The Soul Of A Thief

Edward took the black-haired wench by her wrist and immediately moved toward a creaking stairway, and as he passed me by he whispered, “Just think of Ava Gardner.”

I stared after him. I did not know who that was, and was lost for a substitute image. I found myself temporarily immobilized, while Heidi lifted the hem of her dress and too mounted the stairway. She stopped after a meter’s progress, turned to me and beckoned with a finger, and I swallowed hard and followed.

Within a minute, I found myself standing before her in a small and dimly lit room, rather like the cabin of a steamship. There may have been a washstand, a small desk and a single chair, but I do not really recall, for my eyes were locked on the narrow bed covered with rumpled and graying sheets.

Heidi immediately plopped herself down on the edge of this newlyweds’ paradise, sitting quite erect and spreading her boots. She regarded me with what she might have supposed to be doe’s eyes, and placed a flirtatious finger in her mouth. With her other hand, she quickly lifted her dress and gathered its hem about her waist, revealing short, puffy white bloomers encasing her bare thighs. Then, with the practiced grace of a magician’s assistant, she quickly dragged them off, down over her knees, and allowed them to hang about one ankle, while I stood there and stared at her in utter shock, as if the furry mouth that now presented itself to me was the maw of a dragon.

I could not move. My hands were clenched into tight fists, angled straight down astride my trouser legs, as if I might be at attention on parade. My breaths came in short rasps of panic through my nostrils, and although I tried with every muscle to summon some sensation in my groin, in truth I seemed to be utterly paralyzed from the neck down.

The woman giggled then, which quickly shot my face through with a roaring blush. She seemed to believe that my paralysis was simply a temporary lack of ardor, perhaps akin to a stubborn auto engine requiring coaxing on a winter morn. And so, she quickly unlaced her bosom bodice, slid her hands inside her upper dress, and scooped her breasts out into the air, where they settled upon her torso like a pair of cycloptic jellyfish. This attempt had no effect whatsoever, other than to further widen my eyes and tremble my knees.

For a moment, Heidi cocked her head at me, then quickly leaned forward and reached out for my tunic. I watched her hands as they deftly flashed the flaps aside, unbuttoned my braces, and within an instant I was standing there with my trousers and shorts about my boots. As she gripped me in her hand and opened her mouth, I confess that I squeezed my eyes shut and prayed. But it was all to no avail, as her enthusiastic tongue and lips managed only to soak me in a warm sort of slime, through which nothing worthwhile of me emerged.

“No, my dear?” She finally spoke, perhaps thinking that some romantic lingual engagement might encourage me. “Then let’s try it this way, Schatzi!”

She suddenly fell back upon the bed, raising and separating her legs as she dragged me down, my body stiff as bone in every place but where it mattered. And I fell upon her, bumping hair muff to hair muff, flesh to flesh, and she twisted and bucked and ground her hips and gripped my buttocks and bit down onto my earlobe. But we remained unjoined, and I felt nothing more than sublime humiliation.

At last, she ceased her futile efforts and turned her head to regard a cuckoo clock on the wall. “So, that’s it, poor boy!” she exclaimed as she jumped up.

Within a minute, I was fully dressed and outside on the street, waiting for Edward as I cursed Himmel and Hitler and the entire Reich, not to mention God, who was equally the culprit...

* * *

“You didn’t?” Edward was driving once more and regarding me, post-confession, as if I had failed to feed my own starving child. “What do you mean, you didn’t?!”

Silence for a moment.

“I couldn’t.”

“You didn’t even try?”

“I tried. She tried. All of the angels in Himmel’s version of hell tried.”

“Was there something wrong with her?”

“I have nothing with which to compare.”

“Well...did she have some hideous scar or something?”

“I believe she was biologically normal.”

“Then what the hell was wrong?”

“Nothing happened. I couldn’t... It wouldn’t...”

He paused for a moment, shaking his head slowly and sadly. “And you paid her as well.”

“Yes.”

“Ten reichsmarks. And now you’re broke, to boot.”

“My poverty is hardly of great concern at the moment.”

We drove in silence, like a disenchanted couple, both pairs of eyes forward yet seeing little more than images of our Colonel’s express disappointment, which was bound to rise along with the morning’s sun. We found ourselves headed back to the Beethoven Square, which seemed as appropriate as Napoleon’s return to kick the corpses at Waterloo.

“Ohhh.” I finally blew out a sigh. “I want to get drunk.”

“That’s certainly not going to help.”

“At this point, Edward, it does not matter. I am hardly going to attempt this again.” I fished in my pocket and found a few remaining pfennig.

“All right, then. What the hell.”

We soon found ourselves once again in one of the taverns on the square. At this juncture, Edward seemed quite spent, and I was not surprised given the physically hardy appearance of his recent paramour. He wandered over to a table in one corner, collapsed into a chair and waved at someone for a large beer.

The establishment was full of Wehrmacht officers, all laughing and drinking and hurling jokes across the room at their compatriots. Many of them were crowded about large round tables, some with local women pulled onto their laps, and more than one enthusiastic game of cards was being played out. Crackling music was loudly expressed from a gramophone atop the tavern bar, and the open floor between the bar and tables was full with quickly prancing couples, some swaying and clutching enormous beer steins. All in all I must have saluted twenty times as I carefully shouldered my way between these men, the long oak bar eventually appeared through the crowd, and I swam to it like a drowning sailor spotting a bobbing timber.

Exhausted in spirit and body, I climbed up onto an empty stool at the very farthest corner of the bar, placed one elbow on the polished and puddled wood, and rested my forehead in my hand. I had arrived at a very dark place in this stage of my life. It seemed that, until this night, my adventures in the army had been, although life-threatening, also exhilarating in some sense. Yet now I wanted none of it, and the reality of my predicament had come tumbling down, the realization triggered by the failure of my most basic libidinous necessity. I was hardly a man, and what made me think myself capable of surviving in the world I now inhabited? If I could not meet this most simple challenge, what might my master next present? Some task that would surely mean my death, instead of my humiliation. I began to plan my escape, knowing full well that desertion would also mean certain execution if I were ever caught. I nearly sobbed.

“And what can I do for you, handsome boy?”

I lifted my head. The barmaid, whom I had not heretofore noticed, stood directly in my vision. I noted first her smile, for it was warm and very wide and replete with fine teeth, without a hint of decay or breakage. Her long brown hair was pulled behind her neck, and her matching eyes were wide and friendly. She wore a very modest dark blue dress, buttoned tastefully to her throat.

I grimaced more than smiled, and I touched the brim of my cap and then removed it. “Is the beer expensive?” I asked.

“I don’t think so.” Her smile warmed further. “Five pfennig.”

I frowned and shrugged. “I am afraid I have only three.”

“As I said, three pfennig.” She winked.

She turned away for a moment, and her movement appeared to be nearly a pirouette, for in an instant she faced me once more, a high glass mug with a snowcap of foam in her hand. She plunked it down on the bar before me, and I pushed my last scraps of pay across the wood.

“Danke,” I said as I pulled the heavy glass closer.

“Bitte.” She nodded. Then she glanced up at a clock on the wall behind the bar, and she smoothly removed a white apron, folded it and tucked it away somewhere. “I think I’ll have one as well.” She poured herself a similar helping of beer from a huge keg, then pulled up a stool from her side of the oak and perched upon it. She raised her glass in my direction.

“I do not want to make trouble for you,” I said, glancing about for her employer.

“I’m off now. A girl deserves a rest, don’t you think?”

She clicked her glass against mine and sipped her foam, and I watched her as I did the same. She grinned as she swept a slim white line from her upper lip with her finger.

“I’m Francie,” she said.

“I am pleased to meet you. I’m Shtefan.”

She looked at me then, slightly tilting her head. One must realize that we were forced to speak very loudly above the din.