Part 1: The Rapes

What is her name? Inge? Lena? It doesn't matter. It certainly didn't matter to the Russians. She was young enough and lovely enough and it was payback time.

A year back, now. Almost a year. The memory is strong as she moves through the day, doing the wash, tending to her husband, fussing at her children to be still because the neighbors will complain. She lives in a place where time hasn't moved, a hollow world, monochrome, chill. Though they long since escaped to Heidelberg, when she blinks it is still the East and they are still here. Her memory is too sharp. She sees them plainly. She remembers not only the scars of the one who finally claimed her, but things like the large black mole on the belly of another and the differences in penises. She doesn't eat much, doesn't sleep much, but there are times when it is worse, when little things will set her off so she'll suddenly have their smell and their taste at her face again. Then she won't be able to eat at all. She'll have to kneel in the bathroom behind a locked door, shivering and leaning over the commode until it passes.

Because of this she is gaunt, not a starveling but far too thin, every part of her except her belly which takes so much energy to lug around. She was already thin then, no Brunhilda after two years of caring for the children alone on ever smaller rations, ersatz this and that, moving from place to place because of the bombing. Friends went westward to be captured by the Americans rather than the Russians. They had heard that Eisenhower executed men for rape, but for the Russians, nothing. People fleeing the Eastern front told what had happened to them, how Zhukov didn't care, how German women were booty. Why didn't they leave? They could have. Until the last few days they might have slipped down the road, part of the river of refugees, but she and her mother-in-law both wanted to be where her husband could find them when the fighting against the Russians was finished. Then, suddenly it seems, it was too late.

The bombardment hadn't yet stopped when Russians came in the door that first day. They had thought they would be safe until the fighting stopped, but the door swung open. Hadn't they locked it?... who hadn't locked it?... and the soldiers entered. The first one rushed in but when he found only two women and two small children he stopped and laughed and called to the others.

Five, eight, nine men in the room. It was a large room but they filled it, men and rifles, bunched in a semi-circle, crowding the four terrified victims into a corner. The women tried to shield the children but the Russians didn't give a damn about the children. They came closer. It was completely still until the two-year-old began crying, and the mother-in-law quickly put her hand over the child's mouth to stifle it. Don't invite violence. Don't.

The soldier's smell preceded them. None could have washed for ages so they all smelled goaty. They felt goaty too. Two of them rubbed their crotches as they came forward. There was at least one who spoke some German.

"Your clothes! Off!"

They tried to resist but suddenly they'd been yanked to the middle of the room, both women, where their bodies were grabbed and they were slapped and punched. The children were screaming. She was yelling, "Die Kinder! die Kinder!" not wanting the children to see. She didn't think she could stand for the children to see what was going to happen. The Russians were yelling at them, mostly with words they didn't know. Then she was hit hard on the side of her head, just behind her eye, and she went down. She hunched over, holding her head, and cried again, "Please, the children!"

One of the men said something and it was again quiet except for the children screaming. The men stepped back, forming a circle around the women. One took the children through a door and it became almost completely quiet. The crying sounded as though it were coming from a great distance away. Afterward she found the children had been shut in a closet off the bath. Both women were gasping and whimpering, but quietly. Finally the one who had spoken German before said, "Take off all your clothes now. Cooperate or it will be worse for you."

They stripped, crying all the while, faces red but bodies white. Her mother-in-law spoke just once, saying "Please don't kill us. We'll do anything you want." But the man just laughed and taunted her, "Tell that to the raped and murdered Jewesses of Mother Russia. They did everything the Germans wanted." Thereafter the two said nothing.

The rape was anticlimactic, much of it. The two women were hustled to the bedroom. Both kept their hair fastened in buns, and when they didn't move fast enough soldiers would grab their buns and yank. Did they have to use the bedroom? The children's crying was louder there, so they could hear them screaming, "Momma, momma," while they were forced to lie down on the bed, side by side under the old photograph of her husband's family, the one from the last century. Two men unfastened and pulled down their trousers and crawled between the women's legs. The one on the mother-in-law complained to the others, but he fucked her anyway. Only one other would fuck her, though, before they pushed her out of the room so they could concentrate on the younger woman.

She, though, she experienced it all. The first man diddled with her vagina while another man squeezed her breasts. She closed her eyes and turned her face to the side but someone grabbed her chin to make her look at them, and he yelled something she didn't understand. When the man began forcing his penis in it hurt and she just couldn't stay quiet. She screamed and started to thrash, so other men held her hands and legs, then he was in and fucking, his massive weight on her all the way down. Her vagina hurt with every plunge, as though it were tearing. She screamed again and someone slapped her hard. Then in just a few seconds he was done, yelling in joy and holding his dick inside her as hard as he could while he came.

The men talked and joked among themselves the whole time.

The second wasn't as painful. There were semen and some blood and secretions, and he was smaller as well, so he slipped in easily. She didn't resist this time, not that she could have done anything. He also came quickly.

The third one made her kiss him. She didn't want to do it but he slapped her and grabbed and squeezed her left breast, his fingers digging in deeply until she opened her mouth for him. It was worse than she had imagined. He hadn't cleaned his mouth in weeks, so his breath was like something that had died. She gagged but he made her keep kissing him while he fucked her and she had to control herself. Maybe if she'd vomited they would have left in disgust.

How long did it last? She doesn't know that, or how many did her. She knows some did her twice, including the one who had made her kiss him. He forced her to kiss him again, but by then it was almost like it was happening to someone else and it was easier to control her gagging. They didn't hit her anymore, not once she stopped resisting, and even stopped holding onto her arms and legs. She cooperated, changing position when told, shifting her hips to help them. For the last two or three she lay face down with her ass in the air and they did her from behind. Then a few of them urinated all over her before they simply walked out.

She was still lying wet on her belly when her mother-in-law came to her. The two had never liked each other, but now the old woman was gentle and thorough. She had heated water to make a warm bath. She led her daughter-in-law from the bed, bloody semen and urine oozing down her thighs, to the bath, where she washed her, first her hair, then her body. She had mixed a douche of vinegar and something else and when the younger woman wasn't able to apply it herself she did it for her. Oh it burned when it flowed out! But she did it a second time, to clean her as much as possible, before spreading ointment over her sex. Finally she helped her dress.

During this the mother began to come around. She asked, "The children?"

"Shh. They're sleeping."

Sometimes when she sleeps the memories and terror sweep over her and she wakes sitting rigidly in the bed, ready to scream but controlling it like she did for the Russians. Rather than wake her husband, who has his own demons and own night terrors, she will go to their little sitting room where she will rock herself in front of the heater, arms folded tightly across her chest, sometimes for hours. If he has a nightmare she can comfort him, which will at least give her something to do. It is the only time they have much physical contact. She thinks of their sex before he left for the Army, how sometimes they would sneak out to the park at night to take the risk of getting caught doing it, how they would wake in the morning and sex each other until he had to go to work, and he wouldn't have time for breakfast. He hasn't yet recovered from the war; only five men from his immediate unit returned at all. There's more, though. She was already great with child when he finally returned last month, and he wouldn't look at her belly after he first found what had happened. They have discussed the situation -- such lawyerly talk! -- and have agreed that she will give the child away when it is born.

Her sleep was destroyed that first night. It may never recover. When she had lain down, curled like a fetus, swathed in layers of blankets, she had fallen into a deep and dreamless sleep, but after awhile it had all come back to her and she had jerked awake, thinking they were there. She was covered in sweat and shivering, quaking, crying to herself. Then, after a bit, sleep stole over her for awhile, until the next dream. Sometime during the night she distantly heard her mother-in- law cry out.

In the morning she couldn't get up, but she let the children climb into bed with her, where she held them tightly until they complained. Her mother-in-law did the practical chores quietly. It wasn't until about noon that she remembered that the older woman too had been raped and beaten. Then she forced herself up. In the bathroom she counted eight distinct bruises, four to her breasts, some contusions, two welts. There was a bump just behind her left eye that led to a faint bruise and some puffiness around the eye. Her vagina burned when she used the toilet.

What of her mother-in-law? "Oh it is nothing," she'd answered.

Whatever there was, she had kept it inside, never giving any sign that she was affected, taking it to her grave. No she didn't die from the Russians but from an automobile accident after they'd gotten to the American zone. Sometimes the woman misses her mother-in-law. She wishes she had her strength.

She works as a maid for a group of American officers who treat her well. She is improving her English and teaching them some German words. They pass photos of their kids back and forth -- she has brought her two children to their quarters a few times -- and the men talk about how much they miss their wives. Being with the Americans, keeping busy, gives her a respite from her brooding. There will be a future. For now there is food for her family and the chance to talk with people who seem to have no past. After a few, uncertain days working for them she adopted their universal cheerfulness.

There is one exception. One day an officer who had helped liberate Dachau visits for cards. During a break he relates a story he'd heard from some survivors, about how members of the Einsatzgruppen, whose job was to round up Jews for extermination, would use young Jewish women sexually all night long. The women would cooperate because they thought it would save their lives, but they would be shot along with everyone else the next morning.

When she overhears the story, the woman breaks down sobbing, falling apart completely. She leans against a door and then falls to her knees and makes the same sound as one whose child has died. The officers can't get her to stop crying for the longest time, no matter how solicitous they are with "It's okay," and "There, there," and "No one blames you," and "That's all in the past." Finally they pull her onto the divan in a kind of Keystone Cops routine and bring her a large glass of wine, which seems to help.

"We're sorry. Entschuldigen Sie, bitte. We won't ever talk about that again, okay?"

They give her a ride to her apartment, though they almost can't get the directions right because they are all speaking so many comforting and cheerful words to her and because she is still weepy, but finally they arrive. The senior officer tells her to take the next day off. They're amazed that a German woman would be so affected by a story of the annihilation, so much so that afterward one of them tells the others, "I guess they weren't all Nazis after all, were they?"

The second time was utterly unlike the first. To begin, the door was locked and barred. The lights were off and they had retreated behind more locked and barricaded doors, down into a small room in the basement. Because of this they could tell the progress the Russians made as the crashing of doors and the profanity grew louder. Finally eight or ten of them were standing before the four cowering Germans and even the children were silent.

They wanted only the young woman. Two grabbed her hands and they pulled her away, slamming broken doors behind until they came to the bedroom. There was time for one action before they took her, time for her mother-in-law to push the tube of petrolatum into her hand.

The world rushed past her as she was jerked along by both arms in her circle of dangerous men. She couldn't follow the progress. Everything was fragmented. There were loud words she didn't understand, punches when she stumbled. She couldn't catch her breath, couldn't even beg properly, could think to cry nothing beyond "nein, nein, nein" as they passed through rooms. In the bedroom they pushed her into the middle of a circle and began shoving her from one to another. They would grab her breasts or her pudendum or hit her or slap her face. She fell, whereupon they dragged her to her feet and started over. When they were done there were two trickles of blood on her face, one from her nose and one from her lip. She stood in the middle of the circle, her head pulled down as far as possible into her shoulders, arms in front of her face, swaying like she might fall again, wheezing and whimpering, her eyes jerking first this way then that way. She was tiny and helpless and she couldn't stop shaking.