When the Obersturmführer is finally done, he says, You like to watch.
Pardon? Anna whispers.
You kept your eyes open. I like that.
The Obersturmführer sits on the side of the bed for a minute, staring at the floor, a man making a weighty decision. Then he sighs and says, I will come once a week to inventory the bread. I will come myself; I won't send anybody else. Do you understand?
Anna bows her head over her woolen stockings, which she rolls slowly up her legs.
Yes, she says. I understand.
23
THE OBERSTURMFÜHRER PROVES TO BE A MAN OF HIS WORD, a punctual man. He comes every Thursday evening, after the bakery is closed, often bearing some trinket: a bar of Belgian chocolate, a scarf, a tube of lipstick too bright for Anna. She stows these in a drawer of Mathilde's bureau after he leaves. But the gifts for Trudie she uses, the blue blanket of softest lamb's wool with sateen border, the warm red dress, the only spots of color in the bakery.
They have developed a routine. The Obersturmführer makes a cursory inventory of the bakery's output, which is now picked up by a noncom on Friday mornings; he prowls about the kitchen while Anna gives Trudie the fresh milk he brings. She suspects that it is laced with a mild opiate to make the child sleep, but at least it is real, fatty and nourishing, not like the powdered stuff Anna must use now in her patrons' bread. When Trudie's eyelids begin to flutter, Anna leads her to her bed in the cellar. Then she and the Obersturmführer proceed upstairs. The heaviness of the silence is like being underwater.
Beneath him on Mathilde's bed, lying completely still so as not to give offense, Anna makes a game of envisioning the lives she might have had if not for the war. She is in the sunny back garden of a house on the Rhine, the child squatting to watch a glittering line of ants in the dirt while Anna hangs laundry, the sheets snapping and fresh in the wind. Or: Curtains ripple at the window of a breakfast room, city traffic purrs on the street below; her husband stuffs an extra roll in his pocket and kisses Anna before rushing out the door. Perhaps these are her real lives, after all. The gray walls of the bakery, the cracks Anna traces in the ceiling beyond the Obersturmführer's shoulders: perhaps she is really asleep in a warm safe bed somewhere, twitching through the details of this recurring nightmare, this grinding existence that has become such a bad joke that she sometimes thinks she will laugh until she rips out her throat with her nails.
Often, afterward, the Obersturmführer talks. He is irritated by his small, stuffy office, by the amount of paperwork he must cope with, by the pressure of forcing constant production from the munitions factory and the quarry. He is frustrated by the fact that, living at the camp, it's impossible for one to ever feel quite clean. It's not that I have direct contact with them, you understand, he explains, but the constant mud, and the Jews just have this dirty air about them; I swear it impregnates one's clothes, one's skin. Anna knows about the latter. The Obersturmführer's sweat emanates an odor much like woodsmoke except fattier, richer, as if he eats nothing but bacon; a smell that, despite herself, makes her stomach growl.
But he rarely seems to expect a response, so when he first asks her a direct question, Anna is startled. It is a muggy August evening, the air tired and stale; Mathilde's bedroom is musty with the Obersturmführer's exertions and dust from the rugs. It smells like an attic unopened for years, and perhaps because of this Anna has been thinking not of her whitewashed breakfast room nor the sun of a summer garden but something cooler: strolling down a broad avenue lined with rows of linden trees, her toes hot and pinched in her shoes, strands of her damp hair clinging to the nape of her neck; spying a café, she sits in the shade at a wrought-iron table, eases her feet from her pumps and orders an icy drink, something with a slice of lemon in it. She sips it while gazing at the passersby, her mind blank.
The Obersturmführer repeats his question, not without a note of impatience.
Pardon? says Anna.
He sighs in exasperation and runs a thumb over the stretch marks on Anna's soft belly.
I said, how did you come to be in this position? You've no husband; you don't wear a ring.
The war, Anna says. There wasn't time.
The Obersturmführer nods. But you're from a good family; that's obvious from your breeding. They didn't take you in?
My father didn't think much of the match, Anna tells him. He drove me from the house. Frau Staudt gave me room and board in exchange for labor.
Ach, fathers, the Obersturmführer says. He crosses his arms behind his head and smiles at the ceiling, which is lost in the darkening room. I know about fathers. Did I ever tell you about mine?
It is as if they are real lovers, sharing pillow talk. Next he will offer her a cigarette. For a vertiginous moment, Anna thinks she might laugh.
The Obersturmführer digs in his ear and absently examines his finger. A stupid little man, he says, a nothing really, a weakspined dilettante who never did a day's honest work in his life, but always throwing his weight around as if he were God. Horst, bring me the newspaper! Horst, where are my cigars? He used to beat my brother and me with a belt if we didn't move fast enough to suit him.
Horst? Anna moves her lips, silently tasting the Obersturmführer 's Christian name. It has a dark feel in the mouth, a little thorny. Then she realizes he is waiting for her to say something. She makes a noise in her throat.
One day I took the belt from him, the Obersturmführer continues. I must have been fifteen, sixteen-he didn't realize until then how big I'd become. I threw it across the room and said, Let's go, then, let's fight. But I promise you only one of us will get up, and it won't be you. He never touched me after that.
Anna glances sideways at him.
He still had egg in his mustache from breakfast, the Obersturmführer says reflectively.
Then he pushes her legs apart again.
Maybe we shouldn't, Anna ventures. My-monthly flow is beginning.
And this is true: she feels the cramps, her womb a big dumb fist clenching and easing in slow waves, ignorant as to what goes on outside.
The Obersturmführer pauses for a second before flashing Anna his ersatz grin.
Then I'll remove my clothes, he says.
Without the chafe of worsted trousers against Anna's thighs, without the Obersturmführer's shirt buttons branding her face, the ordeal isn't as painful as it usually is. The slippery sensation of skin on skin, the unexpected breezes, shock Anna. She blinks in an effort to summon the café of her daydream, the leaves on the linden trees turning up their silvery undersides, but the Obersturmführer, watching her, thrusts a hand between her legs. He works diligently at a kernel of sensitive flesh, and Anna's interior muscles clutch in spasms. She can't prevent herself from letting out a yelp. This is not supposed to happen, this has never happened to her before.
From the doorway, there is an answering cry: Mama?
Still pinioned, Anna rolls her head to the right and sees Trudie standing there, arms and braids akimbo. In Anna's impatience to get this over with, she has been careless in ensuring that the child finish her milk. She should have known Trudie would disobey and climb the steps.
Go downstairs! Anna tries to call.
But before she can draw the necessary breath, the Obersturmführer says, Shit! Without withdrawing, he leans halfway off the bed and grabs one of his boots from the floor. He hurls it at Trudie; it thuds against the wall near the door, leaving a black mark. Anna hears the child's wooden soles clopping quickly, unevenly, down the risers. The Obersturmführer continues his business. When he levers himself up and out of Anna, she sees her blood clotted in his pubic hair, smeared on his stomach.