“They’d have to do it to the families of everyone who got arrested,” Gudrun pointed out, coldly. “Father…”
Herman clenched his fists. “You were lucky,” he told her. “Do you know what could have happened to you? You could have been raped, Gudrun! You could have been sold to one of the combines as a farming wife…”
Gudrun looked shocked, then angry. “Is that what you do to the girls you arrest?”
“You…”
Herman bit off his words. He’d never taken advantage of his uniform – his wife would have been furious if he’d even thought about molesting a prisoner – but he knew what happened in some of the less pleasant prisons in the Reich. Young girls, sometimes younger than Gudrun, were raped and abused by the prison guards or their fellow inmates. No one in authority cared, either, not when the victims were criminals. Anyone in jail, as far as the authorities were concerned, had done something to deserve it.
“The prison guards are less concerned with the niceties,” he said, finally. “And you could easily have been sold to the farms, Gudrun. You would have been given to some farmer and expected to be his wife.”
Gudrun shuddered, then gathered herself. “But it didn’t happen.”
“It could still happen,” Herman insisted. “Gudrun…”
His voice trailed away. He’d never been good with words. He didn’t know how to tell his daughter just how scared he’d been, when he’d heard she’d been arrested. His sons were tough young men – he was proud of all three of them – but Gudrun was a girl, the apple of his eye. The thought of her being stuffed into a brutal prison, even one solely for female prisoners, was horrifying. Some of the female prisoners could be far nastier than the men.
“You will not return to the university,” he said, finally. “You will remain here, at home, until we find you a suitable husband.”
Gudrun felt as if she had been punched in the belly. That, or a beating, would have been far preferable to a strict ban on returning to the university. Her father wouldn’t give her an opportunity to sneak out, either. She’d be working for her mother from dawn till dusk, if she wasn’t being watched by Johan or Grandpa Frank. The thought was maddening. After everything she’d done, after even spending a night in jail, she was damned if she was becoming a housewife.
She could see the fear on her father’s face. He wasn’t scared of her, she could tell, but for her. She’d heard rumours about what happened to prisoners too, although she’d never dared ask her father before now if there was any truth in them. She hadn’t really wanted to know, not when her father might have been involved. And there was something else bothering her father, something to do with her mother. Where was she?
“No,” she said. Perhaps it was a bad tactic – it might be better to pretend to surrender for the moment and argue later, when her father had calmed down – but she was no longer the young girl she’d been. “I will not leave the university.”
Her father purpled. “You are my daughter and you will do as I say,” he snapped. “I will visit the university tomorrow and inform them that you are no longer a student…”
“You won’t,” Gudrun said. She met his eyes, knowing he would take it as a challenge. “I worked too hard to pass those exams to just throw them away.”
“Yes, you did,” her father snapped. “And what will spending the next four years at the university get you? A piece of paper that no one will respect?”
“The world may change,” Gudrun said. She was sure demand for computers would only grow throughout the Reich. If the stories of America were true, every household had a computer, perhaps even more than one. “And computer experts will be much in demand.”
Her father snorted. “You’re a young woman,” he said. “You should be turning out babies, not trying to find a job.”
“My boyfriend is a cripple,” Gudrun shouted at him, feeling her temper snap. “They didn’t even have the decency to tell me what happened to him! His father had to find out himself!”
She forced herself to calm down. “Father,” she said, “I understand how you feel. But I’m not going to throw this opportunity away because it could turn sour. Being a housewife could also turn sour.”
“Not if you treat your husband with respect,” her father said. There was a hint of something ugly in his tone. “Gudrun…”
“I won’t quit,” Gudrun said, drawing herself up to her full height. “And you can’t make me.”
She braced herself, unsure just how her father would react. He might order her to bend over the sofa for a thrashing or send her to her room while he called the university and informed them that she was no longer a student. She was directly challenging his authority, after all, just as she’d challenged the government. His pride in his role as head of the household wouldn’t let her get away with it.
But whatever he dishes out, she told herself, I can take it.
“I will discuss your future with your mother,” her father said, finally. “And your punishment for being so stupid as to put your life at risk.”
Gudrun bit down a comment about double standards – her father had congratulated her brothers for putting their lives at risk more than once, although she had to admit that they’d only ever risked themselves – and held herself at the ready. She’d been arrested by the police and threatened with a whole series of unpleasant fates. Her father’s punishments no longer sounded so fearsome. If Kurt had been a different person after his first deployment into a combat zone, she was a different person too.
“Go to your room,” her father ordered, finally. “Have a shower, then wait.”
“Yes, father,” Gudrun said.
Her father watched her through tormented eyes as she walked past him and up the stairs, but said nothing. There was no sign of her brothers, she noted; Kurt would be at the barracks, of course, but she had no idea where the younger boys were. Perhaps they were with friends, if her father had anticipated a row, or maybe they were just keeping their heads down, knowing their father was in a foul mood. It wouldn’t be safe to be seen.
She closed the door behind her, then undressed rapidly. Her skin felt unclean, reminding her she hadn’t showered for over a day… and that she’d been groped by a couple of policemen, one of whom had inspected her private parts. She shuddered at the memory – she no longer felt safe when she was naked – and then forced herself to don a towel rather than hastily dressing herself. It was no longer easy to walk down the corridor to the bathroom, she discovered. The sense of being watched was strong, even though she knew she was unobserved. Being in prison, even for a day, had left her with mental scars.
But I didn’t break, she told herself, as she stepped into the bathroom and locked the door. I didn’t tell them anything.
The thought made her smile before the implications caught up with her. As far as the police knew, she was just another student who’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time. They hadn’t connected her with Sigrún, the writer of proclamations and dissident… they certainly hadn’t connected her to Konrad. There had been no reason to do more than strip-search her, no reason to ask more than a bare handful of questions. But if that ever changed…