Blue Damask (37 page)

     “I love you, Elsa,” he said, and his hand moved to position her properly and get her skirt clear of his intent.  He arched his back with slow deliberation and pressed carefully.

     It hurt.  She tried not to let him see that in her face. She tried to welcome him with her arms around his shoulders and her mouth on his.  His breath was warm into her ear as he moved.

     She closed her eyes and tried not be clinical about this new experience, but she could not help but analyze.  She should be excited, she should be basking in the glory of his embrace, but she kept thinking how strange it felt to have a man inside her body.  How perfectly the parts fit, one to the other, in this act of love.  He was growing harder and larger inside her and his slow strokes would eventually lead him irresistibly to a finish.  She took small breaths in rhythm with his movements, waiting with curiosity to feel the tingling she expected once the shock of entry was gone.

     Other nurses had told her what this felt like, they had recounted their loves in the dormitory and in the boarding houses.  They grieved over their lost lovers, the sad letters limp in their hands.  They were joyful over short notes from the front and the absence of names in the newspaper.  But Elsa had been excluded from that club.  She had never had time for a young man.

     Sonnenby bent to kiss her every few strokes, and mumbled his love for her in unintelligible syllables.  He moved back and forth very slowly.  Her body began to feel warm and pleasant like a gentle rocking on a porch swing on a summer evening; her mind took a break from analysis and focused on that warmth.  A tiny spark of tingling goodness began to spread from the middle of her body to her knees.  Her friends had been correct.  It could be pleasant.  It was very nice.  She smiled in the midst of his next kiss.  “
Gott im Himmel
,” she breathed.

     He arched his back and kissed her harder.

     The warmth was growing, no longer merely pleasant but insistent as if expecting her to do something with it.  Or if there was a such a thing as a proper way to do this.  She reasoned that if it felt good, she would move her hips in that direction.  If it was uncomfortable she would move them in another.  Lovemaking was supposed to be easy.  Anyone could do it, and nearly everyone did.  She was doing it now.  Sort of.

     He was breathing harder and there was no more kissing or smiling as he moved faster.  His eyes had a lost look, internalized on his own body as he neared the end.  She did not want to close her eyes.  She wanted to watch him in the final act of this drama.  She had never seen a man orgasm with a woman.  It would be interesting.

     She had seen bedridden soldiers pleasure themselves in the darkness of the wee hours, she would rush to their sides thinking they were in pain as she heard their small cries and labored breathing.  She was fascinated at the similarities between the sounds a man made for pleasure and for pain.  These men in the hospital did not need medication.  They would grimace and spasm, then relax and sigh, exactly like a man in agony who had been given an injection of morphine.  Elsa had wanted to study this interesting correlation, but Doctor Engel had told her, amused, that it would be too shocking for the other students to listen to her read her papers out loud, and he questioned the direction her research might take.

     Sonnenby began to pant and this brought her back to what was happening right now between her own thighs.  She wobbled in the grass with the force of his thrusts, and though it was no longer painful, there was little pleasure now. He was moving too fast and too hard. Finally Sonnenby grimaced with this private frenzy of sensation.  He froze still and moaned long and deep.  His whole body thrummed with his voice.  She held on tightly to his arms, her eyes on his face.  When he opened his eyes again and looked at her with a smile, she relaxed.

    It was good.  She smiled tentatively in response to his. It was short, but it was good.  It was not the long slow lovemaking of a comfortable couple, but a rite of passage.  An act of possession.  A marriage of sorts.  A commitment.  It had been interesting.  She would analyze the details later.

     He said, “By God, Elsa.  You are a virgin.”

     “I was until a few minutes ago.”

     “Bloody hell,” he said, though he was smiling.  “I watched your face as you analyzed my lovemaking like this was a procedure and you were on a dissecting table.”

     “It is good,” she said.   “Good.” She would keep insisting until it was true.

     He bent to kiss her again.  “I will teach you to enjoy it next time.  It is better with champagne.  Next time I promise we will have champagne.”

     He lowered himself to his elbows and covered her whole body with his.  “I am yours, now.  Do you see? And I shall never be another’s.”  He smoothed a lock of hair that was hanging in her eyes back over her forehead.  He said, “But I want to hear your voice,
Schatze
. Nodding your head is not enough. I want to hear it from you, that you love me.”

     She nodded anyway.  The words were hard to say.  She had never said them before.  Not to anyone.  He tilted his head and gave her a look that said he would not get up or pull out of her until he heard it.

     How could speaking the truth be as painful as telling a lie? She made her mouth move.   She made her voice say the words, “
Ich liebe dich,
Heinrich.”
She could close her eyes now.  It was over.  “I love you,” she said softly in his language, hoping the words were true, because she had just paid for them with her life.

     It hurt.

     In the morning they packed the animals, saddled them, tied Descartes’ horse to Sonnenby’s and set out to the north and west, hoping to intersect the tracks.  She looked behind her as long as she cold, until the dark mound that was Descartes’ grave was a blot among the waving green grass. Then the trail curved and Jean-Philippe was gone forever.  She touched his watch in her décolleté.  She would carry this.  Marshall’s watch was with her too.  She hoped Sonnenby’s watch would always be in his pocket.

     They did not talk about last night, but Sonnenby’s grief over Descartes has lost its sharp edge and his face was that of a man with a task set before him that he was confident to achieve.  His eyes held something else in them.  Hope.  She saw it in the way they softened whenever he looked at her.  And he looked at her as often as he could.

     He had the compass and the map spread out on the saddle in front of him.  Elsa followed behind on her horse, leading the pack animal.  The country evened out to a wide plain as they came out of the hills around the river that would eventually make its way to the Euphrates.  In the distance they could see the tracks, and further north they would find the station.  Sonnenby folded the map and tucked the compass into his chest pocket.

     “Tomorrow we will be on the train.”

     She let her breath out with relief, thinking of the soft padded seats and the rumble of the engine and the regular clacking of the wheels.  No more guns and horses and camels and sand and death.  Into Istanbul, then to Vienna with its wide paved streets, electric lighting and concert halls.  Restaurants and shops. Parks and museums.  She sighed again with pleasure.

     He said, “You will come to England with me.”

     Oh, no. She would not.  She cued her horse to come up alongside him.  “You will come to Vienna with me.”

     The fedora tilted as he bent his head to look at her.  “London.”

     “Vienna.”

     “If I go to Vienna I will be your patient again.”

     “If you go to London you will be insane again.”

     They stared at each other, letting the horses pick their way across the plains toward the tracks.

     “I won’t be your patient again,” he said.  “Ever.”

     “Come to Vienna, then, as my lover.  I am permitted to have one, you know.”  His face told her he remained unconvinced.  She tried to make him smile.  “I will need practice, and I have read in textbooks about a great many things I am eager to try.”

     He did smile, but only briefly.   He said, “I have to go back to London.  I can’t just give everything up.  I can’t let them think they have killed me.”

     “You are a wanted man.  You will have no civil rights as a mental patient.”

     He shook his head.  “If I am a mental patient they cannot prosecute me for treason.”

     He was right.  She thought about that as the horses moved closer to the tracks and began to follow them north.  “But they could find you guilty but insane.  You would be locked up just the same.  Better to avoid England altogether.  Let them think they have killed you.”

     “What good does being dead do me in Vienna?”  He turned around in the saddle.  “Without using my passport, what shall I do?  How shall I work?  How will we live without my income?”

     “I will take care of you.”  Elsa would always be able to find employment.  If she had to give up psychology she would.  Surgical nurses with experience like hers made a very good living.  But Sonnenby’s history as her patient would have to be a secret or she would be discredited in any field.

     He did not like that answer and cued his horse to trot.  She kicked at her mare’s ribs and came up alongside him with the pack animals bouncing behind.

     “I will.  I will care for us both.”

     He shook his head.  “I will not permit it.”

     “You are a stubborn man.  You say you love me, you want me to be your wife, but then you plan to put yourself in the worst sort of danger that is guaranteed to separate us forever.”  She could feel herself getting angry now.  She had a very undignified urge to knock him down from the saddle and sit on his chest.

     He reined in his horse and turned its head to come around and face her.  She pulled on her reins and all the animals stopped.

     “Elsa.  I meant what I said.  I will make this happen. I will go back.  I will clear myself of the treason charge. I will have myself declared fit.”

     “It would be dangerous for me in England.” She reminded him.  “The Foreign Office has already tried to kill me.”

     “Ah.”  He was concerned now and she knew he was seeing the situation from her point of view.

     “Would you be permitted to marry me in England?”  She seized her advantage now that he doubted himself.

     “Who will try to stop me?”

     “
Non compos mentis
doesn’t just mean ‘not of sound mind’.  It also means no marriage, no contracts, no financial decisions.”

     He was silent then, and when he looked at her again his eyes were full of thought.   He took off the fedora and slapped his thigh with it, which made his horse jump to the side.  She heard him grumbling to himself, “There must be a way.”

     She thought of the power of attorney in her bag.  This paper would give her the right to speak for him, to pass him through customs, to make minor medical decisions, but no practical rights. As a ward of the crown his property was held in trust and power of attorney could not change that.  Marshall had hoped the piece of paper might prompt a re-opening of his case before the authorities.  She thought about the powerful military men who had hoped to cover up the politically charged murder of a child by silencing the witness forever in an asylum.  Marshall had not known about that.  She thought about many more things as they rode slowly north.  Doctor Engel could have him declared sane.  That documentation might secure a hearing in England.

     The train station appeared far ahead as a tiny square box.  They rode in silence and the tiny box grew larger and larger. It was not a city station, but a work stop to service the engine, take on fuel and water from a high tank on wooden supports, and transport supplies for the repair of the tracks and the reconstruction of bridges and tunnels damaged during the war.

     “Stay here,” he warned her.

     “I will.”  She tried to look weak and harmless to the men who came and went into the building.  She sat on her horse and gave them each an insipid smile. And as she suspected, none paused in their business to speak to her.

     Sonnenby did well, trading the horses for tickets and came back to her with instructions to gather their luggage from the pack.  Everything they did not take became the property of the station master.  Sonnenby showed her the tickets.

     “Istanbul.  Once there I must do something else to book passage to Calais.”

     “Calais?” She asked him.

     “And from there to London.”

     She did not argue, for the sound of the train wailed in the distance.  She would try to convince him to at least stop in Vienna long enough to talk to Doctor Engel. Later.

     He slept.  He was propped against the window, one shoulder on the thick sill that held tightly to the glass, his head tipped forward and to the side, his dark hair fell over his eyes.  His hands rested on his lap, bandaged neatly again.  His lips were slightly parted and his chest rose and fell deeply, assuring her that his body was finally getting the rest it needed to heal properly.

     She could not sleep.  The rocking of the train and rhythmic clacking should have lulled her to numbness and then unconsciousness as it had Sonnenby, but a persistent dread tortured her awake.  There could not be a more grievous crime than to become emotionally attached to a patient.  She closed her eyes.  Not to sleep, but to erase the image of Sonnenby sitting so peacefully across the compartment from her.

     Not to be.  Her lids lifted and forced her to look at him, to look at her failure.  She fidgeted on the bench and tried to look out the window, but his face was relaxed against the glass.  She looked at the luggage rack, but his name hung from the tag on the handle of his satchel.  She closed her eyes again but not for long.

     Elsa knew that patients often latched on to their therapists as treatment progressed.  It made perfect sense.  Their counselor represented a comforting steadiness and a clear, calm reason in contrast to their own jumbled thoughts and feelings.  As a patient recovered his or her stability of mind, a gradual release of the lifeline was encouraged by the therapist until finally the patient would be able to walk away confident and whole.

     At least that was the theory.  Elsa had heard the ugly rumors of psychiatrists who had taken advantage of the emotional frailty of their young and attractive female patients, and banked on that dependence to bolster their own egos or satisfy their desire for power and control over another.  The problem was that any complaint a patient might make could not be taken seriously, both because of her sex and because of the stigma of being mentally ill.  Elsa knew this.

     She looked at Sonnenby again.  He might be misguided.  It was possible he was reacting emotionally to her compassionate attention.  Certainly gentle kindness was something he had not experienced in the last year.  Perhaps in his whole life.  It was conceivable that he would have fallen in love with any woman who showed him even the smallest amount of courtesy and care.

     She might only be a symbol of a woman to his damaged psyche.  Not a real woman.  The fact that he associated her with a mythological character should be proof of that.  A Valkyrie was an all-powerful eternal woman.  A woman who by occupation was “chooser of the slain”.  A woman who saved the world from the cruelty and greed of men by the sacrifice of her immortality and the healing balm of her love.  Elsa covered her face.  It would be a sacrifice.  Her sacrifice.  He was in love with an idea, not with her.

     Once she had been captured by those fatal words, “I love you”, there could be no retreat with honor. To bring him home with her would mean the end of her career, but breaking with him would be traumatic.  For both of them.  Even now the memory of his body inside hers made her ache to feel it again.  Thinking about leaving him forever caused her stomach to twist.  It had not ended well for either Ophelia or Brunhilde.

     Dr. Engel must never know.  No one could know, yet she could not merely hide Sonnenby in the cellar.  She could not bring him home to her sisters and her parents as a mental patient.  To love him meant that she must dissolve her life.  Give up everything.  Not only a grand sacrifice of her goals, but people would say, “Oh yes, Elsa Schluss succumbed to feminine weakness.  Too bad, she had showed some promise as a professional.”  They would say that women cannot be trusted in positions of responsibility.  Elsa set her teeth, thinking of what people would say. As if men could be trusted in positions of responsibility.  Look at this recent war.  She fumed.  Brunhilde was admired for her sacrifice, Ophelia pitied, Elsa would be vilified.

     But her next thought confused her, for though her mind was ticking through the list of dreadful consequences, her heart was busy basking in the images of long winter nights wrapped in his strong arms, his mouth on hers and warm blankets over them both.

     But did she love him or not? Perhaps she did not love him. Perhaps the events of the past month had given her a psychological dependence on him. Perhaps the forced intimacy of their bodies in close quarters and the heightened dangers they had faced together had fused them in a bond that was not love, but a reaction to a survival situation.  It would fade when the danger faded.

     She put a hand to her forehead.  She had the symptoms of love.  She felt comfortable and content when she was with him, agitated and anxious when he was away.  When he spoke to her in his rumbling baritone she felt a little shiver of pleasure.  When she felt the warmth of his hand on her body she felt drawn closer to him, she wanted more, no matter if it were merely his finger or his entire arm, but she desired that he must touch her again.  She had never shown symptoms like these with her other patients.

     She had bathed men’s bodies and talked to them and dressed them and cleaned their wounds and, granted, had been fond of a few of the witty ones. But never had she contracted the full force of love.  She had never lain in bed at night in a fever of passion nor twitched with the spasms of lust.  She had not breathed the contagion of dependence that infected a woman in love.

     Elsa rubbed her cheek.  She would test her symptoms.  She readied herself for the examination, and then closed her eyes and imagined her life without him.  She then imagined in great detail that another woman comforted him in the night. She then imagined that he told her that he did not love her.  She imagined standing in front of him, looking up at his firm jaw and that dark shadow of his beard which never seemed to disappear even after he shaved.  She looked at his dark eyes with their thick black lashes and saw his firm lips as he spoke, and listened to his voice as he told her he never wanted to see her again.

     Elsa had to stop the diagnostic, for this imaginary event brought terrible feelings of self-pity.  She quickly dug her handkerchief from her pocket.  She was infected.  It was lethal.  She blew her nose and sniffed.  Fatal.  She was in love with her patient.  Nothing more could be done for her.  This was her
Gotterdammerung
and she was about to be professionally immolated.