Chapter 37
They eat and drink and make merry until it is finally time to return to their apartment, Dr Josef holds the door for her and she slips past him, to set Pink Bunny on the bedside table.
Z turns her back and flaps her hands helplessly, he thinks he understands, she needs help to remove her fine gown.
He pulls gently at laces of pink satin and tries not to remember the night in 1939 when he last did something like this.
Irene had made so beautiful a bride: statuesque and golden, like an angel…
Nothing like Z.
Small and curvy, with golden skin, thick wild hair and those strange almond eyes: like twin obsidian stones.
It is like comparing night with day, sunlight with moonshine a diamond's brilliance to a ruby's fire.
Z shuffles away to prepare herself for bed, and Dr Josef lies back and scientifically considers her imperfections.
Too short, barely above five feet tall, all but a dwarf!
A round behind, when held next to Irene's slim, athletic figure.
Irene was graceful, Z prances about like a sprite, wild with barely restrained energy, always rushing about here, and there, there and here.
The food in this country suits the girl, her bones no longer just as they used to like branches stark and glittering in a winter forest.
She prances back out, her nightgown is satin and lilac, kissed with white lace, the promise of those unAryan curves shimmering beneath the cloth.
She slips into bed beside him, sparkling in the starlight, those eyes: haunting pools of midnight: in the candle golden glow of her face.
He recalls the whistle of the knife in the alleyway, she had not hesitated, nor shrunk from her duty in that awful moment, she had aimed for the throat to silence any cry her enemy might make.
Dr Mengele confesses himself impressed: within the cold and gleaming corridors of his own mind.
He has watched a thousand men die, and women and children, this strange girl has the art for killing, as surely as he does.
There was no flicker in her eyes, she tossed a weighted blade end over end as if it were nothing, quick as the twinkle of a musical note.
He chose well, his little companion in escape.
And he had thought her nothing but a liability, a screaming child to be ordered and beaten and threatened into obedience, he reminds himself that she is all this and yet tonight when danger threatened she proved herself much more.
Tomorrow he will take her out and buy her candy, and a storybook besides, his little gypsy deserves a reward, and it pleases him to give her treats and trinkets, he shudders to recall how his beloved Mother scolded his Father like a common fishwife for any extravagance.
He hides the memory of the dreadful day with the family automobile, behind telling Z to remove her nightgown, she smiles and obeys pulling it over her head, she lies her head upon his chest, and he strokes her hair delighting in the warmth of her skin, soft as fairy wings even after all this time: she still smells like fresh strawberries.
For all that has brought him here, an ocean away from family and friends, his life and career in smouldering ruins, despite those two agents and the fear that pulls at him like skeletal hands from the shadows of the past, here, tonight with little Z in his arms, he is happy.
Her presence is like the half-recalled echo of a beloved tune, a twinkling of remembrance, dancing, somewhere at the edge between sleep and memory: the whisper that tomorrow will be better.
The months pass and life goes well for Herr Doktor and his strange little companion, his work prospects improve, and he moves them into a pretty house, with the much longed-for cat that Z loves dearly and fusses over as if it were a "Nicht Owl baby", with money from his Father Dr Josef is able to buy his way into a pharmaceutical company, and with this regains access to his greatly missed laboratory space, it is much smaller, and not so well equipped. but he can send for those things he still needs.
They are to begin testing drugs for their side effects and he is lucky enough to have the perfect test subject!
He makes his way home after examining the place from top to bottom and arranging for it to be cleaned to his particular satisfaction.
Z looks up at the familiar whistling and her stomach drops, it can mean only one thing.
Herr Doktor's work will begin again.
She cuddles the cat closer: as if it can shield her from all that must now befall her.
As Dr Josef comes in with a familiar bloody gleam in his eye, Z sets lunch on the table in the bright afternoon sun, a world away from ice and snow and showers of poison blue gas and tries not to shiver.
He tells her all about his new acquisition and extolls its merits to her in great detail, it even has a little room for her: If she is too ill to be moved safely: she can sleep on the operating table, and he will stay in the clinic with her.
Z does not want to sleep on Herr Doktor's operating table, ever again. She has night terrors from her years of sleeping in his medical block.
He glances up with enchanting dark eyes, and in one smooth movement rises and steps to block the door.
It is 1942 all over again.
She is no longer his subject! The Reich has fallen! He said he would let her go!
Dr Josef laughs, he did offer to: in 1945! She chose to stay. He told her that his work was only halted temporarily, now it can begin again, isn't that wunderbar?
They are going to change the world.
But first, he has a present for her!
He places a small brown wrapped parcel in her hands and Z, distracted: opens it carefully.
It is not a dress, not a storybook, nor candy, not even a new toy for the cat.
It is a dark blue glass bottle, the colour of poison.
Her old enemy: Potassium Superoxide.
Herr Doktor takes it swiftly form her hands before she can overcome her terror long enough to decide to smash it.
Sit down and eat her lunch.
The girl obeys, it is a simple dish of her childhood rice cooked with meat and stock and spices.
For all her strange, foreign tastes Dr Josef has to admit that her cooking is one of Z's very best skills, so he enjoys his lunch and tries to think of how to lure her back into his web of chemicals and restraints, and walls as white and shining as opal stones.
It would not be seemly to drag a young girl, screaming, through the streets of Buenos Aires…
He reaches into his pocket with a sly smile and holds out the brightly wrapped candies.
Z yelps happily, as unseen he slips the needle's glittering spindle into her arm swift as quicksilver,
She falls back in her chair and he stands over her smiling, the familiar mad gleam in his beautiful dark eyes.
Dr Josef carries her out to the waiting car and lays a blanket over her, tucking it in as carefully as ever and arranging pink Bunny beside her.
It will look to all the world, as though the child simply fell asleep during the journey.
He drives her slowly through the crowded streets, filled with brightly dressed men and women, the laughter of small children, still, she sleeps.
Dr Mengele stops outside his bright new medical facility, and lifts Z out like a broken doll, he carries her inside and lies her familiar and well-beloved form out on the silver of the operating table.
He straps her down with practised ease and leaves her to sleep whilst he washes his hands and fetches the bottle in from the car.
Carefully he opens one dark eye with slender, gentle fingers, and allows a few drops of the chemical to fall, Z's frail unconscious body shudders beneath his pale hands.
He moves to her other side and performs his wicked magic again.
Even in her drug-induced sleep, she is whimpering through the strap of leather buckled between her pretty white teeth.
Were his little subject awake she would be howling.
He gently brushes the tears from the golden cheeks and then slaps her viciously across the face.
Z bucks and writhes, even as lost to the world as she is but the tears cease.
Gut! Even with her eyes closed, she could wash out the Potassium Superoxide with her silly crying.
Has he not had to tell her this a thousand times?
Now be a good girl, and stay sleeping, Herr Doktor has other business he must attend to.
Josef is sure to leave Pink Bunny resting against her arm, even if she can't see him when she wakes, she will be able to feel him there and it may…
He is startled from his work an hour later by her endless, guttural shrieks.
The damn Bunny made no difference.
She is howling for someone to help her as he strides in, whistling…not him…not him…anyone in the world but Mephisto…
Hmm, this is new.
Be quiet: he has guests.
She doesn't hush for even a moment, merely screams more.
Dr Josef sighs, is she going to make him hurt her again?
Z is thrashing, pulling against the restraints, begging him to let her go…
He laughs a high, cold sound, and now it is not charming in the least.
Gone is the amber and ruby richness of so many years ago: he laughs like a lunatic with a knife.
Don't be so silly, she is only alive by his whim.
This is the only reason he brought her out of Auschwitz.
Now! They have work to do, he cannot finish it without her, truly.
She is so very special to him… does she not remember that?
Dr Josef Mengele strokes her pretty black curls, as she trembles and sweats in terror and pain in the summer heat.
Hush, meine Kinde…