Those Who Save Us (27 page)

Anna and the
Obersturmführer,
Weimar, 1943–1945

39

BUT HORST, WHERE ARE YOU TAKING US?

Don’t ask questions. Just get in.

Anna balks, refusing to relinquish the safety of the bakery’s shadow for the
Obersturmführer
’s car, which idles a few meters away. She is so terrified that the blood vessels in her brain must have constricted to threads, for she sees the swastika-draped Mercedes and the grim-faced
Obersturmführer
as a two-dimensional trompe l’oeil, a trick of the eye.

But Horst—

She glances at Karl the chauffeur, who holds the door open, deaf to this unseemly little scene between his master and his master’s mistress.

But Herr
Obersturmführer,
it’s the middle of the day. The bakery—

The bakery is now closed. I hereby declare it closed. You’re trying my patience, Anna.

But—

Get in.

Anna helps Trudie climb into the
Obersturmführer
’s car. What could Anna have done to cause offense? Has she been less than enthusiastic in bed, has she polished the
Obersturmführer
’s boots incorrectly, has Trudie irritated him, has he somehow confirmed her past feeding of the prisoners? Has he simply tired of her and found somebody else? This is not the way it is supposed to happen; people disappear at midnight, not at noon.
Nacht und Nebel.
The antennae of Anna’s instincts, delicately calibrated as tripwires to anticipate any change in the
Obersturmführer
’s moods, quiver with effort but pick up nothing. His bearing is military, his face impassive.

Anna would like to pray, but as she is so long out of practice, the only words she can find are
dear God.
She shifts in her seat for a last look at the bakery. It now seems a shimmering mecca,
dear God dear God,
an oasis of everything precious,
dear God dear God please,
cracked walls and all. The car slides away.

Trudie goggles about the interior with intense curiosity. She bounces, kicking her heels against the leather.

Mama, what’s this? she asks. Is it for laundry?

It is not, the
Obersturmführer
tells her gravely. It contains food, and it is a surprise for your mother.

He presents Anna with a picnic hamper, a wicker relic from another, more carefree age.

Surprise, he says. Are you surprised?

Anna closes her eyes.

You could say that, she tells him.

Happy birthday, says the
Obersturmführer.
After a moment, he remembers to grin.

Happy birthday, Mama! Is it really your birthday?

Why, yes, says Anna. I suppose so.

I thought you might enjoy a picnic, the
Obersturmführer
says.

Anna tallies the days: it is indeed the second of August. She is twenty-three years old. She manufactures a weak smile for the
Obersturmführer,
who pats her knee with a self-satisfied air. Has she ever told him when her birthday is? If so, it is a remark she made long ago, in passing. Either his memory is preternaturally keen or he has gone to some trouble to look up her birth record. Having seen him at his most vulnerable, having grown accustomed to viewing him through a lens of ridicule, Anna has gotten sloppy. She must remember always how smart he is. She must never underestimate him.

Karl drives through Weimar, negotiating potholes. Trudie is silent and round-eyed, awed by the speed of the vehicle. In all the child’s three years, Anna realizes, it is her first experience of travel by car. Yet as they near the Park an der Ilm, Trudie recovers. She jumps on the seat, pressing her face to the window glass.

Mama, she says, pointing at a work detail repaving a road. Why are those funny men wearing pajamas?

Be quiet, Trudie, Anna hisses. Sit down!

She glances at the
Obersturmführer,
who has recently taken to commenting on the child’s lack of discipline. He is staring straight ahead, his eyes blank with reflected light. He often falls into these peculiar trances now, and at such times he looks much as he did in the breakfast room in Berchtesgaden: his shoulders slump, his mouth sags at the corners. He is an appliance unplugged. But he comes back to life without warning and usually angry, as though suspecting he may have missed something important while gone.

Today, however, he seems calm enough; when he reanimates he merely hoists the picnic hamper and a satchel and marches into the park. Trudie scrambles after him. Anna follows the pair at a more sedate pace. Karl, the faithful mannequin, remains with the Mercedes. As soon as the
Obersturmführer
’s back is to the car, a stream of gray smoke shoots from the driver’s window.

The sky is white with haze and the air smells sticky, of running sap and milkweed pods burst open to spill their seeds in the heat. The tall grasses whir with insects. Anna expects the
Ober-sturmführer
to seek the shade of Goethe’s
Gartenhaus
or one of the pavilions, but he forges on toward the water. She exchanges a quizzical glance with the statue of Shakespeare, which the Nazis have doused in black paint. Once upon a time the Bard would have beheld sheep grazing here in the park, but they have long since metamorphosed into stringy mutton on the dinner tables of Weimar.

The
Obersturmführer
and his flock, in contrast, dine well. The hamper, opened beneath a tree on the river’s edge, reveals champagne, ham, currant jelly, sweating brown bottles of the heavy beer the
Obersturmführer
favors, sardines, pickles, bread. Anna marvels anew at the innocence of the plaid fabric, the clever pockets for cutlery and wineglasses. She has little appetite, but the
Obersturmführer
and Trudie eat with hearty appreciation. The smacking of lips and licking of fingers is accompanied by Brahms’ Second Concerto, emitted from the phonograph the
Obersturmführer
has thoughtfully packed in the satchel. The record player is a portable antique from which music is coaxed by turning a crank. The proud horns of the opening movement emerge scratchily from its throat.

After the meal, the
Obersturmführer
walks stretching to the riverbank, where he sits and dangles his feet in the current. Anna pictures the black hair on them undulating underwater, an odd form of seagrass. The
Obersturmführer
turns his face toward the sun and twitches a hand in time to the Brahms. As the music swells, he sings along; he leaps up to conduct, waving his arms wildly. Trudie stares at him, mouth open. The
Obersturmführer
pretends not to see her. When the movement reaches its crescendo, he falls solemnly, face-first, into the river; he surfaces snorting and blowing like a horse. Trudie screams with laughter. The
Obersturmführer
crawls toward her. The child climbs onto his back and he carries her into the river, pawing the water and whinnying.

As she watches, Anna shreds blades of grass in her lap. On occasion, she still finds herself drifting into the solace of her simple daydream, the walk along the broad city avenue, the sojourn at the café for a cool drink beneath the trees. And during the long evening sessions with the
Obersturmführer
in Mathilde’s bedroom, the fantasy has evolved: After the café, Anna and her husband push their daughter in her pram back to their hotel. Theirs is a modest room, paneled in dark wood, heavy drapes layered over curtains of lace. The girl is bathed and settled for a nap; they will rest for an hour and wake refreshed for dinner. Anna will linger by the window in her slip, shaking talcum powder onto her skin. She will gaze at the linden trees outside, the quiet street, as her husband sheds his clothes and pulls back the coverlet for sleep.

The dim little room is so real to Anna that she wonders if she stayed in a similar place as a girl, if she might once have been the child, listening to her parents going about a pre-evening routine. Either way, memory or invention, the vision has always been there for her whenever she needs it, comforting and mundane. Now, however, she realizes that the husband has at some point become the
Obersturmführer.
His face remains obscure, but she knows his grunt as he sinks into the mattress, that the clothing discarded on the room’s chair includes an SS tunic, that it is his small feet that twitch against the cool sheets as he dreams.

Anna presses her fingers to her mouth. The willows weep into the grass. The
Obersturmführer
shouts and Trudie splashes and shrieks. The child flails in the river, the
Obersturmführer
’s palm balanced beneath her round stomach.

Take her out of there, please, Horst, Anna calls. She’s too young to learn to swim.

Nonsense, he says. Children are born swimmers. They’re like tadpoles. They learn in the womb.

As if for emphasis, he swings the child by the arms and releases her into the Ilm. She paddles wildly, spitting water.

Please! Anna says.

All right, all right.

The
Obersturmführer
wades to the bank. Come out, he orders the child. You heard your mother.

Trudie splashes into the reeds, yelling for him to catch her, but when she realizes she has lost his attention, she stands in the shallows, staring entranced at her submerged feet. Perhaps there are minnows at her toes.

The
Obersturmführer,
his white shirt transparent, stands over Anna and rubs his hands through his hair, showering droplets onto her dress.

Don’t, she says.

He flops down beside her, grinning.

Why such a sour face on my birthday girl? he asks. Is it because I didn’t get you a cake? I could hardly have had you bake your own, you know. It would have spoiled the surprise.

I’m quite content without cake, Anna tells him.

The
Obersturmführer
reclines, crossing his arms behind his head and squinting into the crown of the tree. Shadows dapple his face.

Listen to that, he says, that beautiful andante. I’ve always preferred Brahms to Bach; Bach is so mathematical...Well, there must be something else you want, then. What is it, Anna?

He plucks playfully at her skirt. Come now, don’t be too shy to tell me. A diamond? Perfume, perhaps? A string of pearls for that lovely neck?

He presses a finger to the pulse in Anna’s throat.

Anna swallows. During the afterlife, if there is such a thing, she will have to pay a heavy penalty for her intimacy with this man. During this life, then, she might as well try to make it count.

There is something, she murmurs.

I knew it!

Horst, she says, and puts a hand on his. It’s a bit strange, but what I really want—

Tell me.

Could you— I wish you would spare the lives of twenty-three prisoners. That’s not so many, is it? One for each year I’ve been alive.

The
Obersturmführer
’s grin widens; then he laughs. You have such a quirky sense of humor!

Anna rips at another stem of grass.

The
Obersturmführer
sits up. You’re serious, he says.

Anna says nothing.

Look at this, the
Obersturmführer
says. Feel this.

He pulls Anna’s hand to his right bicep. The muscles bulge beneath the skin, thick as a mature rattlesnake coiled around the bone.

You know how I became so strong? he asks. Manning the machine gun. In the
Einsatzgruppen.
Shooting Jews.

Anna wrenches her hand from him and wipes her green-stained fingers on her skirt.

Like this, the
Obersturmführer
says.

He lunges for his pistol so suddenly that Anna feels the breeze of his movement against her skin. The report of the shot makes Anna’s ears ring. She covers them and screams. The
Ober-sturmführer
empties the chamber into the Ilm, five bullets in all. Blue smoke hangs in an acrid haze over the water.

You see? says the
Obersturmführer,
tossing his pistol onto the grass.

Anna jumps to her feet, crying her daughter’s name. Trudie runs toward them and Anna stoops to catch her. He fired without even a preliminary glance; the child could be drifting lifelessly downstream—

She turns to say as much to the
Obersturmführer,
but he has gone away again. He stares blankly at the river, mouth drooping.

Then he scowls.

What else can I offer you? he asks, with cold formality. Perhaps you would like me to resign? To denounce myself as a traitor? No, I have it: We could go to England. We could vacation on the white cliffs of Dover. Would that please you better, Anna?

Anna clutches Trudie to her midsection.

No, she says. No, no. This is fine, Horst. This is fine.

The
Obersturmführer
raises an eyebrow, his chest heaving. The Brahms is in its final movement, legato as a lullaby.

40

THE
OBERSTURMFÜHRER
FOUNDERS. HE SWEARS. HE SPEEDS up in compensation, hammering away. Anna, gripping the sheets, locks her legs around his buttocks: sometimes this encourages him enough to finish. Not this time. She feels him wilting. After a moment, he slips out. He slumps atop her, his breath a gale in her ear. Then, with a sudden shove, he propels himself from the bed.

He storms naked around the room, his flaccid penis flapping. Under other circumstances, this might be a comic sight, but not now. Anna can barely see him in any case; the blackout curtain he insists on pulling even in the daytime screens out most of the light. The room is dim, stifling. No matter how often Anna washes the bedclothes, which are now more hole than fabric, they retain the sour yellow smell of nightmares and copulation. She takes small sips of air through her mouth. The odor reminds her of the juice in a jar of pickles. Her stomach gurgles.

She knows what will come next, but she still flinches when the
Obersturmführer
punches the wall. He has hurt himself; he flexes his hand and shakes it, staring at it in mild indignation as though it has insulted him. Yet this doesn’t stop him from pivoting to slam the same fist down on the bureau. The washbasin and pitcher shudder against one another, affrighted.

What is it? Anna asks softly.

Nothing, the
Obersturmführer
mutters.

Nothing! he yells.

But Anna knows better. This has happened before. It occurs more and more frequently as things worsen for the
Wehrmacht.
In fact, Anna has noticed a direct correlation between Nazi impotencies and the
Obersturmführer
’s personal ones. The first incident was in January, just after the bombing of the Schweinfurt ball-bearing factory. The Allied landing at Normandy spawned further inadequacy and fits of rage. In July, when France started to topple, the
Obersturmführer
was unable to perform for three full weeks. And Anna has anticipated that he would be bad today, for she has spent the last two nights huddled in the cellar with Trudie while the unlit ceiling bulb swings on its wire and cement patters from overhead. It is not the city of Weimar the Spitfires are after.

Although she knows it will make the
Obersturmführer
angrier, Anna shrinks from him as he stamps back to the bed. She has learned to dread his failings. Not only does he grow violent at such times, but he must degrade her to achieve his satisfaction, subjecting her to ever-greater perversions. Her muscles clench against the memory of outraged tissue, his brusque exploration of orifices never meant to be invaded, the humiliating sensation of fullness and the need to move her bowels.

The
Obersturmführer
throws himself onto the bed.

Let’s get back to business, he says. I haven’t much time.

Is it the air raid? Anna ventures. If she can only keep him talking. Did they hit the camp?

Hit! Destroyed would be a better word. The prisoners running for the forest even though it was in flames, the idiotic little trolls. And the fucking Ukrainian guards shooting every which way, hitting my own men, a bunch of hysterical schoolgirls. You’d think they’d never held a gun before. The Slavs are imbeciles, worse than the Poles. Why we don’t liquidate the lot of them is beyond me.

He grabs Anna by the shoulder.

Was there much other damage? Anna persists.

The
Obersturmführer
snorts. Oh, no, not much, if you don’t count the Gustloff armament works, the radio factory, the stone quarry, the political department. The records, the years of paperwork! I don’t know where the bombers got their information, but it was all too fucking accurate.

Anna thinks of the rolls of film waiting in their prophylactic packaging beneath the flat rock near the quarry.

That’s awful, she tells the
Obersturmführer,
making a long face. But surely you can set things to rights. You’re so clever, you—

Don’t be a nuisance, Anna, the
Obersturmführer
snaps. When I want sprightly conversation, I’ll ask for it.

He pushes Anna’s head down.

She expels a sigh of relief: so this is what it’s to be. It could be worse. Mechanically she takes him into her mouth. She is dull with lack of sleep. Her vision grays out. She stands in front of the silverware drawer, unable to remember why she has opened it. When she speaks to Trudie, she often forgets what she is saying mid-sentence. And she is delirious with hunger. Last year’s birthday picnic: how could she have wasted the jam, the bread, even the beer? That ham, a fat pink haunch. What she wouldn’t do for even a shred of it! She wouldn’t chew and swallow, heedlessly. She would wedge it into her cheek like tobacco, sucking the meat until the last of its salty flavor had gone.

The
Obersturmführer
’s hands fall to his sides. As usual, he has propped himself up against the pillows to watch, his eyes agleam in the false dusk. His face is empty; he might be waiting in a queue at the bank. His chin, a hanging bladder of fat, folds into dewlaps and wattles. He is not wanting for nourishment, not he. Where is he getting the food, all the food, now that even the black market is defunct? And why doesn’t he bring her any? Anna has a constant low-level headache. Her eye sockets throb with hunger. She is cold no matter how warm the weather. At night she runs her hands over her body, taking stock of the new concavities and protrusions. Her stomach is a depression ringed by ribs and hips and pelvic bone. The squares of sponge she once inserted before the
Obersturmführer
’s visits are no longer necessary; her flow dried up months ago. What if it never returns? Anna eyes the roll of white flesh above the
Obersturm-führer
’s pubic hair with hatred.

The
Obersturmführer
is still at half-mast, sticky and malleable. Even the smell of him makes Anna’s stomach growl: the bacon-smoke sweat, the damp globes loamy as mushrooms. She frees her hands to pull at him like a milkmaid, forcing him deeper into her throat. She has learned not to gag. When she does, he corrects her with a sharp rap of knuckles to the skull. She envisions pork chops. Lamb chops. Veal. One morning this week, Anna discovered the front lock forced, the bakery window shattered. The burglars found nothing, of course; there is nothing to be found. When the noncom from the camp brings her supplies, an increasingly rare event nowadays, they are of the poorest quality: scant salt, no yeast, government-issue flour wriggling with maggots. What do they think, these women Anna must turn away, their hands empty but for their useless ration booklets? Can they not see that Anna too is starving, that any bread she makes now goes to the child? Which one of them broke in?

The
Obersturmführer
groans. His eyes are closed now, his breath harsh. Good. Good. Perhaps it is almost done, then. Anna shakes her arm to relieve the cramp in her elbow and reapplies herself to her chore. She hears Trudie singing in the dooryard:
Backe backe Kuchen, der Bäcker hat gerufen . . . Butter und Salz, Zucker und Schmalz . . .
She chants this all the time. The only way Anna can keep from slapping the child is to remind herself that poor Trudie doesn’t even know what sugar and lard are, let alone cake.
Milch und Mehl, und Eier machen den Kuchen gel’.
Yes, milk and eggs, Anna thinks.
Sauerbraten.
Liverwurst. Bratwurst. Rabbit. Trudie’s pet, a longhaired angora that the
Obersturm-führer
brought her last month from the camp’s breeding hutch, was the only thing taken during the burglary. And Anna is grateful; a few more days and she might not have been able to resist eating it herself.

The
Obersturmführer
finally begins to thrust. Anna’s jaws ache from the effort of not clamping down.
Mettwurst. Bock-wurst.
Don’t bite, don’t bite! Her cheeks are wet with tears, her chin with spittle. She swipes it with a wrist before continuing.

A little faster, the
Obersturmführer
is saying,
Ach,
you’ve got me right there, right there right there—

He digs his nails into Anna’s scalp and hisses.

Weisswurst,
thinks Anna. Or better yet,
Blutwurst.
Ah, yes,
Blutwurst:
blood sausage.