Hello, follows the English translation of Chapter 16. I would like to thank who is accompanying the fic in English. If you can leave comments on the chapter in English, I will be very happy. A big hug, Claire
Chapter 16:
Despair
Suffering from another sleepless night, I give up trying to sleep. I drag my feet beside the bed, looking for my slippers. I get up and wear a robe, because even with the ashes still alive in the fireplace, I feel the room is with a cold atmosphere. Popping the tongue in my mouth, feel a strong desire for a sip of brandy, but I don't drink spirits anymore, so I control this passenger desire. I walk in the room like a living dead, angry at nothing to be working so far.
- Why did she have to keep so aloof?
This kind of thinking makes me even more annoyed because I can't find an explanation in her behaviour. The bitch looks like to suffer...
- How she might prefer to stay locked up in a basement rather than be enjoying her suite, heated by a fireplace with comfort and good food? Who the hell this woman thinks she is?
- Let it be, I still crack all that courage! - I speak aloud. Tired of walking in circles like a caged lion, I decide to leave the room. Across down the hall, I check the time on the clock attached to the wall: 4 am! Indeed, it's been a long time since I have such a bad night...
I'm almost reach the stairs when change my mind and submit myself to the end of the hall, where are the room I have chosen for her. I open the door, which is not locked anymore, since she is no longer sleeping there, and close behind me. I look down and see in the floor, the little music box made of lacquer. I pick up and leave it on top of a dresser, completely ashamed and embarrassed to have pathetically brought this gift to her. As if she were really cares... The bitch didn't even look to the box! Now I know she doesn't need gifts... Since in those camp times, she always needed a concealer, a truly shocking lesson, to make her finally understand for bad which didn't come into her head for good...
I want her to understand she won't leave this house so early, if she continues to play the spoiled girl. My will prevail over hers and if she wants to make it even more difficult, she can expect for my part won't get any easier. I haven't, and never had, patience enough for this kind of behaviour... As much I control myself, it has been unbearable!
I begin to wander through her room, half aimlessly, not knowing if I try something or really want to be there. Slowly I approach to her bed and see the nightdress she wore before fleeing. Instinctively, I walk away with a kind of fear, because I know that even a simple nightdress used by her can wake my lower instincts and take me to some thoughtless act. And I want to keep control of the situation, I don't want to go down to the basement, not now, I want her to miss the human contact. Maybe my presence is more tolerable for her... After all, it hurts to be around her and realize the disgust she feels, it bothers me, irritates me, fascinates me. After all, I'm the person who should feel disgusted in her presence, for very obvious reasons...
I want her to need me, to want me around, and if I go down there now, certainly ruins everything. She's down there, completely isolated from all, facing her past, our past, but it was a short time to her already missing the human presence. She must suffer a little more to begin to change her mind, I am fully aware of that.
I give another turn around the room, just trying to put off what I know I will not be able to avoid doing. Finally, sending all my scruples to hell, sit on her bed and, without reservation, pick up the nightdress she wore.
The fabric is light, very soft to the touch, which instinctively leads me to bring it to my face... And then I headlong plunge in paradise!
Her smell is so absolutely remarkable that immediately takes me eleven years ago... to the villa. Then I remember the countless times I sought some pretext to bring her to me just to smell her.
I liked when could surprise her, approaching from behind, pretending I was watching some work she was running. As she had her hair just above the shoulders at the time, sometimes I revelled only to see that her skin crawled when I got too close. I liked the feeling that my presence aroused in her body, even if unintentionally. To me, it didn't matter that her shiver was the result of fear she had of me, after all, fear is still power! This satisfied my ego, especially when I still lie to myself and pretend to ignore how much she fascinated me...
Once, I remember like it was today, I was outside the villa, returning from another inspection into the camp. As I lived in pain all over the body, but especially in the liver, due to the many types of booze; I had to stop to get some rest so I reached the top of the staircase and stood at the entrance of the house. That's when I saw that she was around and seemed to be waiting for someone. Then the boy who took care of my horse came with a ladder and placed leaning against the house. Intrigued by what would happen next, kept me close enough to observe the situation, but at a distance that I knew they could not see me, unless they turned around. By the way, Helen wanted to achieve something in a lower part of the roof, near the porch door. I watched she suspends her dress a little and held between the legs to facilitate the ascent.
I confess I was like hypnotized!
Her legs, very white and smooth appearance, were up the stairs and, as she climbed, more the dress went up as well. When reached the height of her thighs, Helen stopped to suspend the dress and reached the roof. The boy left holding the ladder and passed a broomstick to her. It was then that I understood what she was trying to clear the roof gutter, just that.
It was all very fast, very everyday routine, but marked me deeply. Especially since in that afternoon wind blew a bit, and so her dress suspends a little more, which made her fumbling with her task unclog the chute and try at the same time preserving their dignity in front of the boy. This flash of humanity, this prudish manners made me realize that she was just a girl, a beautiful and worried girl about the wind reveals an intimacy that was all hers, which didn't concern to the boy, or me, a spectator whose presence she ignored at the time. And I think that, just by not around to see me that she felt free to do something she never did and that, deep down, I longed to see: a rare, spontaneous and beautiful smile!
Helen, embarrassed, grabbed her skirt, which made the broom almost fell on top of the boy. Then she looked at him with so much complicity with such tenderness and smiled, or rather laughed, a light, relaxed, beautiful and soft laughter, while Lisiek, the stable boy, gave loud guffaws. Perhaps all that complicity has sealed the boy's destiny for me, who knows? I enjoyed that smile, that brief moment of freedom as if she had laughed at me. And how that smile struck me as an iron on fire!
I had beaten her so many times... Countless times I had the opportunity to hit her legs with something, to see her suspended dress and to be closer than could physical contact with her. But such a prosaic scene likes this, left me a deep impression because it did not involve physical abuse, had no sexual connotation and at least I was not part of that context. However, I couldn't help being disturbed, as if everything said about her and all she did was, albeit involuntarily from her, extremely sensual and provocative to me.
How to remain indifferent to that light and open laughter she gave? For a moment I felt closer and more attached to her than I've ever been!
A girl! Neither Jewish nor Aryan, not even a magnificent ideal and unattainable beauty... No, none of that: just a girl, my girl! Having that certainty was like going from heaven to hell in free fall! I felt beaten, angry because I knew I was now vulnerable...
As if I, all of a sudden, become naked for all to see in the camp. That's when the fear of being "discovered" hit me like a punch! She was my weakness! Anything, and nobody else. Because of a whim by an insignificant little girl I, Amon Goeth, who never believed in anything except in myself, succumbed! I succumbed and threw away all my deepest convictions. After all, since I was 17, I was a devotee of all anti-Semitic maximums of Nazism. I really believe in all that, I really knew that smiling girl on the roof was not just a girl... I knew all the tricks and spells used by Jewish women to attract men Aryans to disgrace! She was just a girl, of course, but, like all Jewish, could already be considered an experienced sorceress, trained in the art of deception, seduction, lies!
I remember very well when I felt a light tap on my shoulder, which abruptly awakened me to reality. It was he, my "friend" Oskar Schindler, who at that time seemed to live to watch my steps. At least I was feeling so trapped and persecuted by all, for this entire rabble that wanted to see me fall from grace, today, after so many years is that I'm really aware of it.
- Amon, my friend, why are you standing in it? Lost your breath again?
I took the perfect cue to defend myself, before he could capture more of my weakness. On this subject, Schindler seemed ever closer, as if he had already laid bare my soul before everyone, before even myself understood what was happening to me...
- Well, Oskar lately has been like this. If I go slowly, I stop on the stairs... If I run a little, as I do, I need to get a stopped time here to catch my breath to come home. - I disguised as I could.
- Oh, Amon, please! I already have spoken to you to quit this crap of unfiltered cigarettes. How many times have offered American cigarettes for you? Why insist on destroying yourself with this garbage?
As he spoke, Schindler looked at the roof, almost the same insistently that I had done, minutes ago.
- I don't think it's the cigarette! - Tried to call his attention to me - Has more to do with alcohol, Oskar, I have a great pain in my liver. - To strengthen my interpretation (and it was still true) and to keep his eyes away from the roof at once, pointed with my finger towards my liver and made a pained expression.
My theatre little interests him, his eyes were still insistent on the roof, or better, on hers.
- I know, I understand... And the girl does what, there on the roof?
- Hmm? (Coughed and cleared my throat a bit, trying to disguise).
- Helen, do what hung on the roof? Tell her go down, before she falls and hurts those beautiful legs!
- Oskar, don't think prudent that you make this kind of comment on a...
Oskar then interrupted me, and your way.
- On what? A young and beautiful girl? Oh, Amon, I'm not blind! These beautiful legs needs a little more flesh, but still, are highly desirable. Let us not be hypocrites! Or rather, don't be hypocritical!
And then, after finishing those insults, Schindler took a fine silver cigar case from his pocket, opened it, carefully took out a cigarette, gave a light pat with cigarette in it, put it in the mouth and offered me a cigarette.
- Americans. With filter. Try it!
I ended up getting one; I lit it in the tip of Schindler's cigarette. He took a puff, looked once more to Helen on the roof and then turned his questioners green eyes at me, sighed deeply and said:
- To business! Let's go to the business!
It was the unsubtle way he found to change the subject because he had the rare quality to see how far he could go with me.
I breathed deeply that piece of cloth, like a wolf sniffs his hunting. I feel her smell, sweet and soft, which for more than ten years is ingrained in my soul, in my skin, in my senses...
I feel a strong desire, and tired of this entire unusual situation, that I can no longer repress what's happening to me.
- I'm going down, I need to see her!
I quickly go out of the room and down the stairs. No one is awake at that time, not even Frau Künzel, the old owl, always dragging her chains of guilt night after night, through the rooms of the house.
With the house in silence, I try to at least control my movements. When I reach the basement door, unlock it slowly and avoid making too much noise. I want to approach me without scaring her; despite the anger and the desire I'm feeling.
I open the door, and the darkness is total. I light the light of the stairs, and when I go down the first step, even with diffused light, take a fright! Helen is on the ground, as if she had fallen out of bed and had tried to crawl. She was halfway to the latrine, drenched in sweat and using the maid's dress.
I go down the stairs and almost fall in food waste. Probably she threw the plate away or dropped the food in the dark. Well, it didn't matter now. Recover balance and approach hers. She is convulsing, trembling a lot, very white like a candle and, to my astonishment, wrapped in a puddle of vomit.
Ignoring the bad smell, I approach to the ground and took her, placing her on my lap.
- Helen, Helen... - give light pats on her face in an attempt to see if she was conscious. She didn't react. She continued to convulse, oblivious to her surroundings.
I try again a few more times, increasing the patting, shaking her body until she opens her eyes, which are covered with secretion, as if she was really sick!
- Ohhhhh... - she just babbles and closes her eyes again. I insist.
- Helen, look at me, you're pretending?
No answer.
- Helen, if you're pretending, I...
And then she stops convulsing, open her eyes again, stares at me and turns to the side, only to vomit copiously.
The whole scene despairs me. Quickly, I put her on the bed and up the stairs, jumping steps to achieve faster it's end. I open the basement door without looking back, not lock her. I'm not worried, Helen is really sick and I have no time to lose.
Still running, going towards to Frau Künzel's bedroom and knock at the door desperately.
- Open this door, Elsa! - I keep pounding on the door.
With a sleepy face, Frau Künzel answers the door.
- If she dies, I swear, no one gets out alive of this house!
Frau Künzel, always impassive, agreed with a slight nod and plunges again in the darkness of her room. She knows what to do.