I felt as if I were in one of those cloacal dreams that all of us have from time to time — you know, where you seem to turn into a frothing geyser of hot filth, like a stupendous oil strike, and it just keeps on coming and coming and piling up everywhere no matter what you try and do.
*
‘They spent about 2 or 3 minutes talking, Herr Kommandant. In the enclosure behind the ranch.’
He meant the riding school. My Kapo, Steinke (a Trotskyite cut-throat in civilian life), meant the riding school — the Equestrian Academy… So, 2 meetings: the Summer Huts and the Equestrian Academy. And now 2 letters.
‘You mean the riding school. The Equestrian Academy, Steinke. Christ, it’s boiling in here… They talked in plain sight?’
‘Yes, Herr Kommandant. There were a lot of people about.’
‘And they just talked, you say. Did any documents change hands?’
‘Documents? No, Herr Kommandant.’
‘Written material?… Yes, well you see, you’re not looking hard enough, Steinke. There was a transfer of written material. You just failed to spot it.’
‘I lost sight of them for a few seconds when all these horses went past, Herr Kommandant.’
‘Yes. Well you get horses at riding schools,’ I said. ‘Steinke, have you seen the signs mad people wear here? Saying dumm? Saying Ich bin ein Kretin? I think we’ll order 1 of those for you.’ Yes, and 1 for Prufer while we’re at it. ‘Steinke, you get horses at riding schools… And listen. From now on don’t bother with him. Just monitor her. Klar?’
‘Yes, Herr Kommandant.’
‘How did they greet each other?’
‘With a handshake.’
‘With a handshake, Herr Kommandant. How did they say goodbye?’
‘With a handshake, Herr Kommandant.’
We stepped aside as a group of Poles (implausibly overburdened) edged by. Steinke and myself were in 1 of the storehouses affixed to the tannery. It is here that the cheapest odds and ends of the evacuees are stacked prior to their elimination, as fuel, in the tannery furnace — cardboard shoes and plastic handbags and slabby wooden prams and so on and so forth.
‘What were the respective durations of the 2 handshakes?’
‘The 2nd 1 was longer than the 1st, Herr Kommandant.’
‘How long was the 1st 1?’
Although I am indifferent to every aspect of ‘interior decoration’, I’ve always been pretty handy with a toolbox. Working alone, in the spring of this year, whilst Hannah tarried in Rosenheim, I successfully completed my ‘pet’ project: the installation of a fitted safe in the wall of the 1st-floor dressing room. Of course, I have the use of the locker in my study (and there’s always the massive strongbox in the MAB). But the function of the fixture upstairs is quite otherwise. Its visible face, with the dials and tumblers, is hardly more than a facade. Open it up and what do you find? A 2-way mirror commanding a partial view of the bathroom. Alas, over the years, do you see, my wife has become rather shy, physically, and I happen to like appraising her when she’s clothed in nature’s garb — as is surely my conjugal right. The special ‘looking glass’ (and that’s the mot juste, nicht?) I picked up on Block 10, where they were employing it to improve the monitoring of certain medical experiments. A sheet was going spare, and I thought, Hello, I’ll be having that!
Well, yesterday, Hannah was just back from the Equestrian Academy (the pony) and there I was, standing to attention for the evening ‘show’. Now normally Hannah turns on the taps and then rather listlessly disrobes. Whilst she’s waiting for the tub to fill, repeatedly bending over to test the water’s temperature — that’s the best bit (her emergence is worth watching too, though she has an irritating habit of drying herself by the heated towel rack, which happens to be out of sight). It wasn’t like that yesterday… She entered, locked the door and leaned back on it, yanked up her dress, and produced from within her panties 3 slips of light-blue paper. She studied their contents; she absorbed them a 2nd time; not satisfied with that, she perused them yet again. For a moment she seemed lost in reverie. Then she moved to her left, ripping the missive to pieces; the toilet flushed, and, after the necessary interval, flushed once more.
I am now faced with the duty of recording an unpleasant truth. As Hannah read, her face 1st showed horror, then puzzled concentration, until… Towards the end, each time, her free Hand was at her Kehle; after a while it slid downwards somewhat, and appeared to caress the Brust area (her Schultern, in addition, were tensely turned in on themselves). How I felt, as a husband, confronted with that, may be fairly easily imagined. And that wasn’t the end of it. Despite the obvious fact that she was aroused — despite the clear actuality that the female essences had stirred in her (the moistenings, the quickenings, the secret glistenings) — Hannah didn’t even have the common decency to take a bath.
And ever since she’s had this expression on her face. Contented, serene: in a word, unendurably smug. Moreover, she is physically abloom. She looks like she looked when she was 3 months pregnant. Full of power.
Mobius of the Politische Abteilung thinks we’ve got to do something about the Poles.
‘How many Poles?’
‘Not finalised. I’d say in the 250 range.’ He tapped the file on his desk. ‘A big job.’
‘250.’ It didn’t sound very big to me — but I was by now almost unhinged by the astronomical numbers relayed to me by Szmul at the Meadow. ‘Yes, I suppose that’s fairly extensive.’
‘And it’s our own fault in a way.’
‘How d’you work that 1 out?’
‘All that stuff at the tannery.’ He sighed. ‘Slightly insensitive, don’t you think?’
‘I’m sorry, old boy, I don’t quite follow.’
‘All those odds and ends should never have left Kalifornia.’
‘What odds and ends?’
‘Come on, Paul — wake up.’ He then said heavily, ‘All that rubbish from the pacification of the area round Lublin. Peasant clothes. Tiny slippers. Crude rosaries. Missals.’
‘What’re missals?’
‘Not really sure. I’m just going by Erkel’s report. Some kind of filthy prayer book, I expect. They’re very Catholic up there. Have you seen the condition of those men? It’s a scandal. How did we let that happen?’
‘Prufer.’
‘Prufer. This mustn’t wait. It’ll be touch-and-go as it is. They aren’t Jews, Paul. They aren’t old ladies and little boys.’
‘Do they know, the Poles?’
‘Not yet. They have their suspicions, of course. But they don’t know.’
‘What do they hope’ll happen?’
‘That they’ll just get dispersed. Sent hither and yon. But it’s too late for that.’
‘Oh well. Get the list to me tonight. Ne?’
‘Zu befehl, mein Kommandant.’
As the bearer of 2 Iron Crosses (2nd class and 1st), I am perfectly secure in my virility, thank you very much, and need make no nervous boasts about the force of my libido — in the matter of the carnal urge, as in everything else, I am completely normal.
Hannah’s tragic frigidity unmasked itself fairly early on in our marriage, just after I swept her off to Schweinfurt for our honeymoon (her initial unresponsiveness, earlier, as our intimacy bloomed, I had attributed to medical considerations; but these no longer obtained). Personally, I laid it at the door of Dieter Kruger. And yet I faced the challenge awaiting me with the proverbial brash optimism of youth (or of relative youth, being 29). I felt sure that, over time, she would begin to respond to my gentleness, my sensitivity, and my extraordinary patience — a stoicism fortified by the purity of my love. But then there was a further development.