“We have to give the tourists something to steal,” he had told his boss. When the Duce’s party had left after their last visit, all these coasters—and a lot else—had disappeared. “They are Italian,” he told his boss, as if that explained their mendacity. The Chief nervously laughed briefly at Bormann’s comment—perhaps it was a little too close to the truth.
Eva sipped the beer.
“You are right, this is so refreshing.”
Bormann noticed how she had emphasized the adjective.
Then she did the classic action of a woman on the prowl—she brushed her hair slowly with her free hand, then touching her neck as she slowly rotated her head, affecting the appearance of bearing the problems of the world on her shoulders—Atlas had no burden compared to poor Eva.
Bormann smiled to himself—he should write a book on women; for all their artifice and haughty distance, they were as transparent as petulant children.
She put down the beer and started sliding up and down the huge room. She was still wearing the ballet slippers she wore when exercising, and she slid on the polished marble floor of the great hall like an ice skater.
“Martin, you know we are the two luckiest people in the world, do you know? You and I are the Chief’s right-hand man and his right-hand woman.”
He expected a giggle, but none was forthcoming.
Instead, she slid over to the table and leaned forward, to give Bormann his first clear view of her décolletage. Her nipples were slowly getting larger. While she was looking at him, he looked directly at her nipples so she could see him looking. He loved this part of the seduction, when the woman was so excited and was trying so hard to tease, and to please, but her excitement worked against her—they both knew what she wanted and he was far too seasoned a campaigner to make any rushed moves.
It was like when he was playing checkers with the other farm hands before the Struggle had started; some days he could look three or even four moves ahead, it was as if he was a machine and his hands simple implements to move the pieces on the board.
She knew this as well, and his sense of control—and thus power—made her more excited. She sat down in the large green chair at the end of the table, and how she sat did start to stir the old trooper in him.
When the boss was home, Eva played the Vestal Virgin perfectly—often not even making eye contact, but soft, sweet, demure, innocent and pure.
But now, alone in the huge house—the house that could now rightly be called the center of the great new German empire—she sat with her legs splayed. For the first time since she entered, Bormann could see the clear outline of her camel toe, and she made no effort to hide it; clearly there was nothing under the pink silk gym shorts—she was a screeching cat and she could not help herself.
She sat there slowly drinking her beer. She was teasing herself as much as she was teasing him—she knew as well as he did what was about to happen.
While she offered herself to be ravished, Bormann leaned against the wall, as the table was next to the wall with cushions in the old Austrian farmhouse style; the instructions given by the owner to Albert were “simple but friendly;” Albert—as always—succeeded in hiding his disdain of the “taste” of the Austrian peasant, who had flattered Albert with “the greatest genius the world had even seen” and such like nonsense.
“You look like you need another,” Bormann said after a while.
Eva readily agreed.
Bormann went to the refrigerator, which he insisted on calling “his icebox” and fetched two more bottles.
He poured another beer for Eva.
He had brought a bottle of schnapps,
“Madam, would you like a little of this as well?”
“Oh yes, but just a little.”
He loved this part of the seduction, when the woman’s first volley had come to naught. He thought about what her next tack would be. Even while thinking this, Eva started,
“Oh, beer with schnapps always makes me so lightheaded.” (The oldest retort in the play book, Bormann thought.)
Bormann said nothing.
The alcohol was starting to work its effects, as she asked, “Martin, you remember Berlin in the ’20s?”
Bormann said he did, not that he did, but this was clearly a lead-in to more.
“Hoffie is such as bad man, you know he took me and Sally, his other assistant, to some nightclubs. Do you know the Pink Diamond?”
Bormann said he did, another fib.
“Hoffie took us there; it’s a nightclub, you know? And Sally was such a randy little minx—she always embarrassed me, she was so forward.” (The ubiquitous I-am-pure-but-she-is-a-slut play.)
“Well, we were all there one Saturday evening—it was hot like today, but it was pouring rain so everyone in the club came in drenched, and before long it was like a Swedish sauna—so hot and steamy. And there was a stage and on the stage there were three women from the East, you know Slavs, and beside them was a huge Negro man with massive muscles—he was very tall and he was very black, black like ebony, and under the lights you could see how much he was sweating, but that is not what most people were looking at.”
She paused for effect and for more beer and schnapps.
Bormann knew what was next and could fathom what she was leading to, but like an actor who had practiced his lines a thousand times, he replied.
“Oh” (short answers showing no interest at all teased these vixens more than anything.)
“Down there he was so big.” (Obligatory giggle.)
“You were looking?”
“It was impossible to miss—it was so big—more like one from a horse than from a man. And Sally said to Hoffie, ‘God, think of that thing inside you’—Hoffie just giggled, and now I know why he giggled. Actually I was getting tingles all over looking at it, and he did it to all three girls on the stage, one after the other, you know from behind and you could see it going into them and each of the girls cried out in some Eastern tongue as it must have been so extremely painful.”
She looked at Bormann. Bormann could see her eyes looked like she had a touch of fever.
“Actually, I got the tingles then,” she laughed.
“I have to tell you, Martin, that I even get tingles now all over again just telling you about it.”
Bormann waited for the next question—it was just like checkers at the pig farm.
“I’ve heard you have done that, too; is that true?”
Quickly, she added, “I mean with proper German girls, not impure Slav whores, but three or four at once, is that true, Bormann?”
This was the part of the ritualistic Morris Dance that Bormann really enjoyed—making his minx-of-the-day “tingle.”
Coyness was always the best counter.
“What do you mean, Miss Braun?”
With the alcohol, the months of neglect, and her imminent period, there was now no stopping her, she raced on and on.
“Oh Martin, for God’s sake call me Eva. I am Eva to him. I can be Eva to you. Today, I can be Eva to you. Well, I have heard that you, that you sometimes have three or four girls from the village and from other places at your house at the same time. Do you ever do that? Tell me all about what you do with these women. Are they sluts or nice ladies. Are they all German? Are any married? Do they like it? What is it that they do for you? What is your secret?”
Just as suddenly as she had started, she paused.
“Do you mind me asking you, Martin?” she said, overcome with nervousness.
“Would that excite you, Eva, if that was the case? Should I tell you?”
“God, yes, I need to hear, I need to hear. Tell me, please. Please.”
“Certainly. I will tell you. But just tell you—it has to stop at that, Eva; my boss, the Chief, trusts me and I would be betraying his trust.”