“See this mess?” He bared his half-toothless gums at her. “That’s your pig-husband’s fault, for sending me to the Reich. So now you’ll let us have some fun and we’ll call it even. Agreed?”
She stood as if turned to stone, making not a sound. And her horrified eyes NEVER LEFT HIM. Why?
“We’re not going to rape you,” Lojza continued. “As Czechs we’d never stoop that low; but we could give you fifty on your backside, which is more what you deserve.”
He pulled up his sweater and undid a thick belt. He cracked it with a whistling sound on the edge of the brass bed.
“You’ll sleep at least a month on your stomach with a sore ass, guaranteed. Or is my first offer better? Might be more enjoyable. What do you say?”
He raised his hand again, but did not need to demonstrate any further. She began to undress as meekly as she had earlier cooked and washed.
He was excited now as well. He had never seen a woman naked before and the effect was even stronger amid three armed men. He found it disturbing, the way she kept looking at him when she WASN’t EVEN TIED UP.
“A gag!” he suggested.
“Why?” Lojza joked. “This way she can tell us who does it best.”
“So she won’t shout….”
As if she’d understood the instruction, she let out a yelp, but a lot of water had gone under the bridge since that tart in Brno, and his skills had improved. In the twinkling of an eye he whipped out his handkerchief and stuffed it into her mouth, pushing her back onto the bed as he bent her legs. One hand held both hers in an iron grip, while the other fished under his coat for the straps. Then, with the help of the others, he tied all four limbs to the cornerposts of the bed. She lay stretched out like on a medieval rack, unable either to move or speak.
“You’re a fucking grenade,” Ladislav marveled belatedly.
“For that you can start her off.” Lojza offered appreciatively.
The boy just rolled his eyes and swallowed with excitement.
His cheeks flushed; he hoped no one would see it in the glow of the small night-lamp. He played for time, managing to laugh.
“She’s your girl!”
“No problem,” the bald man responded. “Anything for a friend.”
It’s crazy, the thought crossed his mind; it starts the same way.
MY TWO MISSIONS HAVE MET!
“So help yourself,” the stoker said, a bit impatiently.
He had already recovered and was ready.
“I’m sorry, but never with a German.”
“No cunt stinks too bad for me.” Lojza laughed toothlessly. “You don’t wanna, then leave her; I’ll start for old times’ sake, gnaydigga frau.”
He did not even take off his pants, just unbuttoned them, releasing an engorged member, and lay down on the German woman. For some time he moved up and down on her, grunted twice, and got up, satisfied, buttoning his fly.
“Take a number, step right up!”
Ladislav’s turn lasted longer and involved much heavy breathing. At the end he let out a few sounds resembling moos.
He was careful not to let them notice how closely he was watching. And was that all, he marveled. For this people get married and divorced, love and hate each other? Then SHE had been right — a hundred times right! — to protect him from it. This, these funny jerking movements, was what was called passion?
THEN MINE IS STRONGER!
It was the boy’s turn. He wiggled oddly on the prone figure.
“What’s wrong?” Ladislav inquired.
“I don’t feel anything…”
The stoker bent over him with evident professional interest.
“Lemme see… it’s not even up!”
“What the fuck am I gonna do?”
“Get off her.” Ladislav chuckled. “You’re impotent. Or a bugger.”
“What’s that?”
The toothless man, surprisingly, took pity on him.
“Leave the kid alone. Pepik, don’t worry about it, you’re still a bit too young. I say we leave her trussed like this until morning, gentlemen, and sack out somewhere else, there’s loads of beds here. Before we go we can have some more for breakfast.”
He leered at the boy.
“Maybe your willie’ll grow overnight, then wham, bam! You might even want some too, Ludva.”
He was still not used to the name Ludvík, much less to its nickname. And this boasting was starting to annoy him. Why did they think that was all there was to manhood? Even the youth would have sobered right up, if only he’d seen… But why not recruit the kid — or all of them — for his cause? Surely the world had never seen BIGGER WHORES THAN THE GERMANS?
And why was she still looking at him that way? Yes, she recognized him as her master!
“Once you’ve had your fun,” he decided, “I’ll show you what I do with a Kraut whore!”
He considered leaving while Grete was asleep, to spare both of them the good-byes. However, when he had made tea down in the kitchen and dipped his biscuit in it, he suddenly knew he couldn’t disappear without at least kissing her for good luck.
As he had held her, sleeping, in the crook of his arms long into the night until he himself fell asleep, he realized why she attracted him more than his wife ever had. His conclusion was unfair but true: he had been Hilde’s first; she had simply belonged to him, and never had any secrets from him. With Grete, the closer she supposedly brought them with her confession, the more mysterious she seemed. He had filled Hilde’s entire life; in Grete’s he was simply the latest man, or even one man too many. Sometimes he felt himself entirely superfluous.
He was wrong, she’d said once long ago (Long ago? They’d barely known each other seven weeks!), utterly wrong to make all his predecessors into rivals. You love once in your life, for your whole life, and that love simply takes on different names — but the final one is the sum and summit of them all, and that was him, as he knew full well; why brood over it?
He could not deny that he felt the same. As if he’d never loved anyone but her.
Anyway, why worry about it? Now the point was for both of them to stay alive.
He went back upstairs in his socks and tried to wake her by staring intently at her. She slept so deeply that finally he leaned over.
“My love…,” he whispered in her ear. “Do you hear me?”
She swam to the surface of consciousness remarkably quickly.
“Why did you wake me, Buback? You’ve never woken me before? Do you want to tell me you’re staying with me?”
“No….”
“Nor that you’re taking me with you?”
“You know I can’t.”
“Then why? I could have not known for hours that you’d gone. That you’d left me in the lurch at the mercy of the first person to come. Maybe it’ll even be your murderer. Murderers like to return to the scene of the crime, don’t they?”
He was horrified.
“For God’s sake, Grete…. I tried to explain to you…”
An ironic gleam appeared in her sleepy eyes.
“Now you’ve convinced me, love. Of course you explained it. And of course I’d rather see you than wake up here alone. Now go, for real, and leave me alone. I don’t want to see you anymore.”
“Grete—”
“I don’t want to see you till I see you again!”
He collected his strength to leave.
“You’ll have to lock up after me….”
“Not now. Now I have you inside me and I don’t feel so abandoned, so I’ll try to sleep some more. Lock me in and keep the key. I won’t be entertaining visitors today. Good-bye, love.”
The bedclothes billowed. The last thing to register on his retina was the tiny flicker of a flame.
Grete’s face, that battleground of despair and passion, stayed with him the whole way to Gestapo headquarters. No one noticed him; there was no gunfire, and the barricades had become social clubs, where people hashed and rehashed the possible developments while they waited for the Americans to arrive. Everywhere snatches of conversation told him people were convinced the war was over, at least in Prague.