that something might have happened to Lis and Pauli, but could not leave his post to check them out. As a result of the battle, so much of the city of Potsdam not already in ruins was either destroyed or in flames. Thus, he was greatly relieved when she and the boy simply showed up at the bunker, smiled and waved from a short distance, and left. It occurred to him that she might have been relieved as well at finding him safe and unhurt, and he found that thought comforting.
“God, it’s got to be rough for you,” he said. Pauli was asleep on a mat a few feet in front of them. He was pale; it was obvious that no one was getting enough sunshine.
“Rough? No, Jack, as I said before, this is not rough.”
He laughed. Having learned English from a Scottish-Canadian mother, she tended to pronounce his name as “Jock,” which she denied and he found amusing.
She squeezed his arm. “Stop it.”
“All right, but I am worried about you. Are you getting enough food?”
Now it was her turn to laugh. “Jack, even on the reduced rations your army is providing, we are eating better than we have in a year or more. We endured more hunger and privation in Berlin from the bombings and the Nazis than anything that has occurred here. We have learned to cope.”
He had heard some of the stories. He knew that her father, when he was not working as a diplomat, had been a block captain in charge of providing shelters for everyone in the apartment where his family lived. He was also in charge of the surrounding buildings. Elisabeth had told him how they and most people in and around Berlin were so terrified of being trapped and buried alive by falling rubble that they all dug tunnels to the other buildings and locations as possible escape routes. In a way, Berlin became a city of tunnels, and this was beginning to happen in Potsdam.
Jack also knew that her father and Pauli’s parents had been killed in the more recent bombings, while Elisabeth’s mother had died from a fever the year before. Yes, he realized, the life she had now was not as rough as it had been or as rough as it might be in the future, should the food run out or the Russians attack in real force.
She rested her head on his shoulder. “In its own way, Jack, this is the nicest time I’ve had in a long while. I just want to enjoy it while I can.”
He took her hand in his. It was astonishingly thin, yet she said she was eating better. “Me too.” It seemed trite, but he didn’t know what else to say.
“Jack, did you have a girl back home?”
“Not really.”
He thought briefly of Mary Fran Collins. They had dated a few times before he’d gotten drafted, even went to bed the week before he shipped off to basic training. There had been a couple of letters from her, but they had stopped. Or had he stopped writing her? He couldn’t remember. It was another world.
“How about you?” he asked.
She sat up and looked at him, wondering what his reaction would be. “There was a young man. I was very fond of him, but mainly as a very nice and decent friend. He was a good student and naively thought the army would never take him because he was short, nearsighted, weak, and had a serious stomach disorder. Ulcers. Well, the Reich was very well organized and they drafted him into a regiment that consisted entirely of people with stomach disorders. Can you believe that? An entire regiment of people with bad tummies? Last year he was on his way to Normandy, where the regiment was stationed, when his train was strafed by your planes and he was killed. Poor little Hans never had a chance.”
“I’m sorry.” He wondered how many times he would use that phrase.
“Before he left, I let him be my first lover, my only lover. We were so innocent I still don’t know if we were doing the right things.”
Jack laughed softly. “Lis, there’s not too many wrong things two lovers can do.”
She flushed and giggled. “He was so terrified that he would never come back. We would make love and later he would sob with fear and I would hold him and comfort him. I was immensely saddened by his death, but I did not love him.” She touched his chin with her finger. “Are you shocked?”
“No,” he answered, tapping her finger with his.
He had no idea what Mary Fran Collins was doing right now and didn’t care. He briefly wondered if the lovemaking between him and Mary Fran had been like what Elisabeth and Hans had done, an act of desperation rather than love. What concerned him now was Elisabeth Wolf.
She reached across his chest and grabbed his arm tightly. “Sometimes I feel so greedy. I don’t want my life to end like this. I want to grow up. I want to have a real lover, a husband, someone strong and gentle like you. I want children. Do you know I haven’t even had a period in a year because of the lack of food? I don’t know if I’m still a woman.”
Jack held her to him and felt her shudder. “It’s okay, Lis.”
She relaxed slightly. “When I was little, I wanted to be a ballerina. I studied dance for years. I was heartbroken when I found that I really didn’t have the talent. Then I decided I wanted to be a scientist. A biologist. To everyone’s surprise, I found I had a natural talent for it. Now I wonder if I’ll ever see the inside of a school again.”
“Me too,” he said and explained about his years in night school in a dingy junior college in Port Huron. “I was at the point where I had to make a decision. Should I declare my schooling finished and get a job, or should I move away and complete my education at a four-year school?”
“What did you want to be?”
“Either a lawyer or a teacher. Maybe I’d compromise and teach law. At any rate, there’s a world for us if we can only get out of here.” He sighed. “Lis, you wouldn’t mind putting your head back on my shoulder, would you? That is, if you can stand the smell of me?” She smiled and complied and they held on to each other with a quiet desperation.
A little way off and unseen by the young couple, General Miller walked with Major General Rob Wayne, the commanding officer of the badly mauled 54th Infantry Division. They had been inspecting some of the damage caused by the Russian attack.
Miller paused. “Rob, isn’t that one of your boys with that German woman?”
“Yep. And if my memory serves me, it’s one of the boys you gave a field commission to.”
“And Rob, don’t we have a nonfraternization rule that forbids Germans and Americans from socializing with each other?”
Wayne snorted. “Yeah, Chris, we sure do. But why not pass a rule outlawing rain on Sundays? Everyone’s living with the knowledge they could be dead at any time, and those two aren’t the only ones who’ve found each other. They are young and lusty and lonely and scared to death all at the same time. Just a couple of days ago they endured an afternoon of hell and another couple hundred of our boys became casualties along with a large bunch of civilians. Hell, if those two or any others can make the day a little more pleasant for themselves, well, why not.”