Her shyness proved impregnable. We lunched quietly, indeed wordlessly, on the fluidal sausages. Herta was all thumbs with the heavy cutlery and the Swedish glassware. When the servants left, she went and sat on the sofa a d
stared at the attractive rug. I joined her. She proved immune to my light-headed but rather leaden gallantries, the words so hard to shift around. Actually I felt far from well myself. And worse and worse as the morning wore on. And then entirely terrible, after a convulsive visit to the small but resonant bathroom, whose greasy air was full of racing currents, fire-tinged. I betook myself to bed in some exasperation, and without really bothering to get undressed. When I awoke around four A.M., still in my boots, she was lying beside me, entombed in her woolen nightgown, and fiercely whispering, Nein. Nie. Nie. Never. Never. No amount of caresses or endearments (or good-hearted raillery) seemed likely to soften her. I got out of bed—gah!—and then picked myself up off the floor. Herta was now fast asleep. I remember thinking how white and cold and still her face looked, without the breeze of thought or sentience, as I stumbled off to the tumult of the ramp.
Ours was a human enterprise, but the animal kingdom played its part in the new order of being. Cartfuls of corpses were shoved from the burial pits by mules and oxen, and stupidly, with no animal comment. Cows did not look up from their grazing, their indifference seeming to say, This is all right. This need not be remarked, as if it wasn’t unusual to conjure a multitude from the sky above the river. We kept rabbits, too, in much the same way as we dealt with the people, improvisationally and with desperate brilliance. Men gave up the very linings of their greatcoats to provide the little creatures with fur. And then of course there were the dogs, boxers, their crushed faces, their squat coats bearing the ubiquitous sign of the twisted cross, in honor of the Jews they healed with their teeth and with the snort and quiver of their jaws.
In the clubroom I am told (I think I’ve got this right): Jews come from monkeys (from Menschenafferì), as do Slavs and so on. Germans, on the other hand, have been preserved in ice from the beginning of time in the lost continent of Atlantis. This is good to know. A meteorology division in the Ahnenerbe has been looking into it. Officially these scientists are working on long-range weather predictions; in fact, though, they are seeking to prove the cosmic-ice theory once and for all.
It sounds familiar. Atlantis . . . twins and dwarves. The Ahnenerbe is a department of the Schutzstaffel. Schutzstaffel: Defense Force. Ahnenerbe: Ancestral Heritage. It is from the Ahnenerbe that “Uncle Pepi” is sent his skulls and bones.
I am, of course, no stranger to feminine wiles. But I was disappointed, I was very disappointed, when the second night with Herta went no better than the first. Went no different, in fact. Will nothing “melt the ice”—the cosmic ice of marriage? The idea of a gradual familiarization was not without its initial appeal. But surely, I thought, on the third and final night, which we were to have all to ourselves . . .
Herta’s nightdress is childish. It is patterned with genies and sprites. I begged of them, these sprites and genies. Deliriously, all night, in bed, I begged—oh, the bedbug of nightbeg . . . There were periods, earlier on, when I was calmer and we could talk a little. She spoke tearfully of das Baby; and the baby does sound fairly disastrous. I also got the distinct impression that Herta disapproves of the work I am doing here. In her incensed whisper she called me names I didn’t understand. They made her face ugly, even in the dark. Why can’t I answer?
The next day she was gone and the next night I w s
back on the ramp. Playing Cupid. I still don’t know what my wife looks like. She never met my eye. No. I never met hers. Things will improve. She will come around, in time. Has someone been telling her what I did to the bald whores?