FOR YOU, LILI MARLENE

(Originally published in Paradox, issue 6, winter 2004-2005)

 

The war had ended, but it didn't feel over. Refugees roamed the countryside, some­times taking revenge on their former cap­tors, more often stealing food to survive. Just that morning Stefan had seen an American soldier shoot a man for theft of a lamb. The American had shouted for the man to stop. The man ignored the warning, and the soldier fired. The lamb bleated in protest as the thief fell.

 

Stefan wasted no pity on the thief, who had been both clumsy and stupid, nor on the soldier, who knelt and puked immedi­ately after discharging his weapon.

 

Stefan arrived at Deggendorf, a dis­placed persons camp near the Czech border, in late afternoon. Like other camps he had seen, this one reminded him uncomfortably of the death camps, though without the gas or the flames. Emaciated faces peered from behind the fence. Skeletal hands clutched barbed wire. The stench of fear and shit lin­gered, even many months after Liberation.

 

While he dug into his shirt pocket for his travel papers--forged yes, but so far unchal­lenged--an American military truck lurched to a stop with a grinding of gears. The cargo, sixty or more new arrivals for the camp, peered about with dark-eyed bewilderment while the guard opened the gate.

 

Were there Roma among them?

 

Stefan did not permit himself hope, but he searched anyway. He might find a sur­viving band of Roma--men he had known before the war, even though not of his clan. Jews, Poles, Russians, Slavs, Greeks, and French he encountered in his roaming. A few Sinti. Once a band of French Roma, who made a warding sign when they saw his yellow eyes. That gesture, and their hard-eyed suspicion, made him feel more alone than if he'd found no Roma at all.

 

Stefan showed his travel papers to the guard, who waved him inside.

 

The camp, squalid and already over­crowded, had the look of a small, dreary city. Pre-existing buildings of brick had been converted into an infirmary, a school, and a series of dormitories. There were tents, too. At one, a line snaked and bunched--people waiting for soup and bread. At another, volunteers handed out Red Cross parcels. Further on, a series of Quonset huts squatted like gigantic ciga­rettes half-buried in mud. He walked on.

 

Two Americans argued uselessly with a Polish woman. The Pole clutched an under­sized infant fiercely to her breast. Remembered grief hit Stefan like a trun­cheon to the stomach.

 

The Americans wanted the infant. One of them, a woman in the uniform of a Red Cross nurse, reached for the baby, while her companion, an Army captain, tried to soothe the Pole in textbook German. The child was sick, he explained. They would take the baby to the hospital to make her well. The nurse reached for the infant again, and the woman retreated, a torrent of invective shrilling from her lips.

 

Ordinarily Stevan would not interfere. Thre were gadje, non-Roma, and it was none of his affair. He stepped forward. Speaking in fluent Polish, he said, “Give the Americans the baby.”

 

The woman started. She had not heard his approach. He had learned stealth among the partisans, and it was habit. He touched a callused finger to the infant’s flushed face. So soft. So small. Fevered. Wizened like an old crone. His own daughter, dead at birth, had been beautiful even with the blood and slime still on her.

 

This one might live, if the mother stopped wasting time. He told her so, his words quick and fierce. She sobbed but surrendered the child to the nurse.

 

Stefan left them, eager to attend to his own business and be away. He didn’t like the press of so many people about him, so many despairing and frightened gadje, from so many places. Most had nowhere else to go. Some were mad.

 

Sometimes, when the dreams got very bad, Stefan thought he might be going mad himself. Too many bad memories. Too much blood. Too many ghosts clinging to him, sticky as spiderwebs.

 

He told himself he had no time to run mad.

 

The American captain followed him. The man’s long strides caught up to Stefan in mere seconds. “What did you say to her?” he asked in perfectly accented but limited German. “To make her change her mind?”

 

Stefan tensed. He resisted an urge to pull his knife from his boot. The man was taller than he, but Stefan knew he could kill him without difficulty. Stefan had become good at killing. He drew a deep breath, reminded himself that the Americans, though gadje, were not his enemy. “I told her that if she did not surrender the child, it would die. That if you meant her harm, you would have shot her when her belly first grew round.”

 

“Jesus!”

 

Stefan switched from German to English. He was not wholly comfortable with it yet. “You cannot help but inspire fear when you use the language of the enemy.”

 

“Yes, but I don’t know any Polish. Where’d you learn English?”

 

Stefan shrugged. “I pick things up.”

 

“Well, I appreciate the help.” The man stuck out a hand. “I’m Captain Anderson, but you can call me Fred.”

 

Stefan hesitated, but Anderson seized his hand and pumped it vigorously. “Stefan,” he said. “Stefan de la Forêt.” That was the name upon his identity papers. His own name, the name he used among his own people, seemed to belong to someone else.

 

“French?”

 

“Belgian.” This was not strictly true, either. He was Rom, and his people had always followed the Long Road. Anyone who remembered Stefan’s actual place of birth had died in the war. But he knew Belgium, particularly Wallonia, quite well. He had taken refuge there after escaping Treblinka. In the Ardennes, he had learned to kill. “Have you any Roma in this camp?”

 

“Romanians? I don’t think so. Hard to say, though. I’ve not been here that long.”

 

Stefan summoned patience. “Not Romanians. Roma.” He switched back to German. “Zigeuner.”

 

“Oh, Gypsies. You speak their lingo, too?”

 

Stefan nodded.

 

“You’re a real find. See, we’ve got this guy, this Gypsy, in the brig. For fighting. He attacked this other Gypsy--damned near killed him, but we’ve not been able to figure out why. We’ve tried a dozen different interpreters, but the poor bastard can’t understand.”

 

Or won’t understand, Stefan thought. The Roma with the Roma. The gadje with the gadje. If there was a dispute, the kris should judge, not these Americans, however well-meaning. But the Germans had shattered traditional Roma custom. With clans broken and scattered and so many elders murdered, how could they convene a kris? The thought of a fellow Rom locked away from earth and sky sickened him.

 

“So,” Anderson said. “Do you think you can help?”

 

“I will try.”

 

Anderson led him to a small, windowless room lit by a single naked light bulb suspended overhead. A stenographer with a machine sat at a narrow table. Some scarred wooden chairs completed the furnishings.

 

Stefan felt sweat break upon his skin. The Germans had interrogated him in a room little different than this one. They had beaten him with truncheons and fists and all but drowned him in a vat of icy water. He might have died. He should have died.

 

He drew a steadying breath, released it slowly. He was not the prisoner here.

 

A guard brought in the Rom. Deep caramel skin hung loosely upon him. Gray hair salted black curls. The eyes, dark as ripe olives, darted about the room.

 

“Tell him to sit down,” Anderson said.

 

In Romani, Stefan said, “Be not afraid man of the Roma, for I am Rom, too. The gadjo American asks if you will sit.”

 

The man looked startled hearing his own tongue. His eyes searched Stefan’s. Noting their unusual color, hands made a familiar warding gesture against evil. But he sat.

 

“Ask him if he knows why he is here.”

 

Stefan said, “It grieves me to greet an elder away from the open sky, with no bread or salt to share in hospitality. The gadjo wants to know if you know why you are here?”

 

The man’s answer was short, angry. “Because I am Rom”

 

Stefan glanced at Anderson. “He says you arrested him because he is a Gypsy.”

 

“That’s bullshit.”

 

Stefan shrugged.

 

“Ask him why he assaulted the other man.”

 

Stefan frowned. “Assaulted?”

 

“Beat up.”

 

“Ah.” Stefan translated without any commentary of his own.

 

“It is a Roma matter,” the man said.

 

Stefan nodded understanding. “The truth is told in Romani,” he said, “but it is the gadje Americans who will judge you and not the kris. Tell me what happened that I may help you.”

 

“I need no help from a servant of Beng.”

 

The man’s hostility did not surprise Stefan. Among his own clan, yellow eyes appeared once each generation. The color had come to seem lucky. At least, the clan had prospered. Before the war. But to Roma outside his clan, the color was unnatural--a sign of the devil.

 

Stefan smiled a cold smile. “Then you will exchange one prison for another and one master for another. Your Rom spirit will wither and die, far from the Long Road. Is that what you want?”

 

“I want vengeance.”

 

Vengeance Stefan understood. And approved. The satisfaction of knife sliding swiftly into flesh; the joy of light leaving an enemy’s eyes.

 

Roma seldom killed. Perhaps by accident, if a quarrel got out of hand and tempers flared. But blood was mahrimé, unclean, and so were corpses.

 

"Your grievance must be very great to risk becoming mahrimé."

 

"Are you getting anywhere?" Anderson interrupted.

 

"He is . . . difficult." Stefan turned back to the Rom. "Vengeance is hard to find in a prison cell. Tell me your quarrel, and I may be able to get you out of here."

 

The man glanced uneasily at the others in the room.

 

"Never mind the Americans. They are as children."

 

The Rom clenched his hands. "My fam­ily went on the trains to Auschwitz. At Selection they all went left to the gas. All except my eldest son and me. We were chosen to work. The kapo of our bar­racks was Rom, but he disliked my son. He turned him over to the SS for a minor matter. They beat him. Then they shot him. When that kapo came here, I knew joy, for the fates smiled on my need for vengeance. I am only sorry the Americans stopped me before the kapo was as dead as my son."

 

"You are certain it was the same man?" Stefan asked.

 

"He was the same. I would not forget that one. May I die if I speak false."

 

 "Well?" Anderson said, showing some impatience.

 

Stefan considered. It was a Roma matter. The lie came easily. "A silly quarrel," he said. "Over a woman. He is sorry to be such trouble."

 

"You believe that?"

 

 "It happens."

 

"So how do we know if we let him go, it won't happen again?"

 

"You Americans never fight over your women?"

 

Anderson laughed. "All right. I hate to keep a guy locked up after what he's been through. I'll see if we can't get him released tomorrow."

 

"Would you like me to talk to the other man?"

 

"Another time. He's in the hospital and not in any state for talking right now. He's got a concussion. And his jaw's wired shut. She must have been some woman."

 

The room seemed to shrink the longer Stefan remained inside. He was glad to step once again into sun­light. Perhaps he would kill the former kapo. What he had seen of American secu­rity had not impressed him. He would have no trouble entering the infirmary. The man would be helpless. He hated collaborators, and a man who would betray a fellow Rom was worse than a dog.

 

He glanced about the camp, taking in the mud-churned street, the shadows cast by looming bullet-scarred brick buildings, the ugly corrugated metal of the Quonset huts. Someone had made a half-hearted effort to plant some flowers, but the feeble splash of color only made the drabness more pro­nounced.

 

Anderson paused in the doorway to light a cigarette. He proffered his pack of Lucky Strikes. Stefan shook out one, made to return the pack. "Keep it," Anderson said. "You've earned it."

 

Cigarettes were better than money these days. Stefan nodded his thanks, thrust the pack into his pocket. The two lounged and smoked. A group of children watched in feral silence.

 

"They should play," Anderson said. "They never play. The men are building some playground equipment in their off time. Maybe the kids will act like kids then."

 

Across the muddy street Stefan noticed a woman. His chest grew tight in recognition. Plans of executing the kapo flew out of his head. Selene.

 

It could not be. She had been taken on the gas vans out of Lodz. No one survived that.

 

Older, as he was now older, and dressed in a skirt too short for Roma propriety. The dark waves of her hair blew free in the wind. Selene would never be so immodest. Yet the look of her. Selene. Alive. Stefan tossed his half-smoked cigarette in the direction of the children, who immediately began to fight over it. He ignored them, set stunned legs into motion.

 

"Selene!"

 

She did not turn. He caught her hand, drew her into the circle of his arms. The stark relief of her bones pressed against his flesh. She grew rigid. Her eyes held no recognition. "It's me," he said. "Have you forgotten me? Have I changed so much?"

 

They had been little more than children when herded with their clan into the ghetto in Lodz; he fourteen, she two years older. Later the mothers, fathers, uncles, aunts, and older cousins were taken away. To work, the Germans said.

 

Selene took care of the children left behind, and he scavenged for food to keep them all alive. Scavenged and did other things, dangerous things, sometimes dis­gusting things. Finding themselves the unexpected elders of their clan, they mar­ried without ceremony, comforted each other in the midst of the madness around them. Selene wept when their daughter slid into the world without drawing a single breath.

 

One day, when the best he had managed to forage was a handful of blackened potato peels from a German soldier's rubbish heap, he returned to find Selene and the children gone. Taken away in trucks. Lehensunwertes Leben. Life unworthy of life.

 

But now Selene was here. Alive and safe. The world could begin to make sense again.

 

She flashed a quick, professional smile, relaxed a little into his embrace. "My name is Lili," she said, "like in the song. But I will be your Selene for a little while. For the right price."

 

He stepped back, released her as if scalded. How could he mistake a common whore for his Selene? "Your pardon," he said. "I thought . . . I--I'm sorry."

 

He retreated back across the street, dis­appointment bitter in his mouth. What a fool he was to believe, even for a moment, that she had survived. Selene was buried in quicklime with hundreds of others in a ditch outside Lodz, or burned to ash at Chelmno.

 

He must not hope. Hope would drive him mad--if he were not mad already. He clenched his fists to conceal the trembling in his hands.

 

"Who was that?" Anderson asked.

 

"Someone I thought I knew. I made a mistake."

 

"She'll be pretty when she gets some weight back on her." Anderson's eyes fol­lowed Lili a moment. Then he clapped Stefan upon the shoulder. "You look like you could use a drink. Come on. I'm buying."

 

Stefan's shoulders hunched at Anderson's hearty touch. He resisted the urge to snarl, dive for the knife in his boot. The American was only trying to be friendly.

 

The bar Anderson took him to was a quarter of an hour's walk outside the camp. Old, dark, fragrant with decades of cigarette smoke and oiled wood, it was nearly empty. The locals had no money for such places, and it was still too early in the day for most Americans.

 

The captain ordered beer for them both. Stefan drank without tasting. Surely Lili looked nothing like Selene at all.

 

"That woman," Anderson said. "Who did you think she was?"

 

"My wife."

 

Anderson's eyes softened in sympathy. "That's rough. What's your story, then?"

 

"Just that. My story."

 

Anderson's face grew red, then he laughed a foolish, embarrassed laugh. "Sorry. I'm always putting my nose where it doesn't belong. I hope you find her." He lifted his glass.

 

Stefan finished his beer, rose. "Thank you for the drink."

 

"You're not going already?"

 

"Yes."

 

"Hell, I was going to offer you a job. What other languages do you know?"

 

"French, Dutch, Czech. A little Russian. Just basic stuff, you understand. I'm not educated."

 

Anderson snorted. "Add Polish, German, English and Gypsy."

 

"Romani," Stefan corrected.

 

"Romani, then. We've college boys don't know half as much. Look, we're in a real bind here. All these people, from all over. It's like a damned Tower of Babel. You could be a big help."

 

"You want me to interpret for you? Like today? As a job?" He'd never had a job. Not a real one. He washed dishes sometimes. And he killed. He was good at killing.

 

"Sure. You'd draw monthly pay. It might be in cigarettes, at first. You'd have assigned quarters, get special papers, the whole nine yards."

 

"Nine yards of what?"

 

Anderson laughed. "Means the whole thing. Come on, it's a good deal."

 

"OK. For a little while."

 

Days devolved into a whirl of languages, so many that by nightfall Stefan's head ached and he longed for silence. Or if not silence, at least the musical rhythms of his own native tongue. He longed for trees and moss and night-blooming stars, for the creak of wood and leather as the wagons of the kumpania trundled on the Long Road, for the stamp and snort and smell of sleek hors­es, and the laughter of children. Foolish to pine for what was gone forever.

 

His English improved each day, though the idioms continued to elude him. There was much in English that did not make sense, but it did have a nice array of swear words, less earthy than Polish, perhaps, and less precise than German, but satisfying.

 

Sometimes he glimpsed Lili in the camp. She looked better as flesh returned to her scrawny frame. He found himself think­ing of her, wanting her. Would it be wrong to pretend she was Selene?

 

To make love with a woman not his wife would render him mahrimé. But he was mahrimé already, from the endless killing, from living among the gadje. Did it matter? There was no one left to care. No one left to make him pure again.

 

He found Lili in the company of anoth­er woman, bottle-blond and bosomy, pretty enough, if you liked them fair. Lili's skin was olive, her eyes darkly lashed. It unset­tled him, how much she looked like Selene, even though that was why he wanted her.

 

The two women were hanging out laun­dry. Lili's thick, black curls were tied loose­ly back from her face with a scrap of cloth. A strand of hair worked free. The breeze caught it, blew it into her mouth. With a trace of impatience, she swept the lock back behind her ear, the gesture so like Selene's his throat tightened.

 

He kept walking. He needed what the Americans called "a good, clean fuck." He did not need to scatter the ashes of what was left of his heart. He certainly did not need to fall in love with a whore. A woman would do better to kill herself than spread her legs for strangers. Better that the gas had taken Selene and she had been spared such shame.

 

So he told himself, but another part of him thought a Selene defiled and alive was better than a Selene dead. Had he not defiled him­self more than once, giving hand jobs and more to German soldiers for extra bread? Had he not taken one of them up the backside when required, so that he might earn food and medicine for Selene and the little ones? Did that not make him a whore, as well?

 

He did not want to remember such things. He might forget in the arms of a woman. For a little while. He pivoted and strode back. Sheets snapped in the wind.

 

Lili smiled, secured a sheet with a final clothespin. She ducked beneath the clothes­line and approached him. No woman of the Roma would be so bold. A proper woman would pass behind him or, if that were not possible, ask him to turn aside.

 

She spoke first. "Hello."

 

"Hello."

 

"You wanted something, perhaps?"

 

"You."

 

Her smile broadened, but her eyes lost their warmth. "You have cigarettes?"

 

"Yes."

 

"I want to go out. See something outside this camp. I want to eat in a restaurant, like a real lady. You can do this?"

 

He nodded.

 

"I'll meet you at the gate at eighteen-hundred hours."

 

Stefan spent the rest of the day hardly able to concentrate on his work. He won­dered what Lili's lips tasted like, and how many men had taken her. Would she think of some former husband or lover while he made love with her? As he would think of Selene?

 

Seeing his preoccupation, Anderson let him go early for the day. Stefan fled to his quarters to shower and shave with more than usual care.

 

Damp hair fell into his eyes. He raked it back. Glancing in the mirror, he saw little enough to make a woman love him. Then he laughed harshly. Lili was a whore. It was money that mattered, not his looks.

 

He arrived at the gate early, paced as he waited. Eighteen-hundred hours came and went. At twenty past, a woman approached. Not Lili, but her blonde friend. "Lili sends regrets," she said. "Something came up."

 

Stefan felt a sinking in his stomach, but also a simmering anger. "Is she sick?"

 

"Not exactly."

 

"What, exactly?"

 

"Look, I know you're disappointed. I'm sorry. Lili--she gets strange sometimes, you know? I'll go out with you, if you like. I'm Eleni." She extended her hand, American fashion. Her nails were long, shapely, newly lacquered in red. Her eyes were green, friendly. Her yellow hair was caught up in a snood that fell in a net against her neck. She wore minimal make-up.

 

Pretty, but she wasn't Lili. Silent longer than was polite, he finally seized her hand, turned it gently and brushed his lips to the back of it. "I am Stefan."

 

"I know." She pulled her hand free slow­ly. "You work for the Americans."

 

"For now."

 

She took his arm. He signed them both out at the gate, and they walked from the camp.

 

They found a sidewalk cafe in town. Stefan barely tasted their meal of rabbit stewed with prunes, but Eleni pronounced it excellent. She ate all of her portion and most of his. They drank tea after, for coffee in town was still ersatz. Stefan missed real coffee, black and bitter.

 

"What are you thinking?" Eleni asked.

 

He lifted his cup. "That I miss real cof­fee."

 

"God, so do I. Don't the Americans have coffee?"

 

"Brown water. Little better than ersatz."

 

"You like them, the Americans?"

 

He shrugged. They were brave, and they could be kind, but they could also be fool­ish. They'd refused to listen when he'd told them of Germans in the Ardennes, and it had cost them dearly. "They're all right."

 

"I'd like to see America one day. It's easier to go if you have relatives. Someone to sponsor you. It's hard, otherwise. With so many people wanting to go. And it takes a lot of money."

 

Which explained why she whored her­self. And Lili? Was she planning to go to America, too? He wanted to ask. But he would not discuss one woman while sitting with another. Even a whore had pride.

 

They walked about town while their din­ner settled, looked at areas still gutted by bombs and fire, while other places remained miraculously untouched. American music drifted from open windows. Odd no longer being forced to listen to radio in secret. Townspeople searched the gutters and side­walks for discarded cigarette butts.

 

Eleni slipped her hand into his. He mas­tered the impulse to draw away. She was not Lili, and she was gadji, but she was try­ing very hard to be pleasant.

 

She passed in front of him abruptly, put her arms about his neck, and kissed him. She pressed herself against him, her breasts and thighs warm and soft beneath the thin fabric of her dress. He felt himself stir and stepped back, embarrassed. She followed and kissed him again. She brushed herself against the bulge in his trousers. "I was beginning to think you didn't like me," she said. "I'm glad to discover you do. I know a room we can use."

 

An ugly little room on the third floor of a bullet-pocked building, devoid of window or decoration, or rear exit. Only a sagging bed and a tang of recent sex. He balked.

 

"What's the matter?"

 

"There's no back door. No window."

 

"So we'll be private."

 

He shook his head. He knew better than to enter any room without an escape route. He'd not survived this long by being a total fool. The possibility of being trapped set sweat crawling upon him that had nothing to do with lust.

 

"The Nazis are gone," she said. "The days of people being dragged away in the night are over."

 

Stefan gave her a hard look, wondering if she meant to trick him. He no longer had a gun, but he was never without his knife. He could kill her with his bare hands, if necessary.

 

"Don't look at me like that," she said in a small voice.

 

"Like what?"

 

"Like you'd just as soon kill me as look at me."

 

"Killing is easy," he said. "Dying is easy. It's living that's hard." He made an effort to unclench his hands and strode away down a narrow corridor of threadbare carpet and peeling wallpaper.

 

“Wait!”

 

He paused.

 

Eleni caught up with him swiftly. "I'm sorry you don't like the room. We can go somewhere else."

 

She seized his hand and led him down a flight of stairs. Behind the stairwell, he pressed her hard against the wall. She raised her dress. He opened his fly. He took her standing, without finesse, or endearments, or tenderness.

 

She was not Selene; she was not Lili.

 

Eleni made no protest, but tears leaked from her closed eyes, and he felt ashamed even as he shuddered and spent himself. He brushed the moisture from her checks with his thumbs. "I'm sorry," he said softly in Romani, and then repeated the words in English.

 

She smoothed her dress, not looking at him. "It's all right," she said. "Any night that doesn't end in a black eye is a good one."

 

"Anyone gives you a black eye, tell me and I will kill him."

 

She laughed a little, uneasily. "You sound like you mean it."

 

Outside they picked their way carefully over rubble. A few street lamps shone. Yellow light spilled from windows. Strange to have lights at night, after so many years of blackout. Made it harder to see the stars.

 

He kept to shadows out of long habit. He didn't really like cities. In Lodz, the side­walks had grown choked with those dead of typhus, hunger, and simple despair, while the streets echoed with the tramp of sol­diers' boots in precise rhythm.

 

His chest constricted. Sometimes the past seemed more real than the present. Eleni slipped her hand into his again. "What's the matter?" she whispered.

 

"Nothing."

 

She did not challenge his lie, but pushed the hair back from his eyes gently. "Lili and I found a special place a few days ago. Shall I show you? It isn't far."

 

He shrugged. She led him to a small, forgotten park. The shrubs wanted trim­ming, and the flowerbeds were choked with weeds, but a few hardy irises thrust upward.

 

"I wanted to pick them," Eleni said, "but Lili thought we should let them be. It's pret­ty here, isn't it?"

 

He nodded. He liked the sense of wild­ness reclaiming what had once been so orderly. And the stars seemed brighter here. He missed the woods of the Ardennes as much as he missed coffee. More.

 

He traced a finger over the blue inked number on her forearm.

 

"Auschwitz," she said.

 

He showed her the bare patch on his own arm, shiny and hairless. "Treblinka, but I cut it off when I escaped."

 

"None of us really escaped," she said. "Oh, some of us lived, but that's not the same thing."

 

On the walk back to camp, he kept his arm about her waist. He ignored the smirk­ing guard at the gate as he signed them back in. At the door of her barracks, Stefan paid her in cigarettes. She thrust them carefully into her bosom. He turned to go.

 

"Wait," she said, taking his hand. "The: GIs have been working on a playground. Let's see if they've finished the swings. I always loved the swings. My father--" Her face clouded a moment. "I was always happy in a swing."

 

"How many cigarettes will it cost me?"

 

Her face went very still. She dropped his hand. "You're a heartless bastard, you know that?"

 

"I'm sorry." His English failed him. How could lie tell her he liked her, even if she was gadji and a whore? How could he admit that yes, he was a heartless bastard, but only because the war had burned his heart to bitter ash and he didn't know how to be anything else? "I'm sorry. Please? I would like to see the swings. Very much."

 

She did not take his hand again, but she did not object when he walked with her past the barracks and around the corner.

 

Eleni stopped suddenly. He nearly col­lided with her. She pressed her hand to her mouth.

 

Stefan followed her stare.

 

The Americans had indeed finished the swing set. Six wooden planks suspended by thick ropes swayed slightly in the breeze.

 

Lili must have used one of them as a stepping stool when she tied a bit of clothes­line over the center support beam. Easy then to step off and let the knotted line about her neck do its work. She had even tied more line about her knees, to keep her skirt mod­estly in place while she dangled in the air.

 

"Lili," Eleni said. "God, no."

 

Stefan's fingers curled into fists. He wanted to hit someone. Something. "Run and get an MP," he said. "I'll cut her down." He bent to pull the knife from his boot.

 

Eleni stumbled away.

 

Stefan climbed onto the swing next to Lili and sawed through the rope suspending her. He laid her upon the dirt. Her dark hair snagged on his callused fingers as he brushed it back from her cheek. She no longer looked like Lili. Or Selene. Swollen face. Bulging eyes. A blue cast to tongue and lips. She had fouled herself in dying. Mahrimé. She was mahrimé. He was mahrimé. The entire stinking world was mahrimé. What was one more corpse among so many?

 

Captain Anderson met Stefan and Eleni in the interrogation room. Eleni sat hunched in a chair, eyes red and swollen with weeping. Stefan folded his arms and leaned against the wall of painted cin­derblocks. Cold seeped into his shoulders, but he ignored it. Eleni shivered. Anderson removed his jacket and draped it over her shoulders. He pushed a steaming cup of coffee toward her. He glanced at Stefan. "Coffee?"

 

Stefan shook his head

 

Anderson turned back to Eleni. "Do you speak English?"

 

She nodded. She folded her hands around the cup as if the warmth were pre­cious to her.

 

"What's your name?"

 

"Gussmann. Eleni Gussmann."

 

"Miss Gussmann, you knew the dead girl?"

 

She nodded again. "Lili."

 

"Last name?"

 

"Just Lili."

 

"Known her long?"

 

"We were at Auschwitz together. We looked after each other. Like sisters. We had no one else." She raised the coffee to her lips, using both hands as if she were afraid it would spill otherwise.

 

"Do you know why she killed herself?"

 

"She got strange sometimes." Her eyes sought Stefan's from across the room. "I told you she got strange sometimes."

 

Anderson frowned at Stefan thoughtful­ly. "That right?"

 

Stefan nodded.

 

Eleni put her cup down. "It was the babies, I think. She loved babies. She had one once, a little girl, but she died at birth. Lili couldn't have any more. They sterilized us, you know. No more babies for the unter­menschen. No chance to violate their beloved racial purity. That didn't keep them from fucking you, of course, if you were pretty. And Lili was very pretty."

 

Very pretty. Stefan swallowed, hard. He pushed off from the wall, leaned over Eleni, slapped his hands flat upon the table, slosh­ing the coffee in her cup. In a strangled voice he asked, "Where was she? When she had the baby?"

 

Eleni blinked at him, bit her lip. "I don't know. One of the ghettos, I think. Warsaw, maybe."

 

"Not Lodz?"

 

"Could have been. I don't think she ever said. She dreamed sometimes of babies cry­ing."

 

Stefan turned away from her. He could not breathe. Lili was not Selene. She could not have been. The fates were cruel, yes, but surely not so cruel as to take her from him twice? He had to believe that--or go mad.

 

He slammed his list into the wall. His breath came in short gasps.

 

"Sit down, Stefan," Anderson said.

 

Stefan hit the wall again.

 

He heard a chair scrape the floor as Anderson rose. Stefan punched the wall a third time. His knuckles bled. He drew his fist back for another blow. Anderson caught his wrist.

 

"Sit down."

 

Stefan ground his teeth. He jerked his arm free. He could pound Anderson into blood and nothingness, if he wanted to.

 

"You're scaring the lady," Anderson said. "Hell, you're scaring me. Sit down, okay?"

 

Stefan drew a shaky breath. He sank into a chair opposite Eleni. He could still feel the weight of his stillborn daughter as he wrapped her in an old shirt and took her away, could taste Selene's salt tears on his lips. Stefan clenched his fists, stared at the blood welling from scraped knuckles and muttered to himself in Romani.

 

"What did you just say?" Anderson asked.

 

Stefan translated: "A man measures his wealth by his children. I'd like that coffee, now."

 

Anderson eyed him worriedly. "Sure." The Captain rose and spoke to someone in the next room.

 

Eleni reached across the table and placed her hand over Stefan's wrist. Her touch was light, warm, but her lacquered nails were the color of fresh blood.

 

Quietly, he asked, "Did Lili ever--did she ever mention anyone's name? A hus­band, perhaps?"

 

"Not that I remember. She was always the stronger one. Looked out for me as best she could. Like an older sister. Now she's dead, and I'm not."

 

Anderson returned with coffee in time to hear Eleni's remark. He set the cup down before Stefan. "I don't get it--I mean, to have survived the hell of the war and the Nazis and everything just to give up now? It doesn't make sense."

 

Stefan thought it made perfect sense. "When everyone and everything is lost," he said, "it sometimes takes more strength than you have to go on."

 

Eleni nodded.

 

"All right," Anderson said. "It's late, so we'll wrap this up." He glanced at his notes. "You two were coming back from your date. You decided to walk past the play­ground. You found the body. Miss Gussmann went to report it." He frowned at Stefan. "Why did you cut the body down? Did you think she might still be alive?"

 

Stefan shook his head. "I know what death looks like." He lifted the coffee to his lips. It was weak, but it was hot. And real.

 

"So why did you cut her down? Better to have waited for the MPs. It was an obvious suicide, but if there was any question--you could have gotten into trouble.”

 

Stefan frowned in thought. "It was not right she hang there--for all to see. Like a"--he searched for the proper word--"criminal."

 

Anderson studied him a long moment in silence, then nodded. "OK. You two can go."

 

Outside, Stefan lit a cigarette, cupping his palm about the tip to keep the glow from being seen in the darkness, a habit from par­tisan days. At least his fingers did not trem­ble. He passed the cigarette to Eleni.

 

She sighed as she exhaled smoke. "I should have stayed with her tonight."

 

"Then she would have chosen another time." He shook his head. "You can't attach yourself to people. They betray you. Or they die. Better to rely only on yourself."

 

"I don't believe that. I mean--if we were to be alone--forever--we may as well all of us fashion nooses for our necks." She brushed the hair back from his face, the gentleness of her gesture at odds with the fierceness in her voice. "I would never kill myself. That would mean they had won."

 

"You are stronger than I thought." He took a seat upon the steps. She sat down next to him. He lit another cigarette, gazed out into the shadows of the camp. "In Lodz, my wife and I would sit upon the roof, high above the filth of the ghetto. We could see the stars from there. Whatever foulness I had done or seen that day, she could make disappear. For a while."

 

Eleni put her hand over his. "I would do that for you--if I could."

 

He thought of the Rom kapo still in the infirmary. Stefan toyed with the idea of executing him now. He could make it look like suicide--no need to even foul his knife. The man surely deserved death as much as Lili deserved to live. Or Selene.

 

What would Selene think of the accumu­lated blood upon his hands'? He could not turn off the killing as easily as water from a faucet.

 

Eleni squeezed his hand. "Living is hard," she said, "but I will not be a whore forever."

 

"That is good." Perhaps if Eleni could stop being a whore, he could stop being a killer. He might plug his ears against the dead who whispered for vengeance, pull free of the imploring hands that mired his dreams. He placed his other hand on hers. His bruised knuckles had scabbed over. "I hope you find a good man in America."

 

"We could go together."

 

He shook his head, forced a somber smile. “I am not a good man." He rose, drawing her to her feet. "I will walk you home--it is near­ly curfew."

 

"And tomorrow?"

 

Tomorrow. What dark jest might the fates have in store for him tomorrow? He would leave Deggendorf. Anderson would not be pleased, but Stefan did not want to stay here with the memory of Lili and what might have been. There were other camps. Perhaps there were other Roma--Roma who might not fear his yellow eyes. "I will turn my steps once again upon the Long Road."