The Second Winter, page 11
Polina flinched, but she tried not to show it. She remained at the glass. A truck was rumbling down the road toward the bakery. When it reached the building, it came to a stop. The driver stepped outside, bundled himself in his coat, trudged to the back of the truck, yanked open the doors.
“Didn’t you hear me?”
“So it is to fuck me,” Polina said to the window. “That is why you brought me here.”
“You don’t understand.”
“Don’t I?”
“No.”
When Polina faced him, Hermann had taken a couple of steps toward her. He stopped, returned her gaze. This reminded her of a game she used to play as a child, where your opponent could only approach when you weren’t looking. Then his eyes dropped to her sweater. She could feel them on her breasts. A man had told her once that they were beautiful. That she had the most glorious breasts a girl could have. But that was a year ago, in her puberty. They were fuller now, she had noticed it herself. They were still firm, but heavy enough to want to drop a little. She thought about complying, but her hands wouldn’t budge, they wouldn’t lift the sweater over her head. Instead, she turned away again. Outside, the driver was carrying a tray of bread from the bakery to the back of the truck. She watched him load it then make his way back inside for another steel tray.
“I am going to take your picture,” Hermann said.
“Why?” The question was so simple — there was so little inflection in Polina’s voice — that yet one more time Hermann became confused. How could he impress this girl? Why didn’t she appreciate what he wanted to do for her?
“I am a photographer,” he explained.
“I can see this in your eyes,” Polina said. “And in how carefully you maintain your spectacles.”
Hermann took another step closer. “Take off your sweater.”
“So you can see me naked.”
“So I can take a photograph.”
“Do you want a photograph,” Polina asked, “because you don’t trust your mind to remember? Or,” she continued, now switching to Polish, “is it because you can’t touch me with your fingers?”
“I want your photograph,” Hermann said, “because you’re beautiful.” Another step, and he was directly behind her. Polina took a deep breath through her nose. Her body wanted to shiver, but she wouldn’t let it. “Has anyone told you that before? How beautiful you are. I can’t believe it —”
“I don’t want you to touch me.” Polina spoke the words abruptly and clearly. But, again, she spoke them in Polish. Nie chcę, żebyś mnie dotykał.
“What?”
“Stay away from me. Don’t get any closer.” She was speaking in a language Hermann could not understand.
“Let me help you.”
“I’m warning you,” Polina said, now in a whisper.
Hermann’s fingers found the bottom of her sweater, clasped it, began to raise it. When the shirt underneath lifted, too, and he caught sight of her slender torso, his throat tightened. Her skin was made of paper, of silk, of ivory. It would be cold to the touch. Captured inside the lens of his camera, it would radiate. He raised the heavy wool fabric up to her armpits, stretched it to pull it over her shoulders. He gasped when he noticed the bruises that darkened her ribs and arms.
“No,” she whispered, “I’m not challenging you, I’m begging you instead.”
“Polish has a brutal tongue,” Hermann said. “Like German.”
The sweater got tangled in her hair, then slid off, over her head. Outside, the driver was climbing back into the cab of the truck. When the engine started, a plume of diesel exhaust shot from a pipe behind the cab, mixing with the snow like wine in water. Polina’s shirt was crumpled, pulled up onto her breasts. Hermann’s fingers were sweaty. He was fumbling with her bra. “Don’t touch me,” Polina said. Now she spoke in Danish again, so that this man would understand.
“You have a beauty that will translate onto film,” the photographer said. “I can see it. I will show it to you, you will see.”
“I won’t let you touch me,” Polina said.
Hermann stopped moving.
“Your fingers are sweaty,” Polina said.
“A hundred and eighty reichsmarks.”
Polina froze into a statue. The man’s breath sank into her hair. She didn’t have to ask him what he meant. She understood what he was telling her.
“That is how much I paid your pimp,” Hermann explained anyway.
Polina’s heart touched her ribs. His moist breath was continuing to warm her scalp, now to creep down her cheeks like tears, slide beneath the collar of her shirt, slither around her breasts. This was an absurd amount of money. Goose bumps pricked her arms. Sweat trickled down her ribs. She wasn’t going back. She would never leave this place. This man had bought her from Søren.
“Now turn around,” Hermann said. He managed once again to sound a tender note. “I want to see you.”
When Polina still didn’t move, he placed his hands on her shoulders. Gently, not like Søren had. Softly, so that she could feel how smooth his skin was — as smooth, she thought, as the feathers of a swan. He twisted her around to face him. If she had resisted, he wouldn’t have been able to force her. But she didn’t resist, and now she was standing beneath him, looking up into his eyes. His breath streamed from his nostrils onto her face, into her mouth. And she tasted him. “It’s just you and me now,” she said.
“What?”
“In this room,” she said. “It’s just you and me. Can’t you feel how strange that is?”
Hermann didn’t respond. His fingers slid from her shoulders, slipped beneath the collar of her shirt. He ripped the fabric off her. The buttons popped from their threads, landed on the rough-hewn floor like pearls bouncing on marble. The sound recalled a memory. What do you think of her? Isn’t she pretty? In the apartment in Kraków, her uncle’s fingers had directed her into the bedroom, where the black-haired doll was lying against a dirty pillow on the unmade bed. Her thighs were still tingling where the sharp, cold edges of the bicycle rack behind his seat had gouged her skin. She’s pretty, just like you are. She had held on to the doll while her uncle undressed her. When she dropped it, its china face cracked. One of the ears had broken off and skittered across the floor — just like the buttons of her shirt now, on the floor of Hermann’s apartment. Her eyes had tracked the broken ear until it stopped moving.
The German’s clammy fingers traveled down the length of her arms, peeling off the sleeves of her shirt like a second layer of skin. Hermann stopped when he reached her hands, and he intertwined his fingers with hers. Specks of his spit flecked her cheeks, but when she looked at him, it was Czeslaw’s face that loomed in front of her. When the German’s hands found her breasts, her nipples didn’t harden. They remained as soft as desiccated plums. He tried to touch her sensually, but she was only aware of his sweat and his eagerness and his breath.
When his hands dropped to her skirt and ripped the fabric, she slapped him. The violence was sudden and unexpected, and he reared backward. For a moment, Polina imagined that he would strike her back. Instead, his lips rose in another false smile. “Perfect,” he said.
She didn’t understand. She watched him straighten his spectacles on his nose, then take a step in retreat.
“Don’t move.”
One of her hands had found her skirt and was holding it up. The other was covering her breasts. She had no idea whether or not she was breathing.
He continued to stare at her, then turned and walked across the room. In the corner next to the wardrobe, he found his camera. It was a heavy piece of equipment. He hoisted it onto his shoulder by lifting the tripod, carried it back to her, set it down in front of her. “No — this won’t do.”
Polina couldn’t understand what he wanted.
“Here — come this way.” Hermann grabbed her naked shoulder, pulled her a few steps into the room, away from the window. “I need the light behind me.” He set the camera in front of the window, aimed it at her. The mirror was behind her, and her reflection was visible in the glass. Still, she hadn’t breathed. “Perfect,” he said. “Absolutely perfect.” His lips were raised in the same ugly smile when the shutter released. He snapped the photograph, then another.
AMALIA
10.
Jutland. December 24, 1941.
Amalia knelt beside the tub in the children’s bathroom on the second floor of the Nielsens’ house. Pushing her sleeve above her elbow, she submerged her hand into the bath. The hot bathwater stung her fingers. Between her knuckles, the skin was so dry that it was beginning to crack. The harsh detergents she used for the Nielsens’ laundry had given her eczema. At night sometimes her hands bled onto her sheets. Naked in the white porcelain tub, twelve-year-old Christina Nielsen splashed her. A droplet of dirty water nipped her eye. The bar of soap Christina had lost slipped from her grasp. Her sleeve dropped into the bath. The milky water blushed red around her fingers.
Although it was the day before Christmas, Amalia had woken at four a.m., as she always did in order to get to work by five. This morning, she had allowed herself an extra few minutes under the covers. The wind had been blowing so hard that it whistled in the chimney. Amalia could hear the shrill sound through the wall. It had been difficult to pull herself from bed, knowing that she would have to cross the field to the Nielsens’. The soil had frozen into ice. There was a hole in the sole of one of her shoes, and the slush would pinch her toes. Before the war, Christmas had meant roast pork and red cabbage, marzipan cakes and candles and gifts in the evening. Seven years ago, Amalia had traveled with Oskar to Copenhagen to spend the holiday with Fru Gregersen, and the family had taken a sleigh ride in a park where the trees were made of sugar and the sky cotton. What she remembered from that day was the slap of bells tied to the leather harness and the breathing and snorting of the horse when the driver coaxed the animal into a trot. It had been so warm beneath the heavy blanket. Dry flakes of snow had melted into nectar on her tongue. Now Christmas meant something else. Christmas only reminded her how harsh life had become.
By eleven o’clock, Amalia’s chores in the kitchen were complete. She had scrubbed the floor in the pantry, cleaned yesterday’s dishes, carted the trash outside, unpacked the special linens. Setting up for the afternoon party belonged to Mrs. Nielsen herself and her personal maid. Amalia was too young to be trusted with anything so important. Normally, Amalia had nothing to do with the Nielsen children, either, but Alicia, the governess, had contracted influenza. This had happened two weeks before, and Alicia hadn’t been allowed anywhere near the children since. Mrs. Nielsen had asked Amalia to look after Christina and Erik, to keep them out of trouble until it was time to get them ready for an early supper.
Christina giggled. Amalia’s knees throbbed on the cold, hard tile floor. A twinge traveled up her thigh. She ignored the pain, leaned over the wall of the tub, reached into the water to chase the bar of soap. When she touched the girl’s toes, the child squealed. She rubbed her legs together, sending another splash of water into Amalia’s face. “It’s not there, silly,” Christina said, “or I would have felt it myself.”
Amalia peered into the gray water. The soap was hidden beneath the film and froth. Giving up, she placed her hand on the edge of the tub, began to push herself to her feet.
“Not yet,” Christina whined. “You haven’t washed my back.”
Only four years separated them, but Amalia had the impression that she was bathing a baby half her age. The contrast between them was stark. Christina was rail thin. Her arms were twigs. Her skin was translucent. Amalia was dark and heavy. She was on her feet all day, but she ate too much. She could barely fit herself into the new uniform the Nielsens had given her just a few months before — she didn’t bother even trying to button the collar. Christina’s cheeks were rosy. Amalia’s were chafed from the weather. As far as Amalia could see, Christina danced from one delight to the next. Her own thick shoulders stooped. She had long since forgotten how to smile. “Does Alicia wash your back for you, too?” she asked the girl, pausing with one knee still on the floor.
When Christina laughed, her eyes caught the soft, gray light from the window and flashed liquid blue. Except for the cobalt accents in the corner of the floor tiles, Amalia had the impression that this was the only color in the room. Christina’s laughter burst around her like an explosion. “Don’t be so silly all the time,” she said to the fat servant. “Alicia doesn’t give me baths. She’s my governess. She reads to me and teaches me to write and to do math.”
“I’m sorry,” Amalia said. She didn’t understand why, but she felt suddenly stupid. “I didn’t know.”
“You didn’t know because you didn’t ask, because you’re a silly girl.”
Amalia’s fingers turned white on the edge of the tub beneath the weight of her body as she stood. Water tinged red dripped down the slippery porcelain.
“Wait!” Christina insisted. “You haven’t found the soap, and now you haven’t washed my back either.”
“Why do you want me to wash your back,” Amalia asked the girl, “if Alicia doesn’t?” Straightening up, pain radiated from her knees like heat, then dissipated. She stretched her neck and shoulders, arranged her shirt around her stomach.
“Because it feels good,” Christina said.
“If Alicia doesn’t wash it, who does?”
“Mama does, of course. Now wash my back, you silly cow, or I will tell Mama that you stole one of her brushes. The silver one with chestnut bristles.”
Amalia blinked. The girl’s words had stunned her. Though she had little experience with Christina, she didn’t put the threat past her. The soapy lather on the girl’s naked chest began to evanesce. Beneath the residue, her nipples were dots as faint as stains of raspberry jam. “How can I wash your back?” Amalia finally asked her. “You lost the soap, and I can’t find it.”
“Use a washcloth,” Christina said. “Do I have to think of everything?”
Amalia took a small towel from the linen cabinet, sat down on the edge of the tub behind the girl. The porcelain rim dug into her ass. She waited for Christina to oblige by leaning forward, then dipped the cloth into the water and began to wipe the girl’s back. It surprised her how sharp the child’s bones were. The ridge of her spine jutted from her neck. Her tendons were sinewy cords, as taut as the wires in the Nielsens’ grand piano.
Christina bent her head forward, rested her hands on her knees. Her shoulders, though, remained tense, raised. Without thinking what she was doing, Amalia let her fingers travel down the girl’s rigid muscles. “Mama never does that,” Christina said, closing her eyes.
Amalia dipped the towel into the bath again, squeezed out the excess water. Gently, she pressed the hot cloth onto Christina’s slender back, let her fingers trace the channels and grooves, peaks and valleys, in the girl’s frame. The bathwater stilled, and steam rose in small clouds that hovered above the surface. Drips pattered from the spout. The soapy brew sloshed against the porcelain. A minute passed and then another, before Amalia realized that the girl was working her thighs together. Slowly but deliberately, in rhythm with her own massage. She paused, and the girl paused. She dipped the towel one more time, lifted it again. Now the girl’s small hand found the apex of her thighs and, silently, disappeared into the water. “You mustn’t do that.”
Christina froze. Her body was as tight as a coil.
“You have to stop that,” Amalia repeated. “Now.”
Christina’s body stiffened under Amalia’s hand.
“Take your fingers away.”
Christina shook her head.
“Do you understand me? Take your fingers off your cunt.” For this was the word that she had heard her father use, so this was the word that she knew.
Christina quaked. A quiver started in her core, then traveled up her spine. “My what?”
Amalia took a breath — almost, it felt, for the first time since she had started giving the girl a massage. Steam filled her nose. The cloth, she realized, had become tepid in her hand. The fabric gouged her fingertips, and she understood that her fingers were pressed into the girl’s ribs. “Your cunt.”
A second quiver rose through the girl’s body. “Why?”
“What do you think you’re doing?” Amalia asked, answering the girl’s question with one of her own.
“I don’t know.” The girl squeezed her eyes shut. Her body was still flexed. And then her legs began to move again, as if she were swimming, only so slowly that — except for the surface of the water, rolling in small waves — Amalia could barely discern it.
Amalia let her eyes travel the length of the girl’s arm. Where her fingers disappeared into the gray bath, she was able to see the top of the girl’s small, hairless vagina. “Stop it.”
Christina shook her head. Her fingers were moving faster again.
“You mustn’t —”
Now the bathwater splashed against the walls of the tub.
“Stop it!” Amalia repeated.
“No.”
Amalia grabbed the girl’s forearm. In the same instant, the door to the bathroom swung open. The slosh of the water was so loud, so intense in Amalia’s ears, that she didn’t hear it. She wasn’t aware of the footsteps or the change in the value of the light. Her grasp tightened on the girl’s thin, bony wrist. Her fingers plunged into the warm water. She hadn’t intended to squeeze the girl so severely.
“What’s happening in here?”
The voice ricocheted off the tile walls like a hammer striking a mirror. The words reverberated in Amalia’s head. Her scalp caught fire. She twisted toward the door. For a split second, Erik was a giant. Then he was nothing more than a ten-year-old child again. A reedy, blue-eyed, blond-haired boy with a puzzled smile creasing his face into an exclamation point. “Get out of here,” Amalia said. Her fingers were crushed between Christina’s thighs. The water surrounded her hand like the lick of flames.
