Chapter 2

Look up the word Fasching in a German-English dictionary, and nine times out of ten the relevant entry will be confined to a single word. The English equivalent of Fasching, the compiler will prudently have revealed, is simply "Carnival".

This is both something more and something less than the truth. Western Bavarians and those inhabitants of southern Germany living between the Rhine and the Moselle would consider such an answer reticent to the point of being misleading. On the other hand, there is in fact no English equivalent of Fasching. Which large numbers of Anglo-Saxons think a shame.

Carnival it is in the sense that it is a traditional celebration held at the same time, and stemming from the same roots as the Central and South American Mardi Gras. Traditional it is in the sense that, as in France, Italy and many other Catholic countries, it is an ancient pagan festival adopted by the Church and religiously observed through many centuries. But the way in which it is celebrated is something the Germans have made peculiarly their own.

Perhaps as a relief after the bitter winters of the region, perhaps as a necessary safety valve to balance the staunchly enforced day-to-day ethos of the community and its pastors, perhaps even as a salute to the coming rebirth of the Spring, the season of Fasching has developed into a period of total license.

To put it more bluntly, it's a sexual free-for-all.

Certainly there are masked balls and special masses, fairs and fetes, speeches and street parades... but the really important thing about it, for those who observe it, is the fact that you can do what you like, with whom you like, wherever you like, and nobody in the world has the right to reproach you for it afterwards!

For one week at the end of the winter, the towns and villages of the region--especially the smaller ones--shut up shop and have themselves a ball!

Ideally, at the beginning of that week, the stores put up their shutters (for there IS a great deal of wine and beer drunk and a certain amount of rowdiness results), the office workers leave their desks, the farm workers come in from the country, and husbands and wives, bidding each other an affectionate farewell, arrange to meet again in seven days' time. What happens in between is nobody's business but their own ááá and there are no recriminations. The whole population sets out to join in the merriment, spending the time with the partner or partners of their choice.

In practice, of course, it is by no means as clear-cut or as simple as that. The custom is not universally followed, for only thing. For another the complexities of modern life have inevitably modified the original romantic conception. But the fact remains--in that part of Germany, at that time of year, ladies requiring a temporary change of mate and gentlemen out for an easy lay have it all their own way, married or unmarried.

Which explains why sixteen year old Susan Templar, running away from the American hospital that rainy evening in late February, found the village of Siegsdorff in a state of suppressed excitement bordering on hysteria.

The street lamps at the entrance to the village were unlit and the shop fronts shuttered and barred, but there were floodlights illuminating the steeply gabled gingerbread houses ground around the cobbled central platz, and over the drumming of the rain a big brass band blared bravely through the open doors of a flag-decked town hall. A car passed Susan just before she reached the square, spraying a fan of water over her from a huge puddle in the road, but otherwise there was no traffic to be seen.

Groups of villagers with linked arms ignored the rain to surge across the shining cobbles laughing and singing. Through the leaded windows of the gasthaus and two beer-gardens on opposite corners of the square, a high-pitched roar of conversation penetrated the night. And amongst the crowd, masked revelers in costume darted maniacally, whooping, and giggling.

Susan pulled up short as soon as she reached the fringe of the illuminations, astonished by what she saw. She had forgotten it was the week of fasching. Two hussars and a black-bearded pirate, accompanied by a Gretchen whose cotton bodice was plastered to her taut-nippled breasts by the rain, bore down on her shouting. "Thursday night, fraulein, and still alone?" the pirate called. "A kiss on those young lips, and you'll know what to do with the rest of the week!"

Laughing foolishly, the others danced around her, crowding her against the wall as he pushed the domino mask up on to his forehead and seized her familiarly around the waist. She twisted out of his winey embrace and ducked hastily into the open door of a biergarten on her left.

The place was a bedlam of frenetic activity. Beneath the low-beamed ceiling, waiters in white coats swooped bearing trays laden with bottles and glasses. Among the crowded tables an accordion player in lederhosen and a Tyrolean hat tried vainly to make himself heard above the waves of drunken chatter that crashed off the walls. At the far end of the smoke-filled room red-faced men stood four deep around the bar shouting their orders. The overheated atmosphere was heavy with the smell of damp clothes and cheap cigars.

He was sitting, miraculously alone, at a small table not far from the door.

"Stefan!" she cried excitedly. "What on earth are you doing here?"

"Susan! What a splendid surprise!"

He rose to his feet, his slim body lithe in its roll-neck sweater and jeans, the narrowed eyes beneath the thatch of blond hair as compelling as ever. "Sit down," he said. "What can I get for you?"

She let herself drop gratefully into the vacant chair. And all at once she was agonizingly conscious that she was faint with hunger. "I think... Could I possibly have... Could you get me something to eat?" she asked weakly. "'Oh Stefan, I am glad to see you!"

"But, my dear, of course." Effortlessly, he secured the attention of a perspiring waiter, ordered her hot sausages and beer, smiled at her invitingly over the table. "And what happy wind blows my little Susan into Siegsdorff, of all places?"

"I've just been... I had to... I've been visiting at the American hospital," the exhausted girl said awkwardly.

"You're here with your parents, then?"

"Er--no. I came on my own."

The boy raised his eyebrows. "On your own?" he repeated. "But how? By bus? No... you're soaking wet. On some kind of bicycle? A motor bike? And how are you going to get back?"

"I'll manage," Susan said, wondering how she would or if she even wanted to try. By now her father would be home and she would be missed. What would they do?

Stefan shot her a look from under his eyebrows. "How? In this rain? There are no more buses. And don't forget the Fasching. You may not find a car so easily on the way back, or if you do it may be too easy!"

The girl looked up suddenly. Her mouth was full of sausage and her spine was still shivering under the impact of his look.

"How d'you know hitched here?" she demanded.

"Simple deduction," he said easily. "How else could you have gotten here? No--I think you'd better let me take you home. But first there's a little place around the corner I'd like you to see.

"Oh, Stefan, would you really? That would be wonderful!" Susan's eyes were shining. She'd even be prepared to go home and face the music, she could worry about her attitude to what she had seen when she got there, if Stefan was going to take her!

"What did you say about some other place?"

"I'll take you there as soon as you're through," he said.

When they got outside, the rain had eased off a little and the square was crowded. They were threading their way through the jostling throng by the Rathaus when Susan was suddenly seized around the waist and dragged off to one side in the middle of a group of whooping students in costume. She called for Stefan, but the crowd closed in behind her and cut him off. Struggling ineffectually, she saw that her captors were the pirate and the two hussars she had escaped from before she went into the biergarten. "Put me down!" she cried. "Let go of me this minute!"

They grinned at her, still hauling her through the crowd. They were much drunker now, and they had lost their Gretchen somewhere along the way. "Come on, sweetheart," one of the hussars panted. "We'll give you a much better time than he could!"

"Let me go!"

"Not until you've seen what a real man looks like!" the pirate leered.

"Susan!" Stefan shouted somewhere behind them. "Where are you?"

As she opened her mouth to call back, the other hussar grabbed her by the shoulders and sank his mouth on hers, spearing his tongue wetly in between her lips. Half crying, she struggled to break free, nauseated by the beery stench of his breath. But before she could yell for Stefan again, they whisked her around a corner and laughing, drunkenly dashed down a narrow alley running along one side of the town hall, carrying her screaming and protesting with them.

They clattered along the wet cobbles, ducked around a corner at the far end--and stopped dead. There were three youths in jeans and black leather jackets standing in the narrow, ill-lit street beyond the alley spaced out across the roadway, blocking their passage.

"Come on, fellows!" the first hussar said. "Make way, will you?"

"I don't think the lady's too keen to go with you," the youth in the middle said. There was an unlit cigarette jutting from the corner of his mouth.

"Look, get out of our way," the pirate said truculently. We're in a hurry!"

"If you don't want to get hurt, that is," the second hussar added.

"I think the lady wants to go the other way."

"She's coming with us," the pirate shouted. "Get out of the way!"

"She stays here," the boy with the cigarette said. "You can go on or go back, whichever you like. But she stays here. She's a student, and we're here to see no student gets hurt."

"For Christ's sake, who do you think you are? We saw the bitch first."

"Let's push them out of the way, Franz!"

"Give it to the bastards!"

The three youths barring the road stared at them and said nothing.

Susan stared from one group to the other, her heart thumping. She was still powerless to escape, her arms tightly held by the two hussars, and she was frightened. In the distance, she could hear Stefan shouting for her at the far end of the alley.

Abruptly the pirate lost his temper. Uttering a string of curses, he sprang at the boy with the cigarette and aimed a vicious right at his jaw.

The boy swayed back slightly on his heels so that the blow caught him on the collarbone, knocking him slightly off balance. Before he had regained his equilibrium, his two companions leaped at the aggressor. The boy on the left, a sulky youth with dark curling hair, crashed the sole of his boot sickeningly into the pirate's groin as the other punched him savagely on the side of the head. The pirate grunted and doubled up--to meet the bulky youth's knee, which jerked up sharply to smash with stunning force against the bridge of his nose. The pirate groaned and dropped to the cobbles with blood streaming from under his black mask.

Meanwhile the two hussars had released their grasp of the terrified girl to launch themselves at the boy with the cigarette. He braced himself and jolted his forearm stiffly against the Adam's apple of the first, then whirled to trade a fierce flurry of blows with the second.

As the first hussar staggered back, the bulky youth locked an arm around his neck, turning sideways to bend the struggling reveler backwards over his hip in a judo lock. At the same time the third youth--a handsome boy with dark hair--slammed three murderous right-handers low into the pit of his stomach. Released suddenly from the neck lock, the hussar reeled to the wall groaning, fell to his knees, and vomited noisily into the gutter.

All three of the strangers now fell on the remaining hussar. They battered him about the head and shoulders, kneed him in the groin, and finally beat him to the ground, where he lay face downwards in the mud, covering his head with his arms and moaning faintly. The boy with the cigarette drew back his foot, but the dark youth laid a hand on his arm and shook his head.

"That's enough, Heinz," he said quietly.

"Perhaps you're right," the other said. Producing a lighter, he held the flame to his cigarette, which had remained in his mouth throughout the encounter, and squinted over it at Susan as he dragged smoke into his lungs. "I think that's your friend coming now, isn't it?" he said to the frightened girl, jerking his head towards the alley as he exhaled through his nostrils.

She swung around. Stefan had just turned the corner and was running towards them.

"Y-y-you mean I can go? I'm free?", she stammered.

"Free? But of course!" the youth looked pained. "We don't like to see drunken hooligans running off with young girls, that's all." He looked contemptuously at the three groaning figures on the ground and added: "I don't think they'll trouble you again."

Stefan arrived breathless. "Thanks, that was real nice of you," he panted, linking his arm with Susan's and squeezing her hand.

The dark boy grinned. "Be our guest!" he said in English.

The three of them were still standing in the middle of the narrower street, watching, as the couple turned the corner and hurried back up the alleyway towards the square.

Stefan's 'little place around the corner' turned out to be a pint-sized bar in a back street crammed with an older generation of villagers. The conversation was lively but low pitched, and there was little evidence here of the manic gaiety seizing the costumed crowds outside--though Gretchen, drunker than ever, was draped over one end of the counter with her arms twined round the neck of a red-faced farmer. In a corner, a group of Bavarians in narrow-brimmed, decorated tweed hats jested over their beer with much subdued laughter.

They found a place in an alcove at the far end of the beamed, low-ceilinged room, and the blond boy elbowed his way to the bar to return with two small glasses of clear, bright red liquid. Susan sniffed at it experimentally. "What is it?" she asked. "What I wanted you to try. This place is run by Bavarians. The owner comes from Obergunzburg, near Munich. It's a specialty of his part of the country. Try it."

She sipped cautiously, swallowed, and then smiled. "Why it's quite nice! Sweet, and sticky, and... and, yes, it's like that stuff they give babies!"

He nodded. "Rose Hip Syrup, yes. Hardly surprising, because that's what they distill it from! Every rose grower and Gasthof in the hills down there has a still in the backyard."

Susan took a larger swallow. "I like it," she said. "Is it... alcoholic?"

"Just a little," Stefan said.

They had a second, and then a third. Susan never knew whether it was the apparently innocuous drink itself, or the weakening effect on her mind of the shocking things she had witnessed, or the delayed action of cold and hunger or perhaps even a combination of all three but somewhere between the second and third, the evening shattered as it were into pieces... and she was never able to reassemble them again into a coherent whole!

The full effect of the deceptive liquor didn't hit her until they were out in the street again. Before that there was a period in which Stefan, his blue eyes blazing with earnestness, leaned confidentially across the table and told her how beautiful she was, how grown up for her age, how much he had been longing to see her. People were singing in the bar too, but that was at a different time. She remembered lying on the floor--had she fallen over?--looking up past a forest of legs to see the face of Gretchen bending down towards her, screaming with drunken laughter. An old woman in the powder room handed her a face cloth soaked in cold water to put on her forehead and then giggled as though she would never stop, but the giggle sounded exactly like Susan's own. Then there were voices, growing louder and louder, crashing in on her like waves as the town hall spun off to her left and the street lamps spiraled away and up behind her. But no... that must have been after they left the bar.

She didn't actually remember leaving... or even deciding that she must leave. There was just this sudden and alarming sensation of the whole world canting slowly to one side as her nerveless legs stepped down through the wet cobbles of the street as if they had been made of molasses. It was difficult trying to drag her feet up again through that sticky fluid that sucked so persistently at her heels.

But then suddenly she was free of it, walking lightly, as though she was on a sheet of glass a foot above the sidewalk, with no sensation of her feet touching anything. Stefan was with her... a long way off to one side, holding out his hand to help her as he receded further and further into the distance.

Then she was lying on an old-fashioned feather bed in warm room with a fire burning brightly in a polished grate. The old woman drew across the heavy drapes and walked across to the bed to remove the damp face cloth from her brow. Susan blinked dazedly at her. "But... what are you doing here?" she stammered. "Weren't you in the b-bar?"

"Bar?" the woman echoed blankly. "what bar? You've been to a few bars too many, Fraulein, and that's the truth!"

She sniffed severely and turned to leave the room.

Susan shifted on the bed. The satin covers were cool under her skin. She was lying outside them... and, dear God, she was completely naked! She didn't have a stitch on her!

As she gasped in consternation, a warm hand grasped her suddenly around the ankle. She cried aloud and sat up in terror. It was only Stefan. He sat at the foot of the bed, smiling at her in the firelight as his supple fingers absently massaged the flesh of her leg. And then her mind reeled as she took in the full implications of the scene--she saw that he too was wearing no clothes.

"Stefan!" she cried wildly. "What's going on? Where am I?"

"It's all right," he soothed. "It's all right. Don't panic. You were taken a little faint when we left the bar. Probably you didn't eat enough today and then you got cold. Anyway, I thought you weren't in a fit condition to go home, so I brought you here to rest up a little."

"Where's here? Where are we? What time is it?"

"A little hotel I know not far from the Town Hall. Don't worry, they're very discreet."

"Discreet!" Susan repeated, her voice rising to a squeak. "Discreet about what? Stefan, why have you brought me here?" She tried to look angry but the room started to spin around just as the street had done, and she was forced to drop back once more against the pillows. She must have eaten something that disagreed with her, she thought confusedly. Perhaps those sausages at the biergarten... ? Or could it possibly have been... ? No, not those nice drinks at the bar! They were so sweet, almost like kids' sodas back home, and besides they had only had three tiny ones. In any case, Stefan would have warned her if they were intoxicating, wouldn't he?

Wouldn't he?

Prey to sudden suspicion, she raised her swimming head slightly and stared towards the foot of the bed. He was still holding her ankle, caressing the slender swell of her calf with his other hand, a slight smile on his lips and his eyes shadowed beneath those jutting brows.

She was all at once conscious of her nakedness, aware of her shamelessly exposed genitals alone with him in the firelit hotel room. Why did they have to bring her into a bedroom? Why had they had to take all her clothes off just because she felt a bit faint? And above all, she thought with a wild twinge of alarm, why was he naked too?

She hesitated to speak to him. He would look up at her when he replied... and before he could meet her eyes, he would have to look past the silky brown curls of pubic hair mantling the most secret parts of her loins, past the ripely swelling curves of her budding young breasts and the tender petaled nipples at their tips. Her virginal body was nakedly defenseless before his gaze!

She started slightly, feeling the warm wet pressure of his lips on the soft flesh at the inside of her knee.

"Susan," he murmured. "My Susan, I've missed you so much. Why have you not been to see me? It seems like a year!"

"I told you," she whispered huskily, staring straight up at the ceiling (it was still swaying slightly). "I'm not allowed to any more. My father-"

"I know, I know," he interrupted. "Your father is a difficult man. He does not like Germans."

"It's not that, Stefan," she began awkwardly. "It's just..."

"But surely you could have found time, somehow, to slip out secretly? Surely you could have stolen a few minutes here or there? You're so beautiful... it's been hell for me, just waiting and wondering."