Tedi stopped herself. “Now you think I’m crazy, don’t you?”
“No,” said Leonie. “I don’t understand but I don’t think you are crazy. Not at all.”
Leonie paced around the outside of the barrack for the rest of the afternoon, waiting for it to empty so she could talk to Lotte alone.
“Fraülein Lotte?” she said to the shape under the blanket. “Am I pronouncing your name correctly? Or perhaps Lotte isn’t your name at all?”
Peeling the cover down over her face, she stared hard at Leonie. “I have been lying here, wondering how Claudette Colbert learned to speak such elegant German. I thought, maybe she was married to one of my countrymen, or she might have worked for the Reich in France—a secretary typing the orders to deport her own family. And then it came to me: Claudette Colbert was perhaps a whore, opening her legs for the German boys who had no idea that she was a filthy Jew.”
Leonie’s eyes betrayed her and Lotte pounced. “I was right! You were a prostitute! A Yid bitch streetwalker. And you got away with it, too, didn’t you? No one shaved your head and marched you out of town, naked, with the rest of the whores? But maybe that’s what your friends here would do if I told them your secret.”
Leonie made her face as vacant and pleasant as she had during the long, vicious anti-Jewish tirades she had heard in Madame Clos’s apartment. Even Lucas would go on and on about the poisonous Jew when he was drunk.
Leonie had worked hard at charming Lieutenant Lucas and a few other young German officers who were clean and good-looking, who treated her a little more like a girl than just a cunt. She flattered them in bed with coos and moans and passionate thank-you’s. When they brought her nylons and chocolate, she asked for books of German poetry. She improved her conversation and eventually they refused the other girls, which spared her from nights with men who never washed, and men who found pleasure in causing women pain.
When she was with one of “her” men, she emptied herself like a bowl and watched herself perform, permitting herself to feel nothing but pride in her own efficiency. Leonie listened to Lotte’s rant with the same detachment.
“When they do find out about you, they will shame you in public. They will send you away. Maybe they will even stone you to death, which would be very biblical, don’t you think? And so appropriate.”
Lotte was enjoying herself. “I will tell you what is going to happen next, you little whore. You will tell that witch of a nurse that I am better now, that the water washed away all of my problems. And because you will say nothing about my past, I will say nothing of yours. We are in agreement, yes?”
Leonie lowered her chin.
“Now get out of here.”
Leonie walked away, remembering the last time she had faced a question when “yes” would have meant death, and “no” meant life.
In the brothel, she would dose herself nightly with two sleeping pills washed down by a tumbler of cheap brandy. That was how she slept through until morning, and woke up feeling nothing but hunger and thirst. But one morning, a burst of gunfire roused her long before the amnesiac cocktail had worn off.
Leonie had opened a swollen eye and saw blood on the sheets. Her jaw ached, and her sex was bruised. Her legs were black and blue. It had been a horrible night, and worst of all, it had been Lucas.
He had staggered in drunk with two friends who demanded a turn with the girl he claimed was so talented, so willing—truly the best whore in Paris. She had wept and begged, but he’d slapped her and let his comrade turn her on her face and sodomize her. One of them had the SS tattoo on his upper arm and he made her kiss it before forcing her to her knees while Lucas watched, and smirked, and played with himself.
She closed her eyes and tried to sink back into sleep but a second burst of gunfire sent her flying to the window, where a flock of startled pigeons was flying around in tight circles in the deep, narrow courtyard. There, at the center of the flapping gray blur, Leonie saw a woman wearing a long gown. She floated midair, suspended among the birds, waving for her to follow. Leonie had opened the window and climbed onto the ledge when she heard a voice behind her say, “No.”
She turned to see who had spoken, but there was no one in the room. And when she looked outside again, the pigeons were merely pigeons and the flying lady had vanished, a phantom of the drugs.
She crawled back to the bed and thought about the voice that had stopped her. It had been a woman’s voice saying no to death, as peaceful as it might be. It had been her own voice, saying yes to life, as miserable as it was.
That night, as lights-out approached, Leonie told Shayndel that she wanted to sleep in the infirmary. “There’s a girl with a fever in there, a timid thing from Lausanne who barely speaks. I thought I’d stay with her. Do you think I could get permission?”
“Oh, just go,” said Shayndel, distracted and worn out after a long day of second-guessing and biting her tongue. “What are they going to do to us at this point? I’ll see you in the morning.”
“Good night,” Leonie said and kissed her cheek, ashamed of how easy it was to lie to her friend. She held her breath, as though she were diving into deep water, as she ran across the shadows toward the infirmary. Knowing the clinic was empty, she took the key from beneath a loose floorboard, let herself in, and locked the door.
Feeling her way slowly through the dark, Leonie found Aliza’s desk and opened the drawer where she hid the candy. She sank to the floor and let one of the sugar marbles dissolve in her mouth, savoring the solitude along with the sweet.
She could not remember the last time she had been completely alone. Madame had not permitted her to close the door to her room after they had found her with the razor blade; not that Leonie had been trying to kill herself. She knew exactly how deep to cut and when to stop. She glanced at the cabinet that held the needles and scalpels, but it was locked with a key that Aliza never left behind.
Leonie crawled to the space between two cots and ran her fingers around the hem of her skirt. By the time she opened the catch on the safety pin, she was sweating and breathing heavily. But she grew calmer after pressing the point against her fingertip. It was still sharp enough.
Leonie pulled off her shoes and socks and cradled her left foot in her hands and waited until her breathing slowed down, forcing herself to prolong the anticipation. Then, pressing her cheek against the inside of her knee, she pushed the tip of the pin into the space between her big toe and her second toe. She gasped quietly and welcomed the sensation, relaxing as pain took precedence over fear and memory.
It was only a few moments before the throbbing started to fade. Leonie removed the pin slowly, squeezing at the tiny wound, putting her pinky finger to the warm blood and placing the salty drop to her tongue, exactly as she had in the brothel. That was where she had created this small, silent ritual of punishment and purification.
She took her time, eight times in all, one foot after the other, ending with the worst jab, between the fourth and smallest toe. And then Leonie leaned back and closed her eyes, relishing a moment of respite, the closest she came to peace.
Aliza found her on the floor in the morning, sound asleep, her cheek against the floor, fully dressed, her shoes neatly tied, her hands pressed between her knees.