“Yes, Oberführer. He is not well. I think he may die before spring,” Nelka lied.
“What a shame.” The Oberführer nodded at Sister Rosa, who put her leather bag on the table and began to unpack it.
“The baby was early. It’s weak.” Nelka tried not to look at the woman. They had drawn blood from her, and now they had called her back to see the SS officer.
“I sympathize.” The Oberführer gestured to Sister Rosa. She went to him, her small eyes lowered humbly, and carefully, with caressing movements of her thick fingers, she unbuttoned his tunic. It took a few minutes to do. The woman undid each button and then moved behind the man to take off the tunic. She put her hands over his shoulders almost in an embrace.
Nelka watched in silence and thought, They’ve done this before.
The stiff fabric of Sister Rosa’s dress pressed for a second against the Oberführer’s back. She felt the hot flush spreading up her neck and mottling her cheeks. She knew her nipples were hardening as she drew his tunic off. She moved in front of him and unbuttoned the shirt cuffs as he extended each hand to her. She unbuttoned the shirt-front with delicate movements.
Sister Rosa yearned to lay her hands on his white, white chest and stroke the silky hair that flowed in a line down to his navel and disappeared under his pants. She wanted to touch each of his dark nipples, press them flat and feel them harden under her fingers, but she resisted as she always resisted. He never allowed her to touch him. Never.
Nelka watched. How terrible can it be, she thought. I have made love with two men, my husband and Telek. This is only a man. I can go to Magda’s and make a bath and scrub when he’s done. Magda will make sure that I don’t have a child from this, and besides, it’s hard to get pregnant when you’re nursing a baby.
Sister Rosa was panting slightly. She didn’t know if the excitement was caused by the body of the Oberführer, muscled like a statue, or if she panted at the thought of what was to come. It was exciting that the man could do anything he wanted.
“Take your clothes off, Nelka.” The Oberführer kept his pants and boots on.
“I am nursing the baby,” she began. She wondered if the Brown Sister was going to stay.
“Obey.” Sister Rosa moved toward her. She hated to move her eyes from the man. He was pale and beautiful, and Sister Rosa trembled. She would have taken the place of the Polish woman if he asked, but he never asked.
Nelka unbuttoned her coat and laid it on one of the chairs.
“Quickly now.” Sister Rosa was checking something medical looking. Tubes. A needle.
Nelka took off her dress, and the two shifts, and the pads of cloth wrapped over her breasts, and the long pants and boots, and the socks and rags wrapping her feet. She stood in the warm room, and one of her breasts leaked a drop of milk. It fell and made a spot on the floor.
Sister Rosa moved to her and squeezed Nelka’s breast. The milk shot out in a stream into the air. The SS Sister saw the man watching closely, smiling, and she squeezed again to please him. She held Nelka’s breast and offered it to him like a fruit.
“She’s thin, but with that much milk she’s healthy.” Sister Rosa took a stethoscope from her bag and listened to Nelka’s chest, front and back. “No tuberculosis.” The woman pulled Nelka’s eyelids down. “Open your mouth.”
Nelka obeyed. The Oberführer stood and watched.
“Her mouth is pink and fresh. No jaundice in the whites of her eyes. She’s clean.”
“She has a certain look, don’t you think? I noticed it when we were first in this village.”
“What do you want?” Nelka knew she shouldn’t have asked. It didn’t matter if she knew. They would do what they did.
“I will lie on the mattress,” he said. “Set the chair over my body so she sits on the seat.”
“Help me,” said the Brown Sister. Her face was bright red. Nelka helped pull the mattress off the frame. It fell onto the floor.
“This will help get rid of the tiredness I’ve felt for the last few weeks.” He lay down on the mattress on his back.
“Are you a nurse?” asked Nelka.
“I am a Brown Sister. Our duties are to assist the creation of the new world that is coming.”
She talks like one of their posters, Nelka thought.
Sister Rosa picked up the chair and carefully placed it over the knees of the Oberführer.
“Sit on the chair.”
Nelka sat carefully, one leg on either side of the man’s body.
“Move forward on the chair, Nelka. I want to see you.”
She obeyed him and slid her buttocks forward.
“Almost come off the chair. Spread your legs wide.” He stared at Nelka, her breasts full and leaking milk, her body tilted back. Her sex, surrounded by dark blond hair, was violet pink.
A strange rose, he thought.
There was fear in her eyes now, not much, but he saw it. He sighed.
“It would be better if she had no fear at all,” he said, but he was lying when he said it.
There had been a woman once who had no fear. A Dutch woman. When he had taken all of her blood that he wanted, and the needle had been taken from his vein, he ordered that the needle stay in the woman’s arm. The rest of the woman’s blood ran out of the tube and made a puddle under the chair where she sat. Even when the puddle wet her feet, and she was dying, the fear never entered her eyes. Only a final glazing over before she fell off the chair. He’d shot her then.
Nelka looked in the man’s eyes. They were going to kill her. And who would feed the baby? She watched the Oberführer’s handsome face. More handsome than Telek. Almost as handsome as her husband had been.
He watched Nelka and wondered why it was that the fear made a difference. A fearless woman was no use to him. The blood of the Dutch woman hadn’t given him any energy at all.
Sister Rosa put the rubber strap around Nelka’s arm. She rubbed the crook in the girl’s arm where the skin was soft. When the vein popped up she inserted the needle smoothly, and the blood began to rise. Quickly, Sister Rosa attached a tube to the needle.
Bending to the Oberführer, the woman did the same to his arm. Gently, with deft fingers, she attached the blood-filled tube from Nelka to the needle in the man’s arm. The blood now dripped freely down the tube from Nelka to the Oberführer.
“You are really quite beautiful. I like it that you are a mother.” He moved slightly to make his arm more comfortable. Sister Rosa sat quietly on the other chair and watched.
That was it, he decided. It was beauty. A woman with fear in her face achieved a desirableness, a radiance. Courage in a woman’s eyes made her face hard, arrogant. Even a rather ordinary woman achieved a delicate beauty when she was afraid.
“Why do you want my blood?”
“Do not speak unless—” the Brown Sister began.
“I don’t mind. The idea came to me from my days as an athlete. Sometimes transfusions were given to increase energy during the last Olympic games. Your blood will refresh me and serve a higher purpose. Go, Sister Rosa, and do what I ordered.”
Sister Rosa, the graying spinster selected for service by the SS, nodded, put on her long cape and left the room. She was trembling a little, and she wanted to stay. She wanted to tell him that it would be her joy to stay. She wanted to say that she could watch his pleasure with the Polish woman, and his pleasure would give her the greatest happiness any woman had ever had. She wanted to tell him all this, but she didn’t. She simply obeyed because he wanted it.
Leaving the other woman with him, naked and golden, connected by a cord of blood, Sister Rosa felt the pain of being sent away, and even that gave her such pleasure that she nearly cried out as she left the house and moved down the street, her cloak a dark shadow around her.
“You will help me stay strong, Nelka,” the Oberführer was saying to the young woman.
Nelka was beginning to get dizzy. The shiny red line of blood swayed as she tried to move a little and get better ba
lance.
“I won’t take too much. Just enough for a beginning. You can do this again in two weeks. You are giving service to the Reich. The highest thing a Polish woman can aspire to is giving service to the German people. You are a chosen one.”
Nelka said nothing, and they sat for what seemed a long time. Then he began to talk again.
“You are a chosen one, Nelka, and I am chosen also. But there is a difference. You are the giver. Your duty is to be drained of all you have to serve your masters.”
He smiled, and Nelka couldn’t look into his eyes. He is insane, she thought, but not like the insane people I’ve seen before. His penis had begun to swell and pushed against his pants.
“I am also chosen, but differently. I was selected by God to be the receiver. I am the Chalice.” He liked the sound of the words and repeated them again. “I am the Chalice.”
The forest, Nelka thought. I can go into the forest with the baby and Telek.
They sat, joined by a tube of blood, for twenty minutes. Then the door opened and Sister Rosa came in.
“It’s locked in my room with a guard.”
The Oberführer smiled. “Just a minute or two more, Nelka.”
The woods, she thought. The woods. The forest that had never been burned, never been logged, the primal forest that man had never dared to harvest and prune and use. The wet moss. Snow that hid your tracks.
“Sister Rosa will take perfect care of your baby. It will be in Sister Rosa’s room. You can go and sit with it. You will nurse it. It will sleep with Sister Rosa for the moment. Is he sick, Sister Rosa?”
“He seems healthy. Quite good-looking. Blond and with no marks.”
“My baby?” Nelka tried to stand, and Sister Rosa slapped her gently to make her sit. “Where’s my baby?”’
“Safe in my room. You can see him anytime you need to nurse.”
“You have him?” Nelka stared at the woman. She was light-headed. “Why?”
“So you won’t be tempted to run away from me, my darling.” The Oberführer felt the power in his body. He was hot all over, and his arm stung from the needle. The girl’s blood was good. “You’re a lucky girl, Nelka. I could become quite fond of you.”
Sister Rosa saw the girl sway. Stepping forward she grabbed Nelka roughly by the shoulder. It was terrible that he had called Nelka darling.
“Take the needles out.”
Nelka dressed with the help of Sister Rosa.
“You may go to the baby. The soldier has orders to let you in. Sit with the baby as long as you like. You’ll both be quite safe.” The Oberführer lay on the mattress. Nelka saw that he still had an erection under his pants, but he didn’t touch himself or seem to notice. Only Sister Rosa stared at the man’s swollen penis pushing against the cloth.
“And, Nelka?” he said to her.
“Yes,” she whispered.
“You must not tell anyone about this. If I hear that anyone knows, I will have to deal harshly with them. And with you. And with anything that is yours. Do you understand?”
“Yes.” Nelka moved to the door. She had to see the baby.
“Here.” Sister Rosa pressed something into Nelka’s hand. It was a chocolate bar.
“Eat it. It will get rid of the light-headedness. Take this also. You need more food.”
Sister Rosa handed over a sack. Nelka knew from the weight and the lumpiness that it held potatoes, perhaps a twist of salt.
She walked out onto the street with the food in her hands. The snow was falling again.
Nelka moved toward Sister Rosa’s house. She had to see if her baby was safe. She walked slowly, each step an effort, but didn’t stop to rest. His sweet little body. He might be wrapped too loosely. He might be hungry.
Nelka moved down the street looking for her baby. She had to see if it was true that he had been taken from her.
Wiktor stood in the dark and watched Nelka leave the house and walk unsteadily down the street. He twisted his hands together, and his forehead was crumpled into lines as he thought.
Being the clerk gave him a certain freedom and certain responsibility. He could come and go after dark simply by right of being the Major’s clerk. He got more potatoes and bread and a glass of decent vodka when the Major was drunk enough not to care who drank with him.
He was responsible for all the paperwork. The Major had trouble caring much about the paper that flowed into the village and must flow back out or cause trouble with headquarters in Bialystok. Wiktor did the paperwork, but the responsibility that interested him the most was staying alive. No one in the village would help him with that. He was a dog to them. He was the Nazi Major’s clerk, brought from a jail in Warsaw, but he was still a Pole.
“I’m as Polish as they are,” he said, almost too loudly.
And that thought decided him. He moved toward the Major’s house. The man would be awake and drinking as always. The Major would want to know all about what Wiktor had seen, standing in the dark. The Major wanted to know everything that happened in the village, and Wiktor told him what he chose to tell. He didn’t tell it all, but some of it.
And this information was so amazing, so strange. Lying there under the naked woman and taking her blood. It was something peculiar. Even for the SS, it was peculiar. Wiktor was unsure of the exact laws governing the fraternization of Poles and German officers, but he knew that taking blood from a Pole would be a closeness that might interest the Major.
Wiktor grinned then for the first time. He liked keeping the Germans as uneasy as he could. It was a small thing, but he liked it when they had to think about things and worry. He walked up the steps to tell the Major, but he carefully rearranged his face into a look of docile stupidity before he knocked. He wouldn’t smile even once when talking to the Major about this.
“He did what?” Telek stood over Nelka, who slumped in the chair.
“I feel drunk.”
“What did he do to you? Where’s the baby?” It will only take me a moment to go to the forest and get my gun, Telek thought. Just a quick run, and then I could come back and—
“He said he’d kill me if I told. He’ll kill the baby.”
“Tell me.”
Nelka shut her eyes. She couldn’t live alone with it.
“The baby is with Sister Rosa. I saw him. He’s warm, and I fed him a little. I have to feed him there now.”
“Why does he want the baby?” Telek thought of the boy’s perfect blondness, and he shivered.
“So I won’t run away. Then he can do it again.”
Telek’s throat constricted, but he forced the words out. “Do what?”
“He took blood. The woman connected me to him with needles and a tube. He was transfused from me.” She could barely say the word and slurred it slightly. “Transfused,” she said, trying again.
“If he isn’t wounded, why does he need blood?” Telek knew his voice sounded angry.
“He just did it. He said it gives him energy. She wanted to watch, but he made her go, and that’s when she took my baby.”
“Watch you giving him blood?”
Nelka nodded. She couldn’t think very well, but she knew that she wouldn’t tell Telek about having to take her clothes off. About how the Oberführer stared at her on the chair. About the man’s erection under his pants.
“He bled you?” Telek didn’t want to ask, but he had to. “He didn’t make you—rape you?” he finished bluntly, and his voice was loud in the room which seemed so silent without the cry of the baby. Telek hadn’t realized before how one tiny baby filled a room.
“He didn’t touch me. Just the woman. Just the needles. But they have my baby. They’re keeping him in her room.”
“I’ll take him. Tonight. We’ll go in the forest.”
Nelka shook her head. It was so heavy or her neck was so weak, she didn’t know which. She laid her head down on the table and shut her eyes. “They have a guard. You’d get shot.”
I’ll kill him, Telek thought, and s
he read his thoughts without looking up from the table.
“If you kill him, they’ll chase us. And they’ll kill the village for reparation.”
“Blood.” Telek thought about it, and he was puzzled. He didn’t like being puzzled by the Nazis. It wasn’t safe when you didn’t know what the Germans were going to do.
“He said he’d do it again when I recover. Maybe every few weeks.” Nelka felt the tears, hot under her eyelids.
“I’ve heard about using women for blood. It was information passed on months ago, but they were using the blood for the wounded.”
Nelka said nothing. She knew that the Oberführer was not really a logical man. There was not a reasonable explanation. It had to do with her nakedness and his excitement, but she wouldn’t tell Telek that. She wondered if the Oberführer would be more excited as he took more and more blood. She wondered if she’d have to die so he could come to orgasm.
Telek sat and put his hand on her head. He stroked the heavy knot of hair that caught the light from the window.
“He said he’d only do it sometimes, Telek. He doesn’t touch me.”
“I can kill him,” Telek whispered to her.
“Only if you kill all the Germans. Every one. Or they’ll kill the whole village.”
“If he touches you, I’ll kill him,” Telek said.
“He can’t have sex with me. I’m Polish.” Nelka raised her head and smiled at Telek. “It’s against their law for him to have sex with me. They’ll be gone soon.”
Telek sat and didn’t move to kiss her. Nelka sighed. She was so tired. She wanted to be petted and rocked like a child but Telek was rigid with shame and anger. His woman was being used by another man, and Telek could do nothing. He couldn’t even look her in the eyes.
Nelka wanted to lie down wrapped in blankets and slip under the darkness of sleep like slipping under dark water in summer, when they swam in the river after working all day in the fields. But Telek sat beside her, his face white with the pain of his helplessness.
“Come to bed, darling,” she whispered, standing with effort and taking his hand. “Come to bed and let me love you.”