Right after dinner, Muller let Peis know it was time for him to go and take his whore with him. Peis predictably made it clear he was quite aware that Muller was anxious to take Gisella to bed. As she rose to leave, Peis’s whore kissed Gisella.
“Liebling,” she said, wearing her most ravishing smile, “I know we’ll be seeing a lot of each other.” This upset Muller more than he wanted to admit.
Peis then came to attention, clicked his heels, threw a stiff Nazi salute, and bellowed loud enough for everybody in the room to hear him which was clearly his intention), “Guten Abend, Herr Standartenfuhrer.
Heil Hitler!” Muller returned the salute with a casual movement of his arm.
After Peis and his whore had left, Gisella started smiling.
Muller looked at her quizzically.
“I have seen more formal salutes,” Gisella said.
Gisella was looking at him. Into his face–his eyes. It was the first time she had done that.
“I think I am going to have a brandy,” Muller said. “Can I order something for you?”
“I will have a brandy, too, please,” Gisella said.
The proprietor personally delivered the brandy, displaying it like a treasure. It was one of his last two bottles, he said, as he placed a balloon glass in front of Gisella and then Muller.
“Before the war,” Gisella said when the proprietor had stepped away, “this is what my father used to drink.”
“Then we’ll buy him a bottle, ” Muller said.
Her eyes were bright with pleasure.
Could you?
“Of course,” he said. “You heard him, he has two.” That didn’t please her. It seemed to frighten her.
“When you’re finished,” he said, “I will take you home, if you like.”
“I would like, I think, to dance.” This time, they did not dance like father and daughter. He could feel the softness of her breasts against him, and then Gisella laid her head against his chest, and he could smell her hair.
“I have to talk to you,” she said.
“All right.” Is she in some kind of trouble? If that swine Peis..
“Are you sending me home, Johnny?” Gisella asked.
“I thought you–“.”s For an answer, she squeezed his hand again.
It is entirely possible that Gisella would prefer to be the girlfriend of a Standartenfuhrer–even an old, turning-to-fat, balding, peasantstandartenfuhrer–to being at Peis’s beck and call.
So what? What do you care why, just so you can get in her pants?
And then he discarded as beyond credibility that she might like him for
“Why don’t we take the cognac to your room?” Gisella asked softly.
She knows what will happen there, that isn’t a riding crop pressing against her belly.
Gisella went straight into the bathroom when they reached his room.
She came out in her slip, which was cotton, practical, and ill-fitting.
I should have bought her some nice underwear.
Then Muller took a quick shower, and, a little self-consciously, splashed 4711 cologne on his chest and under his arms and down there.
He wrapped a towel around his middle and walked back to the bedroom.
Gisella lay in the bed, and she’d tossed her ugly slip on the back of a chair. She’s naked under the blankets! She raised her arm and held the sheets and blanket open for him.
When he slipped in beside her, she moved so that she was half on top of him, her leg over his, her face against his chest. He marveled at the softness of her back.
“Johnny,” Gisella said, her voice muffled, GI’ve been listening to the BBC.”
“You can go to jail for that,” he said tenderly, making it a joke.
“I wasn’t surprised when Peis brought the radio,” she said.
“What do you mean by that?”
“”Gisella thanks Eric for the radio, “‘ she quoted.
“Aren’t you afraid your neighbors will report you?” he asked.
“Yes, of course,” she said. “I’m careful.”
“I think it will be all right now,” he said. “Peis is afraid of me.”
“I should be afraid of you,” Gisella said. “Somehow I’m not.
Quite the opposite.”t He tightened his arm around her.
“That was a message to you, wasn’t it?” Gisella asked.