He took my arm. “I will show you to your room. It was my wife’s room when she was alive. She died several years ago.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Thank you, but it was a blessing when she passed on. My Trudy was in poor health all her life. A weak constitution. She was never the same after Greta was born.”
My room was large and light and airy, overlooking a small garden where flowers grew in properly disciplined rows. “Sleep if you are tired,” Neumann said. “I will see Greta and tell her of your arrival. She is completely trustworthy. She shares our views.”
“You must be proud of her.”
“I am. It is such as she who will bear the Übermensch – the Superman. But it is devilish hard to keep the Jews away from her. They lust after her. If those swine-” He shook his head violently. “I will send her home. She will cook for you. Perhaps she will go to Prague with you and help you with this Kotacek. Only see that the filthy old Slav keeps his hands off her. I beg that much of you!”
I had seen the father, and I had now learned that the mother had been sickly all her life. I thought of the butcher: The daughter, eh? Oh, they come from far to see that one. No doubt they did; she probably worked in a carnival sideshow.
I stretched out on the bed, picked up a pamphlet from the bedside table. It was in German. The title was The Myth of the Six Million, and it exposed Auschwitz as a legend created by the Jews of Moscow and Wall Street, acting in concert to defame the German people in the eyes of the world. There was an abundance of marginalia penned in by a tiny crabbed hand, and extensive passages were underlined in blue ink and further accented by marginal exclamation points. The pamphlet’s thesis had three main points: that no Jews had been exterminated, that the number killed did not even begin to approach six million, and that next time the job would be done properly.
I read it and whistled the Moldau.
I had finished the pamphlet and was midway through a book called Czechoslovakia: A Nation in Name Alone when someone knocked at the door. I got off the bed and opened the door.
“Herr Tanner?”
“Yes?”
“I am Greta.”
I found this quite impossible to believe. If that crippled dwarf had combined with a sickly little woman to produce this blonde goddess, then all theories of heredity had been permanently repealed. She was tall, almost my height, and her long blonde hair melted over her shoulders. Her eyes were a deep, vivid blue. Her body was long and leggy and yet more than abundantly curved. An old Norseman would have carved her on the prow of his ship; whatever his skill, he could not possibly have improved on the original.
“You are staring at me.”
“I am sorry.”
“I am not. I do not mind.” She licked her lips. “My father told me all about you. But he did not tell me you were young. I expected someone his age. I am not disappointed.”
“Uh-”
“You must be hungry. Come downstairs. I will fix you some lunch and we will talk. My father said that you had many interesting things to say about the question of race. I would be interested to hear your views.”
I followed her downstairs. Her bottom swayed leisurely from side to side as she walked. Her father had said that the Jews had lusted after her. I did not find this at all difficult to believe. I was suddenly certain that she was devoutly lusted after by Jews and Czechs and Slovaks and Germans and Russians and Hindi and Thais and Sumatrans. Anyone who saw her was likely to have the same reaction. It was not simply beauty, which, when all is said and done, may be a chilly asset. She had beauty in abundance, but she also had a special primitive quality that left one with no doubts concerning her obvious function in life.
She was not to talk with, she was not to cook, she was not to produce children. She was not to knit sweaters, to write plays, to dig ditches, to sing songs. She had been placed on earth for the singular purpose of lovemaking. That was what she was there for, that and nothing else.
“Some fried ham, Herr Tanner? And a stein of beer?”
“That would be fine, Fräulein Neumann.”
“Oh, not so formal, please. Call me Greta.”
“Greta.”
“And I will call you what?”
“Evan.”
“Evan. That is an unusual name, is it not? I do not think I have ever heard it before.”
“It’s not uncommon in America.”
She brought the food and watched in silence while I ate. The ham was good, perhaps a little too salty but otherwise fine. The beer, according to the label, had been bottled right there in Pisek. It tasted very much like the Prague beer I had had now and then in New York. There is none better in the world.
When I finished she took my arm. “Now,” she said, “we must talk. We will go to your room. It is quieter there.”
We walked arm in arm up the stairs. Now and then her body brushed lightly but purposefully against me. My eyes kept stealing over to look into the front of her dress.
She was a Nazi, I told myself reasonably, and it was loathsome enough to rescue a Nazi, let alone make love to one. On top of that, she had a fiercely jealous father who was presently vital to the success of my rotten mission. And, if a third reason was needed, there was the fact that my mission to Prague was hazardous enough without the unnecessary complication of a romp in the hay with an Aryan maiden.
We entered my room, and she kicked the door neatly shut. She seated herself on my bed, and I looked around the room for a chair, and there wasn’t one. I sat on the bed beside her. She yawned and stretched and sighed, and I tried to keep my eyes away from her chest with the approximate success of a moth trying to pay no attention to a flame.
“How old are you, Evan?”
“Thirty-four.”
“Thirty-four! And I am only twenty-two. Do you realize what that means?”
“What?”
“You are old enough to be my” – she licked her lips – “my lover.”
As soon as she left the room – assuming she ever did leave the room – I would have to take a cold shower. That was supposed to help. I wondered if they had a shower. I wondered if they had cold water. I wondered if it would really help.
“My father says that I will go to Prague with you, Evan.”
“I don’t think so.”
“But of course I will!” She turned toward me, serious now, the gush of sex momentarily stanched. “You cannot go alone. Have you ever been to Prague? Do you know the city?”
“No, but-”
“I have been there. I know the town well. And I can help you. And you can trust me, and whom else can you trust in this country? My father could find friends of his, friends who might go with you, but I would not trust them. The government has spies everywhere, you know. Even in our own Bund there are undoubtedly spies. Why would you not want me to help?”
“It’s a dangerous job for a woman.”
“Is it less dangerous for a man?” She shook her head violently. “No, no, it is settled. We will go together. Papa will learn what there is to be learned, and we will make our plans, and we will leave for Prague tomorrow night after the meeting. Then-”
“What meeting?”
“Our local Bund. The Sudetendeutsche Bund of Pisek. After you address the meeting, we will-”
“After I what?”
“Address the meeting. It was Papa’s idea.”
“I just bet it was.”
“Will you listen, please? The government police know you are in the country, right? But they do not know why. Tomorrow you will appear at the meeting. You will give them the usual inspiring speech about the need to annex the Sudetenland once again to the Fatherland. We have heard it often enough, but it is a message we never tire of listening to. There will be spies at the meeting, of course. Throughout the country there are spies. They will report you to the authorities, and the authorities will guess that you are traveling through Czechoslovakia trying to stir up German communities. They will not like this.”