The Woman at 1,000 Degrees

78 SS Kiss 1944

Finally I burst into his room one night. He sat at a desk in the corner by his bed, in a sleeveless white T-shirt by an open window. Somewhere in the distant darkness a train rattled across a meadow. Small flies fluttered in the light above his pen like interested readers. He looked up but showed no surprise, as if it were the most natural thing in the world for a lovesick child to erupt into his room.

‘Are… are you writing?’

‘Yes. Scribbling really.’

‘What are you writing? A letter?’

‘No.’

‘Can I see?’

‘See?’ he answered with a snorting laugh.

That was enough for me to step in and close the door behind me.

‘What are you doing here?’ I asked.

‘Here?’

‘Yes, on this Polish farm. Why aren’t you in the war?’

‘What are you doing here?’

‘Me? I… it was a horse that brought me here. I have nothing to do with this place. I’m just satisfied… so long as I have a bed.’

He eyed me for a minute, then finally said, ‘Herra María?’

He had called me that on the first night and chuckled every time he repeated it in Icelandic or German: ‘Herr Marie.’

‘Yes.’

‘Grab a seat. I just have to… finish here.’

He turned on his chair and stooped over the paper. Despite his broad shoulders and strong upper arms, his back seemed delicate and his trunk narrowed at the waist. Instead of sitting on a chair on my side of the rudimentary bed in the corner, I approached him from behind, halted at the end of the bed, and tried to peer at the pages on the desk. He was either writing a fan letter to Hitler or composing a poem. Sensing my presence, he turned his head without lifting it and chuckled through his nostrils again.

‘Isn’t your underwear marked?’

‘Huh?’ he said, without looking up.

‘You’re not wearing an SS vest?’

‘SS? Yes, sure. All our clothes are army clothes, underwear, socks, shoes. Everything.’

‘So why isn’t there a swastika on the vest?’

All of a sudden there was anger in his voice.

‘A swastika on my vest? There is a swastika on my vest. There’s a swastika on the paper. There’s a swastika on the pen. But they didn’t manage to get one into the ink! They couldn’t do it! It’s so heavy that it sank all the way to the bottom!’

He was almost shouting those last words. The door opened, and the big-nosed Karl stuck his head through the gap.

‘Is everything all right, sir?’

‘Yes,’ answered the commander, ‘fine, just close the door.’

The handsome officer of my dreams bent over the desk but had stopped writing and buried his face in his hands. I toyed with the idea of escaping through the open window. What had I done? Knocked him off balance? Why was he talking about the swastika like that? Wasn’t he a true Nazi? How could an SS officer allow himself to shout such things, such blasphemy? Was he writing a suicide note? He was still sitting there with his beautiful face in his hands. I hadn’t a clue of what to say or how to react and therefore started to peel off my clothes, a solution that has served women well since time immemorial. I pulled the white blouse over my head, loosened my skirt, and took off my dirty socks. He straightened up and placed his hands on the table but didn’t turn on his chair, just sat dead still, listening to the silent sound of a stocking being pulled down a leg. Then he picked up his pen and started to write again. I freed my breasts from my vest. Flies busied themselves under the working light that illuminated every hair on his left shoulder and neck. I felt the hairs were dancing to the rhythm of my every move, as if they were being charged by some precious electricity. Still I halted my stripping at the panties and stood on the rug at the end of the bed a moment, in nothing but my briefs, like a small nation at the negotiation table.

My left breast stood in the shadow cast by his right shoulder, but my right breast smiled at the light, making my pyramid-shaped nipple glisten. Oh, how small and innocent it was.

I carried on standing there and listened to the muted sound of his pen scratching the paper, until I grew shy and crawled into the bed under that thin quilt that must have been marked SS somewhere. He turned to me, put his pen away, and snorted again.

‘How old are you, Fräulein?’

‘Fifteen.’

‘Fifteen?’

‘Yes, I’ll be fifteen at the end of the summer.’

‘Then you’re fourteen now.’

‘Yes. But fourteen in war is like eighteen in peacetime.’

‘Says who?’

‘I’ve heard it. I’m not a virgin.’

Oh, the humiliations of love. The child from Breidafjördur had turned into a Nazi whore.

‘I’ve even been raped.’

He stood up and lay down beside me, on the quilt, smelling of vanilla and talcum powder, and gently stroked my hair as if I were dead and he was in mourning for me, a Polish country girl who had killed herself in a dirty canal like Hamlet’s Ophelia. In light of this, I was allowed to be delirious.

‘You’re so handsome. The most handsome man in the history of mankind. You are… can I call you Hartmut? I’ve had to say “sir” to so many people for more than four years now and I’m so tired of it. In Iceland you only “sir” people in hats, and not the ones who wear caps. But here they even say “sir” to their executioners. I heard one screaming: “No, for God’s sake, sir, don’t shoot!” just before he was killed, by a high wall.

‘Do you mind? Can I call you… Hartmut?’

‘In Germany you can be on first-name terms with a man only after you’ve kissed him.’

‘Really?’

‘No, not really.’ He smiled. A broken smile. What was tormenting him? I couldn’t allow myself to ask him all those questions or find answers for them, because now he was looking into my eyes. He put down his smile and vanished into seriousness and love. We kissed. A kiss marked SS.