This chapter is T rated, but there are lots of allusions to sexual violence. I know this is very dark, but it will get a bit happier.
Clotilde got to her feet with difficulty. She could feel a soreness that travelled along her hips as she tried to stand up. There was a wetness between her legs – a mixture of urine, excrement, sweat, semen and menstrual blood.
She put her hand against the desk to support herself, and looking up she saw him standing and watching her, smiling. It was then, when she saw his smug, arrogant face that she began to become angry, rage and fury swelling up within her.
"Are you sore, Clotilde?" he asked mordantly.
Clotilde didn't answer, but lifted her underwear and dress from the ground, biting her tongue, trying to restrain herself, just so she wouldn't provoke him. She put on her clothes lopsidedly, and turned and looked at him, trying to fix her hair so that it sat in the conventional position.
He led her down the stairs in front of him, holding her by the shoulders. Her parents were sitting in the kitchen, smoking. Marie was doing her homework with a cup of tea in front of her, calmly inhaling her parents' cigarette smoke.
Landa didn't say anything; he just took his handgun, raised it and fired twice.
Marie let out a bloodcurdling scream, and dived to the floor, covering her face with her hands, and whimpering. Clotilde didn't make a sound – she felt frozen with shock. Her mother was slumped over the table, blood pouring out onto Marie's schoolbooks.
Clotilde never cried over her parents' deaths. It was as though her own guilt had a numbing effect on her, stifling her grief and preventing its expression. After a few seconds Marie got to her feet, and looked about the room. She began to sob earnestly, clutching at her dress and wringing her hands. She walked to her mother's body, putting her arms around her and trying to embrace it.
Clotilde was startled at this morbid scene, and tried to pry Marie away from the body, somehow angered by Marie's display of grief and suffering.
"Marie, let her go."
"No," she replied, trying to push her sister away.
Clotilde was stronger than Marie, and putting her arms around her, managed to pull her away from the corpse into an embrace. They held each other, and Marie sobbed into her sister's shoulder; Clotilde looked up at Landa, who was still standing at the back of the room. His face was hidden in the shadow, but Clotilde could still see that he was sneering. He then walked out casually, leaving the two of them standing together in the blood spattered room.
The following day Clotilde spent hours washing her blood soaked dress. She sat outside, in the courtyard where Sophie had been killed. She ran it along the washboard until her knuckles were raw, her hands burning from the ammonia soap. It was then that she began to feel guilt, a horrific, crushing guilt, and a sense of fear.
That night Clotilde was woken by the sound of knocking on her bedroom door. She glanced at the clock in the corner – midnight. She opened the door cautiously, and peering out saw Landa standing on the other side. Immediately she tried to close the door, but he forced it open, throwing Clotilde onto the ground. She immediately curled, up, trying to protect herself from what she assumed would be a violation akin to the one she had suffered the previous day.
However, Landa, said quietly, "Get up, I have no interest in sexual relations tonight."
Clotilde stood up cautiously, and then as his eyes travelled southwards she became aware that her night dress, which she had had since she was a child, would have appeared rather too short for her. He smirked, and she blushed.
"Why I have come to see you, Clotilde, is so that we can come to an arrangement."
Clotilde swallowed.
"Now, from now on," he continued, "you'll do as my men want. That is, until we've finished our work here."
Clotilde began to shake, as it dawned on her what she was being asked to do.
"But-"
"If you refuse," he declared, "I'll let them have Marie as well."
Clotilde began to panic, and feeling her voice begin to falter, cried, "No! No, please, not this, not this! Please, not again!"
He replied sharply, "Stop making a scene. I'm giving you a chance to be altruistic; to be selfless; to make up for your past selfishness." He proceeded to laugh and leave her.
It was that morning that Clotilde began to become desperately afraid. She and Marie had just got up to go to school when a hand seized her by the arm, and barked at her, "No – you're not going to school today."
Marie turned and had barely said, "Why…?", when Clotilde ordered her to go on.
Clotilde had never really given Hell much thought, but the days that followed from that were certainly what we would call "Hell on Earth". She lived a prisoner in her own home, terrified of every shadow and noise – each one was a threat to her. Her feeling towards the intruders grew from irritation to hatred; for their lust, their unconcern, and their cruelty. Her bedroom changed from a sanctuary to den of iniquity, and the bloodstained sheets served as a reminder to her each day of the abuse she had suffered.
It was about a week later when there was a knock on the door and she was summoned downstairs. She was taken to the drawing room – their "good" room which was rarely used except for guests.
Landa and Renaud were sitting opposite each other, each holding a glass of wine.
"Mademoiselle," Landa began (Clotilde noted his return to a formal tone), "Fr. Renaud would like to speak with you."
Clotilde sat down on an armchair positioned between them.
"Clotilde," the priest said, "I've become rather concerned that you haven't attended school in over a week – have you been ill?"
Clotilde wanted to tell him, right there and then, everything that had happened (the bodies of her parents were rotting in the ditch behind the chausee, unbeknownst to the general public in B-); how they were alone, and what was being done to her.
"No, I haven't been ill, Father." She said quietly. Landa pursed his lips.
"Then why have you been absent? Clotilde, I can't recommend you for lycee if you miss lessons for no reason."
Clotilde wanted to tell him, to share the horror of what was happening, to escape from it for one day – but Landa's presence beside her made feel unable to do so.
"No, Father. I've been grieving, still."
The priest sighed, "Well, Clotilde-" he stopped abruptly, and looked at her intently, before asking sharply, "How did you get those bruises on your neck?"
Clotilde began to shake. He turned and looked at Landa accusatorily, who continued to sip his wine detachedly.
Clotilde said an incoherent sentence about having fallen, but the priest wasn't satisfied.
"Clotilde, what's going on?"
Clotilde whispered her answer, and it was at the word rape that the priest jumped to his feet, seething, rage spewing at every orifice. He launched into a tirade against Landa, spitting insults – depraved, immoral, wicked, degenerate, and so on until his lexicon of Catholic synonyms for "sinful" had been used up.
Landa continued sipping his wine, and, when the priest had finished, smiled widely, and asked indifferently, "So, what are you going to do about it?"
