Armageddon_ A Novel of Berlin - Leon Uris [163]
After the first week Hildegaard seemed most annoyed by her lack of guilt. Moreover, she had an insatiable desire to return. She enjoyed the game, enjoyed withholding, hated the lust of the men.
They all fell into one of several categories, which Elke had defined, but there was a basic reaction by all of them. Appeal to his vanity, feign interest in his babbling, let him act possessive, laugh at his idiotic jokes, touch him, watch the evening grow, watch his anticipation rise. The drive through darkened streets to billets they had requisitioned. In the final act, Hilde played out a role of demure innocence that brought them to a passionate pitch.
She had never loved a man in her life and what she was forced to do came out in a hatred in the dark. She was drawn to make them plead for her body, and when she submitted she went berserk until the man collapsed. As he lay moaning, she was always awake with the twinge of victory. She was the ultimate whore that every man craves in woman, one who could run the gamut from innocence to savage lover.
At the Paris Cabaret they said here was one girl who made love and loved it. Fritz Stumpf alone seemed to realize that she was, in truth, committing murder through the sex act. He saw that she stuck close to Elke, enjoyed Elke’s morbid humor, which condemned their lives.
Stumpf became suspicious when Hilde curtly told him one day she would accept only two dates a week. This could only mean one of two things. Either she had a steady lover or was making her own arrangements. He had Hippold watch her and was puzzled to learn that she rarely left her room on the days she did not come to the Paris Cabaret.
Hilde’s motives were simple. On those nights she worked, she wore herself into exhaustion. She cared too much for her beauty to use it up. In addition, she was earning more in two nights than most of the others in an entire week.
She was determined to come out of the experience whole. Yet, exposure brought risks. She realized that Elke was a Lesbian with designs on her; the cool patience and mystery of Fritz Stumpf frightened her... she could run into roughness and ugliness. One had to fight against slipping and staying out of serious trouble.
One night, as it comes to all in that ancient trade, Hilde found herself in a desperate situation. Her date, an Ami officer, grew quite drunk. As he did, his remarks about Germans became more vicious. He was a Jewish boy, and in bed his hatred of himself and of her erupted and he beat her up.
Her father and mother apparently accepted the story that she was accosted by Russian soldiers on the street, but Ernestine knew otherwise.
She tended Hilde day and night and watched her sister sink into a deep wordless depression on the realization that there was no coming out whole.
Ernestine was awakened by Hilde’s sobbing. “The scar on my breast won’t ever go away.”
Ernestine was glad to hear Hilde’s first words since the incident. “Those are not the only scars. You cannot see the others, Hilde, but they are there and they may not go away either.”
“Don’t!”
“We must talk, Hilde. We used to talk to each other. We were so close.”
“My breast used to be perfect ... those Russian beasts!”
“I know all about Hilde Diehl and the Paris Cabaret,” Ernestine said abruptly.
Hilde buried her face in the pillow. “You spied on me!”
“I am your sister.”
She forced Hilde to turn over and dried her tears and stroked her hair. “Oh, Erna! I am so terribly confused. What has happened to us?”
“It is hard to realize but there will be a tomorrow someday without this nightmare.”
“There is not tomorrow here in Berlin,” Hilde said.
“We have to live to believe there is. But every time you enter that place you destroy your tomorrow. I have sat here night after night waiting for you to come home and I say to myself ... how have I failed Hilde? How can I make her understand?”
“You have always been too good, Erna. You have always suffered for others. When we were little ... you would take