Aldo Raine was dreaming of his children. He dreamt rarely, and those times he did, the dreams were bad. However, this one was pleasant; Aldo held his newborn daughter in his arms and gazed down at her wrinkled face and felt his heart explode. She mewled at him, crying for her mother and the milk in her breasts. And Aldo turned to his wife and handed over his daughter and they smiled together.
And then he was awake.
He lay on his bedroll for a few moments, studying the low ceiling above him. Counting to three, he rolled off the pallet and stood up. It was dark, but he could see the faint outlines of his Basterds all around him.
In the corner, a sudden pulse of orange light from a cigarette illuminated the smoker's face. Hugo Stiglitz looked furious in the foggy glow, his eyebrows drawn together and mouth stern.
'Stiglitz.' Raine nodded a greeting, ignoring the characteristic anger that seeped from the Sergeant.
'Lieutenant,' Hugo replied.
The German picked up a flask beside his feet and threw it to Raine. Raine caught it deftly, opened it, and took a hearty swig. The alcohol was potent – more so even than the moonshine liquor he had brought with him – and he coughed, screwing up his face.
'Is good?' Hugo asked, chuckling roughly.
'Funny,' Raine said sarcastically, tossing the flask back.
He dug in a bag and pulled out some bread; it was hard and stale, but Raine didn't particularly care. Folding the bread over a chunk of cheese, he took a large bite and sat down beside Hugo.
'How's the baker?' he asked.
By 'the baker', Raine meant to man who was hiding them. They had been taking refuge in the spacious cellars beneath a beer hall in Saint-Mandè ever since the Nazis had discovered their last hideout – it had been a week, and they were laying low for a while. The owner of the beer hall – and therefore, the cellars – was a slender Frenchman by the name of Sergè. He had acquired the nickname 'the baker' on the first day that The Basterds had met him. The name had been given to him on the basis that he looked like a baker that had worked in Donny and Zimmerman's hometown. It sprung from a comment and became Sergè's new name.
On the day of the French surrender, Sergè had helped escort almost two hundred Jews from Paris to Le Mans, and from there they had travelled further south and escaped into Spain – since then, he had been sheltering Jews in his cellars until they could be safely moved. In all, he had helped save thousands.
Hearing of this, Raine had immediately visited the beer hall and had been granted use of the cellars for as long as was needed. The baker was honoured to be helping those who would – and, more importantly, could – bring down the High Command.
Apart from having to share the cellars occasionally with scared Jewish families – who all were impassioned upon meeting the Basterds – there was not one criticism to be heard about their new accommodation – except from the unvoiced faults.
Hugo and Donny shared the same one – though neither knew that the other felt the same way. The beer hall, although situated in the centre of Paris, was just too far from Katerina – a good half-hour's tram journey. It was no longer a case of sneaking out to see her – both men had to think up new excuses that might cover at least two hours' worth of time. But neither of them had seen her in a long time. For Hugo, it was only six days – the night when they had fucked against a wall in the abandoned basement, surrounded by snow – but for Donny, it had been almost three weeks. The last time he had seen Katerina was the night when he had given her the locket he had stolen from the body of a woman caught in crossfire between him and a Nazi soldier. Both men missed Katerina terribly, but neither one of them voiced their complaints to anyone.
As Hugo sat beside his Lieutenant, though, all he thought of was Katerina. The soft cries that whistled through her clenched jaw as he thrust into her; her gentle kisses after he was finished; the sweet warmth between her thighs… and her eyes. Her beautiful dark eyes, set in shadowed sockets, which seemed to drink in the sight of him and relish in its taste. Oh, how she was beautiful.
A hatch in the ceiling that led to the beer hall opened and a set of legs appeared, reviving Hugo from his reverie. Donny dropped through the trapdoor and landed awkwardly, swearing. With him came a burst of light; it was clearly day outside, and the mid-October sunshine had filled the beer hall above and spilled through the hatch. In the pale light, the letter Donny clutched in his fist was unmistakeable.
'I know she's been talking to the Nazis,' Donny started as he handed the letter to his Lieutenant, ' but now it looks like she wants to talk to us.'
'What does it say?' Hugo asked curtly, before Raine had even opened it.
'She wants to meet,' Raine said, his eyes skimming the paper. 'This evening, late. She says there's an abandoned flat near to her house that we can go to.'
'I know where it is,' Hugo said. It was the same flat they had last met.
'Where did you find this?' the Lieutenant asked of Donny.
'She as good as gave it to me – clearly knows we're watching her. Just came out of her house this morning, waved it about a bit and put it on the wall. There weren't no-one with her – the Nazi father and mother had already gone out in the car somewhere.'
'Blödes Fotze,' Hugo interjected. Katerina's father had hit her. He deserved to die.
Donny ignored his German brother-in-arms and kept talking.
'How many of us will go?'
'I'll take Stiglitz, Hirschberg and Utivich. Don't want to scare the girl,' Raine decided.
Donny looked as though he would challenge the decision, but Raine raised an eyebrow and the younger man backed down.
'I will meet you there tonight,' Hugo announced. Then he scaled the ladder and disappeared. It was a normal thing for Hugo to do – leave suddenly –and the other two thought nothing of it. But Hugo had only one thing on his mind – the time he could spend with Katerina.
Katerina too had received a letter that day; it was meant for her father, but she sat reading it in the dining room, the table before her littered with half-filled cups of coffee and scrunched up pieces of paper, tinted orange in the late afternoon sunshine. She had been sat there for almost three hours, drafting and re-drafting a letter to The Apache. She didn't know how to make it sound afraid, and at the same time proud and determined. It was hard because, for one, she was not afraid of him – Landa could do so much more to her – and also, she had no idea what to write.
Katerina had held out a week before Landa had visited her and demanded to know why she had not left the house. She had been trying to forget everything; curled up beneath her quilt, maybe asleep, maybe not – it was hard to tell, for both states were a pure torment of blackness and tears – until Madeleine had roused her, washed her, dressed her, and helped her down the stairs to the front room, where Landa waited. He had sipped his tea and asked politely about her wellbeing. And then he had shouted. And then he had hit her. Only once.
And then Landa had been replaced with Axel – Katerina couldn't remember how that had happened – and he had gently wiped the blood and tears from her face and whispered to her of love and sorrow.
'The end will come, Katerina. If you truly love these men, you will create as much happiness in these coming weeks as you can – not only for yourself, but for them as well. Do not be stupid, for I know you are not. You are stronger than this. I may not be able to stop the pain you will endure before this is over, but I can help you. I am not Hans Landa. I care for you, even if I should not. Live through this, and know that you will always be stronger than he is. Because love, Katerina, is stronger than hate.'
But as she sat at the table, drinking cold coffee and reading her father's letter, she wondered if Axel had been right. Was her love for Hugo and Donny and Bruno greater than the hate that Landa bore for The Basterds? Katerina wasn't sure. And the letter in her hands hardly helped – it just added to her list of worries, but also removed one.
It was written in a concise, feminine hand: blue-black ink on thick white paper. Katerina had recognised the writing on the envelope and had opened it immediately. It was Landa's handwriting. Addressed to her father, the letter detailed Katerina's position in the design of removing all terrorist threats from the country, and expressed the pointed suggestion that she could – and would – be left to her own devices. There was also a barely veiled threat concealed within the last few sentences which even a fool would be able to spot: Katerina was being watched, and if she were to do anything out of the norm – and have no excuse for it – the whole family would be imprisoned as terrorist aides.
It meant that Henrik would no longer have any excuse to beat her on the grounds that she was spending time in 'male company', as she was now doing so with the permission of one of the highest-ranked officers in the whole of Hitler's entourage. And for that, at least, Katerina was grateful.
She finally lay down the letter, after reading it about half a hundred times. Eyeing it suspiciously, as though afraid that Landa himself might materialise out of the words, Katerina stood up and cleared all her failed attempts at Aldo's letter into the wastepaper basket, then piled her dirty cups onto a tray and carried them downstairs to the kitchen to be washed.
As she returned to her bedroom via the servants' staircase, Katerina heard a knock on the door and Ada's voice echoing in the stairwell. She continued upstairs, though, not caring whom it was. Most likely her parents had returned from wherever they had been; either that, or it was Mayer come to check up on her. Katerina wondered if he had received a similar letter from Landa, and if he had, whether he would leave her alone because of it.
Ada knocked on her door lightly and told her that it was a soldier waiting downstairs. Katerina thanked her, but dressed slowly. Even if it were Hugo returned to her, she would barely be able look at him without imagining how much he would hurt when she broke him. It had been the same that morning, when she had given Donny the letter for Aldo. Katerina had taken one glance at his face and burst into tears. He had embraced her still, not knowing why she cried, but she couldn't stop, and soon he let her go, looking helpless.
Katerina closed her eyes to expel the memory, and succeeded – just. After a few moments of silence, she fastened Donny's locket round her neck and glanced at herself in the mirror. She looked older than she had done; taller, slenderer. Her pale hair was knotted in a loose bun at the nape of her neck, but some tendrils had untied themselves and hung about her face like wisps of smoke. The clothes she had put on belonged to Marie, who could no longer fit into them – her belly was growing fast, quick with child as she was. A loose, pale purple silk blouse, patterned with white flowers, and a skirt that hugged her slim waist and legs. She looked – again – like Liesel. Fingering the locket and thinking of her mother, Katerina descended the stairs slowly and crossed to the front room, her shoes echoing in the high-ceilinged hallway.
Hugo waited inside, the uniform he wore crisp and straight. He turned as she entered, and raked his eyes up her body to her face.
'Ach, Ihre Augen,' he whispered.
He reached out and touched her face, traced her jawline and lips, caressed the soft skin over her cheekbone and the faded bruise, and pushed away the strands of hair covering her ears. And Katerina swallowed back tears and leant forwards, brushing her nose against his. The fragile kiss that followed was tender and gentle. It was soft and – for Hugo – excruciatingly slow. He wanted to push her up on the wall and fuck her again, to feel her breath against his neck and her fingers on his chest, her skin on his. For Katerina, the kiss was an apology. She was apologising for the pain she would cause him, and the pain she would cause Donny too. Then Hugo deepened the kiss and ran his tongue over her lower lip and gripped her arms like he was drowning.
But Katerina couldn't take it. The pleasure in her heart and the fear in her mind crashed together like waves against a cliff and she seemed to shatter from the pain. Suddenly, surprising even herself, she pushed him away, falling backwards until her spine hit the wall.
'Hugo!' she gasped, not truly knowing why.
'Rina?'
'I…' Katerina couldn't find words. Too much, too much, too much love!
Hugo took a step towards her and reached out. His touch evoked bursts of hate and pain and fear, and passion; she hit him away and fled.
Running through the hall, she hurled open the front door and threw herself down the steps, pure desperation giving her feet wings. She was halfway down the street where they had last met when Hugo caught up with her and grabbed hold of her arms.
'Katerina!' he yelled, straight into her face – a face now dripping with angry tears.
'Hugo, I cannot love you!' Katerina cried. 'I cannot!'
Hugo took a step back, shock on his face.
'Because of your father?'
'Nein! Because of me! I am not… I cannot… You should not love me!'
'Why?' Hugo demanded. 'Give me a reason, Rina. I will not leave you until you do.'
'Hugo…' Katerina sobbed loudly, her body shaking.
Hugo silenced her with another kiss – hungry and angry and afraid and void of care. He crushed his lips onto hers and she kissed him back, equally as furious and scared.
Hugo unlocked the basement flat they had utilised last time and pushed her onto the bed, positioning himself over her; she clawed at his shirt and the skin of his stomach and felt the soft hair that trailed down from his belly. And Hugo pulled off his own shirt, and hers as well, and kissed the silken skin of her breasts. She moaned and writhed beneath him, her hips rolling sensuously, feeling the hardness of him flush against the warm heat of her navel. She scratched his back and drew blood, and Hugo hissed with pain – or lust. It was hard to discern between anger and pain anymore – especially for Katerina. Nothing made sense – nothing was there, save for Hugo's skin on hers, the pulsing heartbeat beneath her palms, and the urgent need to claim his body into her own. And as he slipped inside, between her thighs, and clenched his buttocks against her fists, a surge of pure love swept through her body like a tidal wave.
And then they lay together on the bed, their limbs entwined and a gentle wetness underneath them. Katerina breathed onto Hugo's warm neck, her head nestled against his shoulder, and traced the pale scar that cut over his ribs and down his side. She nearly slept, but Hugo would ever so tenderly kiss her eyelids, and she would open her eyes to meet her mouth with his.
'I am sorry, Rina,' he mumbled eventually.
Katerina pushed her self onto her elbows to gaze at him quizzically.
'Whatever for, Hugh?'
'Making you… so unhappy,' Hugo said quietly.
'No, Hugo. Earlier, I was confused. I didn't know what to do. But now I do. I love you, and I won't stop just because of my father or Mayer or Hitler – no one can stop me now.'
And it was true – she now knew what she was going to do. So much pain in her past – her mother's death, Dieter's attack, Henrik's brutality… she deserved happiness. And Hugo was her happiness. She deserved him. And knowing the torture she would put him through – it almost didn't matter, because she was doing it for love. She loved him, and this way, he would go away to America instead of being killed at Landa's hand.
'Why do you speak of this Obersturmführer-SS Fotze?' Hugo asked again, more interested that defensive.
'My father has engaged us,' Katerina lied. It was the only excuse she could think of to explain her behaviour. 'It is what he wanted this whole time, and now… I cannot refuse him, Hugh.'
'Yes you can!' Hugo said sharply.
'Hugo, you do not know my father!' Katerina replied, angry. She stood up and pulled on her blouse, buttoning it up furiously. 'Were I to refuse, who knows what he would do?'
Hugo sat up on the bed and caught her arms, pulling her down onto his lap. She didn't refuse; in fact she turned to him and let him kiss her face again and again and again.
'Dieter is dead,' Hugo whispered finally, in a rare moment of emotional empathy. 'And he will not come back.'
'But Henrik is the same –'
'No he is not, Schatze. He is your father, and he loves you.'
Katerina ran her hand over her cheek, where her father's anger had left its mark. He did not love her. He could not.
'Hugo, he loves me no more than Dieter did, that my stepmother does. He loves me no more than the English do – no more than the Jews do. To them, I am a monster, who stands idly by whilst their families are torn apart. And to my father, I am unwanted, and useless; I am loathed by him simply because I was not a man.'
'Schatze, what does it matter if he does not love you?' Hugo breathed into her ear, his voice warm and rich. 'For I do.'
