My Name is Eva(60)
She lifted her head. ‘Damn,’ she said. ‘I thought I was doing so well.’ She unfastened her skis, but before she could get to her feet, he was suddenly upon her. She felt his weight on her shoulders and her ill-fitting, oversized trousers were pulled down behind her. ‘What are you doing?’ She struggled and screamed, ‘Stop it.’
He punched the side of her head so hard she gasped and inhaled a mouthful of snow. Then a harsh gruff voice, quite unlike the polite and gentle tones she had heard from him so far, spat words back at her: ‘You Englisch. So righteous, so proud! You think we can forget, huh? I will show you what I think of you people, telling us all the time how we are in the wrong and must be punished. It will end here.’ She heard spitting, then the warm wetness of his hand groped between her buttocks, his fingers probing her anus, before he forced himself into her, ripping the soft tissue to the tune of her agonised screams.
‘You don’t like it? Maybe this you like better.’ Then he plunged again, not quite so painfully but still cruelly, into the place where she had only ever known pleasure and tenderness with her husband.
After a few quick thrusts he grunted and withdrew. It was brutal and humiliating, but it was quick. When it was over, he stood up, adjusting his clothing, and she turned her head to see him leaning against a tree, lighting a cigarette. He was nonchalant, relaxed. He might have been pausing for a rest by a lamp post on a city street, catching his breath after a tiring afternoon walk.
Eva managed to turn and support herself on one elbow. Other than the pain she felt in her most tender parts, she was not injured. She did not speak, there were no tears, but she was furious and very afraid. And despite her shock and fear, the commanding voice of her combat training sergeant came back to her: ‘Grab them by the balls first if you can. Don’t wait for their move, you only get one chance.’ Peter only knew her as the friendly carefree girl from the camp, who filed visa applications and hiked on her days off; he didn’t know that her survival instincts had been honed by rigorous training in silent killing.
She brushed the snow from her jacket, her face and her hair. She stood up so she could fasten her baggy trousers. He stood there, carelessly smoking and laughing, telling her, ‘You think we can forget how your planes bombed us, how you destroyed our beautiful cities? Dresden, K?ln, all the thousands of innocent civilians you killed. Never! We hate you and I will enjoy taking my time to finish you off, you little English bitch!’ She was alert to the menace in his voice, the menacing hatred that convinced her she had only minutes to save herself. Again, her sergeant’s instructions reverberated like a mantra: ‘Swift upward thrust, don’t hesitate.’ Could she do it? Could she be sure it would save her?
Eva felt inside her jacket; she let him think she was in shock. She wanted him off guard, relaxed, assured she would not fight back. She found what she wanted and then lunged for his eyes, just as she had been trained to do. Eva plunged her sharp pencil, one of the very pencils she sharpened every day at her desk to fill in the prescribed paperwork and select those who might leave the camp, into his eye socket and up into his brain. And as he screamed and put his hands to his face, falling to his knees in agony, she aimed for his head with the end of her ski pole.
He writhed and gurgled and was finally silent. Eva listened for several minutes, but once his cries quietened, there were no other sounds. ‘You foolish boy,’ she whispered. ‘I’m sorry, I had no choice.’ She looked down at his body, now so still and unthreatening, felt for a pulse, just to be certain, then refastened his ski bindings and threw his poles nearby. She scooped snow to cover him completely, so it would look as if he had crashed into a trunk when he went off-piste.
Her cream Aran sweater and cord trousers were splattered with droplets of blood, but if anyone noticed, she could say she had suffered a nosebleed. Eva rubbed away the worst of the stains with fistfuls of snow, then left the cover of the dark trees and glided back onto the slope, down towards the cluster of lights beginning to glimmer at the bottom of the hill as the sun finally set.
55
Eva, 7 January 1947
What the Woods Hide
‘How was the skiing?’ Sally asked when she came back to their quarters from her shift that evening.
Eva was already curled up in bed, a hot-water bottle wrapped in a towel between her legs to soothe her bruised flesh. She’d run herself a scalding bath as soon as she’d returned. In the bathroom she’d scrubbed her skin, slipped soapy fingers into her sore vagina and torn rectum, and hoped she had escaped the danger of being impregnated or infected as the result of her foolishness. Wiping the steam from the bathroom mirror, she had seen bruises beginning to emerge on her neck and shoulders, but her face, though flushed with the hot water and her own tears, did not betray her. Her cream sweater, and the loose trousers that had been so easily ripped from her body, were spattered with his blood and lay rolled in a bundle at the bottom of her suitcase. The dark tweed jacket, speckled in country hues of rust and green, showed no obvious evidence of her crime and she’d hung it to dry near the stove.
‘Did you enjoy yourself?’ Sally asked, her words somewhat muffled as she pulled her thick jumper over her head.
‘It was all right, but I won’t bother again.’ Eva yawned. ‘The snow was a bit soft, then Peter abandoned me on the slopes and went off on his own. He wasn’t impressed with my abilities, he thought I was far too cautious and slow.’