The Baker's Secret(62)
The man was wearing gloves, Emma noticed. What kind of a man wears gloves in June? A breakthrough had arrived for Thalheim, though, some dam of restraint broken, and he surrendered to its flood, pounding her repeatedly, relentlessly, so that Emma was reminded of a thresher crossing a hay field, blades spinning to pummel the wheat. No one would save her, no one would stop his hard-knuckled hand, because no protectors were left and her only friend was the ground below, yet the captain refused to let her fall against it.
After two years of frustration, two years of enduring her sarcasm and scorn, he needed four fists to express the frenzy in his heart. Instead one of his hands gripped her torn shirt, keeping her in ideal range, while the other went left and right on her face—but untidily, wildly, sometimes striking her neck or ear, the ear stung especially.
But then Emma could not distance herself any longer, because of the pain. Out of the mayhem of blows an idea came, a recollection. She reached down for the knife against her thigh. The handle felt solid in a world of blurred confusion, the knife seemed to jump from its sheath, and she managed to slash sideways once.
Thalheim grabbed at his shoulder. “You monstrous bitch,” he cried, tromping his boot on her wrist.
Then his gloves were throttling her throat and the knife fell away as Emma felt for the first time in her life the weight of a man on her body—while she thrashed till her strength turned to vapor, and the hands wrung her life away, and the world closed down to a small dimming darkness.
Yet he let her live. A motorcycle had come into the barnyard and the strangling paused. While Emma gasped for air a young voice spoke rapidly, it was a message of some kind, and she recognized the word “Kommandant.” Thalheim opened his hand, dropping her as he snarled a reply. The young voice answered, and the motorcycle rattled away.
Thalheim bent over, yanking Emma up by her hair. “Am I a sergeant tonight, clever bitch?” His face leered close, eyes bulging like a horse in panic. “Say my rank or I kill you now.”
Emma tried to answer but her tongue was stuck in her throat. A strained garble came out.
“Say it or you die.”
“Capt—”
“Yes.” He threw Emma’s head back. “Yes.” He stood, brushing dirt from the knees of his pants. “Lucky for you I am called to important duty.” Thalheim took out his pistol-cleaning cloth, pressing where she had cut his shoulder. “Now you listen: when this air attack has passed, and failed as it is certain of fail, Captain Thalheim will return, and he will take his pleasure from the clever bitch. Yes he will. Then he will finish of her, and of her idiot grandmother, and burn this filthy peasant place to ashes.”
Emma shook her head, gurgling, but the captain had stepped away. He lit a match, and she could smell tobacco. Thalheim put on his helmet, neatened his gloves, straightened his uniform to perfection—taking his time, the pride of his kind. Emma lay unmoving.
Eventually he ground the butt out in the dirt. “Consider it kindness, that I give you longer than the others,” he said. “Contemplate your mortality.”
With the final word he stomped again on her wrist, all of his weight. It made a snapping sound like kindling for the fire, a lightning bolt of pain and Emma knew that a part of her was damaged inside, though to her numbed mind it seemed to be somewhere far away.
Thalheim climbed aboard his motorcycle and roared off, a spout of gravel thrown in her swollen face. Emma lay there, her mouth full of blood and dirt. It tasted like dread.
Chapter 31
Odette paced the rectangle of her cell, corner to corner to corner. She was dismayed to learn how much confinement galled her. Life was all about constructive use of time: minutes left in a recipe’s broiling, hours till the café opened, days till the beet greens sprouted. Before the occupation, when women wore tight belts and dandy hats, she had favored blousy aprons and a big watch on her wrist. She was a person of activity, working every waking moment. Between the café, caring for older villagers, and relaying information gleaned from overly talkative soldiers, Odette had not experienced a stationary moment in years. This forced idleness felt like claustrophobia.
Now that she had passed the better part of a night, inactivity goaded her like five too many cups of tea.
Worse, the basement contained neither window nor clock. Odette knew by the grumbling of her stomach that the dinner hour was long past, and she shook her head to think of all the hungry customers arriving at her café to find the windows dark, the lost revenue, the lobster now spoiling in its pot. At home she slept by the window, and waking at any hour could estimate the time by the light in the sky, and where the moon hung. But in that cell, night stretched long. Dawn might come in a minute, or two weeks. With the air rumbling from bombs, the ground trembling, Odette felt like she was being held in a tomb.
Yet the guard seemed nothing other than bored. He inspected every inch of his rifle, polishing certain favored spots with the cuff of his sleeve. He examined his fingernails. When the lights flickered after certain bombs, his reaction was limited to raising his eyes to the fixtures. Once the light stabilized again, he wagged his boot side to side while observing closely, as if trying to decide which angle showed it to greatest advantage.
“You aren’t quite the army’s brightest, are you?” Odette asked him at last.
“You speak my language.”
“You noticed.” She crossed her arms. “And they had told me you were as clever as a cow.”