A/N: Apologies for any incorrect translations in this chapter. Suggestions for corrections are welcome.
Chapter 8: A Short Stay in the Quaint Town of 'Nazi-Occupation'
In this chapter:
· The taking back of a town
· The birth of a soldier
· A conversation
· Jealousy
The town that the German soldiers had been driving from, was under the guard of an entire company of Nazis. This absolutely delighted those of the Basterds who were experiencing what they referred to as 'a Nazi-killing drought'. The town was far from being evacuated or abandoned, as all the other towns had been. For the Germans, this one was worth fighting for. It came with, not only many of the original French occupants, but also its very own brothel. Not that the Basterds were interested in that of course. Of course not...
"A'right. We got us an occupied town up ahead and those German boys in there ain't gonna go down without a fight," Aldo began, "Way I see it, we'll be celebratin' with the Frogs in there before the night's out. How's 'bout that, boys?"
"Yes, sir," they replied.
"And girls?" Aldo asked, turning to Elsie.
"Sounds reasonable, sir," she smiled.
As luck had it, the Germans hadn't seen them coming initially, thus allowing them to position themselves more effectively. Elsie stood with Hugo by the side of a building as he lit up a cigarette for her, before lighting up his own. They took out their machine guns and both peered around the side of the building, spotting a sniper in the church tower up ahead. Wilhelm, who was up the road in a position that gave him a pretty good view of both the Basterds and their enemy, looked over for their judgment of the situation. As the best marksman of the Basterds, he was expecting a hell of a workout in this town.
Elsie made a few improvised hand signals – having yet to learn all of the proper military ones – to explain what she had just seen up ahead. He nodded in understanding, checking his gun was clean and ready. Elsie glanced back at Hugo and noticed him staring off up the road. He had spotted a group of four Nazis walking near the entrance of the town, and was suddenly distracted by both their proximity, his fingers already wrapped around the hilt of his knife. When he finally glanced around to her, he saw her smirking at his restless behavior.
"Go on," she urged, and he was off before she could say another word.
She watched him swing his gun back over his shoulder and take out a beautifully shining, silver knife. He used this to kill all four men, despite them being armed with guns. His movements were silent and swift, and as the last of the Nazis collapsed to the ground, he turned back to her, lighting up another cigarette with bloodied fingers. She had to admit, he sure knew how to impress a lady.
When he finally returned, he cleaned the knife on his pants before placing it back in its sheath and smiled a very charming smile at her expression of interest. The crack of a gunshot broke their moment. Wilhelm had taken his shot. Now that the sniper was down, they were free to run amuck through the town, taking down any Nazi they found.
Which is exactly what they did.
Elsie ran towards the church tower, a stupid decision on her part, since it was where most of the German soldiers were being drawn once they'd realized that their sniper was no longer in working condition. She dodged two Nazis as they ran towards the tower, and it took them a minute to realize that she was neither a civilian, nor one of their own. Flattening herself against the alley-side of the church, she glanced down the street and saw even more Nazi soldiers approaching. She considered her best option. Take them all down with her machine gun with the possibility of missing one and being killed herself, or wait it out for a more opportune moment. She chose a mix of the two. Feeling around her jacket for her knife, her hand came to rest on something much more interesting.
Lieutenant Aldo's gift to her; an American hand grenade.
She took it out and kissed it with joy, looking around the corner of the building to find that all the soldiers were now inside; the phrase 'shooting fish in a barrel' came to mind. Even Elsie knew it was a rule for soldiers to spread out, especially when under attack. Or maybe they didn't know that they were under attack. If they didn't then, they sure as hell did when they heard the 'ping' of a grenade pin being pulled and tossed aside, before experiencing the ensuing blast.
Elsie took off down the opposite end of the street, delighted with the result. As far as she knew, there were no survivors. Just as she was about to reach the agreed upon meet-up point of the Basterds, a rather mean-looking German sergeant came out of nowhere, gun in hand, blocking Elsie's path.
"Filthy American whore!" he growled at her in his native tongue.
Donny had spotted the situation from the window of his current position, taking out his baseball bat, ready for action. But he was too slow. Hugo got there first.
With a cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth and a strange kind of smile, Stiglitz slammed his knife through the back of the wide-eyed man, the tip of the weapon pierced through to the other side. After a few more violent stabs, Hugo let the soldier slide out of his hands and slump to the ground, dead.
"I had that one," Elsie told him indignantly, a smile playing at the corner of her mouth.
"Sure you did," he teased.
Elsie had discovered over the past few weeks that Hugo was neither shy nor quiet. In fact, he was downright funny, not to mention cynical and sometimes even talkative, though she was the only one to have ever witnessed this side of him. It had taken him a little while to warm to the Basterds, but they had begun to see a different person from the 'weird, quiet, ex-Nazi' they had originally thought him to be. He was one of them now. Sure, he wasn't as loud as Donny, or as trigger happy as Hirschberg, but he was a Basterd nonetheless.
"Elsie, get your ass over here," Aldo called out to her, as she stood staring at Hugo.
Reluctantly, she continued heading towards her original destination.
"Sir? The town's cleared?" she asked as she entered the house.
"I just sent Hirschberg and Utivich out to give it a once over," he replied from his position by the window.
Hirschberg? Well, if it wasn't cleared of Nazis before, it certainly would be now, she thought. As if to support this, a grinning Hirschberg came through the door behind her and Hugo, splattered head to toe in blood that wasn't his own. Utivich wasn't far behind him, looking less enthusiastic, decorated in the same shade of red.
"Did you throw a grenade into that church full of krauts?" Hirschberg asked Elsie as he passed her.
"Yeah. Why?"
"That was real nice," he chuckled.
"Uh, thanks?" Elsie replied with a raised eyebrow.
"Town's clear, sir," Utivich reported. That had been fast, even for the Basterds.
"A'right, let's go see if we can't find ourselves some survivors."
By survivors he meant civilians, but they seemed indifferent about their small town's sudden change of hands. Especially the whores out the front of L'Amour Divin; 'The Divine Love'.
"More like 'La Gonorrhée Divine'," Elsie commented, thinking about how many Nazi soldiers these girls must have been forced to lay with.
Despite this reference to a very painful consequence, the Basterds, with the exception of Aldo, Hugo, Wilhelm, Donny and Elsie, were drawn into the arms of the waiting girls, who lured them inside the seedy-looking house with the greatest of ease.
"I thought that they called New Orleans 'The Big Easy'," Donny joked to Elsie, gesturing towards a particularly easy-looking 'lady of the evening'.
She could sense he was trying to get on her good side, perhaps even working towards the same thing that the boys in L'Amour Divin were about to receive, but she merely chuckled and began walking away from the remaining Basterds.
Hugo glanced from the retreating Elsie, to Donny, who seem to be considering his next move, then also began to move away from the brothel. He really wasn't attracted to the pouting girls in the windows, even the one that flashed him her breasts as an attempt to persuade him.
There was only one girl that he was interested in, and she was now passing through the doors of a bar named Le Tasse Idiote: The Fool Cup.
Wow, clever pun there, Elsie thought sarcastically as she walked through the pub's wooden doors. She was glad to be greeted with very few faces, and even happier that none of them were of the Nazi persuasion. She was the only woman in the room, but she realized that the other customers had a certain respect for her after helping wipe-out their captors. She took a seat at the bar, placing her weapon in front of her up against the wooden counter.
"What will it be?" the bartender asked in French, as he walked over to his newest customer.
Elsie looked around and thought for a moment before deciding, "Un whisky, s'il vous plaît."
"Make it two whiskeys."
Hugo sat down next to her and gave the bartender money for both of the drinks. The Basterds had acquired a fair amount of money between themselves during their travels. But, hey; dead men don't need their francs, do they?
"I didn't know you could speak French", Elsie smiled.
"Only that phrase. It's the only thing I've ever needed to know."
She laughed, considered his words and then nodded.
Staring rather apprehensively at Hugo, who remained dressed in his original Nazi sergeant's uniform, the bartender placed their drinks in front of them. "It's okay," Elsie reassured him, throwing in a friendly smile for good measure, "He's with me."
The bartender frowned and walked away. Elsie suddenly realized how her words would have sounded to someone not familiar with the Basterds. She bit her lip and made a face that read 'Oops', making her drinking buddy chuckle. Rubbing her eyes with one hand and picking up her whiskey with the other, she toasted with Hugo and drained the liquid in a swift gulp. Despite being able to hold her alcohol fairly well, she only allowed herself two more drinks, both courtesy of Hugo. She realized she had now taken up two bad habits because of him, smoking and drinking, but she wouldn't hold it against him. After all, she enjoyed them both; particularly if it was in his company.
Donny had watched Stiglitz walk away, knowing very well where he was going.
"God fucking damn him," he said under his breath. Now walking away from the brothel with Wilhelm and Aldo, both men heard his words.
"If you want her, why don't you go after her? Why do you think Stiglitz did?" Wilhelm told him.
"Uh-uh, no way she'd go for a kraut. No offence," Donny replied without thinking.
Wilhelm raised an eyebrow at him, but said nothing. Kraut was generally only a term used for the Nazis, not just someone from Germany. He and Donny weren't enemies, but they weren't buddies, either. Wilhelm regarded him as a big-mouthed, Nazi-bashing thug. But he also saw how much the man cared about Elsie, and that at least raised his respect for him a little.
"Elsie's a smart gal, she can take care o' herself," Aldo commented, "If you want something to take your mind off her, Donny, there was plenty o' nice girls back there."
"I'd rather if my dick didn't fall off, sir," Donny replied. "Besides, I ain't about to fuck someone who's probably just been on the end of some fucking Nazi's dick." His eyes blazed and the muscles in his jaw set tight as he thought again of Elsie and their ex-Nazi comrade.
"Well then, why don't you stop botherin' me and go find yerself a nice place to drink 'til you pass out?"
Donny continued cursing under his breath, and walked off, presumably to do what his lieutenant had just recommended. Being a relatively small town there was, of course, only one place to go to for drinks.
As Donny entered the establishment, he found no sign of Elsie, or of Stiglitz. He glanced around and approached the bartender.
"Was there a girl in here just now? Reddish hair, about...yay tall?" he asked the bartender, raising his hand to a position just in front of his chest to indicate the height of the missing person.
The bartender looked up at him briefly before returning his attention to the glass he was polishing, replying in a heavy French accent, "If it's the same girl you're talking about, she and some German just bought a room upstairs for the night."
Donny stared at him, and then glanced up. It took all his willpower not to storm up the stairs and burst into every one of them until he found Elsie, or more importantly Stiglitz. He planned on teaching Stiglitz a lesson or two about what happens to someone who tries to steal his girl away.
"Give me your strongest drink," he sighed in defeat, taking a seat at the bar.
Hugo and Elsie lay side-by-side on the double bed in the room that they had just rented; but at this moment, sex was the last thing on their minds. They were content just to be in each other's company, quietly staring up at the roof; Elsie, with her hands behind her head and Hugo with his hands resting on his stomach.
"How do you know Aldo?" he asked her.
She chuckled slyly before answering, "He and my father used to run an illegal moonshine bootlegging operation between states."
"Moonshine?"
"It's kind of like homemade alcohol."
"Why didn't they just get it legally?"
"Couldn't. Government introduced prohibition in 1919. No alcohol allowed."
"What a horrible government," Hugo commented, making Elsie chuckle again. "What happened to your father?"
"Well, that's kind of Aldo's fault, actually. He was making a run to Louisiana, meeting up with my father at the border, but he got caught just before he made it there. Apparently bootlegging wasn't the only crime he'd had a hand in. He was trialed and sentenced to death by hanging. Naturally, my father couldn't just let him hang, so on the day of the execution, just as the hangman pulled the lever for the trapdoor, my father runs in and cuts Aldo down, and shoots the guards."
She paused, in thought, then continued, "It's not a story I'm particularly proud of, my father being a criminal and all, but he put his neck on the line to save a friend. I guess I kind of admire that about him."
"That's how the lieutenant got that scar?" Hugo asked with his head turned on the side to face her.
She nodded.
"Where's your father now?"
"Dead. He got shot while they were escaping. Got away, but it aggravated some illness he'd had since the war and...yeah. Aldo came by our house to tell my ma what had happened, to give his condolences. I think he blamed my father's death on himself. That's why he bothered to come all the way out to save me like he did."
"You know, I haven't heard that story," Hugo told her, "About how Elsie joined the Basterds."
"It's a long one. Are you sure that you want to hear it?"
He smiled and gave a nod.
"Okay, here goes," she sighed. She began with her mother's death, when she was fourteen; a demise she was certain had some correlation with the loss of her father. Although officially it was the pneumonia that had killed her mother, it hadn't helped that she would often sit outside for hours at a time, staring blankly into space as the rain soaked through her clothes. She didn't even seem to notice the rain.
Elsie then talked about being shipped to France, about her new life in bliss at the Villa. Then about her new hell as Landa arrived.
"You've met Colonel Landa?" Hugo interrupted.
"Unfortunately. Why?"
"Let's just say he's very well known in Germany."
Elsie looked at Hugo curiously as he lapsed into thought. He looked to her to continue. She talked about killing one of Landa's men, about the Jewish family who had been brutally slaughtered, about her time in the orchard, and the ways in which she'd brutally slaughtered the German men who'd come looking for her. Elsie was surprised to see that the man next to her was genuinely interested in her origins. He gazed at her with an intensity that grew distracting.
"What happened after the Basterds found you?" he asked.
"I learned how to be a soldier," she replied, "Well, their version of a soldier. I learnt how to cut throats, scalp heads and that sometimes a knife is a better friend than a gun." She smiled and continued, "Then Donny and Aldo got the brilliant idea of me putting me in costume for a particularly whimsical escapade, and I ended up in a German prison. Though I suppose that wasn't such a bad thing."
Her hand found his and clasped it between them in the middle of the bed. Placing her other hand on her stomach, she continued to stare up at the ceiling. She looked suddenly distressed.
"What is it?" Hugo asked.
"Hellstrom," is all she replied, in a quiet, distant voice.
Hugo frowned, his mouth turned down in a scowl. That name alone was enough to make his blood boil. He turned on his side, letting go of her hand and propping himself up on one elbow. Elsie did the same, still looking distracted with her thoughts. He placed his free hand in the curve of her side and, rubbing it gently with his thumb, he made her a promise:
"If I ever see that man again, I'm going to kill him."
It was pure and simple: an act for her out of the sheer devotion that was growing in his heart.
She gave a small smile of gratitude. Taking his hand from her side, he touched it to her chin and gave a smile of his own. She shuffled in closer to him and buried her head against his chest, closing her eyes, and slowly drifting into a content slumber.
She felt safe for the first time in a long time.
Below, Donny sat and waited.
When the early morning sunlight woke Elsie the following day, she moved slowly and quietly out of the arms of a sleeping Hugo, careful not to wake him. She smiled at him as she closed the door to their room, proceeding down the staircase and into the bar. Donny was still sitting in the same seat from the night before, arms folded on top of the counter with his head resting on them as he slept. It didn't look like a particularly comfortable position to sleep in.
"He refused to leave last night," the bartender told her, as he prepared his business for the days customers.
Elsie looked at Donny with disapproval, but she couldn't find it in herself to be angry at him. She had to appreciate the dedication.
"Donny," she said, poking him in the side gently to wake him. He stirred and then woke with a start. He didn't look very happy with her.
"Ya fucked him, didn't ya," he said, not even bothering to pose it as a question.
"No, I didn't," she replied, thrown by offensive line of questioning.
"Yeah right," he continued, swiveling around in his chair to face her, "You rent a room for the night together? And you want me to believe that he slept on the floor?"
"I never said that," Elsie replied, beginning to lose patience with him, "I said that we didn't have sex."
Donny looked like hell, as if he'd only just drifted off when she had woken him. His hair was a mess and he had the beginnings of dark circles around his eyes. Elsie on the other hand, was feeling fantastic, having slept better than she had in weeks. But her good mood was starting to wane, as she realized the amount of grief she had caused Donny simply by sleeping in the same room as Hugo.
"I wouldn't do that to you," she told him, but he looked just as uncertain as she felt about that statement.
He stood up and gave her a look that very nearly broke her heart. Nodding as though he thought her actions would have been inevitable anyway, he turned and left. Elsie squeezed her eyes shut and then felt a hand on her shoulder. She turned to find Hugo standing behind her looking concerned.
"What's the matter?"
Elsie didn't know what to say, so instead she gave him a forced smile and headed out the door. But Hugo knew that something had upset her, whether she would admit it or not.
The Basterds were waiting for them outside the brothel, the men that had left with the whores the night before now looking content but tired. The only people that looked like they had gotten any sleep were Elsie, Hugo, Aldo and Wilhelm. But Donny still looked like he'd had the worst night out of everyone. He looked over at Elsie, but she couldn't meet his gaze, choosing instead to glance up at the sky. It looked like they were in for some nice weather, at least.
Standing nearby, Wilhelm glanced from Elsie to Hugo and then to Donny, sensing the tension between the three. As Elsie faced forward once again, she met his eyes and he could see that they were full of indecision. They both turned their attention to Aldo as he began speaking.
"Alright, same drill as always. Today we're walking 'til we find the next town or the next lot o' krauts. Any questions?"
As usual, there weren't any.
"So, how's your penis?" Elsie asked Utivich as they made their way down the road.
Utivich looked at her in surprise and narrowed his eyes. "Uh, why do you ask?"
"Just wandering if it's fallen off yet," she replied.
He grinned, now understanding what she was on about. "It's fine", he told her, "Better than fine, in fact-"
"Alright, I don't wanna hear anymore," she cringed, putting her hand up to hush him. He chuckled.
"What about you?" he asked. He hadn't been the only one to notice her leave the bar with Hugo.
"Oh, my penis is fine," she joked.
Then she sighed; she really didn't feel in the mood for making jokes. Utivich laughed and was about to make a wisecrack, when he noticed her expression. Just ahead of her, Donny was walked lethargically onward. As a soldier he was used to not getting a lot of sleep, but lack of sleep wasn't his only ailment at that moment. He glanced back at Elsie again, and this time she met his eyes. She sped up her pace until she was walking next to him, but neither of them spoke.
"Did you see that girl last night?" they heard Hirschberg saying, "She was an absolute pro."
Omar, Sackowitz, Kagan and Zimmerman seemed to agree with this statement; apparently their own girls had been much the same. Choosing to now block out the men's smutty conversation, Elsie stopped to drink from her canteen of water. Glancing around at the other soldiers, who all carried on walking, Wilhelm stopped beside her to wait. She gave him a grateful smile as she took a mouthful of water and he nodded. After she put her canteen away, they walked together in silence, neither knowing what to say. Elsie knew that Wilhelm was bound to know about what was going on with her, but she didn't want to be the one to bring it up. If he decided to, she was fine with that. And he would have brought it up if he had known where to begin.
"Sleep well?" Elsie asked him.
"Yeah," he replied.
They were silent for another few minutes after that, but Elsie couldn't stand it. She dived straight into the thoughts that had been bothering her.
"I need your advice on something," she told him.
"Three guesses what," he said. She nodded and sighed.
"Donny seemed a little aggravated yesterday. Did he find you in the bar?"
Elsie shook her head and wondered if she should say where she had been.
"Hugo and I…rented a room there for the night," she admitted.
Wilhelm simply nodded. That's why Elsie liked talking to him: he didn't judge.
"We talked, that's all, but I can't seem to convince Donny. That's why he's pissed at me."
"Donny's thickheaded. Sometimes words don't work with him," Wilhelm said, "but he cares for you. He'll come around, I guess."
Looking at Elsie now, Wilhelm could tell that she was in much better health than she had been a few weeks ago. Despite her gloomy expression, she looked as though she had been sleeping better, and seemed less distant. Perhaps Hugo was the better one for her, after all.
"How's your shoulder?"
"It's pretty much healed now," she replied, raising her arm and rotating it slowly to show him. "I never really did thank you for getting the bullet out, did I?"
"Yes you did," Wilhelm assured her, "Besides, what was I going to do? Let Aldo remove it for you?"
Elsie cringed, knowing that although Aldo was like a father to her, and she like a daughter to him, he would have taken Donny's pocket knife and twisted it around in the wound until he managed to find the bullet. Wilhelm had simply plucked it out with his bare fingers.
She waited until they stopped for a rest break before talking to Donny. He was lying on the ground with his eyes closed, using his jacket as a pillow, trying to catch up on that sleep he had missed the night before.
"Donny," she said, as she took a seat on the ground next to him. He opened one eye to look at her, and then closed it again.
"Yeah?"
He still sounded pissed off.
"Can we talk?" she asked.
"I'm trying to sleep," he told her.
"Will you just listen, then?"
No reply.
She pursed her lips, raised her eyebrows and nodded slowly, as though she knew that this was how he would act.
"I swear on..." she closed her eyes and sighed, unable to believe what she was about to say, "I swear on my grandparents' graves that nothing happened between me and Stiglitz."
Donny opened his eyes, knowing that there was no way she would never do or say anything ill whilst swearing on the names of her grandparents. She was looking away from him now, her expression riddled with uncertainty and gloom.
He regarded her hesitantly before putting his hand in her knee, "I believe ya."
She turned her attention back to him, her expression a little lighter in relief to his response. He repositioned himself on the ground and rested his head back on her thigh, throwing his jacket over himself as a blanket. He closed his eyes once more and drifted into a much more contented sleep. Elsie gave a small smile and leaned back on her hands. She knew that she didn't really have to explain herself or her actions to Donny, but when she thought about it, she did owe it to the guy.
So things were good between her and Donny again.
For a while.