Eva (36 page)

And the film went on in relentless horror. There were the women prisoners at Ravensbrück, a concentration camp exclusively for female inmates, who had cancer implanted in the uterus; and the Nazi doctors—wearing earplugs to screen out the screams of pain (anesthetics were reserved for front-line soldiers)—who would remove the womb, piece by piece, to study the effects of the ravaging disease . . . .

A dismal corridor with rows of cadaverously thin children aged one to five, lying naked on bare cots. In a hospital near Munich, the narrator stated, a Dr. Pfannmüller had devised a special way to eliminate inferior children, who in his opinion were nothing but a burden on the Reich. He starved them to death, at no cost to the Fatherland. “Our method is simple and natural,” Dr. Pfannmüller boasted . . . .

And there were the guards. The special breed of concentration camp guards. Brutish, demented-looking creatures.

Many of them have become notorious, the narrator said. Ilse Koch, the wife of the commandant, is known as the Bitch of Buchenwald, who scoured the camp for prisoners with interesting tattoos—from which to make lampshades. Or
SS
Hauptsturmführer,
Dr. Josef Mengele, the Auschwitz Angel of Death, who with a flip of his riding crop would decide life or death, while humming music from Wagner. And at the special women’s camp, where 92,000 women were put to death, there was the Rat of Ravensbrück, a woman who was particularly fond of flailing luscious young girls with big breasts . . . .

On the screen a group of female guards were throwing the naked, splotched, and half-decomposed bodies from a truckload of cadavers into an open common grave, supervised by a burly headed guard, a woman, wearing high boots and clad in the severe gray skirt and tunic of the KZ women guards. It was the woman known as the Rat of Ravensbrück. She turned and grinned directly into the camera.

Woody felt Ilse convulse. Her nails dug into his hand. He heard her gasp a guttural moan of anguish, as the impersonal narrator continued: This woman’s actual name was Klara Gessner, he intoned. She was one of the first Chief Administrators of Guards to reap instant retribution for her evil when the camp was overrun. The surviving inmates rushed her—and literally tore her to pieces while she was still alive.

Woody felt Ilse heave. He heard her retch, and he knew she had vomited. He was horrified. Klara Gessner. Ilse’s mother? Was
that
the “administrative job” she had held? Head of the infamous guards at Ravensbrück. He grabbed the girl by the arms as she was about to slide to the floor. He pushed his way to the side, carrying her with him, and started toward the exit. An MP blocked his way.

“Get back there, you lousy Kraut!” he snarled. “You bastards have been dishing it out long enough. Now—eat it!”

Woody shoved him aside. He half carried Ilse out into the open.

The MP was right behind him. He drew his ’45 and held it pointed at Woody. “Get your hands up, you fucking Nazi bastard,” he snarled in rage. “Now! Or you’ll never have another chance.”

Filled with blazing fury Woody turned on him. He was about to light into him when the lieutenant came from the barn.

“What’s going on here?” he asked sharply.

“That damned Kraut and his broad are ducking out,” the MP growled. “Against regulations, Sir. And the bastard is resisting orders.”

Woody glared at the lieutenant. “
Herr Leutnant,”
he addressed the officer in German, “the girl is sick.
She
was not responsible for that horror, and she has seen what you wanted her to see.” His voice was icy, his angry eyes impaled the officer. “If you force her back in you are no better than the swine on the screen!”

The officer scowled at him. He turned to the MP. “Let them go,” he snapped.

Woody found his motorbike. He helped Ilse to mount. She had lapsed into a catatonic silence. She let herself be manipulated with no will of her own.

At the first farm on the other side of Dillingen Woody stopped. At the pump in the farmyard he cleaned the girl. No one was about.

Again he helped her up on the bike, and again they took off down the road.

Already dusk was beginning to tint the countryside with gray. They would not be able to reach Memmingen before curfew.

They passed through the small village of Holzheim where the road ran through a forest. Woody turned off. He followed a path into the woods until he came to a small secluded clearing surrounded by a dense thicket and stopped. He helped Ilse from the motorcycle. She lay down on the grass and pulled her knees up to her chin in a fetal position, enfolding her legs with her arms. She uttered not a word. She only stared vacantly into space.

Woody sat down beside her. “Ilse,” he said, “I know it must have been a terrible shock. But you
must
snap out of it.”

There was no response. It was as if the girl did not even hear him.

Deeply disturbed, he surveyed her. He made up his mind. The girl would
have
to
get herself under control or he would be forced to ditch her. At some farm, perhaps. He would never get her all the way to Memmingen in her state, without being stopped and questioned. And he could not afford that. He frowned. If he did leave her somewhere, would she talk? Would she give away her knowledge of the
B-B Axis
? Touch off an investigation which might spell the ruin of his mission?

He took her by the shoulders. He shook her. “Ilse,” he pleaded, “listen to me. Talk to me.”

Her head lolled insensibly on her shoulders. She did not respond. He gazed at her. Dammit all to hell, he could not leave her. He wanted desperately to help.

Suddenly he slapped her smartly across her cheek. A hard, stinging blow.

She let out a gasp. Tears welled in her eyes and she stared at him in shock.

Suddenly she broke down. She threw herself into his arms and cried, as her insides exploded with an agony so intense it threatened once again to blot out her mind. Between rending sobs she whimpered: “I did not know. Oh, dear, dear God, I did not know. Mother . . . I—did—not—know . . .”

The grief, the shock, the horror overwhelmed her. She buried her face in his chest. And wept.

Woody held her. He caressed her heaving shoulders. He let her weep—waiting for her trembling to stop, the horror to abate.

It was later. How much later he didn’t know. Half an hour? More? It did not matter. Ilse was still huddled in his arms, but her trembling had stopped, her breathing was calm.

The little clearing was getting dark. Night was closing in and the grass and the brush began to release the sweet scents baked into them by the sun during the day. All around them the small, intimate sounds of tiny night creatures murmured to them. Crickets tuning up, a distant throaty frog, the rustling of tiny scurrying feet.

Woody listened to the measured breathing of the girl in his arms. Had she fallen asleep? He knew she must be emotionally exhausted. He looked down at her. Her short, auburn hair seemed to gather the fading colors of the waning day and make them rich and warm. Gently he touched the tousled locks. She stirred, burrowing closer.

He sighed. It was all for nothing, he thought. The ordeal of her flight. Her fear of remaining in Germany. Of being caught. It was all unnecessary. All because of the guilt-born belief, fostered by Goebbels and his damned crew, that the allied conquerors would wreak their terrible vengeance on the families of those they considered war criminals. It was, after all, what they had done in the countries they had enslaved, and would have done, had they been victorious. And, therefore, it was believed. Ilse’s mother had believed, although it was totally untrue, that her daughter would be held accountable for
her
deeds, grisly as they were. And in her own way she had wanted to save her.

With some surprise he recognized the depth of his feelings for this frail girl who clung to him. He cared for her—more than he had been willing to admit. The daughter of a monstrous murderess? Part of everything he abhorred? He gazed at her. Was she? Ilse was Ilse, not her mother. She had known nothing of her mother’s actions. And she had been appalled at what little she had found out about the atrocities committed by her people; shattered when she’d learned the full truth.

He glanced around the clearing. It was almost completely dark. They would have to spend the night. Gently he began to disentangle himself. Ilse held on to him.

“Please, Rudi,” she whispered huskily. “Not yet. Hold me.” She lifted her head and gazed up at him. In the dim light her solemn face was pale and her eyes shone darkly.

He looked down at her. He was suddenly overwhelmed by a tenderness so strong that his chest ached. His arms tightened around her slender body. Totally without a will of his own he bent his face down and pressed his lips against hers. She returned the kiss, her full lips opening and yielding to his.

All the horrors, the guilts, the fears were suddenly swept away. Only the now, the two of them, existed. Eagerly, unquestioningly, every motion a caress, they shed the clothing that was keeping them from the closeness they both hungered for. The fresh softness of the grass was cool against their skin as they sank down on the ground. There was no need for words—the little moaning sounds that purred from Ilse spoke a world of want to him.

He kissed her. He kissed the eyes that had seen horror and cried for it; he kissed the ears that had been wounded by words of shocking and cruel revelations; he kissed the lips that had cried out in tormented anguish. And it was all obliterated in his ardor.

He pressed his demanding body against hers. With feline sensuality she kneaded her nails into his back.

He nuzzled into her throat, arched back in ecstasy, and inhaled the exciting fragrance of her skin.

With increasing urgency they moved together in the age-old, ever-new mutual rhythm, each with a fire and a need, aching for release. Locking out the world of violence and evil, each gave, and each took.

He cupped her face in his hands. Her eyes were tightly shut as if trying to prevent the feelings of rapture behind them from escaping. He crushed his lips to hers. Uninhibitedly they strained, one against the other and quickly, bursting with pent-up desire, they silently screamed their ultimate pleasure to one another.

Side by side they lay naked on the grass in the warm summer night. Woody let his eyes rest on the girl cuddled next to him. A pale moon had risen and was shining capriciously though the leafy canopy above them, kaleidoscopically touching her silken, love-moist skin with gleaming silver.

He reached over and touched her, gently stroking her thrusting breasts. The musky scent of love-making was still upon her.

Impossibly, it was even better, more satisfying, the second time. Both were cleansed physically and emotionally of their tensions and free to explore the wonders of one another. Their rhythmic union seemed to throb and last an eternity before they both exploded into exhaustion and well-being.

He was struggling up the hill. The sun beat down upon him in physical torture, searing his eyes. The steep slope was sandy, and he kept sliding down, farther and farther with each agonizing step.

He looked down at the sea of faces below him, faces distorted in anger and lust. Men and women. SS troops and GIs. Young and old. Silently, relentlessly pursuing him with hate, their clutching hands stretched out against him.

The hideous burden he was carrying, the massive iron swastika, increased obscenely in weight with each laborious step he took.

He slipped. He slid down the slope. The massive, twisted burden fell on him and pinned him to the ground. The pressure on his chest became greater and greater until his breathing became impossible and his lungs shrieked for relief.

He felt his rib cage begin to splinter—and with a start he opened his eyes. It was broad daylight. The sun was streaming down through the trees.

The first thing he saw was a dirty, scuffed, hobnailed
Wehrmacht
boot pressing relentlessly down on his chest as he lay supine and naked on the grass. In the next instant he saw it all. The grinning, unshaven face of the man, clad in a tattered
Wehrmacht
uniform without insignia, looming over him; the clothing with which he and Ilse had covered themselves as they slept in each other’s arms, tossed aside; the other soldier, sitting on the naked girl; tight grip, her terror-stricken eyes wild above a grimy hand clamped over her mouth, the heavy iron chain from the pouch on his motorbike swinging from the man’s other hand. And the P-38 gun, held by the soldier who stood with his foot on his chest. It was unwaveringly pointed down on his face.

He jerked to sit up. Roughly the man pushed him down with his foot.

“Not so fast,
Kamerad,”
he sneered. “You are not going anywhere.”

He shook his head in wonder. “
Mench!”
he said. “This must be our lucky day. Stumbling upon you,
mein Freund.”
He looked around the clearing. “You have much that we can use, Helmuth and me, and use well.” A sardonic grin on his unsavory face, he leered down at Woody. “A motorcycle. Good clothes—and money, I should not be surprised.” He nodded toward Ilse. “And, of course,
her!”