I Followed My Wife to That Ruined Apartment

Vienna, 1948. They said that if you died as a German in those years, you would spend eternity in purgatory paying for the sins of a country that had never repented of anything. I didn’t need to die to know it: I was already living there.

Anyone thinking of crossing into the Russian sector was always given the same advice. Don’t wear a watch, because the Ivans will steal it. Don’t carry anything of value on you, just the oldest jacket you own. And if they speak to you, curse the Americans and pray you don’t smell of Yankee tobacco.

Good advice, all of it. I would have done well to follow it myself that night on the train.

The soldier guarding my carriage suddenly got to his feet and swayed over me with the swagger of a man who knew no one would call him to account. He was a huge, stupid mountain man, with black eyes and a jaw as broad as the steppe. He snatched the newspaper from my hands and held out his calloused palm.

—Padarok —he said, and then, slowly, in bad German—: Want present.

I smiled and nodded like an idiot and rolled up my sleeve to show him my bare wrist. I had no watch to give him, I explained. I had nothing. The smile vanished from his face. He shoved me, spat on the compartment floor, and called me a liar. Then he patted the fabric of my jacket with approval, and I understood there were only two possible endings that night: either I killed him, or he killed me.

When he bent to reach for his carbine, I kicked him between the legs. The butt hit the floor, he doubled over, and I smashed my fist into his face. We grappled against the window until the glass gave way and half his body went out into the darkness of the train racing at full speed. I hit him again, once, twice, until something in the blackness of the tracks finished the job for me and the Ivan’s fingers suddenly loosened.

It took me several minutes to gather enough strength to push what was left of him outside. Then I searched the jacket he’d abandoned on the seat: a handful of stolen watches, a Czech pistol, and half a bottle of vodka. I kept everything, took a long drink to the night sky, and threw the coat through the broken window.

***

It was after midnight when I shouldered open the front door of the house. The lock had been broken for months; getting in took as little effort as getting out. I expected to find my wife asleep, but the bedroom was empty. I emptied my pockets onto the little table and got ready for bed.

Scattered beside the lamp, the soldier’s watches all showed the same time, with a minute’s difference between them. That precision only served to underscore how late Renata was coming home. I would have worried about her if I hadn’t already suspected where she was and with whom.

I fell asleep exhausted. Much later the wind woke me, howling at the window, and by instinct I moved close to the warm body that had appeared beside me. Then my brain began reading the clues in the dark: new perfume on her neck, blond tobacco smoke in her dyed hair. I hadn’t heard her get into bed. I closed my eyes and turned over.

In the morning, on the kitchen table there were things that had not been there the night before: real coffee, butter, a tin of condensed milk, two bars of chocolate. All from the American military canteen, the only shops in the whole city with anything in stock. With ration cards we barely got to a thousand calories a day; I had lost fifteen kilos since the end of the war. I had doubts about how Renata was getting that extra food, but I pushed them aside and put water on to heat.

Drawn by the smell, she appeared in the doorway, still in the white dress and ruffled apron that were her waitress uniform.

—Is there enough for two? —she asked, clearing her throat.

—Of course —I said, setting a plate in front of her—. You shouldn’t smoke so much.

Then she saw the bruise on my face.

—My God, Klaus! What happened to you?

—A run-in with an Ivan. He tried to rob me. We came to blows and he took off —I let her touch my face and show her concern—. You came home late last night.

Renata smoothed her hair with the palm of her hand before answering.

—You were sleeping like a baby when I got in. A colonel took over the place for his birthday. It was a crazy night.

—I see.

She was a schoolteacher, but she served drinks at the Liberty, a bar in Hietzing open only to American officers. I weighed the tin of condensed milk in my hand.

—Did you steal this?

She nodded without looking at me, twisting a blond lock around her fingers.

—You can’t imagine how much food there is there —she said—. One Yank can wolf down your monthly ration in a night and still have room for ice cream.

She took a pack of American cigarettes from her coat pocket and offered me one. Probably stolen too, I thought, but I took it and leaned toward the match she lit.

—There’s the detective again —she muttered, annoyed with me and with my profession—. A boy gave them to me. He’s just kind, that’s all. They like talking to a woman.

—At least your English will improve —I smiled, to soften the edge of my voice.

I didn’t mention the bottle of French perfume I’d found hidden in one of her drawers the week before. Instead, a while later she came out of the bathroom naked and stood before the full-length mirror in the corner, studying herself with the ruthless attention of someone who knows time is running out. She was a mature, beautiful woman, in her early forties, determined to make the most of whatever years she had left of being so.

—You’re aging well —I said.

—A bit thin for a love poem —she grumbled.

She came closer, still naked, and watched me as I stared at the half-empty pantry: real soap, saccharin, a packet of condoms from the canteen. Was there just one American, or several?

—Good God, you’ve been busy, darling —I said, taking the packet—. How many calories do these have?

She laughed, coughed, and then grew serious.

—The manager keeps them under the counter. I thought it would be fun —she tilted one leg—. It’s been a while since we did anything. We’ve got time, if you want.

We did it with an almost professional indifference on her part, as if she were serving me another drink. Even so, I made her work for it, urging her to push back harder to draw it out, and to hear her, and to force her to finish with her husband at least once. When I was done, she picked up the used condom like someone finding a dead mouse under the bed and carried it to the bathroom. Half an hour later, dressed for work, she stopped to watch me feed the fire in the stove.

—You’re very good at that —she said, smiling, and left with a hurried kiss that meant nothing.

***

That afternoon I gave it no more thought. At night I took the train to Hietzing and planted myself on the opposite sidewalk from the Liberty, between the parked jeeps and the windows clouded with steam and noise. Near the door, hunched over, was one of the city’s thousands of cigarette butts men, fellows who made a living gathering the cigarette stubs left behind by soldiers.

—Hey, you —I said—. Want to earn four cigarettes?

His weeping eyes darted from my hand to my face.

—What do I have to do?

—Two now and two when you warn me after seeing this woman.

I handed him the photo of Renata I carried in my wallet and pointed with my thumb to the café farther up the street where I planned to wait. The man saluted almost militarily, tucked away the photo and cigarettes, and went back to scouring the ground. I grabbed him by his dirty jacket.

—You won’t forget, right? I know where to find you.

—She may have forgotten you, sir —he smiled horribly—, but I won’t.

I waited nearly two hours with a glass of bad brandy for company, listening to voices I didn’t understand. When the cigarette-butt man finally came to get me, he was wearing a triumphant grin.

—She went toward the station, sir. With a Yank. A captain, I think. Big and handsome. Be careful.

I didn’t stay to hear the rest. I walked as fast as my leg, still weakened by the Ivan’s blow, would allow, and soon I saw them: Renata and an American officer with his arm around her shoulders. The full moon let me follow them without losing them, down the street, to a block as dilapidated and shell-riddled as the one where we lived.

When they disappeared inside, I wondered whether I really needed to see it. Bile rose, bitter, to undo the greasy knot in my stomach. I went in anyway.

***

I heard them before I saw them, the way you hear mosquitoes before you feel them.

—It’s too big, Dean —my wife laughed—. Other women may be able to, but I can’t. I’m a decent girl, I told you that.

She said it while her hand moved up and down on an erection the captain’s size. I slipped into the shadowed gap of a doorway without a door, and from there, when a cloud cleared the moon, I saw them with cruel clarity through the bare kitchen window.

For a moment they were the very picture of innocence, kissing slowly like two teenagers. Then he lifted her tight black dress up to her waist, whispered something in her ear I couldn’t make out, and bent to run a delicate hand over her breast that didn’t fit with a man so broad. Renata was panting, but she turned and gave him her back, rubbing herself against him while she searched for his sex over his uniform again.

The American took off his shirt. He crouched, pulled down her underwear, and buried his face between her thighs until she, overwhelmed, had to push him away and make him stand up. Then it was my wife who knelt, and he who, hands on her nape, guided her. I was surprised she allowed it: she had always told me that that sort of thing upset her, that she didn’t like it. She coughed and cleared her throat, and at last I understood where her morning throat-clearing had come from.

She stood up, turned around, and, on tiptoe, offered him her ass. If I had left at that instant, perhaps our marriage might still have been saved. But not for a second did it occur to me to give up that spectacle.

—Yes! —was the only thing that came out of her throat when he entered her.

A succession of yeses ran through her as the captain drove into her hips in a languid rhythm, and she looked up at the ceiling of the little room as if a god were fucking her and not a stranger in a bombed-out flat. Her legs trembled with each jolt until he lifted one and held it up, unknowingly offering me a complete view of what he was doing to my wife. Renata clung to his shoulders and closed her eyes to endure the pleasure that bent her in two.

Then he laid her flat on her back on the table, spread her legs high, and entered her again. Her high-heeled shoes shook in the air with the rhythm of his thrusts, and every time he drove a little deeper, she laughed in disbelief before crying out. I had never seen Renata like that. I don’t think she had ever seen herself like that either.

After a few minutes, the American pulled out of her, bent down, and began preparing her with his fingers for something I knew she had never allowed me to do. Renata opened her eyes wide and let out a terrified squeal.

—I won’t hurt you, I promise —I heard him say, with the calm of a man who knows what he’s doing.

Against all odds, she nodded. He took his time, patient, undoing that final knot of resistance with his fingers while whispering in her ear, first to calm her and then with increasingly obscene words, drawing out confessions I didn’t even know she had in her. When he finally straightened up, my wife gripped the edges of the table and spread her legs wider still, offering herself. In the poor moonlight, her forty-something body looked strong and beautiful, and even that young man in the prime of life stood still for a moment, looking at her, doing nothing but shaping her with his hands.

—Close your eyes —he told her.

And he took her. Renata screamed when he went in and put a hand on his belly to stop him, a useless gesture, because he was already inside and all that remained was for her to get used to it. He didn’t use force then, but his hands: he stroked her face, kneaded a breast, sought her sex with his fingers, and kept talking until he convinced her it was extraordinary, until he made her nod and, in the end, ask for more.

—Slowly —she panted weakly—. Slowly.

But as her moans grew sharper, the officer’s tenderness gave way to something primitive. He made her loop her arms around his neck and, without leaving her, lifted her up and set her on his thighs in a battered chair that creaked under their combined weight. There it was my wife who took control, riding him with hip strokes so fierce it seemed to open her right down to the soul, until a final orgasm convulsed her and made her tremble, impaled on him.

She barely had time to enjoy it. The captain pushed her aside, made her kneel, and finished with a rough grunt, holding her head. Renata, who like all the women in that city knew what hunger was, did not despise the ration. What hurt me most was not that, but that she kept going afterward, licking him with a mixture of gratitude and delight, when it was no longer needed. She really liked that boy. He wasn’t just a benefactor with chocolate in his pockets.

***

I left without a sound, aware that soon the chocolate would sweeten for my wife the taste left in her throat. The war had ended three years earlier; the Americans had been among us long enough to know that, so long as they fed us, none of us was planning to slit their throats. And that night I lost myself in the worst streets of the city and drank until I felt nothing.

The next morning I left a note on the kitchen table and took the first train west. I spent almost the entire journey thinking about Renata and cursing myself for not having known how to write something deeper, for not having told her that there was nothing I would not have done for her. Though she already knew that. She had it in writing, in the love letters from our courtship she kept in the drawer, right next to the bottle of French perfume from her captain.