my limbs broken and without strength, oh what a fine old school memory. My panic-stricken thoughts had finally dissipated, leaving behind them only a profound bitterness, a sharp desire to die quickly, to put an end to it. In the morning, Piontek arrived with a full basket of oranges, an unheard-of treasure in Germany at the time. “Herr Mandelbrod sent them to the office,” he explained. Helene took two and went downstairs to Frau Zempke’s to squeeze them; then, aided by Piontek, she sat me up on some pillows and had me drink the juice in small sips; it left a strange, almost metallic taste in my mouth. Piontek had a brief consultation with her that I couldn’t hear, then he left. Frau Zempke came up; she had washed and dried my sheets from the day before, and she helped Helene change my bed, again soaked with the night’s sweat. “It’s very good you’re sweating,” she said, “that chases the fever away.” It was all the same to me, I just wanted to rest, but I didn’t have a moment of peace, the Hauptsturmführer from the day before returned and examined me glumly: “You still don’t want to go to the hospital?”—“No, no, no.” He went into the living room to talk with Helene, then reappeared: “Your fever has gone down a little,” he said. “I told your friend to take your temperature frequently: if you go back over forty-one degrees, we’ll have to send you to the hospital. Is that understood?” He gave me a shot in the buttocks, as painful as the one the day before. “I’m leaving another one here, your friend will give it to you tonight—that will reduce the fever during the night. Try to eat a little.” After he left, Helene brought me some broth: she took a piece of bread, crumbled it up, soaked it in the liquid, and tried to make me swallow it, but I shook my head, it was impossible. I still managed to drink a little broth. As after the first shot, my head was clearer, but I felt drained, empty. I didn’t even resist when Helene patiently washed my body with a sponge and some warm water, then dressed me in pajamas borrowed from Herr Zempke. It wasn’t until she tucked me in and wanted to sit down to read that I exploded. “Why are you doing all this?” I said meanly. “What do you want from me?” She closed her book and stared at me with her large, calm eyes: “I don’t want anything from you. I just want to help you.”—“Why? What are you hoping for?”—“Nothing whatsoever.” She gave a slight shrug of her shoulders. “I came to help you out of friendship, that’s all.” Her back was to the window, so her face was in the shadow; I examined it greedily, but couldn’t read anything in it. “Out of friendship?” I barked. “What friendship? What do you know about me? We went out together a few times, that’s all, and now you’ve settled here as if you lived here.” She smiled: “Don’t get excited like that. You’re going to tire yourself out.” This smile enraged me: “But what do you know about fatigue? What! What do you know about it?” I had sat up; I fell back, exhausted, my head against the wall. “You have no idea, you don’t know anything about fatigue, you live your nice German girl’s life, with your eyes closed, you don’t see anything, you go to work, you look for a new husband, you don’t see anything that’s happening around you.” Her face remained calm, she didn’t notice the brutality of the du form I was using, I went on, spluttering through my shouts: “You know nothing about me, nothing about what I do, nothing about my fatigue, for the three years we’ve been killing people, yes, that’s what we do, we kill, we kill the Jews, we kill the Gypsies, the Russians, the Ukrainians, the Poles, the sick, the old, the women, young women like you, the children!” She was clenching her teeth now, and still she didn’t say anything, but I couldn’t stop: “And the people we don’t kill, we send them to work in our factories, like slaves, don’t you see, that’s what an economic question is. Don’t act all innocent! Where do you think your clothes come from? And the flak shells that protect you from enemy planes, where do they come from? The tanks that are holding the Bolsheviks back, in the East? How many slaves died to make them? You’ve never asked yourself that kind of question?” She still wasn’t reacting, and the more she remained calm and silent, the more I got carried away: “Or maybe you didn’t know? Is that it? Like all the other good Germans. No one knows anything, except the ones doing the dirty work. Where did they go, your Jewish neighbors in Moabit? You’ve never asked yourself? To the East? We sent them to work in the East? Where? If there were six or seven million Jews working in the East, we’d have built entire cities! You don’t listen to the BBC? They know! Everyone knows, everyone except the good Germans who don’t want to know anything.” I was raging, I must have been ashen-faced, she seemed to be listening attentively, she didn’t move. “And your husband, in Yugoslavia, what was he doing, in your opinion? In the Waffen-SS? Fighting the partisans? You know what that is, fighting the partisans? We hardly ever see any partisans, so we destroy the environment where they survive. You understand what that means? Can you imagine your Hans killing women, killing their children in front of them, burning their houses with their corpses inside?” For the first time she reacted: “Be quiet! You don’t have the right!”—“And why don’t I have the right?” I jeered. “You think maybe I’m better? You come to take care of me, you think I’m a nice man, with a law degree, a perfect gentleman, a good catch? We’re murdering people, you understand, that’s what we do, all of us, your husband was a murderer, I’m a murderer, and you, you’re a murderer’s accomplice, you wear and you eat the fruit of our labor.” She was livid, but her face showed only infinite sadness: “You are an unhappy man.”—“And why’s that? I like what I am. I’m rising in the ranks. Of course, it won’t last. It’s no use killing everybody, there are too many of them, we’re going to lose the war. Instead of wasting your time playing the nurse and the nice patient, you’d do better to start thinking about getting out of here. And if I were you, I’d head west. The Yankees won’t be so quick to pull out their cocks as the Ivans. At least they’ll wear rubbers: those brave boys are afraid of diseases. Unless you’d prefer a stinking Mongol? Maybe that’s what you dream of at night?” She was still white, but she smiled at these words: “You’re delirious. It’s the fever, you should hear yourself.”—“I hear myself very well.” I was panting, the effort had exhausted me. She went to wet a compress and returned to wipe my forehead. “What if I asked you to strip naked, would you do that? For me? Masturbate in front of me? Suck my cock? Would you do that?”—“Calm down,” she said. “You’re going to make the fever rise.” There was nothing for it, this girl was too stubborn. I closed my eyes and abandoned myself to the sensation of the cold water on my forehead. She readjusted the pillows, pulled up the blanket. My breath came in wheezes, once again I wanted to beat her, to kick her in the belly, for her obscene, her inadmissible kindness.