Then he grows calm, and calmly he begins to kiss the lips he cannot see, he who has never before kissed anyone on the mouth, he kisses this most probably German mouth that is full and perhaps also slightly wilted, but he cannot judge this because he has never before kissed anyone on the mouth, then he releases her arms and strokes the woman’s head, she is no longer struggling, but he hears her begin to cry, he strokes her head as if to comfort her, and then doesn’t know what to do next, although he’s seen often enough what his men do in comparable situations. Mama, he says, without knowing what he is saying, it’s so dark that you cannot even see your own words, and she thrusts him away from her, he stumbles, falls down, she kicks him, he tries to grasp her once more and in the process takes hold of her knees, and then she stands still, then she slowly pulls her dress up a little, he rests his forehead against her belly, she appears to be naked under her dress, he inhales the smell of life emanating from the curly hair. She says one or two words, but her words too are invisible in this dark hiding place. Perhaps the war consists only in the blurring of the fronts, for now, as she pushes the soldier’s head between her legs, pushing it between her legs perhaps only for the reason that she knows he has a weapon and that it is better not to struggle, she begins to guide him, perhaps war consists only in one person’s guiding another out of fear, and then the other way around, and on and on in this way. And as now the young soldier, perhaps only out of fear of the woman, pushes his tongue in among the curly hair, tasting something that tastes like iron, a warm stream begins to flow over his face, first gently, then more forcefully, the woman is urinating on his face, urinating on him in just the way his men urinated on the painted door in the entryway below, and so she too is waging war, or is this love, the soldier doesn’t know, the two seem to resemble one another, and now, when it ought to be his turn to take over, to guide her, he remains kneeling there, and amid all the wetness tears have begun to flow down his face, and his tears have the same temperature as the great river that is flooding him, with which his tears now intermingle here in the depths of a German closet. Instead of taking over, he remains kneeling there at the feet of the woman, sobbing audibly now, but perhaps it is precisely his weakness that disarms the woman far more effectively than force would have done. For now she draws him at last to his feet, dries his face on one of the pieces of clothing between which they are standing, and speaks softly to him. It wouldn’t take much for her to push him out of the closet with a little spank, like a mother sending her young son off to school.
Back where he was at home there was no such thing. It’s as if his childhood had stopped where his homeland did. Back where his home was, the girls wore two braids on their way to school or else tied these braids into loops with big, red silk ribbons and a triangular neck scarf. When they walked, they held their heads up in a way he has not seen any woman do here in Germany, as if everything that might have weighed them down had been lifted from their shoulders. On summer evenings they went strolling along with their heads held high like this, strolling one last time out to the edge of the field, linking their arms in pairs or even three at a time, chatting and laughing when they saw the boys leaning up against the linden tree, they laughed and went walking past, and the swallows were flying, and the boys were sitting and standing around the linden tree, and sometimes, very rarely, they succeeded in engaging the girls in conversation on their way home, and only one single time did one of the girls take up the boys’ offer and sit down on the bench under the linden tree, the boys had all gotten up at once, gangly and downy, and had nudged and shoved one another while the girl remained sitting there for approximately five minutes exchanging wisecracks with them. In his homeland he had never seen women offering themselves openly on the street or in their apartments like here in Germany, nor had he seen indecent pictures or magazines. In a German photography studio two or three towns back, its display windows shattered and its walls falling in, a creased picture had caught his eye while his men were plundering the shop, this picture lay on the floor and in it he had seen a naked woman threatening another naked woman with a whip. This photograph was as far removed from the mosaics adorning the town hall in the larger town near where he grew up as Russia was from Germany. These mosaics had shown women with sheaves of grain in their arms, young students holding test tubes in their hands, and mothers with babies on their hips. To watch a girl undo her braid while bathing and then see her hair tumble down about her shoulders would have been enough, back home, to fall in love, but these women with whips in their hands he associated with the photo studio itself that had been bombed into rubble and then plundered, as though these women were standing upon layer after layer of things that had been trampled, torn up and worn down, and were whipping one another to set everything ablaze with this last malicious pleasure. His men had taken this picture and many other ones like it and were now carrying them around in their uniform jackets, face to face with the photographs of their wives and children. In school he had learned that the seed for the happy future of mankind was being sowed in the Soviet Union. But now, on his journey through Germany, this journey that was the war, an unsavory dirty past that until then had been unknown to these Soviet men was catching up with them and dragging them deeper in this foreign land. And yet, if you stopped to consider that since the beginning of the war Poland had all but ceased to exist, there was now a border where Russia and Germany met.
Amid all this silence the woman goes on the attack again, she attacks him right in the middle — stop dreaming all the time, his mother always said to him — she seizes his cock right through his trousers and pushes the youth to the ground, she’s much stronger than he is, and now she throws herself on top of him, there’s nowhere to take cover here, she wants to cover him, this mare, with experienced hands she tears open his trousers and spears herself on him, riding him deeper, then she grabs him in a chokehold and squeezes his throat, whispering curses, he has stopped resisting — if that’s what she wants — he drives his barb into her flesh, she holds his mouth shut and spits on his face, she rubs herself against him, he thrusts, she tears open her blouse and slaps her breasts in his face, and he — hears himself moaning, hears himself saying No in Russian, and she says Yes, so he keeps thrusting, thrusts the mare in two, victory grinding itself against defeat, defeat against victory, and sweat and juices between the peoples, and spurting, spurting until all life has been spurted out, the final cry the same in all languages. Now death has finally been brought to its knees, youth and age as well, no point at all thinking of what was and what will be, now there is nothing left any more, nothing at all, nothing, nothing, just weary breath still drifting between mouths, a leftover scrap of something, limp as the summer dresses hanging beside the heads of the Red Army officer and this woman, who cannot be recognized in the darkness. Last summer, when perhaps she or some other woman wore these dresses, the war had not yet disturbed the peace here.
In fact all he did was open a closet.
Now he shuts the closet door again.
Outside his men are at work, they’re just back from their foray. He hears them shouting out in the garden with the horses, shouting and talking, then the shouting and talking enter the house, they call upstairs to him, he says: I’m coming. He goes downstairs, sees his men sprawling on the long bench seat, herrings are lying on grease-soaked paper on the long table, bread as well, someone else is just adding a bottle of vodka. No more horses, they say, all we found were a few German uniforms in the woods, not hidden very well, under leaves. They say: The Germans have flown the coop. One of them is just trying on one of the German coats. Not bad, he says, it fits. On the floor lies his Soviet coat, badly tattered. That’s a good idea, another one says and begins to undress. I’m going to sleep down here tonight, the young major says. Guess you were scared all by yourself, says one of the older soldiers with a laugh and shouts: Go on, give him the cushions from the bench; two others remove a cushion hanging from little brass hooks, hooting once the wall behind it comes into view: It is covered with leather. There’s my new boots, shouts one of the two and pulls out a knife. Not so fast, says the young major, the boots are for me. He pushes the table to one side, takes the cushion and tosses it to the man wearing the German coat, grabs the knife from the hand of the other one, who says: The little man always gets screwed, grinning, because he is much larger and stronger than the major and everyone can see this, and now the others grin too as he kneels down on the bench to be able to cut better. There are two remaining cushions, he removes both of them and tosses them to the others, square after square he cuts out the leather, twelve powerful strokes, he cuts decisively but not at all greedily, as though this were merely some necessary operation he was performing to save a wounded man. Two men meanwhile begin to fight over the remaining German coat. Another belches. One lies down on the bench beside the stove to go to sleep and says: Just like home. Outside it is growing light already, but the colored bull’s eye panes in the windows make dawn in this house green. Two hours of sleep, then the horses must be gotten ready, and we leave again at noon, the major says. He stacks the squares of leather one atop the other, rolls them up and places them, as he now lies down on the cushions to go to sleep, as a leather roll beneath his head.