I couldn’t... It wouldn’t...”
He paused for a moment, shaking his head slowly and sadly. “And you paid her as well.”
“Yes.”
“Ten reichsmarks. And now you’re broke, to boot.”
“My poverty is hardly of great concern at the moment.”
We drove in silence, like a disenchanted couple, both pairs of eyes forward yet seeing little more than images of our Colonel’s express disappointment, which was bound to rise along with the morning’s sun. We found ourselves headed back to the Beethoven Square, which seemed as appropriate as Napoleon’s return to kick the corpses at Waterloo.
“Ohhh.” I finally blew out a sigh. “I want to get drunk.”
“That’s certainly not going to help.”
“At this point, Edward, it does not matter. I am hardly going to attempt this again.” I fished in my pocket and found a few remaining pfennig.
“All right, then. What the hell.”
We soon found ourselves once again in one of the taverns on the square. At this juncture, Edward seemed quite spent, and I was not surprised given the physically hardy appearance of his recent paramour. He wandered over to a table in one corner, collapsed into a chair and waved at someone for a large beer.
The establishment was full of Wehrmacht officers, all laughing and drinking and hurling jokes across the room at their compatriots. Many of them were crowded about large round tables, some with local women pulled onto their laps, and more than one enthusiastic game of cards was being played out. Crackling music was loudly expressed from a gramophone atop the tavern bar, and the open floor between the bar and tables was full with quickly prancing couples, some swaying and clutching enormous beer steins. All in all I must have saluted twenty times as I carefully shouldered my way between these men, the long oak bar eventually appeared through the crowd, and I swam to it like a drowning sailor spotting a bobbing timber.
Exhausted in spirit and body, I climbed up onto an empty stool at the very farthest corner of the bar, placed one elbow on the polished and puddled wood, and rested my forehead in my hand. I had arrived at a very dark place in this stage of my life. It seemed that, until this night, my adventures in the army had been, although life-threatening, also exhilarating in some sense. Yet now I wanted none of it, and the reality of my predicament had come tumbling down, the realization triggered by the failure of my most basic libidinous necessity. I was hardly a man, and what made me think myself capable of surviving in the world I now inhabited? If I could not meet this most simple challenge, what might my master next present? Some task that would surely mean my death, instead of my humiliation. I began to plan my escape, knowing full well that desertion would also mean certain execution if I were ever caught. I nearly sobbed.
“And what can I do for you, handsome boy?”
I lifted my head. The barmaid, whom I had not heretofore noticed, stood directly in my vision. I noted first her smile, for it was warm and very wide and replete with fine teeth, without a hint of decay or breakage. Her long brown hair was pulled behind her neck, and her matching eyes were wide and friendly. She wore a very modest dark blue dress, buttoned tastefully to her throat.
I grimaced more than smiled, and I touched the brim of my cap and then removed it. “Is the beer expensive?” I asked.
“I don’t think so.” Her smile warmed further. “Five pfennig.”
I frowned and shrugged. “I am afraid I have only three.”
“As I said, three pfennig.” She winked.
She turned away for a moment, and her movement appeared to be nearly a pirouette, for in an instant she faced me once more, a high glass mug with a snowcap of foam in her hand. She plunked it down on the bar before me, and I pushed my last scraps of pay across the wood.
“Danke,” I said as I pulled the heavy glass closer.
“Bitte.” She nodded. Then she glanced up at a clock on the wall behind the bar, and she smoothly removed a white apron, folded it and tucked it away somewhere. “I think I’ll have one as well.” She poured herself a similar helping of beer from a huge keg, then pulled up a stool from her side of the oak and perched upon it. She raised her glass in my direction.
“I do not want to make trouble for you,” I said, glancing about for her employer.
“I’m off now. A girl deserves a rest, don’t you think?”
She clicked her glass against mine and sipped her foam, and I watched her as I did the same. She grinned as she swept a slim white line from her upper lip with her finger.
“I’m Francie,” she said.
“I am pleased to meet you. I’m Shtefan.”
She looked at me then, slightly tilting her head. One must realize that we were forced to speak very loudly above the din.
“You are wearing SS tabs, Shtefan.”
“Yes.” It was curious to feel that I was unworthy of such a dastardly coterie of warriors.
“I always think of them as older, and larger. And killers. You don’t seem to fit the image.”
“I’m just the commander’s adjutant.” I was desperately uneasy with this young woman. She was pretty and very open, and I was the world’s most pathetic fraud on every front.
“Ahhh.” She nodded and sipped some more, and I did the same, and we watched the room and were silent for a moment. Then, “And how old are you, Shtefan?”
“Nineteen.”
“I am twenty-three.”
“I wish I was twenty-three already.”
Naturally she did not understand my wish, being unable to connect it to my sexual status.
“And what are your tasks, for your commander?” she inquired, then suddenly touched her finger to her lips. “I should not ask you that. It might be a military secret.”
She was not joking, but I suddenly began to laugh. It came from somewhere deep and melancholy, a well of irony in my groin, and I had no control over the bitter mirth that racked my body as I threw my head back and tears actually sprang to my eyes.
“Why is that so funny?”
“My tasks...” I could not breathe, I was laughing so hard. “I...I must...”
“You must what, Shtefan?”
“I must lose my virginity!” At this point I was holding my chest, and I had to replace the mug upon the bar or spill its entire contents. “That’s the horrendous secret that must not be divulged! That is the shame for which my Colonel will not stand!”
I do not know why I vented my pain thusly to a stranger, but perhaps I could no longer contain my frustration, and she seemed a likely creature to sympathize. Eventually I calmed myself and settled back into silence. I held the mug with one hand, and with the other I rubbed my brow, and as I dared to look up at her again, I found her regarding
