Forest outside Rodelheim, Germany 5:15 AM
Sgt. Donowitz opens his eyes, feeling like he rolled over in the night only to find it was already morning. He is still half asleep. His foot, which for once isn't stuffed into a GI sock inside an unforgiving black combat boot, is still wedged in the door between dream and reality.
darling when you're near
His chest tightens.
there's such an air
A gentle touch is leaving him and he fights it like he's never fought in his life, clenching his jaw and shutting his eyes again. He hates himself with all his might.
of spring about it
"Fuckin' Cole Porter," he says aloud. The gravel in his voice surprises him. Did that happen over night too? Speaking breaks the spell - he is fully awake and now aware of every tendon and ligament in his battle-broken body. He sits up with a groan, scratching his head of dark filthy hair as he looks around him. He can't remember getting into the sleeping bag, let alone taking it out of his ruck sack. There is a bottle of gin at his feet, half-empty. Wicki snorts from inside the bag next to him, as if to ask, "What did you think you were going to do, kick the habit?"
"Not in this life," Sgt. Donowitz says grimly, creaking into a squatting position and lumbering out of the tent. It is something the boys say to each other. Not in this life. Sgt. Donowitz, like the rest of the boys, might have started out as an individual with aspirations and all that naive shit, but the machine has overtaken the vast majority of his will. Half of me is dead, he thinks over again, and the other half belongs to the Basterds. The morning sun is pale and cold like the stretched, panicked skin of the men they've left in a bloody trail. Not men, he reminds himself. Nazis. Animals. Pricks.
Now outside the tent, Sgt. Donowitz cracks his neck on either side and sniffs absently. A couple of the other guys are nudging dirt onto the firepit. Lt. Raine stands on high ground with his rifle in one scarred hand. It's quiet for now. Donowitz lights a cigarette dug from his front pocket and quiets his buzzing tongue with a curl of smoke. It's all stale, of course. He hasn't been able to taste anything since Munich. Fuck Cole Porter, he thinks again decidedly, slicking his hair back with both hands. He fixes his mouth in a smirk which will stay as long as he needs it to. Donowitz leans over to retrieve a baseball bat from the dirt, tossing its length between his hands deftly. With this, he has flicked an internal switch to fully become a Basterd and nothing else.
"Christ, Donny, you look fuckin' terrible," Ulmar laughs from the fire-pit.
Sgt. Donowitz says nothing. He stares at the bat and doesn't see Ulmar's face drop.
"You, uh...you were really crazy last night..." Ulmar trails off, poking the ashes dejectedly. This is his way of asking if I'm alright, Donowitz thinks. He forces a laugh which Ulmar looks surprised, but relieved, to hear.
"Yeah, well, I wasn't going to let all the shit you lifted go to waste."
"Sure. I mean, you were talking about that girl a lot towards the end, and we all -"
"What?" Donowitz says suddenly. His mouth is dry.
Ulmar looks at him again searchingly. The other guys have turned to stare at him too, and Sgt. Donowitz feels uncomfortably vulnerable. It is a feeling he despises, so he tries to backtrack - to cover up his mistake.
"You mean that broad in Hamburg?" he grins, but Ulmar isn't laughing.
"No, you kept saying this girl's name, it was all fucked. I m-mean, you were fucked up."
"Well, ah. I don't know..." Donowitz pulls his boots out of the tent and starts to strap them onto his sore feet. Wicki has climbed out and is staring at him as well, rubbing his red-rimmed eyes.
"Oh, Laos? I thought he was talking about the place," Wicki adds, his voice thick.
"Nah, it was like Laytos, or Louis," Hirschberg pipes up, and Donowitz shoots him a dark look.
"I don't know what the fuck you idiots are talking about," he says, laughing. "The hell if I know what I was sayin', I was smashed for crissake. We all were. Damn, I wish we had more nights like that out here. 'Times I feel like we're walking in circles!" Donowitz says just a bit too loud. He can tell from the shifting of the other Basterds that Aldo is listening. "Ah, fuck it. I gotta take a leak."
Sgt. Donowitz does not meet anyone's eye as he stalks out of the camp, undoing his belt for good measure. He feels the weight of his bat, tucked under his right arm. He cannot look at it, but he knows the shape of her handwriting. Sometimes at night, after Wicki falls asleep, he traces the sloping letters with a callused fingertip.
L-A-O...
He hates himself, and he hates her too, a lot of the time.
But once upon a time Sgt. Donowitz wasn't Sgt. Donowitz. Instead he was Donny, one of only two Jewish boys on Poplar Street in Boston, Massachusetts, if he wasn't forgetting anyone. Let's say one of three, Sgt. Donowitz thinks. That's about right.
He hadn't been a good boy then either.
When he was Donny, he hadn't smoked a day in his life. He did drink often, but he was a brazen kid, only boasting fifteen years of age, most of which had been spent playing baseball, chewing gum, and more recently, jerking off ferociously to a magazine photo of Carole Lombard.
His tolerance for hard alcohol had made him riotously popular with the boys on his street, as well as a few of the outgoing girls. Donny was often pursued by the girls who hemmed their skirts a tad higher and wore thigh-high stockings to highlight their coltish gams - girls who rubbed their mother's rouge into their cheeks and dusted the top of their buoyant young chests with shimmering powder - girls who "put out" - as his buddies laughed over stolen beer.
Of course, parallel to the crude whispers of Donny and his friends ran the delicate musings of the young girls in town, some not even from the Jewish side. In fact, Donny's name was on the lips of the majority of the girls on Poplar, and hidden in the thoughts of the rest. He had dark chest hair that could be seen at the collar of his dress shirt in Sabbath services, and he winked animatedly at any girl who turned in the presentation of the Torah to glance back at his lean frame. He sat on the curb between two of the guys on his stickball team, and would sometimes lie on his back as the girls walked home for lunch, laughing as their feathers ruffled. Could he see up their dresses? Did they want him to?
Sgt. Donowitz remembers these girls in a colorful, glossy blur, without names or scents or distinct faces. They were forgettable as a whole, Donowitz thinks, as soon as he saw Laoise for the first time. Laoise O'Connor, although she liked to be called Louise for reasons no one knew for sure.
At the second he first saw her, thirty feet away from him, leaning on the awning by Pallin's Pharmacy, Donny felt as if his stomach had collapsed in on itself. She had been in a grey flannel dress that cinched in the back with a shining blue ribbon. No, a black ribbon, you asshole, Donowitz thinks. It was a black ribbon at the small of her back, which he pulled apart softly days later at a school-sponsored social. With a childlike curiosity he watched her turn towards him, as if in slow motion. Her clear green eyes met his just before she smacked him across the face. The jazz band played on in the background, and her girlfriends shuffled away from them, perplexed.
"Don't dothat again!" she exclaimed, and he had laughed at her. Not out of spite or anything, but because she sounded so familiar with him, claiming a right to tell him what to do.
"I w-won't," he grinned at Laoise. She stared back at him, recognizing him only as the boy who had asked her a favor in class the day before.
"You're the one that stole my pencil," she said flatly. It was not necessarily an accusation.
"I'm sorry. I wanted to keep it."
"Oh."
"I want to dance with you." he stated, his brow furrowing.
"Well that's no way to..." Laoise began to protest, but trailed off as Donny reached for her hands. Holding both of hers in his together, he stood motionless. He frowned, frustrated with himself for not listening to Ma before leaving that night.
One hand on your shoulder, and the other she puts in your hand. And you hold her waist, you hear me, young man? Her waist only, with your other hand, your left hand.
Laoise sighed lightly, taking his hand and placing it below the loose black ribbon on her dress. Their eyes met, and she blushed.
"Like this," she said gently, stepping towards him. Donny found the rhythm and followed her lead until he was comfortable enough to pull their bodies along.
