Thank you guys again for the reviews! You are more than kind.
Please don't do this. Don't make her watch.
Tell us what we want to know.
Do you know why you are here, Caroline?
Stop screaming!
Get this off. Get this off. Get this off.
"Hey!"
A dark figure before me. Get this off. Get this off. The room spins. I can't breathe. A hand shoots towards me. The flinch is instinctual and my head bangs against the stove.
"Jesus! Calm down, alright? You're going to fucking hurt yourself."
Blackness fills my vision as the figure hovers closer. My cheeks register the hot streaks of tears as my eyelids squeeze shut, blocking out this living nightmare.
Shut up or I will shut you up!
Tugging at the torturous cloth biting into my face. Get this off. Aching screams from my muscles and I plead with myself not to move a hair's breadth, not to accidentally touch the arms encircling my head. He'll kill me. He was good at killing, he said. Enjoyed it, probably. I was nothing. No one worth sparing. The man they sent to finish me is cold and brutal like an assassin should be. Why he insisted on going to the cellar is because it is a suitable tomb. No one is ever going to know I was here.
A bomb would have blown me to smithereens during the battle if there was any mercy left in this world.
The air is cold against my face as the cloth falls loose and the warmth of the arms withdraws. My lungs burned with held breath. It escapes in a great gush from my freed mouth.
There is the sound of shoes scuffing on the stone floor. My eyes shoot open, but there is nothing but darkness and shadows. I wait for the gunshot, for the knife, for anything that might signify my executioner has deigned my life over. My heart rattles against my ribs, echoing the throbbing in my hand.
I jerk as the click of the flashlight echoes through the cellar, and the bright beam sweeps over my shelves. What is he looking for? Evidence of my transgressions? Shouldn't my file be enough?
My breathing is unnaturally loud in the stillness.
"Do you have a lamp or something?" His voice is deep and rough and it scratches against my skin. A shiver makes my bones tremble.
The light turns towards me and my world is suddenly blinding. I want to hide my face but my wrists are still locked to the stove. I duck into the crook of my elbow. I can tell the light doesn't move and there is the sound of heavy boots coming towards me.
Tell him. Keep him away, I think to myself. But my mouth refuses to form the words and my vocal cords choke against the icy hand of fear wrapped around my neck.
"I asked you a question. Can you understand me?" His voice sounds like it is right next to me. The smell of him – blood, sweat, cigarettes – is overwhelming. Calloused fingers grab my elbow and pull my arm away from my face. The flashlight lays me bare but I keep my eyes squeezed shut. The world spins and the ground shifts underneath me. Breath rushes in and out of my nose. Don't faint. Who knows what he will do to you.
There is a muttered curse and the light moves away, leaving me in darkness once more. I regain more of my wits with every step he takes further away and the more distance is created between us. The more warning I will have when he strikes. I crack my eyes back open.
The washbasin clatters noisily across the stones as he kicks it away from the shelves. I don't own much and it doesn't take him long to find my lamp.
He uses the same match to light it and a cigarette. My hand is distracting as the light slowly gains strength. A bright red blush covers my knuckles and even through with the numbness curling from the tight binds the pain makes itself known.
As the dark corners of the room illuminate I know it is time to look at my killer but I let my eyes linger on my hand. Do I want to know who he is? Do I want to see the satisfaction on his face as he closes in? I'd rather not know what was coming and leave this world as suddenly as I came into it.
But my pride, though it is nothing but remnant shreds buried deep in my consciousness, protests. If he means to kill me then disappear back into the night like a nameless apparition, then I want him to know that I see him. That I will take his face with me to my grave. Cowardice has been a label I have lived under, but it shouldn't be one I die still clutching.
It takes the balance of my courage to raise my head and direct my stare towards the man, who by now had collapsed on the cot.
I expect a soldier. I expect a uniform. I expect a Stahlhelm helmet with a flared rim and his collar to be adorned with a SS patch.
He is a soldier, and he is in uniform. But it is green, not gray. His helmet is round, and his patch is on his shoulder. An eagle.
My breath stops. I can't blink. My pulse pounds in my temples.
Oh my God.
The words are a thought, but his head snaps towards me like I have spoken. His helmet shadows his eyes, but the line of his jaw is thrown into sharp relief in the lamplight. I watch it move. He is talking, but I hear nothing but a murmur through the fog of shock engulfing my brain.
I am a dead woman. Perhaps not by the hand of this man, but all the same. They are going to find out. They are going to arrest me. If they thought I was a traitor before –
I don't need to tell you what is going to happen if you disappoint us.
Oh God. An American is in my cellar. An American is here with me. Why? Why? How is he here? Out of all houses, he chose mine? No, no, no. He speaks German. His accent is Austrian. Not someone who learned it for the army. A native speaker.
Yes. Yes, that's it. He's a spy. His uniform is his cover. He is on our side.
But why attack me? Does he know me? If he is just a German soldier why am I tied to this stove? If he was sent here to kill me there is no reason for the disguise. Unless they thought I would welcome an Amer –
"What the hell are you looking at?" His voice is loud and angry. I blink and there he is, nose to nose. My breath automatically sharpens and I recoil, but my bleeding back hits the wall. I clench my teeth from the pain.
His eyes are brown. They glare at me.
"Do you hear me? Do you understand me?"
Of course I do, but… but…
"American." I breathe. It's all I can manage.
His lips flatten into a thin line. For a flash I think of the recruitment posters in the village. Soldiers, drawn in sharp lines and broad shoulders, demanding victory against the Great Menace. All angry stoicism in dramatic lighting. He looks just like them, but it is wrong. It is all wrong.
"How…" My voice rasps in my throat. My lips crack painfully. A headache radiates across my skull and the gears grind in my brain. "German…" I can't think of the words. Like a marooned fish I can feel my mouth moving but nothing is coming out. He stands, still glaring.
"What? An American speaking German is some sort of surprise?" He scoffs and moves back over to the cot, grinding his spent cigarette under his boot. The next words are English. I only understand one – Nazis. The other sounds like a curse.
So he thinks I'm a Nazi. Well I am, aren't I? Isn't there a photo of me solemnly taking an oath to uphold the values of the Nazi party? That's all the proof anybody needs. He can't find out. It would make everything worse. Worse than it already is. An American soldier is trapped behind the line and he is using my home for shelter. This can't be happening. This can't be true.
My heart leaps against my ribs as the panic rises again. I can't get arrested. I can't go back there. I have been waiting for it, but I won't go. I will die here before they take me. The American might not kill me, but if they find out he is here the end of my story is written.
He needs to leave. He needs to get out of my cellar.
"You can't stay." My words are croaked. "You have to go."
He turns and his smirk is icy and cruel. "What are you going to do about it?"
He doesn't wait for an answer that I'm not sure I can give. The cot creaks loudly under his weight and he sinks down with a deep sigh.
He isn't going anywhere. I am trapped with him. He takes off his helmet and brown hair falls onto his forehead. His gun rests next to him. Dark smears of blood mar the stock.
He doesn't look at me as he lights another cigarette. I want to shut my eyes again, close him and this awful situation out, and disappear into the safe recesses of my mind. But I can't. My stare is glued to him as he unbuttons his jacket.
A grimace dances across his features and a soft hiss rises from his mouth. The jacket falls to the floor in a muddy pile and black wet blood soaks the side of his uniform shirt. He rips it off too. The white undershirt is bright red. He is injured.
By the time he is done his skin has gone white and glazed with sweat. His fingertips tremble slightly as they bring the cigarette to his lips.
I want to think he looks more human without the trappings of war hanging off him. Less dangerous, less deadly. I want to imagine him as some sort of guest instead of a captor.
But the sharp line of his jaw remains the same. The angles of his cheekbones are shadowed in the light. An Aryan nose that looks like it was drawn by Goebbels himself. If he weren't covered in dirt and blood he would be a perfect German hero. The only way someone like him would enter my life is to sign my death warrant. It is useless.
A glint of metal against his chest. Dog tags. And a –
A…a…
No. Oh please, no. I was deluded in thinking this couldn't get worse. It is worse. Oh God, so much worse. Finding myself in the company of an American is pure treason, but a…
"Jew. You're a Jew." I feel breathless.
He being Jewish is the finishing touch on this horrible story. Traitors get a quick death. Traitors who help Jews get a tortured one.
"Yes, I am." A flush returns some of the color to his cheeks. The intensity of his stare pierces through me and I retreat back into myself, pulling my knees tighter against my chest to bar him from me.
He rises again, the Star of David flashing on its chain. His height dwarfs me when I am standing and now he towers over me on the floor. "Do you have a problem with that?"
The clamp around my throat is back as his footsteps echo towards me. I only trust myself to shake my head.
"Good. Do you have some bandages or something around here?"
Copper and smoke. The smell comes from him in waves.
Watch, Caroline. Watch what happens to traitors.
"Stop acting stupid. I'm tired of repeating myself."
His eyes burn into me. I swallow, willing the words out of my choked throat. "Everything I have is on those shelves."
He turns away and disappears into the shadows on the other side of the lamp. I desperately try to move beyond my knee-jerk horror, to process what I am seeing and come up with any sort of plan to deal with the pure destruction that has arrived on my doorstep. If he doesn't kill me immediately, he will be found. I don't have secrets. I'm not allowed to have secrets. Especially ones pertaining to Jews.
I can hear things being moved about and my sewing kit flies from the darkness to land on the cot. A bottle of whiskey lands next to it. Not mine. The thick layer of dust covering the label confirms how long the previous tenants of my house have been gone.
My hands are going numb, interrupting the swirling circle of my thoughts. Twisting against the binds doesn't help loosen them.
He appears again, filling the small confines of the room. I feel hot, even if it is the dead of winter outside. There is too little space.
"Could…could you loosen my hands?" I try to sound confident. I try to give the impression that I wasn't deeply terrified. He looks up from pawing through the sewing basket. His expression tells me his answer before he speaks.
"No."
He pulls out a roll of thread. I need it; I won't get more ration cards for three more weeks. Nothing is freely given anymore. Fabric, food, gasoline… all needed for the war, I'm told. To achieve final victory.
How sewing thread will beat back the invaders I don't know. But this doesn't matter as I watch him pull off about a half a meter, cutting it with his knife. I've regained enough sense to not protest.
I swallow as he pulls off his undershirt. Modesty is no longer important. If people were modest I wouldn't be here right now and neither would he. Civility was lost as soon as the Brownshirts took power and beat it to death along with everything else that was good and decent.
My physical recoil is instinctive.
No, no, no. Mustn't think that. Mustn't think that. No need to bring more trouble down on myself. I'm already a traitor again in my actions. I can't be in thoughts too.
We were beaten. Made laughing stock of the entire world by Britain and France. Who returned us to glory? Who gave us back our respect?
Our Fuhrer, sir. My hand pulses with my heartbeat. I can't feel my fingers.
The pale planes of his torso are marred by a jagged red streak curling around his side. Drying blood oozes down to his belt. It looks painful and a brief glimpse of his face tells me it is. He grabs what is left of my sheets and cuts more strips.
The dried cork protests as he yanks it out of the liquor bottle and the pop sounds like a gunshot. We both flinch.
He is silent as he takes a long swig, which quickly stops his shivering. More is poured on a patch of cloth. A brief hesitation, then he slaps it onto the wound. I hear a sharp intake of breath move past his lips and he closes his eyes, becoming still as stone.
XXXXXXX
Oh God. His side may have well erupted in flames. He wanted to yell. He wanted to punch something. He wanted to curl up and cry. The agony was all consuming and if it weren't for the girl staring at him, waiting for him to show weakness, he would have done something reserved for the heat of battle, when tears created no judgment and calling out for your mother was a rite of passage.
Instead he steeled himself to be silent and still. If he so much as blinked she would know that he was on his last rope.
The screaming pain pounded into him for what felt like hours before the intensity ebbed even remotely. Forcing himself to breathe through his nose to keep from passing out, he pulled the compress away.
The gash was bloody and angry, but the edges showed pink as the alcohol dissolved the dirt.
He found the one sulfa pack left rattling around his empty aid kit and poured it onto the mess of blood and liquor. He had no fucking idea what he was doing, but maybe there was a chance he wouldn't die of gangrene.
He needed nicotine. Haze still drifted through the air from his first two smokes, but his third was just as sweet. The tobacco and alcohol – always a blessed combination – held his hands firm as he threaded the needle.
He braced himself as he used his fingertips to press the wound closed. He needed to do this. He needed to stop the bleeding.
The sensation of the needle piercing his skin was lost in the general fog of pain shooting through his chest. It was a small mercy.
Twenty-four stitches. He stabbed himself with the needle, pulled the thread through, and fought the urge to faint for twenty-four stitches. Across the room the girl did not so much as breathe, her eyes following his hands. His cigarette was burnt down to the filter, but he kept it secured between his lips if only to seal away the groans rolling up his throat.
Might as well make this as miserable as possible. He poured fresh whiskey over his sewn side, the burn making his jaw ache as it clenched. But it was better. See? The stitches were already working.
Getting the cork back into the whisky bottle was nearly insurmountable. His arms felt limp and his fingers were clumsy. He sagged against the wall behind him, eyelids heavy. The vision of the woman blurred. He was so tired. When was the last time he slept? The day before yesterday? The tying of the stitches pulled the last of his energy from him and now he was empty and ready to collapse.
What was she going to do if he closed his eyes for a few minutes? His knots hadn't loosened and he would hear if she tried to escape. This was the safest place he was going to be until he was back amongst his brothers. Yes, he needed to get some sleep eventually.
The blackness that took him was so swift and sudden that he didn't get a chance to tell the girl to be still and quiet. Time and fate would tell him if this was a mistake or not.