Chapter 19 The Resurrection
Long, but worth it. Angst! Poland! Frying Pangle! Angst! Settle in with your favorite beverage and let me know what you think.
Maria dutifully got up and dressed to attend Easter service with Onkels Ludwig and Vash at the Lutherische Stadtkirche. In some ways, it reminded her of the Catholic Church; there was an altar with a large crucified Christ, hymns she couldn't sing, and a similar structure alternating prayers and Scripture readings. But she noticed differences in the prayers and how the minister spoke much longer than the Catholic priest. As they headed back to Onkel Roderich's house, Switzerland asked her if she knew what "grace" was, why the minister spoke longer than the Roman Catholic priest and if she was thinking of going to a Lutheran church back in Neustrelitz. She was feeling more and more overwhelmed, as if a teacher were quizzing her in front of a class.
"I don't know, Onkel," she finally sighed. "It seemed pretty similar to the Catholic service—"
"—It is not similar!" Onkel Vash snapped, green eyes flashing. "Grace is freely offered by God to all! You can't buy it by building a fancy church or doing good deeds or saying certain prayers. When you accept God's gift of grace, it transforms your heart so you freely, joyfully give to God and others."
"I'm sorry, Onkel. I just meant the service, not the beliefs." Maria looked over longingly to Onkel Ludwig for help.
"But it's not! Do you know before the Reformation, the church services and the Bible were all in Latin? And most people couldn't read their own language, much less a Latin prayer book! When mortals began to question and demand Scripture translated into vernacular languages, the Pope and his minions crushed them! Why do you think they wanted to keep God's word away from the common mortal?" Vash narrowed his eyes. "To keep them under control and reliant on what they claimed the Scripture said!" When he jabbed his finger at her, he reminded Maria of an angrier Poland.
"Vash, it's too early for theology," Onkel Ludwig sighed. "Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again. I think all Christians can agree on that." He winked at Maria. "And we can have a splendid feast and then see what the Easter Rabbit has brought. Rumor has it he gets his chocolates from Switzerland." He nudged the smaller nation and managed to get a smile from him.
As they entered Austria's house, they heard joyous music by Mozart throughout the first floor and the sounds of bickering, bustling nations coming from the kitchen. Muti trotted out, wearing an embroidered blouse and dirndl skirt. "Frohe Ostern!" She cried, offering hugs to her brother, daughter and cousin. She told them briefly about the Catholic Easter service she had attended with the remaining nations.
"Did Vati go with you?" Maria hadn't seen him since last night's dinner.
"Nein, Liebling. He got up when I did and went for a walk."
"And he's back!" Maria felt fingers tickle her sides and she shrieked in surprise. She turned and saw Vati grinning at everyone, mischief dancing in his red-violet eyes. "I followed the three of you for the past few blocks and you never noticed. I still have my awesome surveillance skills!"
"Ja, because nothing says 'Christ is risen' like being trailed by a former Communist atheist," Vash muttered as he went upstairs to change.
"I'm like the Holy Ghost, Schweizer; I blow where I wish, you may hear my sound, but you do not know where I come from or where I go, kesesese."1 Vati wrapped his arms around Maria; she was so happy to see him in a cheerful mood and to get hugged. "Frohe Ostern, Spatzchen. So, what's on the schedule for next Sunday at home? Greek or Russian Orthodox? Anglican Communion? Free Will Baptist? Shinto? Asatru?"
"Vati, you're being silly," Maria giggled. "Next week we'll take Willi for a walk in the woods near Lake Müritz."
"So does that make us water-worshipping pagans, tree-worshipping pagans or Pomeranian-worshipping pagans?" Vati removed one arm and crooked a finger towards Muti for her to join them. "You know," he said as he curved one arm around her slight shoulders. "Your mother is a daughter of Freya, the Old Norse goddess of beauty and love.2 She is initiated in secret arts known only to goddesses. That's how she caught a nice atheist boy like me."
Maria squirmed as she watched her father pepper her mother's cheeks and mouth with kisses. "Ewww, old people snogging!" She laughed and ran to the kitchen. Hungary and Austria were bickering about who was better at carving the ham, Northern Italy was pouring Hungary's garlic soup into a tureen, and Lithuania and Poland were slicing bread. Onkel Ludwig was adding last minute decorations to his lamb cake. "Can I help anybody?" Maria called.
"Wesołych Świąt, Maria!" Poland called. "Go get the butter lambs out of the refrigerator and put them on the table. One for every two place settings." Maria followed his instructions and then helped bring other dishes out to the table. Things were finally getting interesting this weekend, she thought; delicious food, then looking for Easter baskets, and then…being bored as the adults dozed or talked. Poland and her mother had thrown interesting tidbits about the past towards her and she wondered if she would hear any more. But conversation was polite and mostly about current events and issues facing the nations at the next World Meeting. No family gossip, no arguments, just a little nostalgic reminiscing about past Easters. Maria finished eating and fetched her tablet to watch a movie until it was time to hunt for Easter baskets. She had helped her mother and Onkel Vash assemble the baskets last night, but they insisted on doing the hiding by themselves; that was one of Muti's favorite traditions that she shared with her brother.
Maria thought it was funny to watch adult nations get excited about locating baskets. Even if they had been doing the same ritual for decades, they still got as competitive and engaged as children. Vati had challenged Austria and Hungary to see who would find theirs first, just as he had since the late nineteenth century. Muti gave Onkel Vash hints by shouting "heiß" or "kalt" as he got closer or farther from his basket, just as she had since the end of the First World War. Maria wondered if they ever got bored or if they were pretending to enjoy themselves, like pop stars trying to act as enthusiastically during their last tour date as they had on their first. Maybe they actually entered the spirit of the moment and it was still fresh and fun to look for that basket, despite the amount of times they had done it over the centuries. She still enjoyed it, even if it wasn't the same as it had been only a few years ago, when she had been a kindergartener.
Poland flopped down next to her on the couch. "Inspecting your haul, chickie?" He asked. He fluffed up the grass in the red-and-white basket Maria and Muti had assembled for him. He admired the lamb brooch she and Muti had found at the Easter Market and pinned it to his embroidered shirt. He chuckled when Austria emerged as the victor of the basket-finding competition. "Pretty fast for a grandpa, isn't he?" He nudged Maria and winked.
Maria laughed and then froze. Austria looked no older than twenty-five, his dark-brown hair and slim, upright build giving no sign of his true age. He and Elizabeta had no children born of their bodies, only past nations whom they had collected and lost as an empire. Muti was not his real daughter, anymore than Maria was hers. And Maria realized that even though she had the same body parts as her mortal classmates, the same monthly flow, the same flutter in the belly when certain boys looked at her, she would never carry a baby in herself, never watch a little boy or girl crawl, walk, or run to find an Easter basket. Austria would never disappear from the earth, to live on only in warm memories and photographs passed from one age of generation to the next. Polish and German mortals would replace each other, moving farther and farther away from the times of old hatreds until they wondered why they had ever fought in the first place, but her father and the humming blond man next to her were stuck with the scars and insults on their bodies and minds, no matter how many centuries had passed. Mein Gott, she realized, we're all stuck. Her stomach lurched.
"Excuse me," she muttered. She could feel a cold sweat blooming on her forehead. She had to get away from them, their chatter and memories and grudges. She got up and ran upstairs to the guest bathroom. She shut the door and kneeled over the toilet. Nothing, yet her stomach felt terrible and her head felt worse. Tears joined the sweat running down her face. Finally, she gave up and curled up on the fluffy rug in front of the commode, blood and dread pounding like centuries of troops on the march in her skull. She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to rock herself to sleep and forget the truth about her existence.
She heard a knock at the door. "Uh, are you, like, all right?" She recognized Poland's voice. "Do you want me to get your mother?"
"Nein," Maria replied. She sat up and stared at the door. It cracked open and she saw Feliks peer in.
"Hungary?" She shook her head. "Is it a female thing? I've got lots of sisters and I'm totally fine with girl stuff."
"You can come in. I want to ask you something," Maria whispered. Poland slipped in and joined her on the rug.
"What do you want to ask me, chickie?"
"What did you ask my father to forgive you for? What did he do to you and your sister?"
Poland sighed and shook his head. "Oh, Maria, that's not the kind of stuff to talk about on Easter. This day is all about like, redemption, new life, forgiveness of sins!" He patted her knee. "That was, like, decades, centuries, ago. As long as we're all in Austria's house, I want to be, like, civilized and able to have a polite chat with your dad over tea and makowiec. If I start thinking too much about the past, that'll like totally harsh my mellow." He waved his hand. "Ask me another time, like when my army comes to Brandenburg to train with your uncle's. At least, that way if I get mad, I can like run and wrestle and shoot things, and your uncle can break up any fights between me and your dad."
Maria looked at Feliks, puzzled. "I didn't know Polish troops came to Vati's state to train with Onkel Ludi's army!"
"We've been doing it for like forty years now!" Poland exclaimed. "And France shows up to train, also. Just between the two of us, "he leaned in and dropped to a whisper, "I think he only likes to come to watch Lower Saxony's chest bounce during the morning runs!" He giggled and Maria joined in; Tante Monika was very tall and athletic, but she was also generously endowed.
"Mój Bój, that reminds me of the time I brought kettlebells to training! They were just getting popular outside of Russia and I had this fabulous pink set. I bought some as gifts for your father, aunt and uncle, and I gave your Onkel Ludi and Tante Monika pink ones. Your Vati's eyes were twitching and he could barely speak as we were doing our squats swinging them!" Maria started laughing; she knew the expression Poland was referring to, and she didn't know which was funnier: imagining that or her stern, muscular uncle working out with pink weights.
When she regained her breath, she asked, "Is it true that Tante Monika was a punk rocker in the 1970s and 1980s? Did she really run around West Berlin in tight leather jeans and a black tank top with safety pins in her ears?" It was hard to imagine her serious, proper aunt doing that, but her father, Onkel Ludwig and even Hanover herself had mentioned it in passing.
Poland shrugged. "You gotta remember I was behind the Iron Curtain back then, chickie, and I was kind of busy with, like, strikes and bringing down communism, so I can't say. But I do know," he nudged her shyly with his shoulder, "that back in the day—like the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries—she had quite a thing going on with your other auntie." He nodded and looked knowingly at Maria.
Maria stared back, aghast. "You mean she was in a relationship with Thuringia?!" She had been intrigued about hearing some family gossip, but this was just too much to believe.
Now it was Poland's turn to look shocked. "Mój Bój, nie! Your father's sister, the one you're named after." Marie kept staring at him, puzzled and then stunned. Out of all the German states, not one of them had the same name as she.
Poland's eyes slowly widened. "Your dad didn't tell you he had a sister?" She shook her head. "Oh, chickie, I can't believe that! I know she was mad at him for Jena, but he should have mentioned her to you for family and history's sake!"
Maria studied her hands. Vati had told her stories about his childhood as the Teutonic Order, his time as the Kingdom of Prussia and Onkel Ludi's boyhood. He said very little about the Weimar Republic and the Second World War, but he talked about his time as the German Democratic Republic, his reunion with Onkel Ludwig, and how he had met her mother. In all the stories, he never mentioned having a sister. "Who was she? Does she still represent anything? Did you know her?" She looked up at Poland.
"Hmmm," Poland sighed. "Where to begin? Let's just say that when your father was the Teutonic Order, he found a little girl entity whom the Order called Maria and they gave her their new city of Marienburg to represent. Then lots of fighting between him and me, and I got the city, but because I'm like a good Christian and I believe in turning the other cheek, I graciously allowed him to take Maria out of Marienburg, so I could call it Malbork. She went with him to Ducal Prussia, which I allowed him to hold as a vassal to my kings. They both converted to Lutheranism and used Königsberg as the capital of Ducal Prussia." Maria raised her hand to ask a question.
"I thought the entity of a nation automatically gets the capital," she asked. "So if Königsberg was the capital of Ducal Prussia and Vati was Ducal Prussia, what did his sister represent?" She had a hard time thinking of this figure she had never known about as her aunt.
Poland shrugged. "I don't know. I do know that in 1618, your father got into, like, personal union with the Electorate of Brandenburg, so he moved to Berlin, and his sister stayed in Königsberg. Then in 1656, your father's boss the Great Elector struck a bargain and a treaty with my boss that basically released your dad from being my vassal. It was a dumb move; Liet was totally right in warning me about it, but whatev. That's when your dad became the Duchy of Brandenburg-Prussia and then he got another ambitious slyboots as his boss who struck a deal with the Holy Roman Emperor to start calling himself King in Prussia. This bugged me and my bosses, because we had the territory called Royal Prussia, which was where my sister Gdansk was. Like, you can't have two Kings of Poland running around, because that's just like begging for a civil war, but whatevs. Then your father got even more ambitious, got two more clever bosses, and finally in 1772, after the first partition, they get part of my territory called Royal Prussia, so now he and his boss, Friedrich II—God have mercy on his heretical, sodomitical, pustulent, Polonophobic, deceitful soul—" Feliks crossed himself and spat into the toilet—"could officially call themselves the Kingdom and King of Prussia." Poland exhaled and turned to look at Maria. "And all this time his sister, the one I assume you're, like, named after, is the entity of Königsberg."
"So what does Jena have to do with this?"
Poland was about to speak, but then he paused. "I know this sounds really weird, but you have, like, the most fabulous hair. I'm just jonesing to braid it or style it. Would you mind?" Maria thought for a second and agreed. Talking—or rather listening—to Poland was fascinating, and if he wanted to play with her hair while he told her family stories, she didn't mind at all.
"Goody!" Feliks started separating one side of her hair into sections to braid and loop. He continued. "Jena was a battle in 1806 between your father and France, and France like totally crushed your father. Now your father and Maria"—Maria jumped at hearing her name and she had to remind herself that Poland was talking about the aunt she had never heard of until today—"rode into battle and fought together, but when things fell apart for Prussia and he retreated, he thought she was behind him, but she wasn't. She was intercepted by, like, a cluster of French troops, unhorsed and was holding them off with her sword until some mortal figured out they were getting beaten by a girl. The moment she lost her footing, she was doomed." Poland paused. "And I don't mean like they were going to kill her."
Maria thought about this relative she had never met, a female entity slashing and hacking away at men who wanted to do more than kill her. She saw reports about violence on television and the internet and she knew what Poland was hinting towards. "How do you know all this?" She whispered.
"I was there!" Poland said cheerfully and he started working on another section of her hair. "You see, after the last Partition, I was supposed to be, like, dead, but France took me and some of my mortals in. His boss, Napoleon, kept telling me he was going to put me on the map again. So I was there at Jena, fighting for France, taunting your dad as he fled the field, when I saw a group of mortals swarming around something like a pack of feasting wolves. I ride over, and Mój Bój, there's Königsberg! I beat the mortals away, scooped her onto my horse and rode back to headquarters. France and I patched her up and brought her with us to Berlin for Prussia's surrender. We were going to return her to your father, but she gave him like a total bitchface and insisted that we allow her to travel safely back to join her queen in exile. So we gave her safe passage to Mamel where the Prussian Queen Luise was. I'll never forget your father's face. Part of me was like 'Ha ha, even your sister like totally hates you and thinks you're a failure!' But another part of me kind of felt sorry for him because he looked so hurt and ashamed at leaving a fellow soldier, his own sister, behind. And rumor has it, she never forgave him."
"Where is she now?" Maria imagined Vati's relief about reuniting with his sister after a terrible battle and what he must have looked like when she didn't want to be with him. A memory flashed into her head: she was five, asking him if brothers and sisters could sleep in the same bed. His sad face backlit by the hallway's lighting. Poor Vati, she thought.
Feliks shrugged. "She's Kaliningrad Enclave, a little slice of Russia tucked between me and Lithuania. For decades now, her mortals have been petitioning Russia to change the name back to Königsberg or anything else. They say they don't want to live in a city named after Stalin's yes man."3
"So what was she like?" Maria asked. "Do I look like her?"
"Nie," Poland said matter-of-factly. "She looks a lot like your father. Same silver-blonde hair, same facial structure. She had long legs, basically a slender girl. Main difference was eye color. Her eyes were like violet—"
"Like mine?" Maria interrupted.
"Nie, hers are one or two shades lighter than yours and she had little red flecks in them." Poland finished with her hair and smiled into Maria's face. "Don't beat yourself up about not looking like her, chickie." It was weird how he seemed able to read her mind. "You're like really pretty and you'll be even more fabulous when you get older. In fact, if I were your tatuś, I'd totally—"4
"Get the hell away from her." A familiar voice growled from the bathroom entrance. Maria turned and saw her father glaring at them. He was breathing heavily, fists clenched at his sides. His eyes were the color of fresh blood. She had never seen him so angry, not even when she had thrown temper tantrums over stupid things like insisting Willi should sleep in her bed. She was frightened.
"What? We were just talking." Poland tossed his head at him, wrinkling his nose.
"I. Know. That." Vati's voice was low and poisonous. Ach nein, Maria thought, how much did he hear? Her stomach flopped and she edged back towards the toilet.
"Good! So now you know you have nothing to be upset about." Poland turned back to putting the finishing touches to Maria's hair, as if a minor misunderstanding had been settled.
"Take your verdammt paws off of my daughter." Maria had never heard so much venom in her father's voice before.
"Newsflash, Gilbert. You're not my boss anymore. You don't tell me what to do." To Maria's surprise, Poland sprang to his feet and stood in front of her, arms akimbo, head high, his sharp chin and nose in the air. He no longer looked like the skinny, effeminate man who enjoyed gossiping and doing girls' hair, but a proud, aristocratic youth used to being obeyed.
"You have no right to say a verdammt word about me or my family to anyone, especially my daughter!" Her father took one step into the bathroom and Maria gasped. She couldn't help it; she could feel his rage filling the narrow guest bath, rolling from the doorway straight towards her and Poland. "Get the hell out of here before I break every little bone in your miserable scrawny body."
To Maria's amazement, Poland snorted. "How am I supposed to leave with you puffing yourself up in front of the door? What, I'm supposed to like jump out the window? Like that's gonna happen." He rolled his eyes.
"Nein." Vati's voice sounded almost normal. "I think I'm going to flush you down the toilet, du Scheißhaufen."5 He gathered himself to lunge forward, but then Maria heard a loud thud. Vati's eyes widened as he sank to his knees and fell forward on his face. She screamed, terrified that his anger had caused a stroke or heart attack.
"Vati, I'm sorry, I'm sorry!" She wailed and turned to Poland. "He's dead, he's dead and we killed him!"
"Relax, chickie! It was just Hungary!" Poland pointed back toward the doorway, where Hungary and Austria were standing behind Vati's sprawled body.
"He's not dead, Maria," Tante Elizabeta said calmly. She held a medium-sized cast-iron frying pan in one hand and gently stroked Vati's hair as she knelt down to inspect him. "He's just going to be out for a little bit."
"Feliks, help us drag him back to his guest room, ja?" Austria pushed his glasses back up the bridge of his nose. "It's the least you can do after winding him up like that."
Hungary turned to Poland as he walked back to grab one of Vati's legs. "Feliks, what do I keep telling you to do when you two get on each other's nerves?"
"Say 'whatever' and walk away." Poland grumbled. "But seriously, where was I, like, supposed to go?" He and Austria began to drag Vati's body away as casually as if he were a discarded mannequin.
Maria stared at the trio in horror. She looked at Hungary, who was checking her hair in the mirror. "How can you do this?" she finally managed to say. "How can you hit my father on the head and act like everything's fine?"
"Because it works." Tante Elizabeta turned and put her hands gently on Maria's shoulders. "Look, it kept your father from beating up Poland. He'll be out for a little bit and then Austria and I are going to talk some sense into him." They turned at the clatter of light and heavy steps up the stairs. Maria heard her mother's light voice crying in concern and Onkel Ludwig's baritone rumbling.
"I want to be with him when he wakes up." Maria tried to leave the bathroom, but Hungary's fingers were surprisingly strong; she held her in place.
"No, Maria. It's not your fault and you shouldn't feel guilty about what happened, but it wouldn't be good for you or Feliks to be one of the first people he sees when he comes to. Onkel Roderich and I can handle him; we've done this for hundreds of years and we'll be able to calm him down and get some sense into that thick skull of his." She smiled brightly as she steered Maria down the hallway and to the stairs. "Now, I think you and your mother and everybody should go out for a nice stroll and admire how beautiful Vienna is during Easter time. When you get back, we'll have a nice casual supper, picking at the leftovers from lunch. How about that?" Maria tried to say she didn't want to walk, but something in Hungary's bright green eyes warned her not to question her. So she trudged downstairs, where Onkel Ludwig was lining everyone, including a worried-looking Muti, into a neat formation for a guided tour of the beauties of Vienna.
"You can see him," Austria whispered to Lili after Easter supper. Maria sprang up to follow her, but Roderich shook his head. "Just your mother for now, Schatz." Lili smiled encouragingly over her shoulder as she followed Austria up the stairs. "We gave him a mild sedative and some painkillers, so he's pretty groggy," Roderich said, "but he should be in good shape for tomorrow. Of course, you're free to stay through Easter Monday if you feel he's not up to the drive."
"We'll see," Lili murmured. She wondered what kind of talk entailed the need for drugs afterwards, and then remembered Hungary's frying pan. Gilbert must have been very upset, she thought.
Austria led her to the guest bedroom. The shades had been drawn and she could see Gilbert huddled under the covers, mumbling to himself. Lili walked over, sat down on the bed, and reached out to stroke his hair. He winced and she remembered what Roderich and Elizabeta had said about smacking some sense into his thick skull. "Gilbert, Süßer, it's me, Lili." He opened his eyes and the wide pupils and deep burgundy irises seemed glazed and disoriented. Yet when he smiled, he looked very young and innocent, the way she imagined him as a boy before the Teutonic Order hardened him.
"Lilichen," he whispered. He inched over to lie closer to her, wincing as he did. "My sweet Lili. I messed things up, haven't I? I'm sorry."
"It's okay. Things can get fixed and they will," She said. She thought of Germany, Switzerland, Northern Italy and Maria playing a card game downstairs. Poland, Hungary, and Lithuania were talking outside, since Feliks resumed smoking after Lent.
"You're always so sweet and wise," Gilbert murmured. "So good. And I'm so bad." He squeezed his eyes shut and shuddered. Lili lay down close to him, gently draping one arm over her so he could draw her into his chest.
"Nein, nein, Schatz," she pleaded. "You're not bad!"
"Ja, I am," he muttered, rubbing his head against the pillow, his chin brushing her hair. "But he made me do it. The nerve of him, telling her stories about Maria." Lili peered up and saw the returning rage in his dark eyes, heard its rise in his voice. "It is not his place. Those are my stories, my daughter, my Maria! Not his."
"He didn't mean anything bad by it, Gil," Lili replied. On the walk, Poland kept repeating he didn't mean to hurt anyone; he just got to talking and was shocked Maria didn't know her father had a sister. She wanted to calm Gilbert down, but dismissing his words didn't seem like the best approach. "Ja, Maria is not his, Schatz. You can tell Maria whatever you want tomorrow, but now you need to rest and heal. Breathe deeply, let the anger out and the peace in, ja?" She did so, and he followed her lead, shifting down until his head rested between her small breasts.
"Mein zauber Maus mit ihren magischen Brüste, kesesese," he murmured.6Lili got an idea. She drew her energy up from her pelvis back to her breasts and gently pressed Gilbert's head against them. He chuckled appreciatively.
"Just breathe in and out with me," she said. "No funny stuff. Just breathe and let me hold you." He nodded and she felt his breathing fall into place with hers. She imagined the warm golden ball in the middle of her chest spreading out to her arms, down to her fingers and into his scalp. She closed her eyes and visualized the broken blood vessels mending and the swelling shrinking.
After awhile, she asked, "How are you doing, Schatz? Do you feel anything in your head?"
"Feels good," he slurred. "Y'know, she has small perky tits like yours. And legs that go on for days. Mein Gott, she could wrap 'em around my ears and had some to spare! Kesesese."
Lili froze. The golden ball and its rays started to quiver and break. Elizabeta? Danzig? "Who did, Gilbert?" She tried to keep her voice steady.
"Maria!" He nuzzled against her, eyes closed. Nein, nein, nein, she thought. It couldn't be, he wouldn't do that.
"Which Maria?" She whispered.
He snorted. "My Maria, dumme Dinge! Meine Schwesterchen, so heftig und wild."7To Lili's horror, he began to cry as openly as an old man or a child. "I loved her so much! I begged her to forgive me for Jena! I would have given her anything, I would have pushed Ludi aside and made her the German Empire, if she would have forgiven me. Mein Gott, I miss her so much." He shuddered and sobbed into Lili's chest.
The golden ball had scattered. She was no longer Lili, the potential healer, but small, nervous Liechtenstein. Mein Gott, she thought, he couldn't. But he did. He had crossed a line she had refused with an adopted brother. Part of her wanted to bolt out of the bed and run from him. But as he wept, mumbling incoherently, she thought of all he had suffered and done, all they had been through. Love redeems us, she had said to their daughter, but she thought it had done all its work. She had not expected this, nor the mixture of emotions she felt now.
Automatically she petted him, whispering, "There, there," but her mind and heart were elsewhere. As he finally fell asleep, soaking her pretty blouse with tears and drool, she felt stuck. Shock, revulsion, pity: she expected all of those. But she never thought she would feel fear.
The information about Polish troops training with Germans (and the French) is true and comes from reader JLBB. Danke. I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday and look forward to more angst on New Year's Eve!
1 Gilbert is paraphrasing verse 3:8 from the Gospel according to John.
2 In Old Norse mythology, Freya is associated with love, beauty, gold, war, and death. Her name in Old Norse means "The Lady." And you know how Gilbert calls Lili Meine Dame. Ain't just a D/s, courtly love thang….
3 Mikhail Kalinin (1875-1946) was the nominal head of state of the USSR from 1919 to 1946, and he was basically a figurehead. He supported Stalin and signed every one of Stalin's decrees, up to the imprisonment of his own wife Ekaterina. Olga Prodan, "Mikhail Kalinin."Russiapedia. TV-Novosti. 2005-2011. Web. 11 December 2012.
4 Polish: dad, daddy
5 German: you turd
6 German: My magic mouse with her magic boobies
7 German: silly thing! My little sister, so fierce and wild