Part 3: Happiness and Loss

She didn't hate him. She never had, even when he had taken her that first day. His ability to arouse her was frightening, though, when she thought about it in the middle of the night, and she began to doubt herself. She imagined a Faustian pact, that he had sold his soul to the devil in return for the ability to arouse women. She fell asleep thinking about it.

He was affectionate in the morning, and her failure to react to him came from exhaustion, not an attempt to gain distance from him. She stayed at the apartment while he visited his men at the field hospital, and when he returned he had a fresh, professional bandage on his arm.

"I am ordered to convalesce, Liebchen. No more fighting for a while, except with you."

She ignored this. She was dressed by now and ready to go home, but he required a kiss before he let her leave. She gave him a sloppy, phony kiss, one from the movies, to let him know she was still her own person, and he laughed a clear and happy laugh that followed her out the door.

That was the last happy moment for days. At home both children had been stricken with vomiting and diarrhea, and her baby, the two-year-old, was dehydrated and unresponsive. Her mother-in-law was exhausted. There were no doctors around, no stores open for medication, nothing. She'd been fucking and enjoying it while her baby was dying. She fled back to his apartment.

"I can't come tonight! My children are very ill. I need to get them something to help!"

"Wait one moment, Liebchen."

He left her alone in the apartment about half an hour. When he returned he had a battered staff car, a doctor, and a satchel of supplies, and once he'd pulled her into the car they were at her house within ten minutes. There the doctor worked quickly on the children, put a tiny IV into the arm of the younger, handed out medicine bottles with Cyrillic script, and talked with her Rasputin. The mother-in-law could hardly stand to be in the same room with them, but it wasn't too bad because he was through in no more than fifteen minutes. Grigori translated the Russian into German and wrote out directions while the doctor gave her odd looks.

Then he took her aside to tell her, "Stay with your sick children. When they are better, in two or three days, come back to me. Now, for payment, I need your kiss."

Her mother-in-law was watching through the doorway.

She whispered, "Not in front of her. You can't be serious!"

"Yes. To show your gratitude. She will understand. Also I want my friend to see. I told him how beautiful my German mistress was," and he nodded toward the doctor.

So she did it. In fact she gave him a very tender kiss that lasted longer than it needed to, leaning up against him to apply it, and when she was done he said, "Mademoiselle, you could be a courtesan."

The mother-in-law did not "understand" it. She muttered under her breath against her daughter-in-law all evening, until the mother could stand it no longer.

"Oma, what was I to do? Gott im Himmel! They're my children! Am I to let them die?" She took over running the house and once the mother-in-law got some rest it was better between them. She did ultimately understand how things were.

Many things could be understood back then that would not be today. Would her husband understand the affection she showed for the man who was, after all, her master? He will never know those things that could have slipped out, or been used as weapons in moments of anger by his mother. Neither child seems to remember anything of the incidents with the Russian soldiers in the house. Her memories remain, nothing else.

And could she explain her feelings for her Rasputin? If it came to that, would she say she hated him, she loved him, she tolerated him? The truth only she knows is that she was torn by him. Was?

The first evening back, a full four days after he left with his doctor friend, she ran to him and hugged him, kissed him, full of the affection that comes from gratitude, but also full of loneliness. She had been lonely at night in her own house, alone in her bed, with no one to sooth away her nightmares. She vowed not to fight her body when he coaxed it over to his side. Not this time. She would let it be easy for both of them this time.

It wasn't to be. For the first time he was distant and detached. He pried her arms from his neck firmly but gently and said "I am sorry, Liebchen, but I have things on my mind." She could tell he was stricken.

"What is it?"

"My men. Two of them in the hospital died. I thought they were recovering. I have to write letters to their families." A pause. "One had been with me since Stalingrad so we were very close."

"Oh, my poor darling. I'm so sorry. You're too good to have to suffer that." She was thinking what a wonderful person he was, how full of depths, how helpful and caring, but then the memory of the rapes rose in her mind, and the contrast so surprised her that she exclaimed, "But how is it that you can ra... ," and it was too late to disguise her meaning.

He gripped her wrists tighter.

"How is it that I rape women? That we rape women? We kill people too, madam. Perhaps I killed your husband in battle or he wounded me."

She drew a quick breath then stopped breathing for a second. She saw him killing her husband, shooting him, stabbing him. She had never before had that image.

"No. I didn't mean... But you have to kill. It's war."

"And that keeps me a good man, right? I can kill and be 'good' for you. Oh yes I see your little bourgeois mind working, Frau. You are feeling warm toward me, so you want to imprison me on your good side. Are you so certain I am as sweet and sentimental as I let on? You should not bring up something you are not prepared to know about!"

For the first time he seemed really angry at her, furious, and it set her off.

"But how can you? You are good. I've seen it. How can you do... the other?"

He pushed her away, paced three steps toward the door, then toward the fire. He faced her again.

"Let us begin with the worst reason, shall we? Let me shatter your image of me. We rape German women because we can! We can get away with it. No soldier who has had the chance to do that with impunity, and has done it, can ever forget the experience. There is a special joy in raping the women of the people who have tried to kill you. It is intoxicating. I have known men who became addicted to it. It is especially good because it lets us punish you Germans, as payment for what you have done to our land and our women!

"But what evil have I done?"

"Lady, the German army has left a vast trail of rape and murder. I wonder how many women your husband has raped? How many has he killed?"

"No! No he hasn't! You can't say that! Stop it!"

"I will not stop! You wanted to know, so know it!" He was shouting at her. She thought he would break his promise about hitting her.

"It does not matter what your husband has or has not done! Blame us entirely, though you speak from ignorance. Taking pleasure from enemy women is a payment to my men for what they go through. Your body gets a little abused, Frau. So? Do you think you go through one-tenth of what any of my men have experienced? One percent? Over half the men I began serving with are dead now and most of the rest are maimed. Every time we enter battle we face skilled soldiers determined to kill us. We live with terror! Do not complain to me about being a little hurt, because you do not know anything about hurting!"

She was sobbing now. Sad, angry, uncomprehending woman, this is the memory that dominates when she thinks enough of loving him, that he could do this and justify it and still get a doctor for her children. Finally she said something in a quiet voice, something she could barely get out while crying,

"But we, we women, we were just innocents. We never did anything to you. I was just caring for my family."

"Hah! Oh that is good! That is lovely! What you were -- you were just safe, or so you thought! Did you work in the war effort? Help out? Cheer the men and kiss them? What did you think your armies were doing when they invaded all those countries, playing games? They were destroying! Well, think of that the next time you cheer your men off to a glorious war!"

He came up to her as he said the last part, grabbed her wrists again, and shoved her down to the couch. Then he left the apartment and slammed the door behind. She lay on the couch and cried for awhile, then just lay quietly, then finally began to walk around the room in circles.

He was very late getting back and he'd been drinking. She didn't know what he would do. She wanted him back so she could know what would happen, but she didn't think she could stand for him to touch her because he was just as bad as the others. She decided that in any case she had to be meek toward him. She built up the fire, undressed, and wrapped a sheet around herself like a toga, after which she waited. From time to time she couldn't keep from sighing because she was tormented by what she knew.

She met him at the door but he held a hand out in the "halt" symbol to stop her and stared at her with a fierce look that frightened her. He lurched past her to the fire where he undressed while she stood there. At some point he jerked his head to her and said, "Kneel in the sucking position," then he went back to stripping, until all he had on was a bandage where his arm hadn't completely healed.

She dropped the sheet, hurried to the stool, knelt and waited. Her hands were palm down on her thighs and her head was lowered.

He let her kneel there. Time passed. He went to the bathroom, to the kitchen. He didn't come out. She began to grow cold because the fire was dwindling. He returned but ignored her. He built the fire back up, then lay down on the mattress and pulled a cover over himself. She tried to be completely still. He became quiet under the cover. He was asleep and she knelt for him.

She began nodding off and then catching herself.

Finally he pulled down the cover and turned to her. When he looked at her she froze. What was it to be?

"Get out of here." His voice was flat, completely devoid of emotion.