She put one hand on the polished wooden handrail and led me slowly up to the second-floor landing.
“Besides, I already told you, Bernie Gunther — I do like saying your name — I’m a clever girl. You don’t need to worry that you’re taking advantage of me.”
“Maybe it’s the other way around,” I heard myself say.
“Let me know when you want me to call you a taxi,” she said. “I’d hate to feel that I made you spend the night with me against your will.”
I felt my heart leap a little as she said this. But now that she had I knew that there was no going back. About halfway up the stairs I thought of Goebbels and the warning he’d given me. It didn’t work. Life seemed too short to care very much about tomorrow; if I ended up facing a military firing squad on a hill in Murellenberge — where all the death sentences of the Reich War Court were carried out — then it would have been worth it. If you’re going to die, you might as well die with a sweet memory of a woman like Dalia Dresner in your head.
At the door of her bedroom we met Agnes, who said nothing and didn’t even meet my eye, but it was clear she’d been in there to prepare for our arrival. The heavy curtains had been drawn; there was quiet band music coming out of the radio and the lights were low; the enormous bed had been turned down; a negligee lay on the top sheet; the flowers I’d bought were now in a vase on the dressing table; there was a drinks tray with several decanters and two brandy glasses; the cigarette box beside the bed was open; there was an armchair with a newspaper lying on the cushion; and in the en suite bathroom, a bath had been drawn. I realized that all of this had been planned in advance — not that I cared, particularly. There’s only so much blood a man has in his body — and clearly not nearly enough for his brain and what makes him a man. Which is probably just as well as I can’t see how the human race is going to survive in any other way. I just hoped that she wouldn’t eat me after it was all over like a praying mantis. Then again, it was probably a good way to go.
Dalia picked up her negligee. She didn’t need my help, it wasn’t very heavy. “Help yourself to a drink and to a cigarette,” she said. “Relax. I won’t be long.”
She went into the bathroom. I poured myself a drink, lit a cigarette, and then sat down in the armchair to look at the newspaper. I couldn’t have felt less relaxed if Goebbels had been sitting up in bed looking at me. I didn’t read the paper because I was too busy listening to the sound of her as she got into the bath and splashed around. It was certainly better than anything I could hear on the radio. After a while I noticed that there was a picture on the dressing table that had been laid facedown and, being a nosy sort of fellow, I picked it up. I didn’t recognize the man in the picture though I guessed he was Dalia’s husband because she and he were cutting a wedding cake. He was older and grayer than me, which pleased me enormously. In all the talk about Goebbels, she hadn’t mentioned her husband and I certainly wasn’t about to bring him up now. I replaced the picture facedown and went back to my newspaper. It was probably best that he didn’t see what I still hardly believed was going to happen.
When she came out of the bathroom she was wearing the negligee. At least I think she was. Frankly it was so thin and transparent it might have been the brandy I was seeing through. But I wasn’t worried the alcohol I’d consumed was going to stop me from making love to her. Goebbels and her husband — Stefan? — could have hit me on the head with a sledgehammer and I wouldn’t have noticed it. Nothing was going to stop me now.
“Like it?” she said, turning around a couple of times so that I could appreciate her almost-there garment and the very shapely contents.
“I like it and I like you,” I said. “Very much. I like any girl who knows what she wants. You go out after it and nothing stops you from getting it. I have the most wonderful feeling that you’ve been planning for this to happen since I left here this morning.”
“Oh, I knew it was going to happen as soon as I saw you,” she said matter-of-factly. “This morning, when you caught me sunbathing in the nude, I knew that if you’d taken me right then and there I’d have let you do whatever you wanted. In fact that’s what I wanted myself. Couldn’t you tell? I was sure you could.”
“You know, in Byelorussia, there were these women in the Russian Army. Marksmen and snipers. Rifle babushkas, we used to call them. Dead shots all of them. Once they had you in their sights, you’d had it because they seldom ever missed. They always got their man, is what we used to say. That’s what you remind me of. I feel like I just got one in the head.”
This was only partly true; when these women were caught, the German Army called them “rifle sluts” and hanged them, but under the circumstances, I didn’t think she needed that amount of detail. No one did.
She smiled. “I guess that answers a question I was going to ask you,” she said.
“Which was?”
“Where you got those big sad-looking blue eyes of yours.”
“You want to know why they’re sad? Because they haven’t seen you in years.”
She sat on my lap and kissed my eyelids.
“Besides,” I added. “My eyes. They’re not so sad right now. As a matter of fact, I was just thinking how this is the first time in a very long time that I’ve felt as if life was actually worth the candle. That I can actually manage a smile that isn’t oiled with sarcasm.”
“I’m glad about that,” she said.
“I could get to like it here, with you.”
“Good. I hope you’ll come again. By the way, I ran you a bath just in case you wanted one. Would you like me to wash you?”
“Back in Berlin they have several words for girls like you.”
She frowned. “Oh? Such as?”
“Astonishing. Amazing. Astounding.”
She smiled. “It was a simple question, Bernie Gunther. Would you like me to bathe you?”
“Do you think I need bathing?”
“Need has got absolutely nothing to do with it,” she purred. “Want is all that matters now. What you want me to do for you, what will bring you delight.”
Dalia took my head in her perfumed hands and started to cover it with tiny kisses as small as her pink fingernails. Through the negligee I could see and feel every part of her delicious body. I ran my hand over her breast and onto her bottom; now that I actually had it in my hand it was even more perfect than I’d realized. She shifted and parted her thighs slightly so that my fingers could pleasure her a little.
“That’s all that matters when you’re with me, Bernie Gunther.” Each word she spoke was punctuated with a kiss now. “All you’ve ever wanted from a woman is exactly what you’re going to get. So, please. Try to relax and get it through your beautiful big head that when you’re here, in this room, giving you pleasure is what I’m for. More pleasure than you’ve ever had from a woman before.”
“You know something? I think that, all things considered, I’d really like to have a bath.”
Eighteen
The Fieseler Fi-156 Storch liaison aircraft dropped through the warm air toward Borongaj airfield, east of Zagreb. The three-seater Storch was well named; with its long legs and big wings the aircraft resembled a stork, only this one wasn’t delivering babies, just myself and a bad-tempered Austrian SS police general named August Meyszner. The general was arriving in Yugoslavia after a week’s leave in Berlin, to take command of an anti-partisan offensive in Bosnia, and regarded my mission — whatever it was — as of little or no consequence, and during the flight he made it quite clear that I should not speak to him unless addressed directly. This suited me very well since it inhibited me from mentioning that it was well known in Berlin police circles that Meyszner — a notorious anti-Semite — had a brother, Rudolf, who just happened to be married to the famously Jewish stepdaughter of the famous composer and conductor Johann Strauss II.