The Empire of the Senses (53 page)

He sat down on the couch and took her hand. His proximity made her head light. She gripped his hand. “I wanted to masturbate.”

“Josephine.” He rarely said her name but it sounded much more beautiful coming from his mouth. She buried her face into his shoulder, inhaling his scent of cigarettes and tea and lavender.
He must put dried lavender in his dresser
, she thought.
Or perhaps his mother places it there
. As
if such movements had already been choreographed, she hoisted herself onto his lap, straddling him. She pressed her face into his neck and rubbed against him. He slipped his hand into her underwear, inhaling sharply at the wetness he discovered. With the other hand, he caressed her back, fingering the brassiere under the thin fabric. “God knows the damage of those early repressive years. But we are returning to a primal state of freedom, before judgment, before shame, before mothers and fathers,” he said.

She nodded and bit his neck, tight pleasure spreading and flowing from the epicenter of clitoral nerves he so nimbly manipulated.

Afterward, she sat upright on the chaise. He sat opposite, in his usual chair. The session had run over; it was nearly two o’clock. The next patient had arrived, but after repeated knocks on the door, he left. Quietly exhilarated, Josephine buttoned up her blouse. After a pause, he tapped the long column of ash from his cigarette into a nearby ashtray and leaned farther back into his chair. It squeaked. “Well,” he said, raising his eyebrows, “what just occurred would have been unthinkable two months ago. But the floodgates have opened.” He smiled sympathetically.

She smoothed down her skirt. “It’s still quite unthinkable.”

He had since reopened the window and a tepid breeze blew into the room. “In the confines of this office, what we have is a safe environment to reenact past trauma
consciously
so that it may be integrated into the psyche with a greater degree of understanding.”

Josephine nodded, trying to conceal her pleasure at the thought of repeating such an exercise.

“Good,” he said, snapping his notebook closed. “Until next week.”

“Until next week,” she repeated, standing up.

He led her to the door and pointed out how they’d run over time. “I won’t charge you for it,” he joked.

She paused, touching the brass doorknob. “How’s your mother?”

He hesitated. “It’s been—” He stopped short. He touched her face, his thumb gliding down to her sleek collarbone. “I shouldn’t burden you with my troubles.”

She took his hand. He squeezed it and opened the door. Before them, thick bars of sunlight flooding the empty hallway shimmered with visible dust. She started to leave, but he took hold of her elbow and explained, haltingly at first, how his uncle had recently died, leaving a vast estate behind for his mother to manage in Grunewald forest but it was all too much for her at this age, so the problem naturally fell on his shoulders. They were trying to sell it, but the estate had already devalued greatly since the war. It proved too expensive to keep. “Yesterday, I let half the staff go. Some of them have worked there since the last century.” He took off his glasses and cleaned them with the edge of his shirt.

“I’m so sorry.”

He nodded with resignation.

Without thinking, she took him into her arms, holding him tightly against her. His chest crushed into her chest, his chin bore into her shoulder blade, and tunneling into her ear, his breath, at first uneven and labored, grew as quiet and calm as a Bavarian lake at night.

38

“She’s been gone for ages.”

“Carin’s in Paris?”

“With her mother,” Wolf said, ordering two more beers. “Shopping for her bridal trousseau. Apparently the best lace is in Paris.” Four empty glasses stood between them. Wolf’s eyelids shimmered with sweat and his long lashes made him look particularly feminine, especially in the dim lighting of the bar. They sat on barstools sharing sausage cut into coin-sized pieces. Wolf’s knee brushed up against Franz’s, and it gave him a momentary thrill, despite knowing the futility of such sensations. Today, they had trained near the Staaken military airfield. Physical drills with no breaks. Barking out the occasional order, Lutz watched with a satisfied smirk, pacing the damp field. In one exercise, all the boys stood in a line, one behind another. The last in line had to hold a medicine ball and crawl through the legs of the other boys all the way to the front; then the next would go. Looking up through the tunnel of gaping gym shorts was paradise: the muted color of the jockstraps, the shadow of pubic hair, some dark, some light, muscular legs planted in a V, inner thighs taut. Franz had fumbled the ball twice, the grass grazing his face, and emerged from the tunnel of legs with dirt on his lip, his brow shining with sweat, to the sound of Lutz cursing. He was clumsy and stupid. He lacked basic agility. He needed to repeat the exercise. Franz acted disappointed, but inside he was singing.

After training, Wolf proposed they stop off for a beer in a local bar—the heavy wood paneling and rustic feel of the place appealed to them. When they walked in wearing their brown uniforms, Franz noticed how the other men glanced in their direction, some of them nodding with respect. The bartender gave them the first two beers on the house.

Franz shifted in his chair, thinking about all the Parisian lace Carin was buying for her trousseau, and if she only knew that Wolf had fucked that Ukrainian girl who worked in the university cafeteria last week. Ukrainian or Czech? What did it matter? He was getting married. “It’s June seventeenth?”

Wolf ran a hand through his hair. “You remember the date of my own wedding better than I can.”

“Don’t you want to marry her?” Franz cringed at the hopefulness flooding his voice. He would have to practice producing more definitive statements in short bombastic sentences. He would have to start sounding like everyone else.

“Of course I want to marry her,” Wolf retorted, mimicking the slight elevation in Franz’s voice—that hope.

In the corner a group of men started singing a drinking song. Arms over shoulders, they swayed on the long wooden bench, their shirts unbuttoned, chests blooming with hair.

“What about the Czech you fucked?”

Wolf slapped him on the back of his head. “What’s it to you?”

Franz shrugged, looking down.

“I know. You want to hear all my dirty details. Peter says you want to fuck me.”

He kept looking down, so Wolf wouldn’t see the redness spreading all over his face. He had to say something quickly, something definitive and cutting. Something to make them both laugh, to disperse the panic rising in his chest. “Peter’s the one who wants to fuck you.”

Wolf smiled.

There. A short, nonemotive reply. The hot embarrassment lessened. He touched his face—it felt cool and white again. He looked up from the floor and stared at the murky mirror behind the bar. The room took on a tilted quality as the lights grew dimmer, more golden. The workmen, swaying fluidly, laughed. They clinked glasses, white foam flowing over the rims.
“Zum Wohl!”
they shouted. Franz thought about the customary words, what they meant:
To your completeness, to your fulfillment
.

The bartender poured Wolf and Franz complimentary shots. He
gave Franz a sidelong smile, and for a second, the idea of sex glittered between them.

Wolf stuffed a few extra marks into the tip jar, and the bartender bowed. Even though he was young, he was Old World—the bowtie, the genuflecting, the complimentary drinks, the way he seemed to know his place, the miniature portrait of the emperor behind the wine cases.

Wolf restlessly glanced around the room. He would want to leave in a few minutes, and it always stung a bit, when he so instantly tired of Franz’s company. It was warm here—Franz felt the comfort of Wolf’s closeness, the way his elbow inched toward his own, and the latent excitement of the bartender’s glances, the robust male singing interlacing their conversation.

He blurted out, “I need your advice.” And then he told Wolf about how Vicki was seeing a Jew—a real Jew from Galicia who wanted to take her to Palestine. She had been brainwashed by this Jew, thinking Palestine and Zionism and Communism were the true paths. Worst of all, his father welcomed this Jew into their home with open arms. His father knew the Jew from the war, from the poor little Russian town where he’d been stationed. But he’s an upstart, an arrogant little Jew who thinks he owns the world, thinks he can just take away his sister and disgrace the family. “The pride of the chosen people,” Franz added sarcastically.

After a pause, Wolf said, “Does this Jew have a name?”

“Geza Rabinovitch.”

The tips of Wolf’s fingers met. “The only solution: we kill him.”

“Kill him,” Franz repeated. Plainly spoken, laid out bare before him, it felt clean and pure. Franz envisioned bones on the beach, bleached by the sun, the ocean washing over them, making the surfaces smoother and smoother. Blindingly white bones. That was all Geza would amount to.

Wolf pushed back his barstool, one knee jammed up against the counter. “It’s a job for us, the SA. There are precedents. This won’t be the first time a Jew oversteps his boundaries. We’ve got to rein them in lest they grow too certain of themselves.”

“And Vicki, even if she can’t realize it now, has gone too far. She says
she loves him, but how can she? She’ll be terribly unhappy if she marries him, if he takes her away to Palestine,” Franz said, his voice gaining conviction.

Wolf nodded and slammed his fist down on the counter. “You’re right, Franz. Such a beautiful girl as Vicki shouldn’t be sacrificed because we stood by and did nothing. She’s always felt like my little sister too.” Wolf’s face was sweating, his neck blotchy. Perhaps he’d had too much beer, Franz thought. Or perhaps he still fancies Vicki. Either way, they would stop Geza together. The thrill of talking so confidentially with Wolf pulsed through him.

The bartender, using a damp cloth to clean the nearby tabletops, stopped for a minute, as if transfixed by the hatching of their plan.

Wolf then took Franz’s arm and explained in a low urgent voice how Franz should not tolerate Jewish scum polluting his family line, because even though his father was a Jew, he was the better kind of Jew, having refined himself into a respectable member of society and marrying a gentile, which made Franz and Vicki children of mixed blood:
mischling
. But if Vicki married Geza and procreated, this made her a full Jew again and their children would be full Jews and there you have it:
genetic regression
.

“Genetic regression,” Franz echoed, catching the bartender’s eye. He was young—maybe eighteen judging from his smooth tan skin, the way he wore his hair parted on the side, the clean white part healthy and neat.

Wolf waved a finger in front of Franz’s face, his speech slurring. “We can’t let it happen.”

The bartender shoved the rag into his back pocket. All the tabletops were shining. The group of workmen had left, leaving behind the heady scent of sweat and hard labor. The sound of dishes clattering from the kitchen carried into the main room. Wolf ranted on about Jewish tentacles spreading over the surface of the earth, unchecked. “They are like octopus—octopi! Fists in every pot of gold!”

The bartender produced the bill, and Franz paid up. He was a good bartender—discreet, expedient. Wolf staggered to the door, and Franz said, “Call him a cab.” The bartender nodded.

Wolf hung in the doorway, his head lolling. For the first time, Franz noticed a physical defect—Wolf’s head was extraordinary large, almost baboonlike.

“I can drive myselth home,” he sputtered. Then he slumped into a nearby chair, his eyes half-closed slits.

After the cab left with Wolf asleep in the backseat, Franz lingered in the bar. He was the only one left besides two waiters quietly eating their dinner in the corner. The bartender came over and offered Franz a cigarette.

“I don’t smoke.”

He took a long drag. “A purist.” Then he squeezed Franz’s arm, and Franz tensed at his touch. “You probably have one hundred percent oxygen in your blood. Maybe you’ll get a medal for it.” The boy’s amber eyes lit up with mockery.

Franz leaned back into the chair, tracing a circular stain on the wood. “You think we’re ridiculous?”

He shook his head, sitting down next to Franz. “I admire the new movement—the energy, the unity, the infusion of hope for all of us. It’s really something.”

Franz took the cigarette from the boy’s mouth and put it out. “You’ll ruin your lung capacity.”

He put Franz’s hand on his chest and breathed in and out. “How am I doing, Doctor?”

“Strong.”

The boy guided Franz’s hand downward. “I’m Manfred. But you don’t really care, do you?”

“Not really.”

His amber eyes lit up again with that teasing mocking glee.

Franz’s heart accelerated at the sight of the boy’s sloping jaw, his long swanlike neck and perfectly proportioned head, as if molded by a Roman sculptor.

They ended up in the back room—a threadbare couch, an old radio, peeling wallpaper, the smell of kitchen grease hanging in the air. Despite the coarse atmosphere, Manfred was considerably gentle. He
preferred a lot of kissing and caressing. His breath smelled of vermouth. He barely had to shave because his hairs were so fine and light. Franz touched his face, his mouth, his long neck. Then he wrestled him to the ground, calling him a weakling. The carpet smelled of cigarette smoke.

“Are you really going to kill that boy?” he asked.

Franz ruffled his hair. “Wolf always talks that way when he’s drunk.” Then he bit Manfred’s shoulder and pressed into him. Sweat sprung up on the boy’s skin, and Franz licked his smooth chest, circling his tongue around Manfred’s berry-colored nipple.

“Bite it,” Manfred said, cupping his palm behind Franz’s neck.

Franz took a little nibble.

“Harder.”

He looked up, resting his chin on Manfred’s smooth chest.

Manfred ran his fingers through Franz’s hair and then hoisted Franz up to eye level. His metal belt buckle bore into Franz’s stomach. “Does that hurt?” he asked.