Anna’s voice was surreally calm. “To look at me is to see a version of him. He looked about as Jewish as I, which is to say not very. Even when the Nazis came to power, he and we suffered less harassment than most Jews did. And he was protected by that Iron Cross, for Hitler himself had decreed that the laws against the Jews were not to apply to decorated veterans.
“My mother and I had no such protection. Or if we did, the lesser Nazis chose to ignore it. We were picked up, and he, a man who had shed his blood, had himself been maimed and lost his life’s dream for Germany, followed us voluntarily to the camp, the one at Ravensbrück. Though this was normally a woman’s camp a special exception was made for my father, for some reason.
“I was thirteen years old.”
Anna shuddered then, apparently at the memory of what she was about to say.
“Under the overcrowding, the lack of food and medicine, and the cold, my mother soon sickened and died. With the loss of her, my father lost his will to live as well. He followed her into the grave within two months.”
“I was alone in the world; all alone, Hans. Can you imagine? I suppose I would have died too, without an adult to protect and maybe steal a little food for me. But then, as happens, I changed, began changing anyway, from a girl to a woman. And the guards began to notice.”
Now it was Hans’ turn to shudder; he knew what was coming next. “Anna you don’t have to — ”
“Yes I do!” she screamed, eyes wild in her face. Then, after some internal struggle, she said, a little more calmly, “I do. You have to know; you have a right to know.
“The first one was not the worst. He beat me, of course, never even tried to simply tell me what to do. He beat me then tore my clothes off and bent me over one of the hard wooden beds we had.”
Hans could not remember ever hearing a voice more hate-filled. “Oh, how I screamed and cried and begged and pleaded. That only made him hit me more. The beating lasted a lot longer than the fucking did, too. Maybe that was why he did it, because the filthy swine couldn’t last more than thirty seconds.
“When he was finished he turned me around and slapped my face three or four more times. As he turned to leave he tossed half a moldy sausage onto the floor. He said, ‘Eat that, Jew bitch. When I come back I’ll have a different kind of sausage for you to eat.’”
“And I suppose he did, too,” Hans said, bitterly.
Anna began to rock, gently, back and forth. “Oh, yes,” she answered, distantly, as if from a far away place. “He, and the other guards. Sometimes ten or twelve of them a night. Sometimes all at once. Sometimes they would make a ‘party’ of me.” The rocking grew more intense.
With a voice struggling not to break, she continued, “Hans, there is nothing, absolutely nothing, that you can imagine that they did not make me do. They would even take me out of the camp sometimes and sell me to passing soldiers. For my troubles, they would feed me a bit, maybe give me a toothbrush and some tooth powder, used clothing once in a while, even some cheap makeup for ‘special’ occasions.” She shuddered yet again. “That’s why I so despise makeup, you know? They would make me put it on like a Reeperbahn[40] prostitute and then taunt me that I was just another Jewish whore.
“The worst part though was that not one of them, even once, not in all those years, ever called me by my name. You remember I got angry with you when you called me ‘girl’? The kinder ones would sometimes say, ‘Bend over, girl,’ or ‘Get on your knees, girl.’ But usually it was ‘Jew-bitch, Jew-whore, Jew-slut.’ That sort of thing. I wasn’t even a human being, just a fuck and suck machine.”
At the memory of that last, that ultimate humiliation of being stripped of even a semblance of humanity, Anna lost control completely, breaking down into great, wracking sobs and a flood of long-suppressed tears. Hans, teary-eyed himself, was out of his chair in an instant, holding her, cradling her, stroking her hair and whispering how sorry he was, how much he loved her.
Finally, regaining a measure of control, she wrapped her arms around Hans, squeezed tight, and whispered, “Don’t be sorry. It is over. And you didn’t do any of it. But can you care for me now, now that you know?”
His own nose running slightly, Hans muffled back, “Now that I know what? That you were raped? That you survived? Thank God you survived, my love. You did nothing wrong and I could not love you more if you were as much a physical virgin as I hold you to be a spiritual one.”
Relieved beyond measure, Anna melted into him then. But almost immediately stiffened again. “There is another thing. Something else you must know. I got pregnant, more than once. The first time I was not quite fifteen. The last time I was a bit over seventeen. It was an inconvenience to them, having to take me to the doctor and bribe him to abort me and keep quiet about it. So the bribed the doctor to… ‘fix’… me. I say ‘fix.’ They said, ‘spay.’ Hans, I can never have children.”
Beyond guilt and even beyond pity, Hans felt an indescribable sense of personal desolation. Nonetheless, he answered, “No matter, Anna. Please… believe, that doesn’t matter to me.”
With a last sniffle and a long, quiet pause, Anna came to a sudden, but long contemplated, decision. She stood up, drawing Hans upward with her. She forced a smile and looked deeply into his eyes and said, “I asked Sol to make sure we would not be disturbed; not for all night. I am twenty-three years old.” She began to lead him to his bed, a smile appearing on her face for the first time that night. “That is too old to be any kind of a virgin, don’t you think?”
Though the night sky was illuminated by the battle raging ahead, Hans Brasche ignored it, preferring instead to stroke the pocket containing all that was physical that remained of his love, and submerging in the memory of a first, blessed, night among thousands that were to follow.
The first of the three Posleen landing areas was cleansed before midday on the twenty-second. The second, having more warning, took longer. Not only did it take longer, but this time the Posleen did manage to loft a number of their ships. Hans’ brigade went into action then, his forty Tigers ripping into the newly arrived Posleen. These died, but they died hard, taking seven of Hans’ precious tanks to hell with them. Losses among the rest of the Korps were likewise not trivial.
The third landing south of Berlin was ready when the 47th Panzer Korps met them on Christmas Day.
Interlude
“The thresh of this world have something they call ‘religion,’ my lord,” commented Ro’moloristen.
“Religion? What is this ‘religion’?”
“It is something like the way our normals feel about us, something like the way we once felt towards the Aldenata, and something like the Way of the Rememberers,” answered the underling. “It is, admittedly, a very confused and confusing concept.