The Third Reich

SEPTEMBER 19

I wake up to find Clarita in the room. She’s at the foot of the bed in her maid’s uniform, looking at me. I don’t know why her presence makes me happy. I smile and ask her to get in bed with me, though without realizing it, I ask in German. How Clarita manages to understand me is a mystery, but first I prudently lock the door and then she curls up beside me, taking offnothing but her shoes. As during our previous encounter, her breath smells of black tobacco, which happens to be very attractive in a woman-child like her. According to tradition, her lips should taste of sausage and garlic, or mint gum. I’m glad that’s not the case. When I climb on top of her, her skirt rides up to her waist and if her knees weren’t desperately gripping my thighs I’d say she feels nothing. Not a moan, not a sigh. Clarita makes love with perfect discretion. When we’re done, just like the first time, I ask her if she enjoyed herself. She nods her head, and immediately she jumps out of bed, straightens her skirt, puts on her underpants and shoes, and as I head to the bathroom to wash, she begins to tidy the room in workmanlike fashion, careful not to knock any counters on the floor.

“Are you a Nazi?” I hear her voice as I’m wiping my penis with toilet paper.

“What did you say?”

“I asked whether you’re a Nazi.”

“No. No, I’m not. In fact, I’m more like an anti-Nazi. What makes you think that, the game?” On the Third Reich box there are some images of swastikas.

“The Wolf told me you were a Nazi.”

“The Wolf is wrong.” I made her come into the bathroom so I could keep talking to her as I showered. Clarita is so ignorant that I think if I told her the Nazis were in power, say, in Switzerland, she would believe it.

“Doesn’t anybody wonder why it takes you so long to clean a room? Doesn’t anyone miss you?”

Clarita is sitting on the toilet with her back hunched as if getting out of bed brought on a fresh bout of some undisclosed illness. A contagious illness? The rooms are usually cleaned in the morning, she tells me. (I’m a special case.) No one misses her and no one keeps tabs on her. It’s bad enough having to work so hard and earn so little money, without also having to endure constant supervision. Even Frau Else’s?

“Frau Else is different,” says Clarita.

“Why is she different? She lets you do whatever you want? She doesn’t get mixed up in your business? She protects you?”

“My business is my business, isn’t it? What does Frau Else have to do with my business?”

“I meant does she overlook your hookups, your little adventures.”

“Frau Else understands people.” Her sulky voice can scarcely be heard over the noise of the shower. “Does that make her different?”

Clarita doesn’t answer. But she makes no move to leave either.

Separated by the ugly white plastic curtain with yellow polka dots, both of us quiet, both of us waiting, I felt great pity for her and the desire to help her. But how could I help her when I was unable to help myself?

“I’m harassing you, I’m sorry,” I said when I got out of the shower.

My body, partly reflected in the mirror, and Clarita’s body, huddled imperceptibly on the toilet as if it weren’t that of a girl (how old must she be, sixteen?) but the cold body of an old woman, managed to move me to tears.

“You’re crying.” Clarita smiled stupidly. I toweled offmy face and hair and exited the bathroom to get dressed. Clarita was left behind mopping up the wet tiles.

There was a five-thousand-peseta bill somewhere in my jeans but I couldn’t find it. As best I could I scraped together three thousand in change and gave it to Clarita. She accepted the money without saying anything.

“ Since you know everything, Clarita”— I circled her waist with my arms as if I were about to start groping her again—“do you know what room Frau Else’s husband sleeps in?”

“The biggest room in the hotel. The dark room.”

“Why dark? Doesn’t it get any sun?”

“The curtains are always closed. He’s very sick.”

“Will he die, Clarita?”

“Yes… If you don’t kill him first…”

For some reason I can’t explain, Clarita brings out an instinctual cruelty in me. So far I’ve treated her well; I’ve never hurt her. But by her very presence she’s capable of awakening slumbering images deep inside of me. Quick and terrible images like lightning, which I fear and flee. How to exorcise this power so suddenly unleashed inside of me? By forcing her down on her knees and making her suck my dick and tongue my ass?

“You’re joking, of course.”

“Yes, it’s a joke,” she says, looking down at the floor as a drop of sweat slides neatly down to the tip of her nose.

“Then tell me where your boss sleeps.”

“On the second floor, at the end of the hallway, over the kitchen… You can’t miss it…”

After lunch I call Conrad. Today I haven’t left the hotel. I don’t want to risk a chance encounter with the Wolf and the Lamb (how chance would it really be?), or the Red Cross worker, or Mr. Pere… For once, Conrad doesn’t seem surprised by my call. I detect a hint of wariness in his voice, as if he were afraid to hear precisely what I plan to ask. Of course, he refuses me nothing. I need money and he agrees to send it. I ask for news of Stuttgart, Cologne, the preparations, and he gives a brief account, with none of the pointed and sarcastic commentary that I used to like so much. I don’t know why, but I can’t bring myself to ask about Ingeborg. When I finally work up the courage, the answer just depresses me. I have the dim suspicion that Conrad is lying. His lack of curiosity is a new symp-tom; he neither begs me to come back nor asks when I’m leaving. Don’t worry, he says at some point, by which I gather that my end of the conversation hasn’t been entirely reassuring, I’ll wire the money tomorrow. I thank him. Our farewell is almost a murmur.

I run into Frau Else in one of the hotel corridors. We halt, shaken— in earnest or pretending, what does it matter?—some fifteen feet from each other, hands on hips, pale and sad, exchanging glances that reveal the despair beneath our flurry of activity. How is your husband? Frau Else points at the line of light under a door, or maybe the elevator, I don’t know. All I know is that, carried away by a powerful and painful impulse (an impulse generated in my churning stomach), I stepped forward and drew her to me without fear of discovery, meeting little resistance, wanting only to lose myself in her for a few seconds or for life. Udo, are you mad? You almost crushed my ribs. I lowered my head and apologized. What’s wrong with your lips? I don’t know. Frau Else’s finger on my lips is freezing cold, and I jump. They’re bleeding, she says. After promising her that I’ll clean up in my room, we agree to meet in ten minutes at the hotel restaurant. My treat, says Frau Else, apprised of my new financial straits. If you aren’t there in ten minutes, I’ll send a couple of the toughest waiters to get you. Oh, I’ll be there.

Summer 1943. The English and Americans land in Dieppe and Calais. I didn’t expect El Quemado to go on the offensive so soon. It’s worth stressing that the beachheads he’s won aren’t very strong; he’s got a foothold in France but it will still cost him something to establish a secure position and advance. In the East the situation is deteriorating; after a new strategic retreat, the front runs through Riga, Minsk, Kiev, and hexes Q39, R39, and S39. Dnepropetrovsk has gone over to the Reds. El Quemado has air superiority in Russia as well as in the West. In Africa and the Mediterranean the situation remains unchanged, though I suspect that things will look very different by the next turn. Curious detail: as we were playing I fell asleep. For how long, I don’t know. El Quemado shook my shoulder a few times, saying wake up. Then I woke up and I couldn’t get back to sleep again.