I Confess (29 page)

Maud was precocious. From twelve years on she was filled with an increasing restlessness and an excitement that could not be stilled. She reacted to everything with a sensationalism none of the others had. Softly, secretly, cuddled up to Yolanda at night, she reported about the gardener's boy who had kissed her; about Sister Benvenuta and Sister Camille and the unbelievable relationship between them; about her father, who was divorcing her mother because she was having an affair with another man and had come home drunk; about various boys in the city high school; about film stars, dogs doing odd

things to each other in the street; and about the curious peculiarities of her own developing body.

At thirteen Maud confided to Yolanda that she had a plan for escaping from the convent. A couple of trailer truck drivers (she looked every bit of sixteen) had parked their huge vehicles alongside the highway just behhid the convent. The drivers—^tall, jovial fellows in leather jackets and boots had talked to her through the iron fence, pretty plain talk and pretty plain proposals, and she had replied just as plainly and agreed to join them for an "outing." She had promised to bring along a friend, but Yolanda didn't have the courage. She let Maud go alone. There was a new moon. Maud climbed out of the dormitory window. In the distance you could hear horns tooting impatiently. She was gone for seven days. The nuns were beside fliemselves, the police were called in, and Yolanda, who did not betray her friend, waited trembling for her return and aU the exciting things she would have to tell about her unheard of experiences.

Maud came back, but about her experiences she had nothing to say. On the eighth day two policemen brought her back. Yolanda was playing in the garden when they brought her in through the gate. She was horrified. Maud's clothes were dirty and rumpled, her hair was a mess, she had cheap make-up on and it had smeared, she looked bloated and sick. The policemen were dragging her behind them and she had to run the gauntlet of a row of silent students, lined up along the fence, watching her with contempt. When she saw Yolanda, she let out a word of horrendous obscenity. It was the last word Yolanda ever heard pass Maud's lips. She was immediately placed in solitary confinement. That afternoon the school doctor came to examine her, and that same evening an ambulance came to take her away. Yolanda saw her once more as she walked to the ambulance. She was wearing a dressing gown; she looked white, gaunt, ruined.

"She's ill," the girls told each other as they went to bed. And they reported what they had managed to glean

from the cook, the doorman, the laundress. Maud's sickness was something horrible that ate up your face and bones, that could not be cured, that in time made you ugly and blind, an illness you got when you let yourself in with men, when you "loved" them.

Yolanda's heart beat fast. She pressed her hands together tight and stared up at the ceiling with burning eyes. So that's how it was. When one loved one got sick and ended up in the hospital. Love was a dirty thing with a dirty name. Love ate up your face and your bones, made you deaf and blind and idiotic! Love was an illness. Everything about it was repulsive: pictures, books, poetry. Repulsive and horrifying—^that was love.

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In 1933, Yolanda lost both parents.

Her father found it impossible to go on living in Germany for political and private reasons and shot his wife^ then himself. He left his money to his daughter who was about to graduate and leave the convent. The Hitler state declared the wiU invalid and confiscated all property and money. Overnight Yolanda, bom and brought up in wealth, found herself without means and with no support of any kind. Generous relatives, living not far from the Dutch border, took her in.

Yolanda went to Uve on a huge, prosperous farm. She was eighteen and a virgin. She worked in the farm office, wrote letters, did some accounting and paid the employees. One of the farm laborers, a big, strong stocky boy, pursued her with his love. She wanted no part of it. He took this to be coquetry. On her nineteenth birthday he

was invited to the festivities and got drunk, a condition that led, as they went for a stroll in the evening, to a crude, brutal attempt to rape her. She screamed and fought him oil, loathing threatening to choke her, but the hayloft where it happened remained silent and dark. She could feel her strength leave her, smell the liquor on his breath, feel the weight of his body, his crazy, murderous hands. She could hear his senseless babbUng and gave herself up to it.

But they were interrupted. Her uncle, who was looking for her, found them. The boy ran off. Yolanda lay in the hay, humiliated, desperate, and—as she thought—^forever sullied. She turned on her side and vomited. Next day she left the farm. She went to the city and got a job as secretary to a lawyer and for months lived in constant terror that she might be ill. She consulted countless doctors; she was sure she recognized symptoms of the illness, she couldn't sleep anymore. "I'm ill! I must be ill! I can feel it!" she cried to the doctors who kept trying to reassure her that all their findings were clearly negative. One advised her to see an analyst, a frightened litde Jew—this was in 1934—who was still being allowed to practice but was already preparing to leave Germany. He finally succeeded in freeing her of the delusion that she was ill. However, he could not free her of her other delusions. Wildly, senselessly and without any real goal, she began to live promiscuously. She had an endless number of affairs, all of which ended unsatisfactorily, and always she blamed her partner for the failure. Because the httle Jewish doctor had told her, "You are a perfectly normal woman, with perfectly normal sensibilities. If you can't find satisfaction with a man, then it is his fault, not yours."

The manias at fault—not she. That was what Yolanda believed. She began to hate them, to torture them. Meanwhile she had developed into a beautiful woman, and she found pleasure in seeing men vie for her favors and how they suffered when she rejected them. She de-

cided she was superior; she would never do anything stupid, like Maud, who had been brought back dirty and sick because she had "loved." Yolanda never loved; she let herself be loved.

1939. The outbreak of war. Her employer was arrested and she was jobless. It didn't bother her. In an adventurous mood, she went to work for the airforce. For the desk job she was given, no special knowledge was required, The war machine needed people and Yolanda was ♦immediately employed. Her job took her to Poland. She worked on an air base. The commander was a certain Lieutenant Mordstein. Yolanda saw him daily; they shared the same oflSce. He began to show his admiration for Yolanda. She accepted it in her usual cold, routine way. She let him take her out, went with him to the front theatre, drank, danced and laughed with him. And he was as much a stranger to her as all the other dirty, sick, repulsive men.

Mordstein was an army man, unscrupulous and daring. Yolanda's aloofness, her lack of any deep interest in him, drove him crazy. It was what really resulted in his falling madly in love with her. He gave her presents, he went so far as to propose marriage—she remained aloof. He was on the point of breaking off his efforts when something surprising happened.

It was an afternoon on which both of them were free. They drove out into the country in his car. It was a still, sunny autumn day. There was no warning of the sudden appearance of enemy bombers over a German munitions depot. The Poles were attacking with the bravado of an army that knew it was lost. Wave after wave flew over the little village through which Mordstein was driving, behind which, in a nearby wood, lay the eoal of the attack. The pressure of the explosions hurled Yolanda out of the car. Mordstein stopped, ran to her, lifted her up and carried her, unconscious, through the hell of topph'ng houses, bursting bombs and burning barracks into a nearby chapel.

When she came to, she found herself lying in front of an altar on a thick red carpet. Mordstein was leaning over her. He was breathing hard. He had torn open her blouse to see if she was hurt, and her bare breasts shimmered white in the dusk of the church apse.

A new wave of bombers flew over them. The roar of the motors grew louder and louder and was soon joined by the gruesome whistle of bombs finding their target. The walls of the chapel trembled, the floor heaved as Yo-landa gave herself to him. The violence of her passion came as a complete surprise to him. He had imagined that it would be much more diflicult with her, and he was experienced enough to know that this woman, whom he held in his arms in the midst of chaos, was deliriously happy. He did not see the white Thorwald Christ standing on the altar behind him, stretching one arm in blessing on the panting woman beneath him.

24

They were married by a field chaplain in Poland. Yolanda went back to Germany. Her husband. Lieutenant Robert Mordstein, remained at the front, or rather—at the various fronts of the war. He fought in Norway, France, Russia, Africa. He was away six years. It was thanks to him that Yolanda—and the little Jewish doctor had explained this to her—was freed of a traumatic shock and relieved of her frigidity. This "good deed", however, had its shadowy aspects. Yolanda was now a woman who had radically changed her views on love and its pleasures. She needed a man. She needed Mordstein, who had made a

woman of her. But Mordstein wasn't there when she needed him.

In Munich, where she had settled down, she soon had a bad reputation. She slept with other men, she was shameless in her insatiability; suddenly all the repulsive, sick, nauseating men were her friends, her lovers, her salvation. Mordstein had healed her, healed her far too effectively as he was to discover in 1945 when he came home. Gossip and rumor soon reached him. For quite some time he paid no attention to them because he was so happy with Yolanda. And she was happy with him. She was happier with him than with any other man. The old magic of the Polish attack still worked, all other men were forgotten, they had never existed when Mordstein took her in his arms.

It was not she who broke up the marriage; the break came from him. He had found someone else and wanted his freedom. Yolanda gave in after he reproached her with what had gone on while he was away. She saw that she had no right to hold him and, in the end, even she had had enough. They separated. And Yolanda had to face the fact that she couldn't Hve without him. She tried desperately to win him back, to do without him, and failed. Whenever he came near her, her stren^h, her control of the situation, her senses left her. "The chapel in Poland" broke out all over again.

She fought it. She began to hate Mordstein. And he, whom the aftermath of war had cast onto paths of illegality, began to use her. He recognized the worth of his power over her. Purposefully and deliberately he began to take advantage of it. I know now that I was a last desperate effort on Yolanda's part to free herself of Mordstein. I also know that it was my fault that this effort failed—if one can speak of "fault" in such cases. And I can say truthfully that I could understand Yolanda when in the end, after I had let her down, she came to me and said, "Let us km him."

"Anything like that," I said, "isn't so simple, not in peacetime."

We were seated in our living room and were talking dispassionately about her proposition. We had nothing to hide from each other.

"I know it's not simple," she said, "but I think I've found a way."

On the table between us stood a bottle with two glasses. This time both of us were drinking. Yolanda had been drinking throughout the preceding days; I had started only after I had left my bed.

"I don't want to hang for it."

"They don't hang people any more in Austria and Germany," said Yolanda.

"That's a help," I said and filled our glasses.

"Do you want him to get the money? What happens when you have another attack? Do you think he'll leave us a moment's peace?"

"No."

"If you don't want to help me, say so. Then I'll do it alone. I'm determined to do it. I have no intention of going back to him. I'm through. As far as I'm concerned, he's already dead." She drank, then she looked at me and asked hoarsely, "Do you beheve me when I say I love you?"

"Yes, Yolanda," I said, feeling terribly oppressed. "I believe you."

"And will you help me?"

I nodded. And with that nod I wrote off a human life. I 261

was a little startled when I realized how easfly I had nodded.

She moved close to me and explained her plan as if she were proposing an export deal. "Listen—I go with him as his wife; you travel alone with your false papers. In Freilassine we meet again. Then, if something happens to him on the autobahn, they find Mr. Mordstein who was visiting Vienna. If they investigate, they may find out from the border police that his wife was in the car with him when he crossed the border into Germany. But his wife has disappeared. They may look for her as a murder suspect, but they won't find her. Because by this time Frau Mordstein will have joined her husband and returned to Austria as Frau Valery Frank. As for you—no-body'll know a thing about you. You entered Germany by train and left the same way. Is that clear?"

"So far—ves. And what's to happen to him?"

"An accident," she said. "Do you know the Bavaria Bridge?"

"No."

"The Bavaria Bridge," Yolanda explained matter-of-factly, "is part of the autobahn Salzburg-Munich and spans a deep valley. It's a very long, high bridge, and, during the last few days of the war, they blew it up. The center span is still missing, so all traffic is rerouted when you get to it. The bridge is closed by a lighted barrier. He'll drive through this barrier and go over the edge into the valley below."

"And how do we get out of the car?"

"Just before the barrier." She put out her cigarette. "From the running board, you puU out the throttle as far as it will go, then you press down the clutch with a stick, put the car in gear and jump off after releasing the clutch. The car drives through the barrier, onto the bridge, with Mordstein at the wheel."

"With Mordstein at the wheel?"

"Of course he's ahready dead."