The Second Winter, page 27
Oskar was still thinking about his confrontation with his father that night when he sat down on the side of his bed and pulled off his boots. Amalia was already sound asleep on the other side of the room. New Year’s Eve was only two days away. Today she had worked late to prepare the Nielsens’ house for the party. Fredrik was downstairs, asleep as well, in front of a dying fire. Polina was in the bathroom, cleaning her face, sponging off her body. Oskar untied his laces, then kicked the heavy boots from his tired feet. His toes were wet and cold, and he reached down and squeezed them until they thawed. The pain melted into warmth.
When Polina stepped through the doorway draped in a towel, he was still bent double. Her shadow slid across the sheet that divided the room. The only light emanated from the fire downstairs. The smell of soap wafted across the room with her, and with it came the memory of her perfume from the middle of the night. She moved without a sound, as light, Oskar thought, as a breath of wind. The sensation of her arms around him through their first night together, in Korsør, tickled his shoulders. “Sit down with me,” he said.
Polina paused behind the sheet. Her shadow undulated on the surface of the cloth.
“Sit down with me,” he repeated.
She took a step to the edge of the curtain. Why should I do that? In retrospect, Oskar wasn’t certain whether or not she had spoken.
“Sleep here tonight,” Oskar said.
“I might be bleeding,” she said.
“I was wrong before,” Oskar said. “I want you in bed with me.”
When she approached him, as gentle as she was, their first embrace was clumsy. It was nothing like Oskar’s dream. She misjudged the distance, and her hand poked his eye. Then she giggled, and when she leaned toward him to apologize, her mouth hit his forehead. She slowed herself down, clasped his shoulder, sat next to him on the bed. It took Oskar more than a few beats to realize that she was nervous. She had been so sure of herself since he had met her, and then so indifferent. Now he was seated next to a child. A girl barely eighteen. The temptress had vanished. This prostitute had hands that shook, a heart that beat loud enough for him to hear. Her fingers faltered as they climbed his chest. And Oskar, inexperienced himself, had no way to lead her. Their hands became tangled. He lost her face in the dark. When he leaned into her to kiss her, he found her ear, then her cheek. What he remembered afterward was the taste of her hair, and then the damp heat of her breath on his neck.
When he pulled his shirt off, the smell of his sweat displaced the soapy fragrance lingering from her bath. He slithered out of his undershirt, too, then stood to unfasten his belt. His trousers slid to the floor. He stepped out of them, then climbed into the bed with his underpants still on. He was so thin that the sharp edges of his pelvic bones nearly punctured his skin. “Lie down,” he said. “Here. Under the covers — next to me.”
Polina obeyed. He lifted the blankets for her, and she pulled herself onto the narrow, lumpy mattress. Her towel crumpled between them. He yanked it out awkwardly, dropped it onto the floor, found her naked body. She had entered the covers with her back to him, and he pulled her against him. In the small bed, the gesture was rough. The stiff sheets grabbed her shoulders. The straw pillow snagged her hair. His hands explored her body, and she was aware of the gnarled cuts and calluses on his fingers. “I might be bleeding,” she repeated.
Oskar didn’t understand. Of course he knew about a woman’s menstruation. But what difference did this make to him? She felt his lips on the back of her neck. Her hair caught in his mouth. He tried to kiss her. His teeth pinched her skin. The firmness of her breasts fascinated him. They were small and as hard as apricots. “I haven’t been able to escape you,” he said, though even he wasn’t certain exactly what he meant.
“I know, love,” Polina said. “I know.”
Her words were a whisper, and then the room fell silent again. Downstairs, a log broke apart into embers inside the fireplace. Another log popped, perhaps because the wood was still wet and the fire was having trouble consuming it. Fredrik rolled his head to one side, and the armchair groaned underneath him. Across the room, Amalia continued to breathe steadily. Her sheets rustled when her hand twitched.
When Polina reached behind her and took hold of him, she understood how much Oskar wanted her. She slipped her hand below the band of his underpants, pulled his erection free. Just this friction was enough to excite him further. She shifted her ass and guided him toward her. The dirty fabric of his underpants blocked his path, and she yanked the cloth out of the way, then repositioned herself. Her breasts ached. The smell of his sleep trapped in his blankets and pillow wouldn’t dissipate. His bony hips gouged her back. The ring around her neck formed a sharp lump between her ribs and the hard mattress. Knowing that the penetration would be a painful one, she bowed her head, waited.
But then Oskar stopped.
The house remained silent. The smell of smoke climbed the stairs. Polina lay still. When Oskar didn’t insist, she squeezed her hand around him, decided to finish him off that way.
Oskar wasn’t certain what had stopped him. He tried to silence his breathing, then found himself gasping. An instant later, the pressure of her fingers was too much for him. His eyes were open, but when he thought about this moment, he would remember them closed. He saw nothing but black. The taste of Polina’s hair suffused his mouth.
And then it was over. Just like that. The ejaculation gave Polina a small start. His penis was already becoming flaccid again. She held it firmly in her hand. “Are you finished?” she whispered.
Oskar’s heart was still pulsing in his ears. He was rolling in an undulating ocean, floating in the sun, washing toward the shore. The sensation, he realized, felt exactly like the elation of his dream. Softly now, he held her. His lips found her neck, nuzzled her spine. The glint of dim light reverberated in her hair. “Stay here,” he said.
“Your father —” she replied.
Oskar breathed in her smell. She was his. His. “It’s okay,” he said. “I want to sleep with you.”
“We shouldn’t.”
“I want you in my bed tonight.”
She didn’t move.
“Every night,” he said. Already, he was drifting off to sleep.
And Polina let him. She lay in his arms, listening. Across the cramped room, Amalia was still breathing softly. Downstairs, Fredrik reclined in his chair, master of the house, asleep in front of a dying fire, waking from time to time with a grunt. Mice scurried in the walls. Outside, the wind gusted, whistling in the eaves. The windows rattled. The buzz of a German airplane whined overhead, then faded, disappeared. The country slept, the house slept. But Polina’s eyes remained open.
She could count the steps to the sitting room. She could feel the cold, painted floorboards on her feet, the warmth of the fire on her face. And there was Fredrik, in his chair, his chin on his chest, his long hair shaggy, uncombed, hanging over his eyes. She couldn’t erase his image from her mind. She remembered him pounding the table. Enough! And then the feeling of her fingertips on his scalp and, later, of his gigantic fingers intertwining themselves with hers under the faucet. The memory was so real that her skin tingled. She tightened her grasp on Oskar’s hands, pulled them against her chest, then up to her lips. They were damaged hands, but they were good hands. She tasted his skin, recalled his smell, recollected him as she had first seen him, and then at the hotel in Korsør. The shoelace became a chain around her throat. This was the man to whom she belonged now — wasn’t it? And then she capitulated and allowed her thoughts to return to the beast sitting in the chair downstairs, absorbing the last heat from the hearth.
AN OVERDOSE
26.
Jutland. December 30, 1941.
Fredrik sat with his head in his hands. He was alone in this room. The bed’s metal frame sagged underneath him. The scent of Isabella’s perfume rose from a dark, indistinct heap on the mattress behind him. At three o’clock in the afternoon, the whorehouse was quiet. Music crackled on a speaker downstairs, barely audible through the oak planking. In the room next door, a whore was shouting angry words. Her voice carried through the thin wall separating them, but Fredrik didn’t hear what she was saying. His eyes were focused on the floor just beyond his bare feet. A heavy curtain covered the window. As low and threatening as the sky was, where the curtain was snagged on a loose nail the gap glowed white with an intensity that burned. Nevertheless, the room was dim. Shadows camouflaged the filth.
On the edge of a throw rug lay a syringe, half filled, a length of rubber cord, a spoon with a blackened bowl. At the sound of footsteps in the hall, Fredrik’s eyes darted to the door. A shadow flickered across the crack at the threshold. The footsteps receded, and his eyes returned to the rug. A shaft of light reached into the room from the bright edge of the curtain, bathing the steel syringe in a soft, luminescent pool.
A few minutes passed. Then Fredrik stood from the bed. His torso was clothed only in a singlet, tucked into the waist of his trousers. His arms were sinewy and strong, marked with cuts and bruises. His left shoulder was disfigured with a pink scar. He crossed to an ornate dresser. Its top was covered with a square of dirty lace. There was a pitcher with a couple of inches of water remaining in its reservoir, and he poured himself a glass. He swallowed too slowly, and water escaped on either side of his mouth, streamed down his chin, spilled onto his shirt. The singlet clung to his chest. He set the glass back down, stared blankly at the pitcher, then returned to the bed. Once again, the frame sagged beneath him. Once again, he lowered his head into his hands.
Half an hour earlier, when he had knocked on Isabella’s door, Fredrik had been holding something in a hand behind his back, and he was nervous when she let him inside. He had visited the small lingerie shop in Aalborg on his way to the whorehouse. The shopkeeper hadn’t restocked her inventory in more than a year, and Fredrik didn’t have much of a selection. He had considered stockings, but he wanted something special. There were a few sweaters and robes, but they didn’t feel appropriate. Finally, he settled on silk panties and a matching chemise. He didn’t like the color. Isabella had dark skin. But there was nothing else as beautiful in the shop. The shopkeeper wrapped the present in tissue paper and tied it with a ribbon. Fredrik shoved the package into his pocket and trudged across town to the brothel.
When Isabella opened the gift, she said nothing at all. Fredrik hadn’t expected this reaction. He had never bought her anything before, and he thought that she would be pleased. Sitting on the side of the bed, she pulled the tissue apart, picked the delicate silks out from the paper, held them up to the light. Fredrik wanted her to try the lingerie on. She had large breasts, and he wondered if they would fit inside the chemise. Instead, she folded the undergarments onto her lap. When she met his gaze, she didn’t smile.
“Wash yourself first,” she said.
Fredrik stood above her, propped against the headboard of the bed. His arms were crossed over his chest. He looked down at the whore. Since when had she told him what to do?
“Go on,” she said. “Wash yourself.”
The gift meant nothing to her. He had spent three crowns on the weightless bits of shiny fabric, but the gesture had been ignored. He pushed himself up from the bed frame. The bathroom was at the end of the hall. He grabbed a towel from the back of a chair. The cloth was still damp, and the smell of mildew wafted into the air. Out the corner of his eye, as he closed the door, he saw Isabella slide open the drawer of the night table.
In the hallway, he heard music rising through the building. Someone was listening to the radio with the volume turned so high that the sound from the speaker was distorted by static. The song was something that Fredrik had never heard before, something in English broadcast over an Allied station. He paused to listen. He had received the beginning of a classical education in Copenhagen, and the melody cleaved itself into words he could understand. When you look at me, it’s easier for me myself to behold. Behind him, in Isabella’s room, he heard the floorboards creak, then the scratch of a match against flint. He imagined that he could smell the pungent, sour scent of heroin boiling in the basin of a spoon. He stared at the closed door, then followed his shadow down the corridor to the shower.
Now, sitting on the side of Isabella’s bed, he squeezed his temples with his thumbs. His hair was still wet. He drew a deep breath through his nose. When he exhaled, his breath caught in his throat. He let go of his forehead, raised his eyes, once again fastened on the syringe. Thirty seconds passed, then a minute. Then he leaned forward, hooked the chrome plunger with the tip of a finger. He stared at the amber liquid still inside the tube, measured the volume. The steel and glass caught the weak light, and the glint became a reflection on the glazed surface of his eyes. His left hand curled into a fist. With his right hand, he gripped the hypodermic with a practiced motion. His fist tightened until his fingers became white. He didn’t bother with the rubber strap. He placed the needle against a bluish vein, pushed slowly until the steel point punctured his skin.
At the Nielsens’ house, Amalia was carrying a bundle of soiled linens down the length of the hallway upstairs. Her foot scuffed the carpet, and she tripped and lost her balance. As she fell, she tried to catch herself on a decorative table. Her hand struck a porcelain bowl, and the pottery skidded across the tabletop. If it had hit the floor, the bowl would have shattered, certainly. But by some miracle, when it left the table, it landed instead on the laundry Amalia had been cradling in her arms. Her knee scraped the carpet, her wrist wrenched backward. Her gaze remained fastened on the bowl. She heaved a sigh of relief when it didn’t break. Tears stung her eyes. No one in the house seemed to have heard.
Picking herself up, she returned the bowl to the tabletop. Her hair had come loose, and she collected it back into a bun. Then, glancing up and down the hallway first, to make certain she wasn’t being watched, she reached into her apron. Her pocket turned inside out in her haste, and she stuffed it back into place. After another quick look behind her, she slipped a chunky tablet she had stolen from the vial in her father’s coat onto her tongue. Even as she swallowed it, she told herself that this would be the last time. She wouldn’t let this become a habit.
She gathered the laundry, started once again down the hall. Behind her, a door opened, but she didn’t hear it. Old man Poulsen leaned his head into the hallway, peered at Amalia’s retreating figure. Light was streaming into the house through an oversize window at the end of the corridor. Despite the clouds outside, this light burst into the hallway and surrounded Amalia in a halo so bright that the old man had to squint. He watched her shrink as she walked. The light grew brighter. At last, he had to shield his eyes with a hand. At the base of the hall, when she turned to glance behind her, he couldn’t see her face. She had become a black silhouette, flat and featureless. The bundle of laundry in her arms had become indistinct, and the old man wondered if she was carrying one of the children.
Amalia noticed the old man, and she smiled. The old man didn’t return her greeting. She opened the door to the rear stairs, carried the laundry down to the kitchen. Dropping the bundle into the utility sink, she twisted on the taps. Steam from the faucet billowed into her face, and she closed her eyes. The water was nearly overflowing when she remembered to open them again.
In the barn, Oskar had dropped the shovel and taken a seat on a crude bench Fredrik had fashioned from two logs and a splintered plank. Slivers of wood pierced the fabric of his trousers. He was suddenly out of breath. He had woken this morning at five and had been busy all day without a single break. A pig had escaped, and he had found it half frozen on the far side of the property. After that, he had had to cross the farm a second time to repair a fallen section of fence. He hadn’t eaten breakfast, and now he was missing lunch. His heart was racing. If he didn’t sit, he might tumble.
He took a few deep breaths and steadied himself. Behind him, the pigs were bleating. They needed to be fed. The hens squawked. He twisted on the bench to see if something was disturbing them, but the barn was empty. He faced forward again, leaned his elbows onto his knees, let his head hang. At his feet, he noticed a few stray feathers. He picked one up and examined it in the dim light. When he held it at a certain angle, its barbs turned from gray to purple. He gripped it by its quill, brushed the soft tip of the vane against his chin. This made him shiver. He let the feather drop, watched it flutter to the hard floor of the barn.
A few minutes later, after a rest, he was feeling better again. He stood from the bench and crossed to the barn doors. The air was thick with mist. Across the icy yard, the windows of the cottage were dark. A thin trail of smoke was rising from the chimney, and he breathed the sweet smell into his lungs. He narrowed his eyes and tried to see inside through the plaster walls.
Upstairs in the cottage, Polina was standing next to the window beside Amalia’s bed. When Oskar stepped into the light at the crack between the barn doors, she took a quick step backward, hid herself in shadow. His face was pensive. His eyes were focused into a squint. His mouth was raised in a loose circle. His front teeth showed white beneath chapped, cracked lips. Not for the first time, Polina remarked to herself how beautiful he was. He had grown up on this farm, a slave to his father. Fredrik had worked him from morning until night, seven days a week. His hands were bloody despite how callused they were. His face was weather-beaten. His nose had been broken and was misshapen. He only cut his hair when it tangled. He hardly ever bathed. But there was still something soft about him. His mother must have been a beautiful woman. He had Fredrik’s height, Fredrik’s arms, Fredrik’s build. But he had a woman’s eyes, he had a woman’s lips, a woman’s cheekbones. That was it. He must have resembled his mother, and yes, Fredrik must have fallen in love with the woman for good reason. Polina took another half step backward. She didn’t want him to see her.
