Von Deitzberg struck her in the face with his fist. The blow came without warning, and was forceful enough to knock her backward onto the floor.
She looked at him with terror in her eyes, put her hand to her face, and then looked at her fingers, which now had blood on them.
“I’m not going to tell you again, Frau von Tresmarck,” von Deitzberg said.
She looked into his eyes and saw something that quickly made her avert her eyes. She put her fingers to the buttons of her blouse, saw the blood on them, and licked them clean. Then she began to unbutton the blouse.
Von Deitzberg walked to the desk, placed the black briefcase on it, and sat down.
Inge shrugged out of the blouse and laid it on the carpet beside her. She looked at him. He was carefully removing large envelopes from the briefcase. She lifted herself to her feet, unbuttoned the skirt, and stepped out of it. She glanced quickly at him again, then pulled her slip over her head. She was afraid to look at him, but somehow she sensed that he wasn’t even watching her. She unfastened her stockings from the garter belt and removed them. As she did so, she tasted blood on her lip, proved this by putting her fingers to her mouth, and then bent over, took a handkerchief from her purse, and wiped her nose, mouth, and fingers with it.
She looked at him once again. Now he had one of the files open on the desk and was flipping through it. She put the bloody handkerchief in her purse. “May I go to the rest room and clean my face?” she asked after a moment.
He raised his eyes from the file. “No,” he said, and dropped his eyes back to the file.
She stepped out of the garter belt, looked at him again, exhaled audibly, and reached behind to the clasp of the brassiere. She took that off and dropped it onto the skirt. Then she slid her underpants off and stepped out of them. She put her left arm across her breasts and covered her pubic area with her right hand.
Von Deitzberg looked at her. “Put your hands to the side,” he ordered matter-of-factly, and then demonstrated by extending both his arms from his body so that they were midway between vertical and horizontal.
She complied. Tears ran down her cheeks.
He returned his attention to the documents on the desk.
“Why are you doing this to me?” she asked, plaintively, a long moment later.
He raised his eyes, looked at her from forehead to toes, and then returned his attention to the documents without speaking.
Five minutes later, he closed one of the file folders and looked at her again from head to feet. “Feel a little humiliated, do you, Inge?” he asked.
“What is it you want?” she asked.
>
“That’s the whole idea,” von Deitzberg said conversationally. “To humiliate the person being interrogated, to deprive him—or her—of his—or her—dignity.”
He let that sink in.
“You’re a more than ordinarily attractive female, Inge. One might even say beautiful. That was my reaction to you when I saw you in your car, when you gave me a look at your legs. You were then in charge, so to speak. Or at least thought you were.”
She didn’t reply.
“Right now you are a naked female, and frankly, your body isn’t nearly as attractive as I expected. Your breasts are starting to sag, and there is too much flesh between your legs.”
Her lips quivered.
“More important, I think you’re getting the idea just how vulnerable you are, how completely you are at my mercy.”
“What is it you want from me?”
“That standard line from any film about a court trial, ‘the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.’”
“I would have answered anything you asked me,” she said. “You didn’t have to do this.”
“I think I did. Otherwise I wouldn’t have done it,” he said matter-of-factly. “Please turn around, Inge. Turn completely around.”
She looked at him for a moment, then complied.
When she had completed the turn, he let her stand there for a long moment. Then he said, “Your buttocks are beginning to sag, Inge. You are losing the charms of youth.”