Black Cross

20

Rachel stood terrified before Major Wolfgang Schörner. After her experiences with the SS and Frau Hagan’s warnings, he seemed more apparition than man. He sat calmly behind his desk, wearing a clean gray uniform. He had changed clothes since the soccer game. Rachel could hear Ariel Weitz behind her, shuffling his feet. Schörner inclined his head toward the door, which then opened and closed quietly behind her.

Schörner frowned. “A crude man,” he said. “But useful.”

Rachel said nothing. She found herself trying to guess Schörner’s age. Thirty seemed about right, though the eyepatch made him look older. Unlike Sergeant Sturm and the other SS men, Schörner was not scrupulously clean shaven. A day’s shadow of dark beard grew evenly from his cheeks to his jawline. The two top buttons of his tunic were undone. He drummed his fingers on the desktop.

“You are Frau Rachel Jansen?”

Rachel nodded. “Ja, Herr Major.”

Schörner’s face brightened instantly. “But I thought you were from Holland!”

“Ich bin Holländerin, Herr Major.”

“But your German is perfect! Perfektes Hochdeutsch!”

“I spent the first seven years of my life in Magdeburg, Herr Major. I was moved to Holland as an orphan, after the Great War.”

Schörner leaned back in his chair and regarded Rachel. “I’m sorry they cut your hair. In this camp that is done before the medical inspection, so I had no opportunity to intervene. The barber told me it was quite beautiful.”

Rachel tried not to appear in a hurry to leave the office.

“I noticed you at that inspection,” Schörner said softly. He sounded almost embarrassed by this confidence. After what seemed an age, he said, “You remind me of someone.”

Rachel swallowed. “Who is that, Herr Major?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

The longer Rachel stood there, the more uncomfortable she felt. “Herr Major,” she said hoarsely, “what is it that I have done?”

“You have done nothing yet, Frau Jansen. But that will soon change, I hope.”

Schörner stood and stepped from behind the desk. He was a tall man, lean but strongly built. Only now did Rachel notice the bottle of brandy standing open on the bookshelf against the wall, three quarters empty. Schörner poured himself a glass and drank it in one swallow. Then he tipped the glass toward Rachel.

“No, thank you, Herr Major.”

Schörner turned his palms upward as if to say, “What can I do, then?” He took a step toward her, hesitated, then took another. Rachel felt a shiver run across her shoulders. She suddenly realized that Major Schörner was very drunk.

“Did you come here straight from Amsterdam?” he asked.

“Yes, Herr Major.”

“This place must be a shock to you.”

She didn’t know how to respond. “I try to make the best of adverse circumstances.”

Schörner’s eyes opened wider. “Just so! That is exactly what I am doing myself!”

Rachel’s puzzlement showed on her face.

Schörner sighed deeply. “The SS, Frau Jansen — the true SS — was established as an elite order. Like knights. At least that was the idea in the beginning. Lately, all manner of men wear the Sig Runes. Estonians, Ukrainians, even Arabs. My God, when I joined the SS a single dental filling was enough to disqualify a man.” He closed his eyes briefly. “Nothing is as it used to be.”

Rachel tried not to move a muscle. The change from the enthusiastic athlete of the soccer game to the drunken officer before her was disorienting.

“You’ve seen the guards here,” said Schörner, moving closer. “Scum, most of them. Some were press-ganged from the Bremen jails. Not one of them has seen real combat.” He lifted her chin with his right hand. “Does this talk surprise you?”

Schörner’s touch had paralyzed her. “I — I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about, Herr Major.”

Schörner let his hand drop. “Of course you don’t. How could you? While I was fighting in Russia, you were hiding in a cellar in Holland, yes?”

“As you say, Herr Major.”

Schörner seemed to find humor in this. “I don’t blame you for hiding, you know, not a bit. The world is a difficult place for your people just now.” He looked into his bookcase. “Have you ever been to England?”

“No, Herr Major.”

“I was at Oxford, you know.”

It’s remarkable, thought Rachel. I am standing here having a conversation with an SS officer. A member of the murderous legion that never speaks except to command, and those commands given almost exclusively to order preparation for death. “I didn’t know that,” she said awkwardly. “You were one of the German Rhodes scholars?”

Schörner shook his head. “A regular student. A paying student. Anyway, Oxford terminated the German Rhodes scholarships in 1939. I was at King’s College. My father’s ideal of a gentleman was the English public school man. Absurd, isn’t it?”

He walked slowly around Rachel. With great effort she remained perfectly still. When Schörner next spoke, his mouth was practically in her right ear.

“Miles from the battle,” he murmured.

Without any preamble he slipped his right hand into Rachel’s shift and cupped her left breast. She felt a jolt like an electric shock, then a sudden weakening of her bladder. Just as quickly she remembered the diamonds and forced her legs together. Schörner squeezed her breast gently, like a woman at market appraising a melon. She shivered.

“Be still.”

Rachel obeyed. Schörner stroked her breast for several moments, then removed his hand. She felt tears welling in her eyes. His hand fell to her right hip. His breathing grew shallow. She could endure no more. Only a moment ago he had been speaking to her like a human being. Now. . . She took one step forward and turned sharply to face him.

“Herr Major!” she said in the most indignant and aristocratic German she could muster. “Does a gentleman force himself upon a lady?”

Schörner stared at her with a mixture of anger and fascination. Rachel searched frantically for some frame of reference the SS officer might relate to. “Would you have me against my will?” she asked. “I should think that would be like stealing a war medal.”

Schörner seemed intrigued by her reaction.

Rachel pushed ahead. What had she to lose now? “You say you are a man of honor. Would you falsely wear a medal for gallantry? It is the same with the act of love.”

Schörner smiled sadly, then scratched at the edge of his eyepatch. “There is an important difference, Frau Jansen.” He pulled his Knight’s Cross from beneath his collar. “Medals cannot keep a man warm at night,” he said, fingering the fine ribbon of red, white, and black. “They cannot erase the loneliness of this place for even a moment. But you could, I think. One hour in your arms could do it. At least for a while.”

Rachel was speechless. Here was one of the men who had murdered her husband and God knew how many others in cold blood, now asking her to go to his bed. “Herr — Herr Major,” she stammered, “I appeal to you as a gentleman. I am a new widow. I am not ready for this.”

Schörner’s face locked itself into a mask of formality. “I see,” he said stiffly. “You are still grieving. You require time to purge the memory of your husband from your mind.” He walked to the window and looked out at a squad of Sturm’s soldiers drilling in the yard. “How long do you think you will need?”

Rachel was dumbfounded. “I don’t. . . Six months?”

Major Schörner took a deep breath and paused, as if mentally consulting a list of social mores. “Impossible,” he said finally. “Outside, the normal mourning period is quite long, of course. Up to a year.” He turned from the window. “Here things are different. We are at war, after all. Thousands of women are made widows every day. You cannot let your youth pass by simply because of a little sentimentality.”

Rachel tried to think of some further argument, but came up with nothing.

“I shall give you one week,” Schörner said. Then he moved back behind his desk and sat down.

“Is that all, Herr Major?”

“Yes. Oh, just a moment. From now on you will receive a special diet. When the evening meal is finished, go to the alley between the hospital and the Experimental Block. Inmate Weitz will meet you there with food.”

Schörner picked up a pen and began scratching on a form that lay on his desk. Rachel felt a sudden wild courage, like the implacable instinct that had driven her over the block fence to search for the diamonds. “May I bring my children, Herr Major?”

“What?” Schörner looked up and blinked.

“May I bring my children to eat this special food?”

“Oh.” A knowing gleam came into his eye. “Yes, I suppose so.”

Rachel turned and stepped toward the door. She stopped at the sound of Schörner’s voice.

“If you change your mind before the week is out, you can find me in my quarters. I am there every night. Do not take too long.” He returned to the file on his desk. “Auf wiedersehen.”

Rachel nodded to the door. “Auf wiedersehen, Herr Major.”

Frau Hagan was waiting behind the cinema annex of the administration building. Rachel did not walk directly toward her, but toward the barracks area. Frau Hagan contrived to walk in such a way that their paths seemed naturally to intersect in the Appellplatz.

“What did he want?” she asked.

“Me.”

“For sex?”

“Yes.”

“I told you. You came here too healthy. I’m surprised it was Schörner, though.” They walked for a few moments in silence. “At least it isn’t Sturm. You might not survive a night with him. He’s an animal. He would throw you to his pack when he was finished.”

“God, what am I to do?”

“You must go to him tonight?”

“No. He gave me a week.”

“What?”

“He said I could have one week to finish mourning. As if even a year would be enough!”

Frau Hagan stopped walking. “I think the major is taken with you, Dutch girl. As far as I can recall, Schörner has never had a woman in this camp. And why else would he let you wait a week? He could have you right this minute. There is nothing to stop him.”

Rachel drew a quick breath. “He told me I remind him of someone. I think perhaps . . . perhaps he has some remnants of decency left.”

The Pole seized Rachel’s wrist in a clawlike grip. “Don’t ever think that! If you walked within a meter of the wire he would shoot you himself. If you disobeyed an order he would have you on the Tree without a second thought.”

Rachel felt herself losing control. As they neared the block, she threw her arms around Frau Hagan like a terrified child. “Why me?” she wailed. “I am a Jew. I thought I was like a disease to the SS.”

Frau Hagan stroked Rachel’s nearly bald scalp. “That is what Goebbels and Himmler say. But people are people. I know of a case where an SS man actually fell in love with a Jewess. They were both shot.”

“What am I to do, then?”

Frau Hagan gently disengaged Rachel and held her at arms’ length. “At the end of the week you will have to give in,” she said firmly. “This is not Amsterdam. You have no choice.”

But as they entered the block, Rachel decided that maybe she did have a choice. If she had to yield to Schörner in seven days regardless, why shouldn’t she try to get something out of it?

Something for her children.