Austrian Novel

 

Vienna Dolorosa

March 12, 1938

by

Mykola Dementiuk

The individual is always defeated in the end.

Joseph Roth

via dolorosa, a painful difficult route, passage, or series of experiences...used especially for depictions of the Virgin Mary grieving over her dead son

1. Friska Bielinska

THE BRIGHT MORNING sun streamed through the lace curtains and moved across the large room and bed until a bright sliver of beam slashed over and warmed Frau Friska Bielinska's lips and nose and eyes. Frau Friska awoke and cursed.

She moaned and cursed again and turned on her side, but the opposite window facing the rear courtyard, though sunless, was also glowing in morning brightness. Having been left open in the night for air, it now let in the clamorous day sounds of plates and dishes clattering day sounds of plates and dishes clattering in the café-kitchen across the courtyard.

Is it breakfast they're serving? Lunch?

Frau Friska covered her eyes with the crook of her elbow and eased back to sleep, suddenly jerking upright at the clash of a plate stacked atop another and laughter from the café.

She yawned and glanced at an ornate gold clock and cursed again – almost eight a.m.

"Scheisse! she groaned and spun her fist against her nose and mouth. She glanced at the beside her. He was sleeping peacefully, his lips slightly downturned, a stream of dried white saliva lacing from a corner of his mouth and down his chin, oblivious to the brightening room, the clamorous café sounds, or the cursing and shifting Friska.

She studied the boy's soft face and pulled off the bobbed black wig which had shifted off his head and lay matted in smeared makeup, lipstick and saliva at the side of his face.

Frau Friska tossed the wig on a chair and rose from bed. She shivered and tugged at her twisted loose panty, pulling it out of her crotch and ass, and aligned the satin material over her stiffened groin. She quickly crossed the room and shut the double rear courtyard windows. The café clatter grew muted and dull, peaceful. Frau Friska glanced up at the sky -- blue and cold. She pulled the curtains shut, crossed her arms over her bare chest, and rubbed her shivering shoulders. She turned to the warm sunny window facing the street.

Vienna was a slow-moving city; early-rising but moving at a pace seen in other cities more at the relaxing close of the day than at the busy start. Yet in the past week and a half the city had erupted into a bustle of movement and activity unlike anything Frau Friska experienced since she had left Berlin five years earlier. At the time the Berliners seemed to dwell in a constant frenzy of street activity: street patrols, street demonstrations, street battles, street harassments.

With the coming to power of Adolph Hitler and his National Socialist Party, the first clear manifestation of their power and authority was on the streets. Berlin started to systematically get rid of the elements that by nature, instinct, misfortune, or choice flock to any large cosmopolitan center and become as much a part of the city as the streetlamps and paved streets. Gaudy prostitutes and perfumed homosexuals were beaten, abused, and arrested; drunkards and addicts dropped in their stupors and were disposed of in alleys and back lots; Leftists, Reds, trade unionists, and homeless unemployed tramps were openly savaged and slain on the street; Jews, Gypsies, and Eastern Slavs were fair game to anyone – government officials, Party members, or any outraged citizen who happened to come upon them in the streets, building hallways, stores and shops, or even in their dreams.

Frau Friska considered herself fortunate to have been arrested and deported in the first wave of expulsions from Nazi Berlin and Germany. But being Ukrainian one never knew. Will it be the same in Vienna and Austria?

She shivered and lifted a lace curtain, draping it over the front of her bare chest. She squinted out the sunny second-story window. A group of teenage boys dressed in Austrian Brownshirt uniforms stood before the museum entrance across the cramped Inner City street as one of their comrades leaned against a shuttered storefront gate, doubled over and vomited. The other boys seemed to ignore their stricken friend, merely lolling about as though waiting for him to tie his shoe or straighten his tie and rejoin their group.

Fray Friska glanced up at the museum building: three-storied, gray and nondescript, of significance only that it was a confirmed residence of the Mozart on his hectic flight across Austria from dunning creditors and unpaid landlords, and where, it was said, he composed one of his masterpieces. Which one was a bit unclear and unconfirmed since he carried so much in his head and seemingly composed at will wherever he sat and brooded, drank and played billiards, laughed and made love. A small commemorative bust of Mozart frowned in a niche above the doorway, looking irritative and angered by the flapping corner of a massive red, black, and white Nazi flag striking the top of his head and brow.

Frau Friska also frowned. She liked the bust of Mozart: it was more boyish and innocent than the usual stolid Viennese depictions of the composer as some immature stunted genius imprisoned in the body of a boy and straining to break free and grow up. If only he had lived to be a man, went the common interpretation, what beauty he could have created then! Frau Friska didn't think so; being a beautiful boy and not cursed by age was beauty enough.

She sighed and looked away from the bust to the young boys; she started, certain one of the boys just averted his eyes from examining her in the window. Frau Friska stepped back and let fall the curtain.

She turned to the sleeping boy, his flattened blonde hair shimmering and gleaming in the beams of sunlight streaming the bed. She crossed the room and lifted the bulky goose-down cover; the boy's morning erection was stiff and solid, the crown on his puffed penis neatly outlined and stressed in the tight satin panties he wore.

Frau Friska moaned, tottering slightly, then fell on the bed and pulled down the front of his panties, gulping the stiff penis in her mouth. It filled her cheeks, and it was a lot better than lapping on the limp dick the boy couldn't get up last night.

A hand touched her thigh; Frau Friska squinted and saw the boy yawning at her and straining his hand to reach her leg. She moved up on the bed. The boy reached into her loose panties and circled his cold fingers around Frau Friska's erect penis, gliding it out of the loose panty leg and leveling it in his palm and on his wrist. He slid and pulled the hairless sheath back and forth; Frau Friska quickly ejaculated. The boy took a bit longer, finally coming in her mouth and bucking his groin in her face.

2. Helmut

BY THE TIME Helmut heard the footfalls from Frau Friska's apartment upstairs he had been up for hours, supervising the morning staff – the porters, the maids. He never liked what he felt was the pretense of playing boss, making his work assignments sound more like suggestions than commands, but there was little he could do but take over the hotel operations; Kurt, the usual morning man, had marched off the night before into the torchlight demonstration moving along the nearby Ringstrasse and had not come to work yet. He was probably still rousing up Jews, beating up beggars, cheering on speakers, or sleeping it off from too much exuberance, too much violence, or at the least, too much hastily drunk beer.

Helmut glanced across the lobby to the front door and saw the boy vomiting before the Mozarthaus. It was a good thing Kurt was gone; he would certainly have marched over to the boys and berated them for disrespecting their uniforms, their youth, their Fatherland, their Fuhrer ... no, better Kurt was off marching and boasting elsewhere.

Still, Friska must have had her reasons for keeping Kurt on at the hotel; Helmut would have let him go the first time he appeared in his ridiculous country-bumpkin lederhosen and white knee-stockings getup, emblematic of Party membership when all Nazi symbols were banned. In the past few days Kurt had come donned in the quickly legalized Brownshirt, leather chest-strap and swastika regalia which seemed to be worn now by the majority of Viennese males.

Helmut detested all uniforms and the change of personality that went with them. As much as they represented authority, the greatest dullard or layabout, be he soldier, cop, or public official, once in uniform could wreak havoc regardless of legality or simple morality. The Great War had been staged and waged by men in uniform, and their blindness and incompetence had not only destroyed millions of lives but also the empire and dynasty which had ruled over those lives for generations. Now new uniforms were on the march. Helmut sighed; each time a new idea, a new life, a new hope, and promise is offered by men in uniforms, it can only mean death for those in civilian dress.

Helmut turned away from the puking boy and flipped a page of the hotel registry book. It had been fairly quiet but stressful night. The registered guests retired early, and only one of Frau Friska's personal clients showed up. Kaufmann the Jew. He had bolted out of the hotel at dawn but returned a few hours later and now was pacing nervously in the dining room at the far end of the lobby.

Throughout the night some disheveled-looking couple or individual – or at one point, about three a.m., an entire family – pounded on the closed front door and demanded a room or at the least a refuge in the lobby from the chaos a few blocks away. Helmut finally dimmed the lobby lights and armed himself with a small revolver he once found in a vacated room. Though it contained only three rounds, he kept vigil lest anyone break through the glass door and gain entry.

Helmut studied the guest book. Of the six names only one sounded Germanic (or Aryan, as the current nominative would have it), von Belse. The rest were typical Jews: Blumfeld, Orehstein, Hessell, Wassermann, Gottlein. Not one of them was due to check out till Monday morning, having reserved their rooms for the entire weekend. Who could foretell this would also be the weekend Hitler decided to march on Vienna and annex all of Austria, putting an end to all talk of independence, plebiscites, sovereignty, self-rule?

Helmut looked back at the puking boy -- young, probably thirteen or fourteen, his shirt-front stained with vomit – then glanced at the pacing Jew Kaufmann in the dining room. Wipe off the vomit, take off the uniform, slip on a dress, and what have you got? Something for old men to play with.

Helmut frowned, shaking his head, and bent down over his registry book. Outside the vomiting boy gagged and spat out a few more times, then shuffled to rejoin his comrades. In the adjoining lobby room Kaufmann stroked his stubbled chin and glanced nervously at Helmut.

3. Wanda and Suze

WANDA QUIETLY OPENED the door, peered into the cubicle, and saw the covered figure in the same position it had been in for almost an hour. She frowned, knowing that the pansy Herr Kaufmann left the room at dawn before anyone was up, but she shut the door behind her and walked up the carpeted hall. Fifteen more minutes, she thought, then she'd have to wake the boy up.

It had been an easy morning; only one cubicle occupied, the rest as clean as she had prepared them the day before. But there was Frau Friska's apartment to tidy up -- she couldn't enter until after nine – and that would take at least an hour to do if not more. She probably wouldn't be done till almost eleven o'clock.

She cursed, then spun around and strode back down the hall. I've got someone in bed, too, she mumbled, flinging open the cubicle door.

"Guten Morgen!" she shouted and swooped into the room, snatching at a towel on a corner bedpost and grimacing at a large bowl of spoiled water on the end-table and a pair of crumpled, brown-stained panties on a nearby chair.

Idiots! she mumbled, and leaned over the bed, poking the covered figure on a raised shoulder.

"Hey, get up!" she said, then turned and tossed the dirty panties into the bowl of water. The figure had not moved. Wanda suddenly shivered. She looked at the open door and glanced about the room.

"Hey!" she said again, quietly though, prepared to explode in anger if the jesting figure sprang up at her in laughter. She leaned over and daintily picked up a corner of the blanket. "Wake up!" she snapped, flinging the blanket off and taking a step back.

The figure remained still, turned on its side, one arm under its head, the other draped beneath the overly large bosom, its long white dress demurely tucked into and under the knees, the outline of heeled shoes molded under a corner of the blanket still covering them.

"Suze," Wanda smiled faintly, and saw the glimmer of a belt buckle peeking from under the long blonde wig. She walked quickly around the bed and faced Suze from the front. She stared in horror and raised her hands to her cheeks.

The child's face was blue and puffy, its mouth twisted open, its eyes bulged out, its brow permanently wrinkled as though straining for comprehension. The belt buckle locked the throat, bulging flesh dripped over the leather strap, its end disappearing somewhere in the strands and folds of the blonde wig and pillow.

Wanda darted from the room.

4. Kurt and the Jewess

THE FRINGES OF the rallies on the Ring and Kartnerstrasses, bored with the droning do-nothing speechifying and pointless cheering, quickly broke off into splinter groups with their own provocateurs and rousers, fanning out across Vienna in search of beer, women, Reds, and Jews.

The crowds blocked the paths of automobiles, trolley cars, hapless pedestrians. They checked identity papers, clothes styles, nose lengths, word pronunciations, and beat up any resister as a Jew-loving anti-German Bolshevik pervert. Everyone on the street was fair game, for if they were not participating in the celebrations in support of Austrian unification with Germany, what were they doing riding or walking the streets if not hurrying to some Jew cabal? No, a fist in the face or a boot in the groin was a sure way to put a halt to any conspiracy.

How many have I hit? Kurt wasn't sure; sometimes two or three in rapid succession, often egging other beaters on, but always getting a good last kick in the chest or head of a slumped sagging body. Still, the first time his flesh struck flesh was but a limp, hesitant slap on the cheek rather than a solid blow to the face. The slap was hard enough, and surprising enough to have pushed the old Jew face slightly to the left where someone's more solid fist was able to strike and shatter the frail cheekbone and crooked nose, but Kurt knew he'd better be more careful. The time of indecisive slapping was over; the millennium of clenched fists had arrived.

Kurt happened to be at the rear of the mob when they came upon and surrounded an old Jewess near the Westbahnhof rail station. Yet it was hard to tell how old any Jew actually was, since they all dressed slovenly and beggarly. Whatever youthful faces they may have exhibited beneath their caftans and kerchiefs, their massive hats and shawls, were prematurely wrinkled by poverty, worry, fear, and paranoia. Just the fact that they were Jews made them seem aged and youth-less; any race carrying the burden of history, claiming to have been a witness at the start, would clearly exhibit the classic certainty of that history, the passage of time and inevitability of age. Yet this was also the classic fear of the Gentiles: that if the Jews have experienced History at its dawn, they might also be a witness to its end, an end out of control of Gentile hands.

Kurt succeeded in forcing his way through the mob, snatching at a few remnants of the old Jewish woman's belongings which had been rifled and scattered through the crowd, a few of the men laughing and pawing the women's frayed undergarments, holding them up to the streetlights and ridiculing the under-washed menstrual stains, commenting on the stretched curves of yellowed petticoats and shifts, and tossing aside other ragged clothes and items they accused her of trying to pilfer out of the country.

The woman sank to her knees, sobbing quietly, almost unresponsive to the taunts and snapped insinuations flung at her. She clutched at a small broken sewing kit which had been pulled out of her bag and crushed underfoot, a few on the needles with short colored threads still looped in place in a purple velour-backed compartment. The woman had seen the case grabbed out of her bag, snapped open, and discarded to the ground. It had no particular meaning to her, no value as a memento or heirloom, but she was suddenly seized with its importance and a desperate need to reclaim it, even yelping as though in pain as a gray metal thimble shot out from the case at the stomp of someone's booted heel. 

Kurt pushed his way to the front of the crowd, pawing and laughing at the heavy linen stockings which had passed through the crowd, viciously tugging at the thigh-length hose and finally ripping them to shreds. The Jewish was now on her hands and knees, reaching for something on the ground as a few small boys in short pants and jackets darted around her and kicked her up-raised behind.

"Like a dog!" someone laughed, and Kurt also dropped to the ground, snatching at whatever the woman was reaching for, then spun behind her and hiked up her skirts and petticoats and began his torso into her bottom.

"This is how Jew-dogs fuck!" he slobbered, howling and yelping, and pounded into the woman.

The crowd picked up the chant of a small boy dancing around the pair. "Fuck the Jew! Fuck the Jew!"

Kurt ejaculated, but few in the mob recognized his sudden spastic shivering as sexual release. Kurt yelped and ground himself into the woman's covered buttocks as if he had penetrated deep into her, then just as suddenly bolted from her. He laughed self-consciously but acknowledged pats on the back as he melded to the rear of the crowd.

He did not wait to see or hear what other indignities the woman suffered but branched off into another group moving toward the Westbahnhof rail station up the street. His hat covered his semen-wet groin, his penis as hard and stiff as it had been since he first joined the demonstration and slapped his first Jew.

He opened his hand and gazed at a small metal thimble. A thimble? He shook his head, flinging the useless object away in disgust.

5. Petya Gets Dressed

THE BATHROOM WAS large and spacious (at least larger than anything Petya had ever experienced), the large enamel toilet bowl and sloped gray metal tub in one corner of the room, the upright sink and vanity table in another. Plush dark carpet remnants lay strategic spots on the floor, and one could pace about the room, stepping from throw rug to throw rug, moving from toilet to sink to tub to table without landing once on the bright white floor tiles in between. A frosted-glass, curtained window faced the front street.

Petya quickly removed his panties and stockings and left them in a heap on the floor on top of the white dress he'd worn and discarded the night before. He went to the vanity table and glanced in the mirror, remembering his grotesque image of the night before, the lipstick blotted about his mouth, his painted eyes and brows in Harlequin peaks and points, his usually curly hair pressed flat to his skull. Frau Friska had fixed his attempts.

He examined the vanity table-top. Jars, bottles and canisters of makeup stood neatly in a row, with creams and powders next to them. He went to the sink: a silver straight-edge razor lay on a small shelf next to a wet shaving mug.

Petya looked at his clothes on the floor and snatched them up, folding the damp panties, straightening the stockings and dress and draping them over the cushioned backrest of a small chair before the table.

It had been exciting to be pampered and disrobed of his boy-clothes, adorned in girlish panties, camisole, dress, lip rouge, eye-darkeners, and black wig. But once made up as a girl, he couldn't get it up as a boy, frightened and resisting the flustered Frau Friska as though guarding some make-believe virginity the new unfamiliar clothes had forced him to assume.

Still, he was grateful Frau Friska hadn't kicked him out but let him spend the night, dressed as a girl, cradled in her arms. It would have been difficult to return to the Danube canal or Leopoldstadt. The Brownshirts and marching crowds were everywhere, and he knew he'd be a much of a target as any Jew or degenerate they promised to rid the city of.

Petya had heard snatches of speeches, listened to the rumors, stared at the illegal posters, and concluded that Anschluss not only meant Austrian unity with Germany but also an end to his way of life.

Hitler had promised to put every German citizen to work, and Petya had immediately began toying with French identities; but knowing only a mispronounced word or two, he knew it would be ridiculous if not dangerous to profess as such, the French being enemies of the Germans for generations.

Maybe Czech or some other Slav name. He chose Petya, having heard it in some Russian film and thinking that if he were arrested once more, he'd be deported East rather than tossed into prison. Twice in the past year he had been picked up along the Canal in police raids to rid the Inner City of crime and perverts, and both times he had been sentenced to the boy's reformatory in Ems. Each stay at the reformatory provided him with new names and places to see back in the capital city – the Redl Hotel reaching his ears only a week before as he was released to make his way back to Vienna.

Petya stepped into the empty tub and sat down, turning on the hot and cold metal taps. Frau Friska had demanded he wash even before entering her quarters last night not that she actually told him he smelled, but the look of disgust on her face was enough to dissuade him from any arguments. It was certainly a relief to be rid of the dirt and stench of a week of hiding and sleeping along the road on his way back to Vienna.

Not that he had to be so careful or cover his tracks too much, since he was only a day or two ahead of the first German armies Hitler finally sent into Vienna. The roads were already strewn with crushed flowers, sagging banners, empty wine bottles, raucous Brownshirts, over-exuberant celebrants, looting children, laughing whores, farmers on horseback, and villagers in regional dress. All streamed along the roadways to the capital city of Vienna, not one of them paying the least interest to a reform school juvenile.

Petya turned off the taps and sank beneath the water, holding his breath as long as he could, then bounded up, panting for air and briskly scratching and rubbing his face. The makeup easily smeared and came off in the warm water, though he had to force a washcloth into the corners of his eyes and lips to remove the thick mascara and lipstick.

He dunked a few more times under the water, finished washing and stepped out of the tub, snatching at a large damp towel off a rack near the tub. A pair of similar towels were folded and stacked on a small stand at the side of the rack, but Petya hesitated soiling any of them and instead wiped himself with the already used one, catching a waft of Frau Friska's fragrance as he toweled his head and face.

He replaced the towel on the rack and went to the vanity table, staring at his naked reflection as he neared the mirror. He frowned at his folded panties and stockings; does she expect me to wear them all day?

Petya glanced at the makeup jars on the vanity table; he knew there were men who dressed as women – the private clubs in Leopoldstadt were filled with them – but they were obvious, grotesque in appearance, dressing in apparel which did nothing to reveal their innate femininity but instead exaggerated their ugly maleness: a mustachioed face under a blonde-tressed wig, a too-short, too-tight dress atop a male's knobby knees, woolen sock and boots. If by lucky chance the body conformed to the compactness of a woman's smaller frame, the silk hose seams were aligned, the shoes form-fitted, the makeup and wig proportioned in place. It was almost inevitable that the entire image would be perverted by that constant male-exaggeration of the female shape: the longing for a gargantuan bosom created pads and pillows puffed up at the chest and rising to the shoulders and face or curving downward to the erection-risen skirt at the groin, creating a monstrous obese pregnant belly rather than a handful-proportioned female breast.

It wasn't so much that these men wanted to be women, but to create themselves as the unattainable woman they could never have or find, a woman that existed only in their imaginations and masturbatory fantasies, in their lusts to escape themselves and the reality of their male existence. Being men, that saw women as something existing solely for the pleasure of men. Making themselves up as women and having themselves chosen as women by other men -- being courted, wooed, girlishly resisting but leading-on until finally won over, hastily disrobed, their pleasure spent, their lust sated -- they could step back into their pants and become the pleasure-seeking men once more: the conquerors, the self-assured, the masqueraders, the abusers, the ultimate enjoyers.

Even at the reformatory in Ems there were boys who instinctively took on female roles, acting submissive, compliant, servile, some going as far as adorning their faces with saliva-tinted lead pencils, using dyes of shredded blotters, smearing on tints from sodden book covers. They became girls for the other boys, yet once released from the reformatory naturally reverted to their boy-identities, which were as deadly and dangerous as those of any other street urchin.

Petya had once participated in an attack on one such boy in the reformatory, pummeling his head and ejaculating in his mouth, the boy's darkened eyes blackened even more by Petya's fists, his blushed red cheeks cracked and broken by other blows, his tinted mouth colored in blood and pinkish semen. Petya picked up a jar of makeup: it would be easy to take the jar and post to the boy at Ems; use the hotel as a return address? In case the boy got out?

There was a double tap on the door. Petya quickly set down the small makeup jar and snatched up his panties; the door opened before he could step into them.

Frau Friska Bielinska, slim and petite in a demure but shapely black skirt and bolero jacket, came into the room. Her white ruffled blouse enhanced her small, rounded bosom, and a black pageboy hairdo tucked behind her ears framed the contours of her narrow high-boned face. She wore low-heeled shoes, her hose-darkened legs hairless and smooth – unlike the hairy Austrian look. She looked as naturally feminine as any woman one could imagine or pass on the street.

Frau Friska smiled faintly, looked about the bathroom, and held out a pair of short pants she carried on a hanger in her upraised arm; a pair of fresh white boy's undergarments and a brown shirt were folded over her other forearm. "Leave those," she said, gesturing to the panties and handing Petya his new clothes.

He took the garments and stepped into the warm cotton drawers, sliding them up his legs. Fray Friska walked about the room, then rolled up a sleeve and reached into the soiled tub to pull out the plug. Petya blushed as he heard the dirty water gurgle and suck itself out, but he continued dressing, pulling on the brown shorts and knee-high white woolen socks.

Frau Friska wiped her hands on the wet wall towel then pulled it off the rack and tossed it into a corner hamper, replacing it with a fresh white one from the nearby stack. She turned and looked at Petya. He was almost dressed, buttoning up the front of his Brownshirt, a child's equivalent of an Austrian Nazi uniform, the brown color they donned when all Nazi insignia and paraphernalia was banned by the just-ousted Schuschnigg government. She knew he'd blend right on the streets.

Frau Friska stepped to the vanity table and picked up the small jar Petya had moved. She put it next to a dark-colored jar and studied the red-faced Petya, then moved to the door.

"There are new shoes out here," she said, nodding to the living room, and scrutinized him once more.

Petya tucked in his shirt in his short pants and slung a suspender up his shoulder.

"Don't steal anything, alright?" she said finally, but she smiled and stepped quickly out of the bathroom, shutting the door behind her.

Petya's face was as red as Frau Friska's red lip rouge. He glanced at the vanity table and cursed.

6. Kurt and His Pants

KURT HURRIED THROUGH the Westbahnhof train station, his Nazi uniform opening a path for him in the bustling crowd of Jews, Gypsies, and other dark-skinned foreigners impatiently awaiting trains out of the country. It was a similar scene at other train stations and depots throughout the city – the Ostbahnhof to the east, the Sudbahnhof to the south – mobs of desperate people straining to flee the certain onslaught and retribution of the invading Nazis.

Like rats, thought Kurt, and entered the station restroom on the main level.

In the confusion and commotion his uniform would have been enough to allow him entry to the lavatory without the usual piddling two groschen contribution to the matronly war-widow who tended the facility, but Kurt was not one to take financial advantage of his position. He had joined the Party out of loyalty and self-sacrifice to the glorious future the Party-program promised was inevitable, not to reap the selfish benefits and perks which could be his simply by his position and membership.

Even in Vienna, with the Party outlawed and banned, it was well-known who was a member or not, or at the least who sympathized with the Party ideals. But no, Kurt would not take advantage of his loyalty; it was not the way things were done, should be done, or would be done once the country was fully united with the German Fatherland.

“Heil Hitler!” he saluted the old matron, placing a schilling on her tray – a generous amount in inflation-ridden Vienna – and requested a private cubicle. The old crone glanced at his crotch; Kurt reddened. He was certain the stain had been obvious to all he passed in the station, but none of the rabble dared comment on it, at least not until he passed by.

Let them, he thought. It will be their last criticism of anything on Austrian soil, the rats!

The old woman handed Kurt a towel and led him to a private wash cubicle. Kurt noted the other cubicles were all empty, the wall urinals also unused with their water flushing needlessly. Had the Segregation Laws already gone into effect, banning the despicable mixture of Jewish urine and excrement with that of pure Aryan waste?

Kurt entered the wash cubicle, peered over the door to watch the old woman shuffle back to her post, then pulled down and stepped out of his pants, draping the belted waist on a wooden door hanger. He sat down on the toilet seat and stared at the damp yellowing stain at the front of his drawers. The ejaculation had been powerful and certainly more voluminous in semen than he thought possible. Perhaps it was the rapidity of release after prolonged erection, but even he'd let go of the Jewess and rejoined the hooting crowd, semen continued to spurt out of his stiff penis and further soil the darkening stain on his pants.

He had sidled away from the crowd and slunk into the usually dark and deserted streets behind the train station, but the crowds surged everywhere: cheering Nazi supporters with flags and banners, fleeing Jews and traitors with outlandish suitcases and satchels of rags, mobs of looting teenage boys.

Kurt shook his head; he couldn't get out of his mind the sensation of the woman's buttocks against his groin and the feel of her waist in his hands. Though he never thought in terms of conquest – having paid his way for everything all his life – the disheveled old Jewess had been a conquest: she was the first woman Kurt had ever touched and experienced sexually.

He glanced at his pocket watch: almost nine o'clock – he was three hours late for work. Though Helmut would remain at the desk, it was Kurt's first absence in over two years of employment at the hotel. The gnadige Frau would be mad; she had no objection to his joining the Party, but warned him that his Party activities should not interfere with his hotel work hours. And, she stressed, No Party activities in the hotel; No berating the guests or staff; No attempts at recruitment of anyone; No Party comrades loafing about; No speech-making, and – this was the hardest for Kurt to bear – No photographs of any civil servant's son hanging on the lobby walls, no matter what his accomplishments in later life.

Kurt complied, but then, Frau Friska gave him leeway to wear his uniform, the Brownshirt and pants when the Party was still legal, the brown shorts and white stockings when the Party was suddenly banned, and the uniform once more when the German army was about to enter the country. Frau Friska gave way a little; Kurt was a good worker, and a Party member on the staff could certainly be useful some day.

Kurt liked his job at the hotel. He liked the gnadige Frau and he liked working for her. As a matter of fact, his job as the hotel's day manager was the best thing that happened to Kurt. It was also the steadiest position he ever had. Most of his other jobs let him go after a few months or he'd walk out on his own a week or so after starting.

Not that Kurt wasn't a good worker, he was too good, taking an uncalled interest in everyone's job. After he had sped through and successfully completed his own work, he began commenting on how theirs could be accomplished so much better and faster. He ended up being alienated and snubbed not only by his co-workers but also by their supervisors, who probably saw him as a threat to their own comfortable positions. But Kurt wasn't after anyone's job; his ambition wasn't material. He simply saw how a job could be done better and more efficiently and assumed that the other workers would be grateful for his suggestions and insight.

Not so; for the one thing Kurt was never able to recognize – in his own need for efficiency and production – was that work for pay always regenerates itself by necessity into a long stretched-out affair that allows the worker to look busy while getting by on the minimal amount of work actually done. Hence, this allows the worker the opportunity to return to work on ensuing days. The point of work is never to get the job done, but to keep the job. If everyone did their job the way Kurt did his, they would soon be idle and out of work.

So the often-jobless Kurt moved from office to office till he walked into Frau Friska's and applied for the clerical position noted in that morning's paper. He was hired. For someone with Kurt's inability to successfully interact with people on a long-term basis, the position was a godsend. Though his post as front office clerk – Day Manager was a title he bestowed on himself – kept him in constant contact with people, it was always brief and rudimentary: the payment of a bill, the signing of the registry, a nodding hello or goodbye. The paperwork and bookkeeping at the reception desk left him little time to wander about, and the few times he did leave his post to visit the gnadige Frau in her apartment upstairs, he simply nodded and walked past the maids and porters going about their cleaning tasks.

Kurt knew better than to say anything; his raison d'etre was clerical work, that he excelled at. In his two-year stay at the hotel Kurt had received nothing but compliments and bonuses on his efficiency and accountability for every schilling and groschen registered in accounts and debits. Frau Friska never regretted having hired him. Of course, it did not go unnoticed in the first interview that Kurt immediately recognized what she was under the skirts and powders. Both their penises tingled and rose – his forcibly and visibly in his dark wool pants; hers delightfully twisted and straining in her panty and girdle – though their physical contact, then or later, never went beyond that of a handshake or a holiday kiss or hug. Frau Friska had others to please and satisfy Kurt.

Still, if working at Frau Friska's was the best thing that had happened to Kurt, joining the Austrian Nazi Party shortly afterwards was certainly the second best thing in his life. There, all his inherent drive for efficiency and order, in himself and others, was given the chance to reveal itself, to prove itself, and it did not go unnoticed by the German leadership of the nascent Austrian Party. Though only a month earlier placed in charge of a secret recruitment drive for the outlawed Party, Kurt had implemented the unrealistic dictum that each current Party member should enlist five new members (family relatives excluded) who in turn would prove their loyalty by bringing in five additional members.

No one seriously expected the ambitious membership drive to succeed – Kurt was certainly relieved no one raised the issue of his own inability to bring in five acquaintances – but with the continuing hesitancy and flip-flopping of the Schuschnigg government in response to pressure from Berlin, with the basic shambles of the government and its reluctance to govern, the Party rolls were so nicely flooded with volunteers that the drive exceeded all expectations and proportions. This was noted and appreciated at Party headquarters in Berlin and Munich.

Kurt sighed, and glanced at his trousers on the door. Even though the wet stain had almost dried, the semen left a crusty indelible circle at the crotch, which, Kurt was certain, would be clearly visible as he returned to work. Not that it would matter there, but he would have to get from the Westbahnhof to the Inner City in broad daylight. While moving through a bunch of Jews and fleeing traitors in the station was one thing, it certainly wouldn't do for an official of the Party to be seen walking through the streets as if he had just peed himself, especially on the day of Nazi triumph. Since washing the pants was out of the question – who knew how long they would take to dry in the humid tile-lined lavatory? – Kurt decided it best to get in touch with the hotel and have Helmut send over a fresh pair.

He poked his head out of the cubicle door and beckoned to the old matron. She had been standing at the entrance to the lavatory, staring at the nervous crowds milling about the station. A rumor went out that all outgoing trains had already departed and incoming trains were being halted at the city's perimeter. No further trains would be let into the station. The silent crowds in the station remained where they were, as if their mere presence on a platform would enlist a train to appear and take them to safety.

The old matron grimaced at Kurt and shook her head, scratching her neck. She wasn't sure she knew how to use an outside telephone and was more unsure if the telephone branch at the far end of the station was even open. “Who knows what's working anymore?” she shrugged.

Kurt glared angrily at her and snapped back, “Things'll be working soon enough!”

The best she thought she could do, she said finally, was get her son Ludvig, who worked at a nearby concession and souvenir stand, now empty-shelved and sold out of goods (even in fleeing the country people found the time and means to pick up a final Viennese trinket of St. Stephen's Cathedral of the Prater carousel). Ludy would probably know himself, or know someone who did know, how best to go about there things. But she just couldn't leave her post; who knows what would get carried off? In the Great War the British and French stole toilet bowls and bathtubs to take back home. She shook her head, she just didn't know.

Kurt stood open-mouthed and red-faced in the cubicle door, a towel over his groin, disbelieving he was patiently listening to the old woman and doing his best not to explode into a tirade of outrage and disgust.

What the hell is this? he wondered. Ignorance of telephones, concession-stand sons, Viennese trinkets, toilet bowls and bathtubs? Ach! he wanted to spit; the Austrian people deserve the unification with an insane asylum! It's all of that Habsburg interbreeding: generations of mental deficiencies eventually tricking down to the masses...Oh, there's work to be done!

“I'll watch over the facility,” he finally erupted. “My authority will stop anyone from even entering.

He puffed himself up in the doorway, and suddenly knew he looked ridiculous with his Nazi Brownshirt dangling over his drawers and bare legs.

“I don't know,” the women shrugged, glancing at his legs and boots. “I could get in trouble.”

“Get you son,” Kurt said quietly. “I'll make it worth his while.”

The old woman studied him a final time, then shrugged and shuffled off, shaking her head. “I don't know,” he heard her mumble.

Kurt snapped the cubicle door shut and collapsed on the toilet seat also shaking his head in disgust. Maybe he should just get up and leave. It would probably take the old hag fifteen minutes to get her son, fifteen minutes to bring him back, and then another fifteen minutes to haggle with him over what an errand such as that was worth, not to mention the the forty-five to an hour it would take for a fresh pair to arrive from the hotel.

Kurt glanced at the semen stain. Would anyone really notice, in the din inside and outside the station? Would anyone care? Hadn't this efficiency in action, dress, and appearance gotten out of hand, particularly at a time such as this? History was being made and he was sitting in a train station lavatory, worried over a scum stain!

He jumped up and snatched the pants off the door. Footsteps echoed on the bathroom tiles and he hopefully peered over his cubicle door. He watched a slim figure slink to the towel cabinet.

“Halt!” Kurt ordered him to stop. The look was unmistakable. Near the front door, another figure snatched up a bar of soap off a corner sink and fled back out; from a far cubicle , an accusatory train of loose toilet-tissue dotted the tile floor after another fleeing figure.

Kurt ignored everything but the slim thief's softening face and smile; a quick dart of the tongue at the corner of the thief's mouth and Kurt's face reddened, but he returned a shy smile and grazed his own tongue on his lips. The young man glanced at the front entrance, then hurried to Kurt's cubicle. He gasped, jumped back, and froze at the sight of Kurt's Brownshirt and swastika armband, but watched curiously as the Nazi lowered the front of his drawers and gripped his erect springing penis. The young man stepped into the cubicle stall.

7.Wanda and Her Tits

THE FIRST THING anyone noted about Wanda was her large bosom. Though her neck-high short-sleeved maid's uniform sufficiently covered her chest, its light blue color also enhanced and stressed the curvature of the fulsome breasts, suspended and dipped in molding shadows, puffed in overstretched cotton, bulbed in cloudy shifts and hints of warmth, excitement, imagination.

She never made a pretense of not enjoying the avid stares of the hotel's male guests as she went about her morning chores, or the resentful self-consciously glares of their inadequate wives. She thrust her chest out even more, the top of her light blue smock beading in moisture from the perspiration-dotted breasts within.

But Wanda's over-sexed appearance, her demeanor as being an easy certain conquest – her wide hips, her pouty freckled face, her crinkly auburn hair – was just that, an appearance, an attention-getting asset which elicited stares and favors but which she never satisfied with the generosity of an actual squeeze or grope. The few males desperate or bold enough to actually clutch a tit or a thigh quickly lost their grip after doubling over from an upraised knee to their groin.

Not that she was a man-hater; she enjoyed men, their blathering company, their fawning ridiculousness, their loss of themselves in paying her so much attention. Wanda was a classic cockteaser and nebulous flirt, luring grown men into a boy-like strutting of their good fortune in meeting her. She'd grin and watch them exaggerating their charms and self-worth. Wanda was certain of and always wished she could witness and chortle at their manic frenzy of flustered solitary masturbation.

Unlike Kurt, who had never experienced actual intercourse with the opposite sex, Wanda had had her fill of men and was disgusted by the lot of them. She did, however, also assuage her longing with members of her own sex – other women, preferably small-breasted ones who could not compete in appearance should a man be about.

Wanda sighed, thought of Suze, and shivered. Twice she had refused Frau Friska's orders to help with the body but finally jumped at Friska's exasperated command she go and tend the front desk. This is where I belong, she thought, leaning back on the wall behind the desk and looking at the Mozarthaus across the street and cursing at something on the sidewalk. Wanda craned her neck.

It was bad enough I found the body, she thought. She certainly wasn't going to start moving it around. Let Helmut do it. Her job, though she hated it, was to clean up after the boys and second-floor guests, to remove filthy shit-smeared, blood-streaked, semen-crusted linens and towels, not fool around with strangled corpses.

Wanda knew she deserved better, yet each time she approached Frau Friska and pestered her for a change from her maid's position to one of greater responsibility, Wanda was always put off that the time wasn't right, that there was no opening, the we already have Kurt at the desk, but if something comes up...until Wanda walked away feeling flustered and somehow cheated even with a new pay-raise in her already overly-high maid's salary. As Wanda well knew, along with the rest of the highly-recompensed working staff, they earned their wages more for their discretion outside of work, keeping their mouths shut, than for any actual toil at the hotel. Still, Wanda felt she was qualified for a whole lot better.

The elderly man across the street paused and stared at the hotel, as if suddenly spotting something and trying to focus through the muted-glass, wood-paneled doorway and window curtains, straining to discern and shape the reality of the image behind the glass.

Wanda snickered and pulled back her shoulders. The elderly man gasped. She took a deep breathe and suddenly frowned. Another old man was watching her from the breakfast-room doorway, one of Frau Friska's clients Herr Kaufmann, the one who had spent the night with Suze. Wanda's eyes opened wide and her sagged.

8. Dead Boy

HELMUT UNDID THE buckled belt from around Suze's neck and turned her on her back. He shut the boy's gaping eyes but the small face remained grotesquely bulged, the mouth pursed as if blowing a permanent goodbye kiss.

Helmut straightened up and sighed, brushing a hand over his dark scalp and looking at Friska by the closed cubicle door. He was curious about her muted reaction when he had brought her the news. She stared at the dead boy and rubbed a lipstick-smudged fingernail back and forth over her smeared lower lip.

Kaufmann, she muttered, as if she had known at all known it all along and the child's death only confirmed her suspicion.

But who else could it have been? Not only had Kaufmann spent last night with Suze, but the old pansy had made no pretense about his inordinate interest in the boy, refusing Friska's suggestion of variety and other available boys, demanding that only Suze be available to him each time he paid a visit. Though it was not unusual for a client to take a sudden possessive interest in a boy, the infatuation usually wore off after a week or so, and the two would move on to other partners, other amours. In this business, Friska had always known: no one loves a whore for long, and if they do, the outcome is always disastrous.

Friska glanced at the lipstick-smeared fingernail, then rubbed it against the side of her black skirt and went to the bed. She picked up the leather belt Helmut had unwound from the child's neck and doubled the straps in half, folding them over and over until she clutched the crimped leather and stiff buckle in her palm. She leaned over the dead boy and pulled down a corner of his white dress, covering an exposed knee, then pushed up a flattened breast which had moved out of the brassiere and fallen to the side of his chest. Friska quickly looked up at Helmut.

“Leave us,” she said quietly. “I want to...fix her up.”

Helmut nodded and stepped to the door.

“Wait!” she called.

Helmut turned.

“Let's get all the guests out. Make something up. Tell them the new government has ordered us to shut down. Or something like that. How many are there?”

“Six rooms taken,” Helmut said. “All registered until Monday.”

“Married people?”

“Except a man and his daughter.”

“All Jews?”

“I'm not sure,” Helmut shrugged.

“Just as well,” said Friska. “Let's get them out. Oh, and give the new boy some money. Have him pick the suitcase from Berlin. It's as Westbahnhoff this time. Was probably on the Munich train. There might be extra charges.”

Helmut nodded and left the room.

For a moment Friska remained staring at the shut door, then she glanced about the tiny cubicle. Just a bed and a chair were more than enough for what had gone on here. There was probably evidence and proof everywhere. Fingerprints, hair strands, the killer's belt, a boy in girl's clothes, a cubicle more like a prison cell and execution chamber than as actual bedroom. Yes, the police would certainly have proof enough to put two and two together.

She sat on the bed and faced the dead boy. On his back, the puffy face had slackened somewhat and the pursed lips appeared less cinched and pointed. Just another boy, easily picked up in the Prater – small, attractive, his clothes ill-fitting, his longish hair unkempt, his face soft and pretty. Frau Friska first thought he might be a tomboy, a little street dyke, but it was only the request for money and the look in his eyes – even the voice was girlish – that convinced her the child was a boy. A few words more and he agreed to follow her out of the park, across the canal bridge, and to the hotel. He had been with her ever since, and had remained almost as small and petite as when he first arrived. Have three years already passed?

Frau Friska sighed. She clenched Kaufmann's belt then slung it in corner, brushing a strand of wig-hair off the child's forehead. She should have recognized the signs, put a stop to it right then, refused him further contact with the child, because it had happened to her in almost the same way in Berlin, an attraction turning to infatuation, to obsession, to possessiveness, to murderous rage.

“If I can't have you, no one else will!” the idiot had shouted, lunging at her with a knife.

Though she averted the blow, somehow twisting his arm and pulling his body onto the blade, she was always puzzled by how, even at the deadly moment, the entire incident seemed so theatrical and almost rehearsed, as if her role as a female allowed her lover to act as a man. What does the role-playing man do? What else? But attempt to kill the role-playing woman.

Is that what happened here? Something out of an American film? If only Suze had been a little stronger, a little less trusting, a bit more suspicious, and not so eager to please. Kaufmann? What about him? He had been a client for years. Odd, yes, but a murderer?

Friska sat up and shook her head. Enough of this, she thought, and wiped a corner of her eye. Suza has to be changed. Can't be left in these clothes. Don't want the stench of Kaufmann anywhere next her.

She got off the bed, picked up the belt, and wound it round her hand.

He'll pay, she said to the dead boy. He'll pay, she repeated, then nodding, turned to leave the cubicle and get fresh clothes for Suze.

9. Petya on Mariahilferstrasse

PETYA STRODE UP the Mariahilferstrasse. The long street – it had been the ceremonial route taken each spring by the last ruling emperor, Franz Josef, from the Imperial Palace in the Old City to his summer home, the Schonnbrunn, on the eastern outskirts of the city – rose up from the Ringstrasse and pulled on a gentle incline past stores, adjacent arcades, and galleries. It was always teeming with shoppers, strollers, idlers.

Unlike the exclusive but stunted streets Graben or Kartnerstrasse, the Mariahilfer provided a good summer's day event for a middle-class Viennese family to stroll down one side, gazing at ready-made suits and dresses, household innovations, books and art reproductions, children's furnishings and toys, then return up the other side, staring, comparing, and dreaming of when they'd be able to do more than just look and admire.

The majority of stores, closed Friday at sundown for the Hebrew Sabbath and remaining so throughout Saturday, were this Sabbath morning wide open to a marauding Mariahilfer crowd. Jewish owners were roused into the street to watch their store windows smashed, their goods looted, their sidewalks and store walls painted over in swastikas and the eternally accusing word “Jude.” Their faces were pummeled and kicked by the crowd at what had already been taken, and berated the Jews for hiding the best in some massive Jew-vault in the basement below.

Almost every store on the Mariahilfer had been broken into and looted, its Jewish owners bloodied and broken-nosed on the pavement outside or huddled amidst the rubble at the rear. Even a few Christian-owned stores were attacked for their seemingly contemptuous display of an object or for an item coveted by someone in the crowd.

Petya looked enviously at the signs above the barren, looted stores: Ready-made Clothes (he could've used a few shirts and underwear); Sportsman's Goods (a pocket knife would be handy); Viennese Tortes (his stomach grumbled); Ladies Fashions (his penis jerked).

Petya speeded up. If he could catch the mob before it descended on the next Jew-exploiter, he'd be able to grab something; but whether he missed his opportunity by a few moments or a few hours, he soon began to feel oppressed by the rabidity of the destruction around him.

Petya was not a violent boy, and violence was not an attraction, even if his life on the streets did not allow him much leeway in avoiding that violence. He would not shirk from a fight, though he never actually won one. A few times he had joined in for a blow or kick when someone was already down.

Still, no matter what violence he may have witnessed and experienced in his fourteen years, the extent and aftermath of damage had never been like this. His world of violence revolved among the boys and girls who lived beneath the niches and crooks of the Danube Canal bridges and parapets and sold themselves for scant groschen to the adults who prowled the canal walks at night.

It was a world of abused and abuser. Often, in some over-repressed outrage, disgust, and hatred, did the children, acting as one, descend on a prowling adult and beat him to unconsciousness or even death. Depending on who the victim was or was not, for the next few days the Viennese authorities and newspapers would go on a binge of speechifying and editorializing and rounding up any unwary youngster who looked homeless or depraved or happened to be in the vicinity of the canal, making the area safe once more for decent Viennese to look folk to peacefully stroll during their evenings without fear of being molested or slain.

What's this city coming to if people can't walk where they please? Railed the editorials, showing groups of young boys and girls brandishing knives and bats and gesturing for the cameraman to come down the canal steps. Naturally no questions were raised as to why a Viennese family man with a wife and children of his own should be wandering the canal embankment at night, and of course, there was no mention of the paper paying the canal boys a few groschen apiece to look tough for the photographer, and no mention of paying the canal girls a few schillings for private modeling sessions.

It was during one of these official outrages just a month before (a frightened boy pulled out a knife, a frightened man panicked, the boy tried to run, the man slipped and struck his head on a boulder), that Petya got swept up in a police raid on the canal. Being unable to prove his identity or school registration, he was shipped off to the reformatory in Ems, where he was grouped with the same boys he had known on the canal.

When Petya stole, he did so to survive, to eat, to cover his body. When some adult was set upon by the canal boys and his pockets rifled, that, too, was a means of survival.

But here on the Mariahilfer the lootings and beatings had no sense or reason. It was violence for the sake of violence, and theft for the satisfaction of stealing. The groups of boys he came upon were not the desperate canal children straining to get through another day and night, but well-fed Viennese school boys caught up on a holiday lark. In a sudden permissiveness they let loose their rage and frustration not only on the Jew-scapegoats of their parents, but on any hapless pedestrian or shopkeeper, Jew or otherwise, who did not get out of the way or turn over his goods fast enough.

Petya finally caught up to the marauding mob, but by then he was disgusted with all the ugliness of the sad spectacle. The few times when he forced himself into a crowd, thinking another Jew was down on his knees and scrubbing the sidewalk, he found the crowd cheering and egging on both boys and adults who set upon one of their own and were demanding some costly item – a watch, a bracelet – which the unlucky thief had snatched for his own and was now being made to turn over to the others.

As he strode up the Mariahilfer, Petya came across many sobbing and bloody boys, their shirts and shorts torn, their pockets turned out, their hands caressing bruised, swollen faces. This was the Vienna he despised: the slobbering Vienna, the outwardly gemutlich self-satisfaction of a city priding itself on Culture and Art while acting as brutish and boorish as any provincial peasant in the throes of the season's first wine. All the Mozart-culture, all the Art-culture, all the supposed elegance and class of Vienna Gloriosa had little to do with the city's residents or their futures. To the man in the street Art was meaningless only if it had financial merit and earning power for him. One hundred thousand schillings for a painting? Ach, I should be an artist and sit around doing nothing! Spiritual and aesthetic beauty of Art? Of Music? Of Literature? Of Vienna? Empty you pockets, Jew!

It had taken Petya more than an hour to walk up the long Mariahilfer to the Westbahnhof train station. Helmut had given him trolley money along with his instructions and baggage claim stub, but Petya knew he might not see any other money for a long time and decided to walk. Who knew how long they'd let him stay at the hotel?

Oddly, for the Jew-baiting and Jew-beating he had witnessed on the street, the Westbanhof seemed as civilized and courteous as the city had been just a day before. It was as if the the train station represented a once-placid old world, while the stupidity, violence, and depravity struggled for existence and supremacy in the new Vienna and Austria outside.

Petya looked at the nervous but orderly crowds and was puzzled the the disparity with what he had just witnessed on the Mariahilfer. An obvious family of Jews – the grandfather bearded and kaftaned, the grandmother bewigged and regal – sat by their suitcases a few feet away from a group of Austrian policemen who stood idly talking of some boat race that two of them had participated in while at school. On a station platform a rail official, also bedecked in Nazi Brownshirt and swastika insignia, was not only politely explaining but also commiserating and apologizing that no further trains bound for Switzerland or the East would be leaving until further notice. Where are the groups of rude and crude schoolboy? Petya wondered as he strode through the familiar station.

As in all large cities and towns of Austria and Europe, the train stations – with their transient commuters and short-staying/quick-departing tourists and travelers – were always sure and easy places to make a few groschen in the scattered bathrooms and darkened niches about the station. Watch any depot lavatory in Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Berlin or Munich, and the unequal numbers of men using a restroom compared to that of women would certainly indicate that European men have a greater need of relieving themselves than European women. Viennese men's rooms were no different; yet if the causal observer ventured into one, he would find that some men's needs of release – doorkeepers and elder matrons notwithstanding – were a bit more urgent than simple elimination of waste. Petya had known this all his life, and he headed for the men's room on the main concourse level.

A crowd had gathered before the bathroom entrance as loud shouts echoed from inside. As he had done on the Mariahilfer, Petya pushed himself through for a better look, though someone tried to block his way and said, “This is not for young people.”

Petya squirmed about and made it to the front of the crowd. He instantly recognized the man being led out of the men's room: he was from the hotel, and had been standing around near the reception desk the previous night waiting to go off to a Nazi rally when Petya finally mustered the nerve to enter the hotel lobby.

Petya looked around at the laughing crowd as the man was escorted out, handcuffed, dressed only in his Brownshirt and barely buttoned drawers, his pants slung over his shoulders; two policemen walked at his side and ignored his shouts of being a Nazi official and that they'd be sorry. The crowd fell silent as another young man, red-faced and sobbing, was also led out of the lavatory by a single policeman and a bemused Austrian Brownshirt who had suddenly been pressed into service by the police patrol.

“Nazis!” the old man next to Petya spat out, then nervously looked down at Petya's own Brownshirt garments. “Homos!” the man blurted as if correcting himself, but he quickly edged away from the boy.

Petya saw another man eyeing him and gesturing slyly toward the raided bathroom. He glanced at the man's crotch and saw the moving bump, then nodded in agreement, but when the man bustled into the restroom, Petya turned and nonchalantly headed to the baggage room at the far end of the station.

10. Herr Kaufmann

HERR KAUFMANN SAT in the breakfast room at a table away from the windows, stoop-shouldered, slouched in his seat, his usually clean and pressed clothes mussed and torn at one shoulder, his gray uncombed hair peaked over his ears, and his stubbled face gaunt and emaciated. A large wireless set in a corner of the room softly played traditional Austrian march music.

Frau Friska looked at Kaufmann and shuddered. The man had become a pitiful caricature of what the music professed. Gone was the Old World aura of aloof charm, elegance, prideful bearing, assurance of position – of self, of destiny. In its place huddled a cowardly sex-demented egoist, still expecting and awaiting service and obeisance as his due, as though Colonel Radetsky's March had become a funeral gala played by madmen.

Frau Friska turned away and went to the reception desk.

“I can put him in the cellar,” said Helmut, nodding toward the breakfast room.

Frau Friska waved her hand. “He's not going anywhere.” She shook her head and glanced at the registry book.

“Only two left,” said Helmut.

“How was it?”

Helmut shrugged. “Everyone said they would complain to the Austrian Tourist Bureau.”

Friska snorted.

“And one called me a filthy Nazi.”

Helmut spoke slowly and enunciated each word clearly and carefully, breaking up his replies into phrases and short sentences, speaking the way he heard things – with his one good ear, in brief elliptical lines, moving his head about as though straining to hear not only what was being told but also what he was trying to relate. Still, in a Brownshirt uniform, he would certainly fit the perfect Nazi type: tall, solidly built, stubble-shaved head, and blue eyes. Everything the German Nazis professed to be but couldn't quite achieve with their beer bellies, knockwurst faces, and potato haircuts.

“Why is Kaufmann such a mess?” asked Friska, looking back at the breakfast room.

“His apartment was looted last night. I don't know how he got beat up. Probably some young ruffians caught him the morning.”

Friska nodded and looked up at whirl and hum of a descending lift-cage carrying an old couple down to the lobby, their angry faces clearly evident behind the elaborate metal grille-work which encased the open-box lift from floor to ceiling.

“The Orehsteins,” Helmut said quietly.

Friska stepped around the reception desk and hurried to the lift, opening the door and pushing aside the protective grille-gate. Helmut was directly behind her and entered the elevator cage, snatching up the Orehstein's small suitcase – though Herr Orehstein refused to turn over as old violin case clutched under his arm. The deferential treatment was unexpected and somewhat surprised the old couple but also emboldened them to express their outrage at the unjust eviction.

“We will certainly inform the Austrian Tourist Board about our unjust treatment,” huffed Frau Orehstein, waving her finger in the air.

“It couldn't be helped,” replied Frau Friska as she steered them to her desk.

“Isn't our money as good as anyone else's?” huffed Frau Orehstein. “I've never been treated so despicably in my life,” she concluded, and turned away from Friska and Helmut, suddenly startled by the shabby figure of Kaufmann staring out from the breakfast room doorway.

Friska also looked at Kaufmann but moved behind the reception desk and glared at the Orehsteins. “Don't you know what's happening in Vienna?” she shook her head. “The Nazis are everywhere. The German army will be here any moment. Don't you think you should try and get back home?”

She glanced at the registry book. “To Linz?” she asked, and suddenly realized that the city had been Hitler's boyhood home and was probably even more dangerous than Vienna.

The old couple glanced at each other. They were both tired, and obviously had slept little in the loud night.

“But I'm a veteran of the Great War,” sighed Herr Orehstein, holding his violin case to his chest. “I was at Ypres not more then ten kilometers from the division in which Herr Hitler served. We both have the Iron Cross for bravery, and mine is First-Class while Herr Hitler's is Second.”

He glanced nervously about him; Frau Friska and Helmut said nothing.

“I'm a veteran,” the old man repeated quietly. “A war hero.” But his shoulders slumped, his face sagged, his brow furrowed as though straining for comprehension and understanding. He stooped down to pick up his suitcase.

Friska hurried from behind the desk. “Come,” she said, grabbing the case and gesturing to the breakfast room. “There's still some coffee and rolls left?” she glanced at Helmut.

He nodded.

“Yes,” she said. “Coffee and rolls. Eat before you go.”

Kaufmann hurriedly stepped aside for Friska and the Orehsteins to pass. Friska instantly noticed his belt-less waist.

                                                    11. Homo!                                                    

       

         

KURT'S NOSE WAS broken. As were his teeth, the fingers on his left hand, as possibly his right knee cap. He lay in the corner of a basement, his face and woolen drawer's bloodied, watched from across the room by a young soldier puffing on a cigarette and stroking his flaccid penis. Kurt coughed and spat out blood. They must have injured something inside him, too. He winced and shut his eyes.

“Hey, homo!” the soldier shouted. “No sleeping allowed! Only sucking.”

Kurt focused on the soldier, who had been stroking himself for at least half an hour, yelling at Kurt to crawl over to him, drawing the tight uncut skin over the dry crown of his cock, yet unable to achieve erection and remaining as limp as when he first drew it out of his pants.

“C'mon, homo!” said the soldier, shaking the penis at Kurt. “C'mon, homo. Food!”

Kurt groaned and tried to move his right leg. The red puffiness at the knee seemed to be getting bigger, swelling his blood-splattered thigh and his leg down to the shin. He compared it to his other knee, which was half as large. He'd never get his pants on now.

He groaned and touched his head. The dried blood on his forehead crackled and peeled onto his fingers. He carefully ran his palm over his dirty hair, feeling for any bruises and sores on his head. An image of a boot-heel thudded his eyes and he remembered; yet it had been an odd puzzling movement on his part; why had he lifted his face? He knew the boot was falling and instinctively turned to protect his face, when suddenly he defiantly turned back and let the boot smash down on his nose, his mouth, his eyes. Even the soldiers glanced curiously at each other as his eyes clouded in blood and he passed out.

Kurt lowered his head and tried to shift his back against the wall. How his fingers and knee were broken, he didn't know; either the beating had gone on after he passed out, or else he was dragged across some flour, knocking into hall corners, sharp-edged furniture, hard stair-steps.

He groaned again and looked at the soldier. The boy was young, blond, blue-eyed – the cliched pride of German-Austrian youth – exactly what Kurt portended as the future of Aryan supremacy. Yet the boy's eyes were dully glazed, shining not with a vision of a bright future, but with the soulless emptiness of a dismal present.

Kurt glanced at the soldier's penis – still limp after his exertions – and wondered how many times the boy had masturbated. At his age, twenty-years ago, Kurt was at five, six, seven times a day, and still struggling late at night for a final watery trickle of semen that would lull him to sleep, only to awaken with a morning erection and start masturbating once more.

Kurt still masturbated, though not as often as he presumed the young soldier did, and found that his masturbation was more powerful and satisfying than mutual arousal and ejaculation he could've shared with another. But then Kurt did not care for prolonged intimacy with others.

Even at the hotel, where he had his pick of boys and always paid for them (no gratuities for him!), whenever he used the cubicles he never attempted to lure a boy or settle him in his own small flat not far from the hotel. The hourly rate suited his needs more than enough, and he was usually done and satisfied in less than a quarter of the allotted time.

Fantasy played an important role in Kurt's life, and the physicality of flesh only diminished the images he summoned to have the flesh participate in. The person he was with always played a role, but the daydream was always so much better. When he strolled the streets of Vienna, the Danube canal paths, the twisted Leopoldstadt lanes, he would ever be alert for a glimpse of a face, a neck, an arm; he shut his eyes to protect the image from drifting, straining to meld it into a memory to bring home and linger over as stroked himself to a shared participation in the image.

For it was the dream and image of some kind of ultimate sharing and belonging which sustained him and kept him searching for more images and dreams, and led him into the dream of the Nazi party. It, too, promised a vibrant and physical future, focusing on symbols, images, and visions, discarding reality for a communal act of arousal, erection, ejaculation. If history could be compared to an act of sex, then the history of Nazi Germany would surely resemble an act of angry selfish masturbation – hopeless, but satisfying at the moment.

The soldier ejaculated. A weak bubble peeked out of his dry penis tip, hesitant, wary, uncertain or unable to spring any higher, then fell over the crown and inched down the side of his cock into the crook between the thumb and index finger of his pulsing hand.

Kurt frowned. There had been nothing erotic or sensual about the soldier's masturbation – the entire process seemed more of a forced physiological chore, elicited out of boredom and depravity, than a true release of sexual longing and lust. There was nothing in this for Kurt to savor.

The soldier wiped his hand on his pants and stood up, leaving his limp penis and scrotum dangling out of his unbuttoned front flaps. Kurt wondered if he would immediately start masturbating again.

The soldier walked to the other end of the basement and stepped behind a wooden stairway. He stood with his back to Kurt and peed into a metal can, the stream of urine splashed loudly against the bottom and sides of the echoing canister. Kurt glanced down at his own crotch. A bubble of blood was pulsing out of a dried patch on his drawers and streaming into a small puddle between his legs.

Kurt gasped and looked at the peeing soldier. He inserted his good hand into his drawers and held the waist flap out with his wrist. His entire groin between his legs was covered by a thin and bloody gauze bandage. Kurt grimaced and sobbed. Some recollected image flitted about his head, and he blinked his eyes.

“They wouldn't dare,” he groaned. “Not without a trial, at least.”

He carefully touched the flattened wet gauze around his scrotum. There was no sensation or feeling. He looked at his bloody fingertips and heard the soldier returning from the stairwell.

The soldier was carrying the small metal urine can, his penis and scrotum still dangling out of his pants flaps.

“What did they do to me?” Kurt sobbed, looking from the soldier to his bandaged groin.

The soldier shrugged. “What do you think they do to homos?” the soldier said, and held out the metal can to Kurt.

Kurt shook his head grabbed an end of his bandage, gently tugging the gauze glued to his matted pubic hairs.

“Homo!” the soldier snapped, holding the can.

Kurt heard the splashing urine echo hollowly in the metal canister. “I don't need to,” he sobbed, still struggling to free the gauze from his hairy belly.

“Need to?” the soldier glared at him. “Not need to; drink!” He stooped down and pushed the can into Kurt's face, grabbing his hair and snapping his head back, pushing the rim of the canister into Kurt's mouth. The biting urine stung Kurt's nostrils and the warm pee splashed into his mouth and out of the sides of his lips.

“Drink, homo!” the soldier shouted, ramming the can into Kurt's face.

Kurt fell back, gagged and buckled, running his tongue over chipped and broken teeth. He erupted into a stream of vomit, heaving and retching down the front of his shirt and bloody drawers.

“Fucking homo!” the soldier cursed, and flung the emptied can toward the stairwell. “What kind of fucking homo are you?” he shouted, sitting back down in the chair across from Kurt. “Fucking homo! Won't eat cock; won't drink pee. No good fucking homo!”

He jumped up and raised his fist. “No good fucking homo! They cut all homo dicks off!”

Kurt gagged and collapsed. He lay still in a pool of blood, vomit and urine. The soldier looked at him, mumbled something, then sat back down. He glanced at a metal wrist watch, tapped it a few times and held to his ear, then sighed and shut his eyes, clasping and tugging his limp wet penis.

“Up, homo!” he said, but kept his eyes shut, as if straining for some remembered or imagined memory or vision.

12. Kaufmann

KAUFMANN SLID HIS finger on a butter-smear, wiping up the crumbs and flecks of crust on his plate, and stuck his finger in his mouth. He had quickly eaten the two rolls with butter but drank only one cup of coffee instead of his usual morning three or four. He sat staring greedily at the slow-nibbling soft-sipping Orehsteins just a few tables away.

Helmut had brought in a basket of rolls and a pot of coffee, setting them down between the Orehsteins. Spotting Kaufmann, he picked up two rolls, a pat of butter, poured a cup of coffee into a spare cup at their table, and brought the meal over to Kaufmann's table.

Kaufmann gave no acknowledgment, but the rolls were delicious. He hadn't eaten since the previous evening, and even then it was only s meager lukewarm sausage and a thin slice of black bread bought at one of the street kiosks on the Ring.

Kaufmann craned his neck: at least three rolls remained in the Orehstein's basket. Why couldn't he just get up, stroll over, smile, and pluck another roll and coffee from them? They didn't look undernourished at all, much less like they were enjoying the food they were eating.

Kaufmann picked up his plate and cup and pushed back his chair. At just that moment Frau Friska entered the breakfast room. Kaufmann dropped back down and stared at the drying stains in the empty cup before him.

Friska strode to the Orehsteins, saying a few words to them. Kaufmann saw them instantly cheer-up and profusely thank her (they'll probably eat everything now). Then she came to Kaufmann and sat down across from him. Kaufmann moved his eyes from her face to her ears, to her mouth, to her neck, to her breasts, and back up again. He knew he had best not show any sign of disapproval or disgust, and looped his finger into the ear of the empty coffee cup.

Kaufmann could never reconcile himself to accepting Frau Friska as she was and always presented herself to be. Dressing up in private was one thing, he thought, and going out in public was quite another, but actually living as a woman and running a business as one was not only scandalous, but perverse. It was bringing the sexual longing and pleasure of the night into the stolid open day.

Kaufmann could never accept that. Men should act as men, and women should act as women was his philosophy; even if they be attracted only to their own kind, there were still norms of behavior to be observed. What kind of civilization would have evolved if no one knew who was who or who you were going to bed with? Men in skirts? Women in trousers? A disaster!

“Herr Kaufmann,” he heard, and looked up, blinking, at Frau Friska.

I'd better control myself, he thought. Pay attention to where I am and what is happening around me. More and more he seemed to be lapsing into private soliloquies which were always judgmental and condemning of everything about him. Everything is a mess. Look at him...you can't disguise...

“Herr Kaufmann!” Friska repeated, staring at him curiously.

Kaufmann blinked again and looked at her. “Gnadige Frau,” he forced himself to say, but nodded his head flippantly.

“Herr Kaufmann,” said Friska. “Why are you here?”

Kaufmann blinked and looked about the small breakfast room. A handful of tables were angled primly about the room, the chair's positions freeing diners from being stared at by a diner at an opposite table. It was middle-class and proper. Kaufmann nodded.

Friska shook her head, a look of disgust on her face. “No,” she said. “Why have you returned to the hotel?”

“But my rooms,” mumbled Kaufmann, rubbing his chin and squeezing the coffee mug ear tighter and tighter. “My rooms were attacked. They were waiting for me. I fled. My enemies...”

“What time did you leave last night?” Friska interrupted him.

Kaufmann stared at her. She always hated me, he thought. Only taking my money. Tolerating me. Patronizing me. And now accusing me.

“What time did you leave Suze?”

Kaufmann tilted his coffee cup and looked at the brown lip stains on the side of the white porcelain cup. Suze? he thought. Who is Suze? Not Suze. Hans. Hans doesn't love me...I love Hans...Frau Friska hates me...I hate her...He glared and clenched his teeth.

“They have been reporting that German troops are crossing the frontier,” he gushed, nodding at the wireless set and smirking at the Orehsteins.

The old couple were steadily nibbling their breakfast; Kaufmann noted that only one roll remained in the basket. He suddenly leaned over the table to Friska and cupped his hand to his mouth.

“If the Anschluss takes place,” he whispered, “German laws will go into effect. And that means German Anti-Homosexual laws will be enforced.” He nodded his head and leaned back in his chair. “You've no doubt heard of Paragraph 175, eh?” he asked. “Of course you have,” he answered himself. “You are from Berlin, aren't you?”

Friska looked at him and smiled. “Is that why your apartment was taken over?” she said.

Kaufmann opened his mouth. “No,” he shook his head. “I have enemies. They're after me. My creditors. But I've always been discrete.”

Friska guffawed. “Discrete?” she laughed. “Any child on the canal could point you out. Any delivery or postal clerk could testify about your tips and offers. Discrete? You came back here, didn't you?”

Kaufmann grimaced and lowered his head, A tear ran down his stubbled cheek and hovered at the edge of his chin.

Friska sighed angrily. “Kaufmann!” she snapped suddenly.

Kaufmann looked up, his face grimaced, her eyes wet. “He said I was old. Old and ugly.”

“Who said?”

“He laughed at me.”

“Who laughed?”

Kaufmann blinked and sighed. “Hans,” he whimpered.

Suze, thought Friska; if Kaufmann doesn't like them in skirts why does he keep coming back?

“But you are old,” she shrugged.

Kaufmann's face contorted ever more. “But I loved him,” he sobbed, shaking his head.

As if that's supposed to explain anything, thought Friska. Love, always love. She sighed and glanced at the Orehsteins – they quickly turned to their meal – then pushed her chair back and stood up.

Kaufmann looked at her pleadingly. “Hans never belonged here,” he said.

“Suze!” Friska snapped. “Her name is Suze! Always was, and always will be. Do you understand”

They looked at each other. Friska walked out of the room.

                                                      13. Breasts

HELMUT PAUSED BEFORE the shut cubicle but decided against going in. The dead boy had been gawked at enough by Friska, Wanda, and him and should be left in peace, he thought. Still, why hadn't Friska let him take care of Kaufmann? He could've dragged Kaufmann down in the cellars beneath the hotel and no one ever would have found him again. There many so many nooks and crannies, bricked-over dead ends, and unexplored passages that probably entire squads of invading Turks from centuries ago had been entombed in their fortification beneath the Viennese streets and were yet to be discovered. Helmut was certain the place was haunted, and except for getting supplies from the brightly lit shelving near the cellar stairs or climbing the narrow steps which continued up to a secret doorway in Friska's apartment, he hardly ever ventured deeper into the cellar than necessary.

Besides Friska's three-room flat facing the front, there had previously been six extra rooms at the rear, which Friska partitioned and sectioned with only enough space for a cramped cot-like bed, a chair, and a wash-stand in each of the twelve divided cubicles. But that was more than enough space and furnishings for their purpose.

Helmut stepped to an adjacent cubicle and opened the door. He looked into the room: clean, the bed made, a fresh towel laid out, fresh basin scrubbed and disinfected – a hint of ammonia lingered in the air. He shut the door and stepped to the next cubicle. There really was no need for this inspection tour: only Kaufmann had shown up last night, and anyway, the cubicles were probably the best kept-up section in the entire hotel. The other upstairs guests often complained of a lack of soap, the wrong-sized towels on a rack, a shoddily-made-up bed, but each morning Helmut went through each cubicle, double-checking that everything was clean and in order and ready for the new night. The complaints upstairs could be corrected as they came in.

He stepped down the hall and saw the maid's cleaning cart in an open doorway, a stack of white towels on top of the cart, a bucket of water and a bottle of cleaning solution at the bottom. The maid was probably giving a cursory dusting to the otherwise clean cubicles. Helmut's penis stiffened. He grunted and opened another cubicle door and peered in. With the maid so close, he no longer saw the cleanliness of the room but merely scanned the walls and floor and bed and washstand, suddenly preoccupied, as if remembering something, and unconcerned with soap or towels or dust in corners.

He thought he heard movement in the hall and craned his good ear, then gripped his cock and spun around to peer out the door. The cleaning cart was drawing into a far end cubicle. Helmut fumbled and unbuttoned his pants flaps, pulling out his stiff penis. He stroked himself a few times and heard a splash of water and almost ejaculated, but pulled his hand away, the frustrated penis jerking and lunging before him.

He groaned and moved slowly down the hall, each sound and splash and wipe from the cubicle bounding around the tip of his cock and teasing him on. He paused at the edge of the open doorway, his back pressed to the wall.

Breasts, he imagined. Breasts swaying to and fro as they hovered over a bed. Breasts stretching into flatness as they strained for something above them. Breasts rounded as they settled and bulged in a bra and blouse.

Helmut blinked and shook his head and bounded into the open doorway.

“Oh, it's you!” jumped Wanda, clutching a folded towel over chest. “You scared me!”

Helmut blushed and grimaced and tilted his head to one side; his exposed penis shrunk slightly. Wanda smirked and lowered her towel. Except for a tight decollete showing off the fullness of her breasts, Wanda was naked from the waist down, her red pubic hair and freckled thighs as crisp and fiery as her short hairdo and plump pink face. She glanced at Helmut's shrinking penis and cackled again, then raised a leg and rested her foot on the bed, her dry vaginal lips crackling open. Helmut gagged.

“Bitch!” he coughed, and gaped at her chest.

Wanda quickly raised the towel back to her bosom but opened her leg still more.

“Dyke!” Helmut spat out and bolted from the room. Wanda's laughter trailing after him as he raced past the clean, neat, and shut cubicle doors.

14. The Orehsteins

THE OLD COUPLE Orehstein sat in the living room of Frau Friska's second floor apartment and tried to draw Herr Kaufmann into a conversation as he nervously paced about the room or lingered by the curtained widows. It was a simple and polite form of sociability, of getting to know each other – where they were from, where they had been, what their livelihood was, who they may have known in common – but Herr Kaufmann either had too much on his mind or wasn't interested in that sort of quick familiarity, and he merely grunted or mumbled to himself as he skirted about the room.

He had already dismissed the Orehsteins as typical country-bumpkins – fiddle-case and all – on a lark in the capital city of music lovers. Herr Orehstein professed to be a noted violinist with the Linz Mozarteum. Herr Kauufmann, not being from Linz, had never heard of Orehstein and didn't think much of his possible musical talents or prowess.

The Orehsteins didn't think much of Kaufmann's rudeness either; it was easy to overlook the man's nervousness and anxiety – that was certainly understandable – but his insolent manner typified one who blamed not only the world for his misfortune but also each individual person he came across as being responsible for that ill-luck since they were doing nothing to relieve it.

It was the characteristic trait of the sponger: ready to take when it was offered, and equally ready to sulk and demean when it was withheld. Whatever Old World elegance and charm he may have once had – the look of a pampered Viennese dandy was clearly obvious – his self-assurance and confidence were fading with each turn he took about the room or glance to gave out the window.

Still, whatever state of bad luck Kaufmann considered himself to be in, Herr Orehstein viewed their chance meeting as a propitious fluke of good fortune, for he was certain it was Kaufmann's association, whatever that might be, with the mistress of the hotel and his being in the breakfast room that morning that persuaded Frau Friska to allow them an extra day's stay at the hotel. The radio reports of German armies crossing the frontiers may have swayed her from daring even to venture out herself, Orehstein had caught only snatches of her conversing with Kaufmann – Anschluss, Anti-Homosexual laws, canal boys and postal clerks, the interchangeable names of Hans and Suze – but that was enough to convince him something was going on which was not fully aboveboard. The gnadige Frau probably had as much to fear from the invading Nazis as did any Jew on the street.

“I wouldn't keep drawing so much attention,” said Frau Orehstein to Kaufmann, who kept flapping the front window curtains each time he stopped in his pacing.

Kaufmann angrily slung the curtains shut and glared at the Orehsteins. They sat on the couch together, their violin case suitcases primly set at one end of the coffee table before them as though ready for departure at any moment. Where do they think they're going? he wondered, and snorted.

“There's more of them out there, y'know?” he said, nodding his head up and down. “Brownshirts. They're everywhere. And they'll be here too.”

He grimaced, stroking back his gray hair with both hands, and fell into a chair. The Orehsteins looked nervously at each other. The rumble of a truck echoed through the apartment, making Kaufmann jump back up and go to the window, but he carefully edged his face to the lace curtains and squinted out one eye through an open slit. He studied the street, then glanced up at the squat Mozarthaus. He turned sharply.

“You say you're a musician,” he said to Orehstein. “Is there an expensive piano in there?”

But his question seemed more of an accusation and he didn't care if he got an answer. He turned back to the curtains, squinting once more through the parted slit. Again he slung the curtains shut and sat down. “They'll come here too, y'know?” he said quietly, looking at the carpeted floor. “They were in my apartment,” he nodded. “And they'll be here, too.”

“Please, Herr Kaufmann,” said Herr Orehstein. “Don't stress yourself so much. We've done nothing wrong. It's just the usual excitement of the people. It's holiday mood. Once the authorities get control, things will quite down once more. Then we'll be able to leave.”

Kaufmann looked at him in disbelief, then snickered in disgust and jumped back to the window. Frau Orehstein gestured for her husband to keep quiet.

Kaufmann turned suddenly. “Don't you have newspapers in Linz?” he glared at Herr Orehstein. “Or radios? Don't you know what they've done all over Germany? The authorities are in control! That's the problem...”

He shook his head and rubbed his eyes. “Leave?” he said quietly. “Sure, we'll leave. But where do you think we'll go?” He sat back down, glanced at the window, but remained slumped in his seat and waved his hand a few times limply before his face as if concluding all his alternatives and options had disappeared and everything was hopeless.

The Orehsteins were relieved, but wary of his sudden indifference. Kaufman's nervousness was contagious, and though they were not as easily impressionable to unconfirmed reports of what had been going on in the city throughout the night and morning, there was no doubt the man had been attacked and he had fled from his home. It would easy to let the ready lure of his fear and apprehension draw them in. As much as they would have liked to dismiss Kaufmann as a bothersome worrywart, they knew he was probably right.

Of course there were papers in Linz. And radios. Herr Orehstein was well tuned to political events, having been fascinated by the wireless craze that had swept the Americas, the Continent, and the rest of the world in the early part of the century. He still spent his free time tinkering with wires and tubes capable of picking up foreign shortwave broadcasts beamed to Austria from abroad, but the British reports were paying scant attention to the accomplishments of Chancellor Hitler and what his regime was doing to Germany and her people.

It was obvious to anyone who paid attention. Kaufmann was right. They'd soon be here. Orehstein knew it too. Knew it after their first day in Vienna; the mood of the city was unlike anything he had experienced, having lived there before the Great War and on his countless return trips afterwards. Gone were the respectful politeness and distance of the people on the streets, the waiters in cafes, the guides in museums. Instead, the couple was treated with the brash un-civility of someone long repressed and now taking their comeuppance.

The Orehsteins were kept waiting at cafe entrances, ignored at shop counters, even refused entrance to antique shops along the Ringstrasse. The only place they found themselves still treated with a semblance of respect and civility was on a visit to rehearsals of the Opera orchestral, where a few of Orehstein's old friends, colleagues, and students could always gain him entrance – though the Opera door-clerks eyed them with disdain – and at Frau Friska's Hotel Redl, where, until this morning, they felt as secure of the usually safe and staid Central European capital.

Yet it would be wrong to assume the city of Vienna was a political naif out of the mainstream and swell of Europe of the 1930s. Cities do change overnight, but not from any influence from abroad or outside but because of what is brewing in the underbelly of the city – in the longing of the unemployed, the hunger of the homeless, the embitterment of the disenfranchised. Vienna's almost-overnight heady fervor and passion for the Nazis and their ideology, after months of similar passion and longing for the ideals of democracy, were as readily explosive and violent as any demonstration or uprising on the streets of Paris, Munich, or Tsarist Petersburg.

The people were set on getting their just revenge: Leftists of every humanistic persuasion. Rightists of their own extreme agenda, monarchists, republicans, ethnic nationalists, Reds, Fascists, and Nazis were constantly at each in the streets, the wine bars, the workers' tenements, and even at the job-site pitting laborer against laborer. Whatever passion had been stifled since the Great War was now reaching fruition and probably had passed its fait accompli; there was no turning back. Kaufmann knew it; Orehstein suspected it; and Vienna was proof of it.

Orehstein sighed, glanced at his wife, then looked at Kaufmann. Though the man had remained seated, he was still a mass of nervous and jittery movement. His crossed legs were both shaking, the bottom one bouncing up and down, the top one swinging back and forth. His hands kept stroking his hair or lighting a cigarette he half-smoked and stubbed out. He would rub his face and light another one as his eyes flitted about the room from Orehstein to the window to the apartment hall leading to the front door.

Herr Orehstein noted from the first it was a particularly feminine apartment: plush, ostentatious, and showy in the sense of recently acquired fortune (wanting to brag a bit), rather than the restrained decorum of inherited wealth and taste. But Viennese apartments were always cluttered with contradictory and misplaced junk. The middle-class passion for accumulation of objects approached the pawnshop peril of being buried by those objects.

In any Viennese apartment it was the same: expensive chairs next to cheap thrift-shop end tables; art supply paper prints of Klimpt nudes or Kokoschka's garish expressionism next to a gold-framed merit award from some factory or clerk's office; Persian rugs in one room, colored remnants in another; a delicate China set on one shelf of a glass-cased cabinet, unmatched cups and saucers on a lower shelf. Except for the unusual amount of wall mirrors about the place – one wall practically covered in them – Frau Friska's was not much different from the usual Biedermeier-like pettiness and self-indulgence of a typical Austrian household. Every non-essential object brought into the home had its special reserved spot for being displayed and shown-off; the Orehstein's home in Linz was no different.

Kaufmann stubbed out a half-smoked cigarette, helping himself freely to another from a wood-carved cigarette box on the end table next to him, re-crossing his legs again and again. Herr Orehstein hoped Frau Friska would return soon: if Kaufmann panicked and did something stupid – shouting out a window, breaking a mirror, or even threatening the Orehsteins – Orehstein knew he wouldn't be able to stop or handle Kaufmann.

Still, he doubted Kaufmann was a physically demonstrative man, in friendship or in anger. His attitude was even more estranged than the typical aloof Viennese stance of maintaining a polite distance; his was a definite demarcation from others. Orehstein had noticed this about him in his slight backward movement away from the breakfast table when Frau Friska seated herself before him, the way he grimaced when introduced to the Orehsteins then walked at the rear of the group as they bustled upstairs, and how he circled the room, taking the farthest seat from them when Frau Friska left.

Even if the situation had been different and safer, Orehstein doubted Kaufmann was the sort to take an interest outside of selfish pursuits and obsessions. Orehstein found this typical of Kaufmann's sort even without his strange innuendo about German Anti-Homosexual laws going into effect. Orehstein suspected Kaufmann of just such leanings when he saw Kaufmann seated at the table earlier. The man was an obvious pansy – a bit untidy, yes, but even in his dishevelment the darkened eyebrows, the caked cheek makeup, the delicate tinge of reddened lips were still evident about his face.

It was Sodom and Gomorrah all over again, and just as they were destroyed in Biblical times, so too would they suffer retribution for their sins again. There had been little public outcry when just a few years earlier Hitler purged his officer corps of the homosexual Colonel Rohm and others of his ilk, and there was even less of a murmur when all obvious homosexuals, transvestites, and prostitutes of foreign nationality were ordered out of Berlin, Munich, and Germany. Even then, most people felt that deportation was a bit lenient since German deviants were imprisoned while the foreign perverts were simply let go at the frontier.

Still, Orehstein avoided penning his name to a Nazi-sponsored petition going around the Linz Conservatory demanding the Austrian government immediately imprison the sudden influx of homosexual riffraff being herded out of trains at Passau, Brunnau, and other border towns between Germany and Austria, or at least strip them of their identity and deport them still farther East.

Herr Kaufmann stubbed out another cigarette and suddenly stood up. He smiled meekly at the Orehsteins, somewhat embarrassed then brushed his hand through his hair. He seemed to be more relaxed, though a slight tic played about the corners of his mouth, a reminder of the nervousness which had briefly subsided but which also seemed ready to return as easily as it had passed.

Kaufmann had come to a decision. “I'm sorry for having upset you,” he said quietly, still brushing his hair but avoiding looking directly at either of the Orehsteins.

“Think nothing of it, Herr Kaufmann,” Frau Orehstein said immediately, moving up on the couch, but checking herself before she stood up. “We're all upset and on edge.”

“Yes,” Herr Orehstein added, grasping his wife's hand. “These are strange times. But this too, will pass.”

“Hmm,” Kaufmann nodded and mumbled. “Strange times,” he said and turned away.

His thoughts were already elsewhere, as though the brief words he had uttered were an irritating distraction, easily brushed aside, meaningless and forgotten, and once more he was set back on course. He brushed his hair again and looked down at his unkempt clothes.

A slight chuckle broke his lips and he looked at the Orehsteins. “You will excuse me,” he said cheerfully. “I must clean myself.”

He chuckled again and shook his head, but as he turned Herr Orehstein saw his face droop back into that languid resignation of loss and defeat. His lips were twitching and he was standing stoop-shouldered, continually brushing back his hair as he shuffled down a hallway leading out of the living room; he seemed to know the apartment very well.

The Orehsteins looked at each other.

“He'll be alright,” said Herr Orehstein, pulling out a vest pocket watch and checking the time. He patted his wife's hand then pushed himself up as he heard the apartment door open. He rose to greet Frau Friska. Behind her followed an elegant middle-aged man and a frumpy-looking fat girl, both clutching small suitcases, but who seemed shy and reticent once they spotted the Orehsteins.

“Herr Kaufmann stepped out for a moment,” said Herr Orehstein to Friska's look about the apartment and toward the hallway. She paused, studied Orehstein, then turned to the new arrivals.

“Herr von Belse and his daughter will be joining you,” she said, introducing the shy man and the girl, then excusing herself and left the apartment.

Orehstein was immediately struck by the Aryan name and Teutonic title but nodded his head in greeting as the younger man stiffened in respect and also nodded. Orehstein was certain the carpet muted his clicking heels; the fat girl simply giggled and turned red.

15. A Perfect Cover

FRAU FRISKA CAME down the main stairs and glanced out the curtained window of the hotel. A few Brownshirt-clad men and boys staggered through the quiet street, either hung-over or exhausted from their night's revelries, yet unwilling to go home and sleep it off lest they miss another celebration, another attack, another expression of their German-ness. She wished she had heeded Kurt's advice that they install a rolling metal gate over the hotel entrance as the shopkeeper next to the Mozarthaus had done.

Where is Kurt anyway? She glanced at a wall clock and walked across the empty hotel lobby to the small office behind the reception desk. The role of hotel proprietress suited her; its professional and somewhat official standing gave her a sense of legitimacy and respect she would never have achieved as simply a madam of boys.

It was a perfect cover, though a well-worn theme: a house of prostitution for the cognoscenti and a working hotel for the unwary; the trick was to keep the two identities separate and distinct. Houses for boys might be common knowledge in Berlin or London, but in Vienna, whatever depravity lurked beneath its cultured facade kept its passions and lusts hidden under a veneer of proper appearance, proper decorum, and proper respectability. As long as one acted, dressed and presented oneself in a manner correspondent to one's social class, who would look or care what lay covered by the cravats and dining coats, the pressed pants and gowns and gleaming shoes, the coiffed hair and polished fingernails?

It was all appearance and not much more. Frau Friska Bielinska passed easily in her proper feminine attire and respectful Viennese demeanor. Vienna and Austria had been her salvation, just as Berlin and Germany once were; but after Hitler's coming to power and the orders to clean the depraved Kurfurstendamm – the night raids, the shredded clothing, the shorn-off hair, the forced sodomy and fellatio, the beatings and pummelings, the long train ride to the frontier with stops along the way for local Party members to express their outrage on the vile pansies – any city or country would have appeared a haven from the sickness Germany had infected on itself and was now spreading to Vienna, and to Frau Friska's Hotel Redl.

She sighed and shook her head and bent over the ledger Helmut had worked on. With Kurt's disappearance Helmut had taken it on himself to reconcile the accounts, and though it was a simple task of adding a few columns of figures, deducting the loss of unpaid-for rooms (the evicted guests were told there'd be no charge) from the expected earnings (one guest demanded he pay his bill in full and be done with the hotel for good), Helmut had made a total shambles of the simple arithmetic, coming up with a figure of profits earned in one night that was more than the hotel made in a month of full occupancy. He had not comprehended the impossibility of the gain or discrepancy of his count.

He probably thinks we're rich, Friska smiled to herself and quickly recalculated the sum in her head. Kurt could make the corrections later.

She pushed aside the balance book, retrieving a small key-ring from her skirt pocket, opened a locked bottom desk drawer, and pulled out a ledger book, much larger and thicker than the one for the hotel accounts, but already more than a quarter filled with columns of numbers, dates, names and cubicle assignments.

She opened the book and glanced at last night's appointments. Except for Kaufmann, not one of the other clients had shown and only a few of the scheduled boys appeared.

Like Kaufmann, the clients were probably nervous wrecks – in hiding, scurrying out of Vienna, or else, like Kurt, marauding through the streets in a frenzy of beer-guzzling, store-looting and Jew-beating.

Friska dismissed the boys who had did show up, though a couple of the clearly effeminate ones decided against venturing out again at night, and she took the new boy from the streets, Petya (who had appeared unannounced), to her quarters. Most of Frau Friska's boys were recruited from the canal walkways, the Prater paths, and the alleys of the Leopoldstadt, though she did take on boys who lived at home with working or middle-class families but who showed a natural proclivity and willingness to dress up.

Unlike the other houses in Vienna which catered to men seeking boys, hers was distinct in that the majority of her clients did not want boy as boys but boys as girls. This Friska gave them. Because Friska knew, after all her years of dressing up and living as a woman, that there was a clear distinction between homosexuality and transvestitism, between male longing for another male, and male desire for a male as female.

It was all a matter of control: males in female clothing destroyed the mask of male pretense, the societal image of masculinity as assuredness, as dominance, as control, and allowed the privilege of sensitivity, of gentleness, of playfulness, of femininity.

The donning of makeup, of skirts, of bras, of stockings, stripped aside male delusions of male power and control. If clothes make the man, clothes certainly undo the woman in the male. But would the man dressed as a woman be allowed to accomplish half as much as he had dressed as a man?

Frau Friska, if there had been a surgical procedure to dispose of her penis and open a vagina, to implant breasts, to mold and soften the sculpture of her masculine self, she would not have hesitated to undergo the altering and correcting operations. It was a mistake of nature to have been born a male; all her proclivities were to be female, all her aversions were the daily intrusions of her masculinity. It was no help to her gender identification and acceptance that as a child she was introduced to the little-girl-fashion of long bowed hair, satin dresses, lace stockings and frills so common among upper-class Central European women in attiring and adorning their young sons.

Whether her mother had wanted a daughter instead, Friska never learned, since her father one day caught the mother in bed with a lover, a woman, and killed them both, then took his own life, leaving Friska to be placed in an orphanage for girls. There it was soon discovered the girl, Franziska, was a boy, Franz. He was immediately stripped of his pretty laces, shorn of his beautiful tresses, and transferred to a boy's orphanage where he was forced into a mode of behavior he knew nothing about.

Though her first sexual experience was rape, forced sodomy, and fellatio, she quickly learned and mastered the female art of teasing, withholding, offering, and drawing back. But it seldom worked; a blow to the head dropped her to her knees where she forgot her feminine cock-teasing intent and complied with the brutal cock-pumping in and out of her mouth.

As a refugee she plodded her way across the hodgepodge borsht-and-kasha dullness of Central Europe until she reached Berlin. Within a month she was again dressed as a girl, with identity paper proving the same, installed in a house on the exclusive Kurfurstendamm. She had attained not only her maturity, but her sexual destiny. There was no going back, because there was nothing and nowhere to go back to.

Frau Friska flipped a page of her ledger to the evening's appointments. Much like her other boy's, Suze's name appeared twice: once for a seven o'clock appointment with the banker Kessel and then at ten for the counselor Waldmann. Friska doubted either of those respectable gentleman would show; still telephone calls had to be made canceling tonight's and all future dates. Business was business and Friska was one to hold to proprieties. She studied a few of the Jewish-sounding names (who knew there were so many Jews if the Nazis hadn't pointed it out?). Would the Nazis have already occupied the telephone company?

She reached for a city directory and heard the heavy thud of boots pounding down the stairs and across the lobby. Helmut was stepping behind the reception desk, his face red, his brow pursed, his breathing staccatoed.

Wanda and her tits, Friska frowned, and moved her chair from her desk, certain the oil-dry wheel squeaks would draw him in. Friska glanced at the bulge at the side of his crotch and pulled back her shoulders, her fabricated bosom rising slightly and puffing out at the front of her blouse.

Helmut approached and stared at her breasts. Friska remained still; Helmut reached out and gently cupped a breast, his fingers slowly pulsing around the soft pliant cloth. Friska sighed, and Helmut leaned and pressed his crotch against her other breast. She regretted they weren't as big or real as Wanda's. Friska shut her eyes; Helmut ejaculated.

16. Trolley Ride

THE SUITCASE WAS larger than Petya expected. With black leather and cloth sides, buckled securely beneath the handle, strapped crosswise and lengthwise by heave twine, it probably weighed as much as he did. It was obvious the case contained more than just clothing and travel accessories.

“One schilling,” said the baggage clerk, grunting and dropping the case on the thigh-high counter between them. “You're a day late,” he glared. “And what the hell you got in there anyway?”

Petya frowned, then snapped to attention and pulled back his shoulders, his crisp new brown shirt stretching across his chest.

“Oberstrumfuhrer said there'd be no problems,” he protested, hoping the clerk would be intimidated by the hint of his clothes and the official-sounding title he had simply guessed at.

It worked. The clerk blinked and jerked upright, taking a slight step back, and pushed the case at Petya. “Yes, yes,” he said. “No problem. No charge. Take it.” He nervously looked past Petya, then ducked around to a desk at the side of the baggage counter and started examining a stack of forms and stubs on the desk.

Petya shrugged, clasped the handle and tugged the case off the counter; it dropped to the floor. He grunted, glanced at the clerk, took a deep breath, jerked the case up the side of his leg and wobbled out of the baggage room, certain the clerk was glaring behind him.

He struggled up the ramp from the baggage room, heaving, gasping, even holding his breath until he could go no further and dropped the case, collapsing atop it. I'll never make it, he thought, but he stood up, took a deep breath, and began dragging the case across the station waiting room, sometimes pushing it before him, often tugging it behind him, and once, lifting the case on the stomach and surging into the separating crowd before him.

More and more uniforms were to be seen moving about the station, and more and more people were being accosted to show their identity papers or were being bustled out by unformed men. Petya knew he had to get out. If the crowds of schoolboys on the Mariahilfer had bypassed the station, they'd eventually make their way around and show up sooner or later.

He rushed into the street. A group of children with swastika arm-bands and Nazi stickpins in their lapels had assembled on the square outside the station, but they were orderly and quiet, each child at attention. A few adults in Brownshirt uniforms moved between them and handed out a small paper swastika flags.

They were obviously there to greet someone. The Fuhrer? Petya had never been enthralled by officialdom; the fact that mobs of people would gather to wave and gawk at some speeding automobile carrying a barely recognizable general, president, or cardinal held no enthusiasm for him. To be impressed by authority one had to succumb to authority; in Petya's life there had been no father-figures but cops, judges, and jailers. They, too, wore uniforms, interfered in his life at will, and were nothing to look up to. If paraded, they would be readily spit upon by a hundred boys and girls.

For Petya, an official visit or parade or celebration meant one thing: an opportunity – the opportunity to steal, grab a woman's ass, be pawed by men, and maybe sleep in a real bed for a night. Just as people ordered their lives from celebration to celebration – graduation, marriage, anniversary, birthing, funeral – so, too, Petya looked forward to and planned for official galas and fetes. Faces were recognized, not seen since the last event, news and gossip exchanged, cliques of attackers and lookouts formed.

Petya glanced about the in square: a few raggedy-looking boys and young men leaned unobtrusively against trees and poles or smoked lazily on benches while surveying the scene at alert. Petya smiled in recognition, then frowned and bustled across the square; with his new clothes and bulky suitcase he was as likely a target as any hick from the farm. The Fuhrer? Fuck the Fuhrer, it's me who's attracting all the attention!

He moved across the square, pausing briefly to watch a crew of workmen hoisting a massive German flag up the front of the Westbahnhof. The street lamps and buildings opposite the station were already festooned with similar but smaller banners, though an odd mosaic of Joseph leading a donkey bearing the pregnant Mary peeped over a Nazi standard suspended down the front of a small hotel. He struggled with the suitcase onto the Mariahilfer.

The streets and sidewalks were strewn with litter and broken glass. Storefront doors dangled precariously from a single jamb or had caved into the store; signboards were torn from building fronts or whitewashed with either a Star of David or the single word Jude. Small closet-sized food kiosks were overturned, gutted, their oil ovens carried off, burlap potato sacks ripped open, winter chestnuts mashed underfoot. Clothing store dummies lay stripped of clothes, their limbs and heads broken, their stomachs crushed, their buttocks and crotches gutted and gorged.

An old man sat huddled next to one store mannequin, his eyes puffy and unseeing, his face swollen and bruised, his bloody hands rhythmically clasping and unclasping the jagged shards of glass around him. Petya squinted up the Mariahilfer; a mob was forming over an incline of the street, obviously moving back down from the meager pickings at the end of the long shopping street. Petya looked back at the old man and kicked aside some of the larger shards of glass within the man's reach.

Petya glanced back up the descending mob, though still quite a distance away, and clutched the suitcase handle, snapping it up the side of his leg and wobbling down the street. He collapsed after a block and fell atop the suitcase; at this rate it would be nightfall before he made it back to the hotel.

The baggage clerk was right, what the hell was in there? he wondered, staring at the locked suitcase clasp and playing with the heavy twine.

“Just pick it up and bring it back,” Helmut had said; maybe easy for him, sighed Petya, looking back up the street. He saw a metallic object by his suitcase. Thinking it was a groschen, he brightened, but it was just a metal object discarded by the mob, a thimble that had been crushed and flattened. Petya stuck it in his pocket.

The mob had spun down the Mariahilfer and was surging into the side entrances of the Westbahnhof. Another group moved around, saluting the assembled children on the square and cheering the workmen hoisting the Nazi standard, entering the station through the main entrance at the front.

The crowded Viennese trolleys, as though oblivious to the carnage around them, kept to their prompt efficient schedules. A trolley car rounded the corner just at that moment and Petya snatched up the case and lurched into the debris-strewn street, making it to the center island trolley stop just as the tram pulled alongside and opened its doors.

Whether it be to the credit or shame of the city of Vienna, at its most chaotic moment in modern history the city continued in all its mechanized urban aspects: the traffic lights, the waterworks, the transportation system, the gas and electric utilities. All continued to run and function regardless of the turmoil in the streets, regardless that the citizens of that entity, a city, ceded all responsibility and control of themselves not only as members of an organized political society, but as human being in a just and rational world. The city worked; its citizens came apart.

The trolley doors shut behind Petya. It was a slow ride down the ravaged Mariahilfer, and though the trolley was filled with riders (Petya sitting on his suitcase in the center aisle) they either looked straight ahead or read newspapers or sat napping and totally ignored their fellow riders and the devastation outside. (If they show no surprise, thought Petya, could the entire city be so ravaged?) They went on their way as they did every weekend in their once-a-week suits and dresses – to Sabbath services, to breakfast meetings with friends, to trysts with lovers, to visit old parents – as if it were a typical Viennese March morning, a pleasant morning crisp and bright, with the depressive winter storms gratefully away.

Still, it was easy to sense the wary disquiet of the riders. They may have looked away from the looted stores, the huddled figures crouching in the debris, the devastation, the shame, but they were certainly aware of the unusually slow pace the trolley was pushing down the street compared to the normal briskness of Viennese trolleys, the conductor even getting out a few times to move aside some wood or trash strewn on the trolley tracks.

Once as the trolley rose over the final incline of the Mariahilfer, the bustling Ringstrasse visible below, a metal pipe crashed through the side window of the trolley, striking a well-dressed elderly woman, her head and clothes quickly bloodying, and a group of men chased after the trolley screaming for the conductor to stop and turn over any rich Jews aboard. The passengers stared at each other, some shouting for the conductor to hurry up, others glaring accusingly as though a Jew in their presence was a betrayal of well-ordered lives and who does the Jew think he is anyway, sticking his nose in everywhere, putting us in peril; haven't they caused us enough trouble as it is? Let's be rid of them once and for all!

Fortunately, the men outside were either too old, too fat, or too drunk to give any real chase and flung a few more pipes and bricks after the trolley. As it finally reached the broad looping Ringstrasse and disgorged its frightened passengers, the old woman remained bleeding and unassisted in her seat. Petya tugged his case down the trolley steps. The conductor also fled.

Once more Petya struggled with his case, lugging it for a block, resting, lifting it again, wobbling down the street, dropping and sitting atop the case, picking it up and moving again until he finally turned the corner onto the cramped Mozartstrasse in the Inner City. A group of soldiers before the hotel turned to look at Petya. He dropped the case.

17. Slashed Wrist

KAUFMANN WATCHED THE blood bubble from his wrist to his palm and drip in between his limp fingers to the carpet beneath the bathroom sink. He was surprised by the almost casual instinctiveness of the gesture: it happened as routinely as on other mornings when he washed his face or brushed his teeth, combed his hair or shaved his cheeks, picked on a pimple and just as routinely went on with his day.

Kaufmann sighed. The gash was deep, an almost straight line across the wrist, the blood quickly gelling and thickening around the edges of the opened flesh. It hurt. He had struck very hard, his entire arm going limp as if dropping from his body as the razor slashed into his flash, the inner forearm instantly reddening and browning from the shock and force of the blow. A routine? Yes, and maybe this was what had been missing from the routine of his life. It would have been so easy to have done this long ago.

He looked in the mirror; even his face seemed to blacken and go limp. He raised his arm and let his hand drop inwards, the open gash closing and sealing somewhat, the blood continuing to seep out of the wound, run down his forearm, and fall in a steady drip from his elbow and rolled-op shirt sleeve.

He held the arm over the sink and moved his hand back slightly, once more separating the two bloody and gelling pieces of open flesh, the cut veins and tendons neatly severed by the sharp razor.

Was this suicide? A gesture of final atonement and responsibility for all that proceeded that moment? A sort of confession, punishment, and pardon all in one? Yet shouldn't death, or the nearness of death, free you of having to atone for anything?

Kaufmann stared at the wound. The dead are not blameless, and he was nowhere near death. If only it had been instantaneous,he thought, studying the wound. It had taken him awhile to recognize and identify the two white severed cord ends sticking out of the gash, but before he did so he assumed the cut tendons to be something his enemies had laced in his body to hold him together until he came undone.

Here is the source of my difficulties:someone has done this to me, someone is controlling me!

But Kaufmann always found it easy to blame others for his problems – his lack of money, his growing old, his resigned solitude.

This is it! They put these cords inside of me and are maneuvering me about like a wooden puppet. Do this; do that; fall down.

Kaufmann shook his head. It was ridiculous, and he knew it. No one put him together; no one was responsible for his actions and mistakes. And the strange severed cords? Nothing more than his own muscle, tendons, and gristle, much like in the un-chewable badly-cut slabs of beef or pork he had eaten in cheap restaurants and spat out many times.

Kaufmann gagged and began to weep. Not once since he slashed his wrist had he thought of the dead boy Hans...Suze...

18. Hotelier

FOR AS LONG as Helmut knew there had always been a hotelier or an innkeeper in his family. The name Redl had been synonymous with hotels in Vienna since the early 17^th century, though the first Redl taking up the profession was executed soon afterwards as a traitor for acquiescing to the invading Turks in taking over his home, then demanding payment for their stay, not to mention for the pleasures of his sultry daughter. The invaders found his rash audacity and boldness so extraordinary that the incident appeared in dispatches to the Sultan in Byzantium who answered: Pay him.

They did, and continued their lodgings, and the amenities of his daughter. After the Turks were routed from Vienna and Austria, the authorities did not find Redl's business dealings with the enemy so benevolent and were not so generous as the heathen Sultan, having Redl quartered for treason and complicity with the enemy. By then other guests were lodging in his rooms, and his daughter, taking over from her father, had her eye on the larger building next door and even thought of adding a few stories to the existing one she now owed.

Helmut had taken over the hotel from his father, who continually changed the name, from Majestic to Royal to Excelsior, until Helmut settled on his own, the Redl Haus. No matter that Redl had taken on sinister spy associations unknown to Helmut. Though Helmut regretted slightly never having married while the old man was alive so as to assure him there be an heir to take over at his own passing, when Friska arrived Helmut didn't real care all the much as to the fate of the establishment once he was gone. Frau Friska was as good a legatee as any heir or scion he could produce. If one day they lowered the Hotel Redl sign for good – to the consternation of local historians and newspaper editorials/obituaries (though they did nothing to fill his rooms) – he'd just as well agree to call the place Hotel Friska as any other.

In the few years Helmut ran the establishment after his father's passing he had his fill of hotel-keeping; the hotel steadily deteriorated not only in its physical structure and appearance, but also in the clientele it attracted. Just as Helmut could never decided which to to do first, fix the plaster or change the path-worn carpets, so too was he blind to his lodgers, who often arrived without luggage and departed with a pillow case stuffed with towels, sheets, and soaps.

The Austrian Tourist Commission even downgraded his rating from Excellent to Good, eventually omitting the hotel from the recommendations it sent across the Continent to tourist bureaus and travel-guide publishers as an enticement to travelers.

Still, it took him another two years, after numerous official reprimands, before he got around to removing the Commission's Recommended sticker from the hotel door window, and that only because the window was broken in a scuffle between guests and not from any bureaucratic threats. He later re-glued the old sticker to the new window. Though it soon curled up around the edges and looked as if it would fly off with each door opening/closing, it stayed stuck for at least another year before Frau Friska finally flicked it off with her nail and replaced it with the new Recommended sticker the hotel received the same day.

For Frau Friska Belinska it was as if the hotel had been awaiting her arrival. She appeared one morning just as Helmut was struggling with the padlocked front door after a sleepless night in the city jail trying to understand why he was being held accountable for what went on in his hotel rooms once the guests closed the doors behind them. Prostitution? Sadism? Kidnapping? All I do is rent the rooms. Helmut kept protesting, but the police shoved him with the other rounded-up suspects and charged him with a house of prostitution and associating with known criminals.

It was probably the name Redl which got him out so quickly (official Vienna still impressed with something long since faded), though he was warned to return the following afternoon for arraignment before a magistrate, or else, noted hotelier or not, he would forfeit all rights and remain in jail until a trial date which could be months away. Frau Friska stepped in behind him just as he broke through the police padlocks and opened the door.

It was odd for anyone to request a room so early in the morning. Even in his father's day the earliest guests did not arrive till at least the afternoon, and then they'd usually just deposit their bags at the desk to be sent to their rooms as they went about their business in the city.

He had seen the strange figure lurking about the quiet street as soon as he turned the corner, clutching a small paper parcel to her chest. Though she wore men's trousers and a large ill-fitting suit jacket, the flower-printed blouse beneath the jacket was certainly feminine and out of place with the otherwise masculine appearance. Her uneven, oddly-cut hair was dirty and matted in spots where it was cut short – the scalp bruised and scabbed where it was cut short – and her unwashed face had that yellowed puffy look of slowly healing sores from blows and punches.

Helmut's first impression was that she was one of those pansies from the canal who had tricked someone by an assumed femininity and got beaten for the almost successful charade. His first instinct was to turn her out – he was in trouble as it was without adding charges of homosexuality to his list of crimes – still, there was that tinge of sorrow and pity he always felt in seeing someone destitute, which had become a common sight everywhere in the city: a bum scavenging for food in the trash; an old couple seeking refuge in a cold hallway; hungry children overturning a fruit stand so as to steal an apple or two and run away.

It wasn't the usual idlers and shirkers, but entire working and middle-class families who now huddled on the streets or in soup-kitchens or lice-infested sleeping shelters, those who had lost everything in the Great Depression and couldn't seem to scrape enough to get started again, much less hold their families together.

This was the real outrage: that a society continued to function and prosper while a greater portion of its people could not. This was also the temptation and justification: that those who weren't prospering by rights and duty should overthrow that society by any means possible.

Helmut let the sorry-looking stranger into the hotel and locked the door behind them.

For the rest of the week Frau Friska became the sole guest of the Hotel Redl, occupying a double room on the second floor overlooking the Mozarthaus across the street. The charges against Helmut dropped for insufficient evidence by the presiding magistrate, who then summoned Helmut to the bench to enquire if the hotel had a back entrance unseen from the street, then slowly grew angry at Helmut's seeming incomprehension of what he was hinting at. The judge angrily dismissed him from court with the stern warning that his family's reputation in Vienna would be of little help if he were brought before the judge again. Helmut shrugged and hurried back to his ailing guest.

He temporarily dismissed the staff, giving the three maids and the porter a week's wages he could ill-afford to expend, and hung a large hand-printed Closed sign on the front door. Friends of the other suspects swept in the raid came pounding on the door and demanded Helmut turn over the belongings that had been left behind, dismissing his explanations that the police had confiscated everything from the rooms as evidence.

We'll get you! Threatened the male friends, while the females simply called him Idiot! and ran off down the street.

Though Helmut was unnerved by the raid, the arrest, the court hearing, and the repetitive threats of door-pounders, he was even more unnerved and puzzled by his new guest. As soon as she requested a room, she also told him she had no money to pay for one, but that there was bank account in Berlin she had been trying to transfer to Vienna and that the funds should be available and day now. This was a new one on Helmut; prospective guests usually did not admit they were without funds until they over-extended their stay as much as possible, and even then denied there were any real financial worries.

“We'll settle in a day or two after my funds come in,” they'd say, and never be seen again.

But he believed his new guest; whether she was telling the truth or not didn't seem to matter all that much to Helmut. Not that he was the proverbial soft touch, but rather the rare type of man who easily took compassion on another's bad luck and usually ended up paying the price for it. Still, his misreading of one person's character had never hardened him so much as to dismiss another without even a glance.

“Don't worry,” he had told the flustered Friska, her face sweating in the morning chill, her arms leaning heavily on the front reception desk. “You know how slow and greedy bureaucracies can be. They readily take your deposits but demand a reference from Adam for a simple withdrawal.”

Friska chuckled. Helmut escorted her up to the rooms and shut down the hotel.

It was not until a few days later that Helmut was surprised by the actual beauty of his guest and what a few garments and creams and rouges could do to enhance and alter a seeming plain and battered face and body. He had spent hours skirting about the obvious femininity of his visitor, knowing fell well that the sick person in bed was a male, but treating the patient with all the reserve and sensitivity due an injured and ailing person, be he man or woman.

Helmut walked quietly, left the downstairs wireless set off, muted the hall and bedroom lights, and one morning brought a sprig of flowers in a vase to brighten the cheerless curtain-drawn recovery room. It was not only the first time in his life Helmut had personally cared for anyone (his father dying unexpectedly in his sleep), but also the first time he had ever gazed upon anyone with that strange fear, nervousness, and uncertainty which is a prelude to love. He'd often sit for hours near the bed, staring at the sleeping figure, his mind vacant of any dreams, hopes, scenarios, but sitting as if his mere presence in the room were beneficial to a speedy recovery.

He knew nothing of what had occurred to the man, why he was beaten, why his hair was crudely shorn, whether he was Austrian or German, or even if it'd be safe to be in the same room with him once he slept off his illness and was well enough to move again. What if he was harboring a killer? A child-molester? A pervert wanted by the authorities?

He shrugged; it was like taking in a stray cat off the streets; either your house could be contaminated with fleas and lice, or your cellars rid of mice and rats; the risk was always there, but the chance was always worth it.

“Guten Morgen!” he said cheerily one day, and almost dropped the breakfast tray he carried, surprised by a slender woman standing near the open window, the bed empty and unmade. For a moment he thought his ailing guest had a visitor, though perplexed as to how the woman gained entrance to the hotel. He was about to withdraw when the woman turned and smiled and greeted him, “Good morning!”

He blushed and recognized the voice and stuttered a reply and felt very uncomfortable as he set down the tray on an end table.

“Your breakfast,” he muttered and tried to hurry out of the room.

“Join me for a cup,” said Friska, moving across the room, her skirt swaying around her shins, her torso eased slightly forward from her high-heeded shoes, her breasts arched and pointed up in a white satin blouse.

“I...I...already had,” Helmut stuttered.

“Just one?” asked Friska. Her face gleamed in morning sunshine, the makeup and creams disguising the bruises beneath, the mascara evening out the blackened eyes, the lipstick creating an appealing pout on her still-swollen lips.

“No cup,” said Helmut, gesturing to the tray.

Friska frowned.

“But I already had,” he shrugged and shook his head. “This is your breakfast.”

Friska brightened. She took the tray to a small round table near the window and sat down, simultaneously adding equal parts of milk and coffee. She blew a waft of breath over the steaming cup and took a sip.

“Ahh...even better than Berlin's,” she sighed, taking another sip.

Helmut nodded and was about to tell her the story of how the Turks brought coffee to Vienna but remembered he had already told her the story the previous day, when he forgot having related the same story a day earlier.

“Hmm,” he blushed, and remained hovering by the door.

It had been more than a week since Friska arrived. For the first few days she mostly slept and recuperated in bed, barely touching the breakfast, lunch and dinner Helmut brought up. She had finally eaten a full meal yesterday and asked to borrow some toiletries. If he could advance the money, would he purchase some garments and things she needed? Helmut noticed that she had already washed the print blouse she had arrived in, but the trousers and jacket remained on the closet doorknob he had hung them on after picking them off the floor the day before; they'd probably have to be discarded.

He readily loaned her the use of his razor and soaps and went for the other brushes, tooth-powders, combs and goods she requested. Fortunately she had made up a list of required articles, and though Helmut felt awkward entering the Ladies Millinery store on the Mariahilferstrasse, he simply handed over the list, nervously explaining it was for an ailing female relative, then stood red-faced as the list was compiled, wrapped, paid for, and handed over.

He should have expected the change into woman's clothing; what he didn't expect was the actual woman in them. She had trimmed her hair, evening the odd-cut clumps into a short boyish bob up-swept off her forehead but short at the sides (though definitely longer than any male haircut), and she had rouged her cheeks and lips and eyes to an almost unrecognizable tincture of her previous self. Yet it wasn't the makeup or skirt which so unnerved Helmut, but the pointed bosom she thrust out and held high on her body. He gaped greedily.

Ever since Helmut became aware of the physical and sexual differences between himself and females, it was their bosoms he longed and lusted after. Yet in his entire forty-two years only twice had he actually ever touched a female breast: that of a prostitute who resisted his rough mauling of her large teats and kept pushing his hands off, and that of an overdeveloped young girl in a dirndl who wouldn't let him touch her anywhere else.

The prostitute he soon forgot, disgusted by the recollection of ejaculating in her mouth and having her spit out and retch all over his crotch and thighs, but the young girl in a dirndl became an almost nightly masturbatory fantasy. Though it had been over twenty years since he saw or touched her, her breasts in his dreams were as familiar and large as if he had personally been pawing them in the two decades since.

Friska's breasts were nowhere near the size of the prostitute's or the exaggerated girl of imagination; still, Helmut could not help but stare hungrily at the pointed shape and form of the fake bosom. He knew they weren't real; he had seen her bare flat chest the first day he brought breakfast and found her asleep uncovered in bed, but they were as near to real, or at least attainable, as any he had imagined or sometimes made up for himself.

For like most chronic masturbators, Helmut had eventually evolved himself into his own ideal fantasy. Though he started with the dream of breasts on a girl, he had progressed to the vision of what the girl would and would not let him do to those breasts, until he became the girl of the fantasy and controlled the availability and offer of his breast: the teasing, resisting, the baiting, and the crying out in final release.

It was only a matter of time before the stroking of his own flat chest, which did nothing to arouse or excite him, led to the logical notion of cramming his shirt with towels and cloths and stacking up pillows atop his torso as he laid grinding and moaning beneath his tumbling breast-mauling dream-lover.

Friska saw him staring and pushed out her bosom even more. She had long ago learned that it isn't a flesh and blood woman most men desire but the ideal of a woman, and the more exaggerated and unattainable the better.

Though her penis may have blocked the reality of someone else's fantasy, Friska always thought of herself as the complete embodiment of the ideal woman. It wasn't so much a question of physical gender, but how that gender was expressed. All the men she had ever been with knew she was a male beneath the facade of female makeup and clothes. She knew their longing for her went beyond the cliched explanation of men and women coupling to be reunited and heal their separation from Adam's rib. Their longing was the natural longing of men being a part of each other long before any separation took place.

Maybe that's why God scarred Adam for millenniums and why Man felt so alone in the Cosmos: he had taken too much pleasure in himself.

The bitterness between the sexes, their conflicts, their misunderstandings, their ability to hurt and hate each other other stemmed from that fact alone: woman was created to stop the hedonism and self-indulgence Adam had in himself. The animalistic coupling between men and women was not a longing for unity to breach the separation, but an attack of revenge to further punish and rebel against the imposed desire and need men and women were cursed to express for each other.

If men were attracted to Friska knowing full well that she was as them, it was a facade of going through the motions and conquering a female to find an image of themselves that only enhanced the pleasure and satisfaction the two took in each other, and brought them into a unity of togetherness a woman could long for but never experience with a man. It wasn't trickery, deception, or manipulation if a man was lured to a man dressed as a woman, but a stimulus that once stripped of its cultural sham of perfumes, brassieres, powders and silks would reveal that the man playing at being a woman and the man seducing the woman to uncover the man were only annealing a distant primordial race-memory of a species which had once had no need of others but itself. Attracted to the imposition of apartness, the transvestite can befuddle the wrenching hand of God and gel with Adam as no woman can. A sin? A taunting of nature? Or simply an affirmation that the first draft of Creation, Adam alone, was already perfect?

They stared at each other across the room. Friska slowly sipping her coffee, Helmut hungering after her breast. When she finished and set down her cup, they walked instinctively toward each other and fell onto the bed. Their mouths met and her skirted torso rose up against his stiff penis and she felt her own, pressing to uncurl and rise and free itself from the puckered hold of her panties and girdle. Their tongues probed each other, and Helmut gripped a breast and tugged it up her chest, molding it slightly below her shoulder.

He ejaculated in his pants, lay still for a moment, then rolled off and tried to rise, but Friska pulled him back down. His face and mouth greedily fell onto the awkwardly risen tit and he sucked quietly, peacefully, his fingers pulsing around the other fake breast, also rising out of its hold and moving to her shoulder. They lay clothed in bed the rest of the day.

Friska never got her savings from Berlin: the Nazi authorities had confiscated all possessions of deportees. She eventually concluded it better not to press her claims since the Austrian Nazi Party was becoming as voluble as the early German one. They would welcome the opportunity to do Berlin's bidding and shut up an enemy and pest of the Reich.

She took over the reins of the hotel and restored it to its former attractiveness and money-making status, eliminating its transient riff-raff who had become accustomed to free lodging. She gave out a room either when payment was made in advance or when there a was a certainty the guest was legitimate and would not abscond with the bill or a pillowcase of goods.

Within a year the Austrian Tourist Commission once more gave the Hotel Redl its Recommended citation. Within another year Friska had the back rooms on the second floor portioned into cubicles, not only providing a rewarding and secure haven for young boys to dress as girls, but also quadrupling the hotel's back corridor earnings in six months, making what the legitimate part on the upper floors would take two years to earn.

And for Helmut, Frau Friska always enlarged and puffed out her breasts.

19. Soldiers

THE SOLDIERS OUTSIDE the hotel noted the Brownshirted boy with a heavy suitcase coming up the street but dismissed him as a threat and continued talking amongst themselves, all the while scrutinizing the passersby and observing the building windows, the roof eaves, the various balconies and storefronts of the small cobble-stoned street. It was easy to be careless, they knew, to give in to a sense of security and safety, but it was highly suspicious that the country was yielding so easily after weeks of belligerence and insult. Reports of the conquest were noting it to more of a coming-home ceremony than a military invasion.

Still, the same people now cheering and welcoming the German armies were the same people who just a week ago were screaming and affirming their willingness to defend their country to the death before an invader set foot in Austrian soil. Strange, but almost overnight the selfless martyrs of Austria were offering up that beloved inviolable soil with their own hands and souls.

The soldiers once more noted the boy's approach up the street, until one of them took a broad step away from the hotel entryway and blocked his path.

Petya dropped the case. His first instinct was to run, leave the bag. He was already poised to leap backwards and flee when the soldier smiled and gestured at the case. “Going on a trip?” he asked, looking directly at Petya. “Or coming back from one?”

Petya glanced at the soldiers by the door and wiped his sweated brow on his sleeve. Though the soldier's voice was friendly-sounding, it remained blunt and intrusive, the German wording and intonation more guttural and nasal than the soft almost musical and lilting Austrian equivalent. He was probably an officer, though Petya knew little of discerning collar or lapel rankings; but whether he be a private or general, to Petya he meant only one thing: a threat to be gotten away from as quickly as possible.

“A delivery from the station,” Petya volunteered, glancing at the man's hands, his right-hand thumb stuck under a shoulder-strap holding a machine gun down his back, his other hand at his side. Could Petya sprint faster than the soldier could grab him?

“What station?” the soldier asked.

“Westbahnhof,” Petya replied, and added, “where the trains come from Germany.”

Petya knew the soldier had already scanned the address label on the suitcase, having squinted to read the smaller return label, and Petya stopped himself before he boasted the bag came from Berlin as Helmut said it would, since he was certain the return label read something different than the few big-city letters his barely literate abilities could read.

“What's in it?” the soldier asked.

Petya shrugged. “I don't know. A delivery for the hotel.”

The soldier glanced at his comrades outside the hotel doorway; Petya also looked. He saw the gnadige Frau talking to another soldier inside the lobby, her back to the front desk, though Helmut was at the front desk and staring past them directly at Petya.

It's the case, thought Petya. There's something in the case they shouldn't see.

“Probably just towels and bed-sheets,” said Petya hurriedly, reaching for the suitcase handle.

He was too late; the soldier also stooped down and grabbed the case, nudging aside Petya's hand and easily lifting the heavy case.

“Towels and bed-sheets?” he grunted, switching the case to his other free hand. “Feels like an entire laundry shop!”

Petya laughed and smirked at the soldier. He decided it was worth the chance. “With the laundry-maid thrown in,” he winked at the soldiers near the door. They erupted in laughter.

“Hey, Fritz!” one on the soldiers laughed. “Don't drop the case or she'll give you a good cleaning out!”

The soldier next to Petya bristled and cursed his comrades. “Get inside,” he pushed Petya's shoulder.

Petya smiled to himself; one thing about him, which he himself was not fully aware of, was his ability to size up a situation and act accordingly, falling into the precise modes of behavior and reaction expected of him and demanded by the circumstances. It wasn't so much an attempt to please the people he was with, but a need to make himself acceptable by them so as to draw as little attention as possible to himself.

His street and reform school upbringing made him want to fit in, not in the sense of group membership but with the flighty fealty of taking what he could and drifting to other groups that happened to pass by and beckon with something else. It was the instinct of survival. Just as he had readily gone off with men down canal paths, allowed himself to be fought over by reformatory boys, and donned female and Brownshirt clothes, so too had he been won over by the soldiers and would be equally ready to serve them as well...until someone else demanded something of him.

Petya giggled and winked once more at the soldiers. They laughed even louder.

“With the maid thrown in!” he heard one of them exclaim. The soldier behind him pushed him once more and Petya jumped into the hotel doorway.

Frau Friska glanced nervously from Helmut to Petya to the soldier carrying the case and back to the officer she was talking to. She was surprised when the Gestapo troops first arrived, the wireless reporting the German army as still being at least a day's march from the city limits. But the Gestapo? That should have been no surprise: they probably crossed over weeks ago. And if they did, they had probably learned all about the hotel, her clients, her guests, her boys, herself. She was not that circumspect or careful that someone somewhere in the police administration didn't know what the hotel was up to, and if the cops knew, then the Gestapo would also know.

Years ago she had pondered the idea of changing her name and nationality (paper were easy enough to get) but Vienna seemed a more civil and cultured city then the Berlin or Germany she had come through. She felt no danger from her identity or statelessness. Informed six years before that she was stripped of her German nationality (days before the beatings and rapes and deportations started), she merely snickered and didn't bother to inform the Nazi flunkey that she had never applied for German citizenship and couldn't care less what political entity claimed her as its own. Still, she was careful enough to dispel questions of her Slavic-sounding name, knowing that Poland or Russia were no havens, either.

“What have we here?” asked the officer next to Friska, turning to the soldier with the case.

“A delivery for the hotel.” Petya immediately snapped to attention and raised his right arm in the Hitler salute.

The officer smiled and raised a slightly open hand, returning the salute. “So this is our Viennese youth,” he nodded, putting his hand under Petya's chin and stroking his cheek.

Petya glanced at Frau Friska. Something signaled in her eyes, but he didn't know if she wanted him to spit into, bite, or kiss the officer's hand.

“Helmut!” Friska snapped at her hotel manager and gestured to the soldier still holding the case. “Many times our guests leave their bags at the station,” she said, and turned back to the officer. “And we send a messenger for them.”

She smiled at Petya and put her arm around his shoulder, trying to draw him away from the officer. “So many times our messengers, who know all the shortcuts, get back before the guests.”

She glanced at Helmut again. He had moved from behind the desk but stopped a few feet away from the soldier with the case. The soldier set the case down away from him, almost centered from where the two stood. Helmut made no move to pick it up,

“Our boys are the best in Austria!” Friska beamed, and nudged Petya toward the reception desk.

“The best in Germany!” the officer snapped as if correcting her, and stood at attention.

Petya blushed, but also snapped to attention and once more raised his arm in salute.

“Now, what's in the case?” the officer said, smiling at Friska.

20. Von Belse and Inga

THE YOUNG GIRL Inga squeezed her father's hand and gestured for his ear. She had been trying to tell him something in the lift, but hesitated each time she saw the gnadige Frau smiling at her.

“Papa,” she finally gushed. “Why is that man dressed like a lady?”

Von Belse stared after Frau Friska and squeezed his daughter's hand.

“Hush, Inga,” he said. “Be a good girl.”

Von Belse had at first declined the gnadige Frau's offer of putting them up in her apartment, arguing that if that were the case why couldn't stay in the room they already had, yet when he saw his daughter looking out the window at the truckload of troops that had just pulled outside the hotel, he hastily agreed to accept her offer.

Friska was puzzled. The man and girl were obviously Aryan, the girl as blond and blue-eyed as her father – yet Helmut had mentioned their names along with other Jew-guests as being particularly unnerved by the sudden eviction. Friska was now certain the man, von Belse, had something to hide.

Possibly a Communist, she thought. Or a trade unionist. But if he was, he looked the most well-dressed and pampered Red or unionist she had ever seen.

Von Belse was neither. Still, he had not expected to be sharing rooms with other guests, and when he heard Frau Orehstein mention still someone else in the apartment, he wondered how wise it was to remain with so many people.

Frau Friska was right: von Belse did have something to hide and fear; not just from Nazis, but from any legitimate police authority. Even Helmut suspected as much when von Belse first arrived a few days before and requested that anyone asking for him or his daughter be told they were out, even going so far as to immediately return their room key to the desk once he and his daughter had gone up in case anyone was clever enough to notice their key missing from its numbered cubbyhole behind the registry desk.

“My daughter hasn't been well,” von Belse explained nervously. Helmut nodded and looked away from the vacant-eyed fat girl , saying he understood perfectly and assigned them a room on the top floor overlooking the quiet street. Von Belse looked over the room and returned to the front desk, paying for two weeks in advance.

In the three days after they arrived, the father and daughter came out of their rooms only twice, appearing as the first guests for the seven o'clock opening of the complimentary breakfast service, then leaving the hotel in late afternoon for dinner, returning promptly afterwards. Von Belse was so grateful and impressed by the discrete distance and disinterest shown them by the hotel staff (their room tended to as they had their breakfast) that when he asked his daughter if she liked it here and she shrugged and nodded her head, he mentioned they might be staying for quite a while, or at least until their troubles passed.

Von Belse had grown tired of their shiftless flight, moving from hotel to hotel, city to city, but more than that, worried that he could no longer dismiss or ignore that his daughter's large growing belly was clearly identifiable for what it was, a sign of her pregnancy and not a result of avid overeating, which he claimed.

Von Belse let go of Inga's hand; the Orehstein's were looking at them.

“Come here, my dear,” said Frau Orehstein, holding out a hand to the girl and nudging her husband to make room on the sofa between them.

The girl gripped her father's hand again and hid shyly behind his back. Frau Orehstein frowned, thinking the girl was too big for that kind of behavior. She glanced at von Belse. He also looked as if he wanted to hide something.

“Come, sit down,” Frau Orehstein said to both of them, again nudging her husband to move over.

“No, no, please,” said von Belse as he faintly clicked his heels. Herr Orehstein pushed himself up off the couch and also said, “Please...” offering up his seat, then went and stood by the curtained window. He did not bother to look out.

“Come, Inga,” said her father, gently pulling th girl from behind him.

“Yes, come,” repeated Frau Orehstein, patting the empty sofa cushion beside her.

The girl looked at the woman and shook her head, but let go of her father's hand, as though understanding the disapproving frown on the woman's face. She moved her small soft suitcase in front of her knees and clutched the handle with both hands, her forearms outlining the large belly protruding between them.

Her father set his suitcase down at his side. “I'm sorry for this intrusion,” he said with a slight bow, glancing from Frau Orehstein to her husband (Orehstein was certain he heard the heels click this time). “But we had assumed we'd be given a private room.”

“No sir, we're in this together,” snapped Herr Orehstein, then checked himself. “I'm sorry,” he mumbled. “Just a bit tense, I suppose,” and he turned from von Belse.

Orehstein immediately disliked the seemingly bashful von Belse. He never trusted shy people; they were actually more disarming, clever, and deceitful in the end than they presented themselves at the start. Whereas Orehstein had restrained himself with Kaufmann's complicity of Jewishness, with von Belse he felt no compunction to empathize or disguise his disdain.

“We're all a little tense,” said Frau Orehstein, finally gripping the girl's hand as Inga lumbered onto the couch beside her. “It's a disgrace what's happening in Vienna,” she said to von Belse. “Don't you agree?”

Von Belse shrugged slightly and set down his daughter's small suitcase next to his own at the side of the couch.

“A disgrace,” repeated Frau Orehstein, shaking her head and studying the girl behind her. “My, that's the prettiest blond hair I've ever seen,” she gushed, fluffing the girl's shoulder-length curls.

Inga blushed and lowered her head, twisting her shoulder slightly away from Frau Orehstein.

Orehstein glared at von Belse. Blond hair, blue eyes, eh? he thought.

Ha! Exactly the type for the streets. So what is he doing here? What is he hiding from? And his little fat girl? Fat, indeed! Disgrace is right. It's a disgrace what the German people have evolved into; what they have done to their culture, their children, themselves.

Orehstein shook his head and continued glancing at von Belse. The man had settled down next to his daughter and held her right hand while Frau Orehstein clutched the girl's left; the girl's large stomach protruded grotesquely before her.

A damned maternity ward! scoffed Orehstein to himself. “How long before she comes to term?” he suddenly exploded.

“Fritz!” his wife exclaimed.

“Look at her!” he shouted, his fingers jabbing the air toward her stomach. “She should be playing with dolls instead of getting ready to bear one of her own!” He mumbled quietly to himself. “How old is she? Thirteen? Or fourteen? A disgrace!”

The girl seemed puzzled by the sudden eruption, looking from Frau Orehstein to her father, as if unsure who the old man was shouting at. She suddenly brightened and giggled at him. Orehstein shuddered, his face red, his nostrils flared.

“Stop it, Inga.” von Belse said, squeezing and shaking her hand.

The girl pulled her hand out of Frau Orehstein's grip and cuddled against her father, pulling his hand between her legs.

“I said stop it!” the father snapped, pushing her hand away and rising from the couch.

The girl gripped his thigh. “Papa,” she pleaded.

“A disgrace!” cried Frau Orehstein, turning her back of them.

“Just tell me one thing,” snapped Orehstein, still glaring at von Belse. “Are you the father of all this?”

Von Belse turned to Orehstein. Though his face was as flushed as when he first entered the apartment, it was now tightened with anger, though he seemed more in control and certain of himself then earlier. The man's shyness had been deceptive indeed.

“We are guests of this hotel,” von Belse said, his voice firm, assured, authoritative. “My daughter and I will not be insulted or demeaned by other guests.” His eyes had not blinked once. “Is that understood?”

Orehstein was taken aback by the controlled force of the man's speech; it was obvious he was cultured and well-bred, disciplined and used to having his own way. His wife Hilda was right: it was none of their business.

Von Belse took a step toward him. “Is that understood?” he repeated.

Orehstein nodded, vigorously.

“My personal curiosity toward you and your wife,” continued von Belse, turning to Frau Orehstein, “are of little matter.” He looked back at her husband. “I expect the same disinterest from you towards us.”

He glanced at his daughter who had also risen from the couch and stood looking out the window. “You will not question, insult, or raise your voice to us again,” he concluded, and made a slight bow. His heel-click was loud and sharp.

The Orehsteins looked at each other.

“Papa!” the girl suddenly squealed, holding open the curtains and pointing out the window. “Mozart, Papa! Papa, Mozart!” Her voice was thrilled and excited, yet also relieved and happy, as if she had come upon a long-lost toy or doll.

Von Belse smiled at his daughter and went to the window, slowly

nodded his head, then beamed good-naturedly at the Orehsteins. “She likes Mozart,” he explained quietly and shrugged. “Not the music, just the statues all over Vienna.”

The two men looked at each other and Orehstein smiled awkwardly and glanced at his wife. Von Belse pulled his daughter away from the window.

“Yes, yes, Mozart,” von Belse nodded. He glanced at the military lorry and soldiers on the street below, then dropped the curtains and led the girl to the couch. “Maybe we'll go and look at it later, alright?” he smiled.

Inga nodded.

“With your permission,” von Belse said to Frau Orehstein, who was seated at one end of the couch.

“Of course, my dear, of course,” said Frau Orehstein, reddening slightly and tapping a sofa cushion. “Please, sit.”

She moved closer to the girl . “Let's me friends,” she said, taking the girl's hand in her own. “Mozart is my favorite composer too.”

Inga eagerly snatched at her case, opened it, and retrieved a child's picture biography of the musical genius. The large book was profusely illustrated, with the minimum of biographical data. The girl opened the cover to the first page and began to read loudly from the scant text. Frau Orehstein glanced at her husband; the girl was obviously making up words, reading text the could not possibly be printed on the page, reciting ungrammatical phrases and syntactically awkward sentences, as though she had memorized the story someone had read her and was now repeating and adding to it her own words and phrases.

“Next page, Inga,” von Belse said.

The girl looked up angrily at her father. “I'm not finished!” she glared, and buried her head back in the book, shielding the illustration from the adults. She recited that Mozart wrote a lot of music, died young, and was buried in a potter's field somewhere in Vienna.

“The End,” she said, and turned the page, suddenly gasping, her eyes wide, holding up the book and showing off the lavish two-page illustration of the city of Salzburg, Mozart's birthplace. “But he lived in Vienna,” Inga shrugged, and flipped the page, ignoring the printed description of the Alpine city.

The next page showed the child prodigy seated blindfolded before a harpsichord and entertaining the royal family. Inga began to explain to Frau Orehstein who the noble personages were. The woman made no move to correct her mistaking obvious servants and hanger-on for archbishops and royalty.

Von Belse gestured to Herr Orehstein and the two men moved to an open doorway, the next room similarly furnished and also facing the front street. Inga went on with her recitation to Frau Orehstein.

“Please accept my apologies,” Orehstein stuttered, as he followed von Belse into the other room. “My insensitivity and behavior were indefensible.”

Von Belse shook his head and hand in dismissal. He looked around the room and nodded toward the window. “Listen,” he said quietly. “There's a military lorry below, and soldiers will probably be searching the hotel soon.”

Orehstein started, his face contorting. He sighed and shook his head, then slowly went to the window. He jerked back.

Von Bekse also peered out the window; the soldiers seemed to be casually lolling about the street. “The SS,” von Belse said. “They've probably been here in the city for days. There's no way they could have crossed from Brunnau so fast.”

Von Belse let fall the curtain and looked at Orehstein. The racial difference between the two men was suddenly clear and evident. Orehstein lowered his head.

“Listen,” said von Belse. “I have never supported the programs of National Socialism. That pan-Germanic idiocy and race purification nonsense should have been swept away in the Great War.” He shook his head and rubbed his eyes, “And now we must suffer the consequences of having sore losers in power,” he concluded and looked at Orehstein. “You mentioned there's someone else in the apartment?”

Orehstein started. “Yes, yes,” he replied. “I almost forgot. A Herr Kaufmann. An acquaintance of the hotel's mistress. A nervous sort.” He pulled out his vest pocket watch and flicked open the cover. “Hmm,” he mulled. “He went to the bathroom and has been gone quite a while.” He snapped the cover shut.

“A Jew?” von Belse asked.

Orehstein winced, but nodded.

“Perhaps we should find him?” von Belse suggested, and moved back toward the other room. He gasped; his daughter and Frau Orehstein were no longer on the couch; the Mozart book lay closed on a soft cushion. “Inga!” he shouted, and raced across the room.

“Hilda, mein Liebshen!” Herr Orehstein shouted after him and darted behind.

A woman's voice shrieked from down the back hallway. The two men raced toward the cry. Frau Orehstein stood braced against a wall, clutching Inga's shoulders. The girl was gazing calmly through an open bathroom doorway. Von Belse barged toward his daughter, she was all right, glanced up at Frau Orehstein, then turned to the bathroom. A bloody-faced man, his mouth and eyes gaping at them, sat on the toilet seat next to the bathtub and held his gashed open wrist over the tub as if in greeting, the blood dripping quickly from the wrist into the red-splattered metal bathtub.

“Kaufmann!” gaped Orehstein.

“Papa, another man dressed like a lady,” smiled Inga, as von Belse stared mutely at Kaufmann's overstretched and torn little-girl clothes; a bloody short white dress and stocking draped limply about his knees, red-stained panties too small to rise higher than his bare flabby thighs, a tilted blood-matted wig, red lipstick mixed with blood and circling his mouth like the grin of a grotesque circus clown.

Inga giggled.

21. Wanda Caught

WANDA CUPPED HER hand in her crotch, wriggling a finger in between her dry vaginal lips, and pressed her thighs together. The orgasm was instantaneous; she yelped, shuddered, then cursed at its fleeting quickness. But it was always the same, quick and sudden, almost unexpected, without any real prelude of anticipation or excitement, merely a gush-like oozing of fluid that just as abruptly ebbed and stopped. Sometimes it was like a flea or gnat bite – the actual bite unfelt, but the swelling white and itching.

Even with a partner Wanda's climax would be no more rudimentary than another would experience as the first sign of arousal. Though she revelled in foreplay, the kissing, the sucking, at the last moment she always held back, orgasming with a slight bored grunt, as if a prostitute going through the motions with a client. She was unable to understand why she could never experience the same freedom of release she had built up in herself but always restrained to fizzle into a dull meek thump.

Wanda cursed again and wiped her wet fingers on the side of her thigh, then slipped on her panties and skirt. She went to the doorway and looked down the empty corridor. She snickered; she enjoyed Helmut's lust and pursuit of her, and even more, his obsessed focus and craving after her breasts. She particularly enjoyed his not-so-secretive spying on her, the slinking around corners, the seemingly accidental run-ins in hallways, empty room, storage closets. She quickly became adept at displaying herself in various poses, postures and scratchings whenever she was almost alone but suspected Helmut of being nearby.

He often was, staring open-mouthed, squeezing his crotch, and disbelieving the difficulty she seemed to have in keeping her breasts in her bra and blouse, cramming them back into place as they kept plopping out when she'd stoop for a broom or bend over a bed.

Once, hearing the soft pulse of cautious steps moving up the hall, she stretched and clasped her hands high over her head, spreading the fat teats evenly out, her large areoles and stiff nipples peeping out of the bra and blouse top, and turned to see Frau Friska standing in the hall and gaping at the bare-chested woman. Wanda reddened, forcing herself not to look at Friska's small made-up breasts, but she clearly recognized the envious look in her mistress's eyes, almost greedy in yearning. Unlike Helmut's desire for them, Friska's longing was that of regret, of loss, of unfairness, as though gazing at a photo of a long lost love, or one of yourself in youth, then comparing the contradiction of reality in the mirror before you.

“Oh, these damn things,” blushed Wanda, stuffing her breasts into place.

Frau Friska said nothing but looked away and continued down the hall. For days afterwards Wanda felt like an idiot, avoiding Frau Friska and refusing Helmut's stalking games, wearing only neck-high blouses which covered her from belly to throat but also enhanced the entrapped bulges within. Helmut's crotch was on Friska's bosom two or three times on those days.

Wanda shut the cubicle door and pushed her cleaning cart down the hall to the storage closet. It had been an easy morning. The majority of cubicles were unused the night before (only the client Kaufmann had shown up), but even those which had been occupied were only slightly disordered by the few boys who did show up and simply lay dressed in bed and smoked cigarettes and flipped through magazines to bide their time.

She hadn't wanted to report for work this morning either, the events on the streets as legitimate an excuse for staying out as any could be. She even grew angry when she found out the priggish Kurt, whose fastidiousness she always ridiculed and laughed at had taken advantage of the Nazi invasion to skip work after going off the night before. When Helmut glanced at her breasts and blushed and mumbled that only a few of the cubicles needed cleaning, she hoped she could get back home before the sleeping girl in her room awoke.

Helmut was a pleasant diversion, but the body at home was what she desired and didn't dare lose or give up. Even after a lust-filled night and only a few scant hours sleep, the girl was ready to start the morning, moaning for Wanda to kiss her, suck her, hold her, touch her, and, Please, please, hurry back!

Wanda may have held back on her own orgasms, but she knew how to elicit and prolong another's.

Wanda came down the hall, shutting and locking the gates which separated the cubicle section from Frau Friska's gate-secured apartment at the other end of the hall. Except for Helmut and Friska she was the only person with access to both wings; even Kurt wasn't allowed on the second floor without Friska's knowledge. She immediately sensed the scarcity of activity below. The usual morning sounds were placid and easy: the welcoming clink of breakfast dishes, the tired shuffle of departing guests, the besom broom swoosh of street sweeps moving along the outside curbs.

Wanda peered over a balcony railing. She jumped back. A uniformed figure passed in the lobby below. Another uniformed figure stood next to a Brownshirted boy and Frau Friska, Guests? Not likely. Wanda saw the suitcase on the floor before one of the soldiers. She instantly recognized it; the case had traveled back and forth from Berlin many times. Friska always made sure they sent something for Wanda, too.

Wanda clung to the banister and moved to the stairway. On her way to work that morning she had passed truck loads of screaming Austrian Brownshirts, begging for a feel of her tits, a ride on their laps (a fuck for the Fuhrer!) and Wanda instinctively did what had always served her well: she pulled back her shoulders and thrust out her tits even more.

She had long ago learned that her breasts could be the inducement that easily got her a job, credit at the market, or preferential treatment wherever she went. It always worked. Men fell over themselves in the presence of a big-breasted woman; compliant, ready to serve, yet also spun madly about by the whims of the woman, as if her large bosom were a double-orbed phallus that men were obeisant to – to please, and to fear.

Wanda stepped down the curving stairway and passed behind the open grille-work elevator shaft. She saw one of the soldiers point to the suitcase on the floor. She took a deep breath, checked on the long deep line of her freckled cleavage, and descended to the lobby.

She walked solidly, her arm extended along the banister, the carpeted stairway softening the thud of her flat footfalls. Only Petya, still smarting from the officer's stroking hand on his face and neck, noticed the big-breasted woman coming down the stairs. Yet unlike most people who first saw Wanda, it wasn't her breasts he focused on, but the fiery redness of her hair and spotted face. It was the same as a boy Petya knew at the reformatory.

Wanda stopped midway on the stairs, blinked her eyes at the soldiers and the Brownshirted boy, and suddenly raised her right arm stiffly before her.

“Heil Hitler!” she shouted, and, as she was certain it would, her right breast rose up her chest, strained at the V-dip blouse, and poked at the arc of her areole and stiffened nipple out the edge of the dip.

“Oh, my!” she cooed, and blushed, lowering her arm to cover the slightly bared bosom. “Did I do it right?” she pouted, shyly blinking her eyes at the gaping soldiers. “Or is it this way?” She raised her left arm and saluted with the same result, baring the cleavage of her other freckled breast.

“I'm waiting,” she sulked at the soldiers, holding her left arm aloft and shaking her bosom; a few shakes more and she was certain the entire breast would plop out. “Shouldn't you say Heil Hitler too?” she leered.

The soldier who had brought in Petya immediately jerked his arm upright. “Heil Hitler!” he shouted.

“Yes, yes, Heil Hitler,” another soldier mumbled, clearing his throat and raising a limp arm in reply to her salute.

Wanda giggled, lowered her arm, and dipped her thumb into the V-cut, bobbing and shaking her breasts until they settled back into the hold of her fragile brassiere cups. She glanced from Friska to Helmut, then at the soldiers and the strange boy staring at her hair.

Except for the boy, the erections on the men were evident. Wanda blushed and thought it possible that the quirkiness of her exposure even elicited a tinge of erection in Frau Friska, too.

Frau Friska coughed. “Fraulein Wanda!” she snapped. “You have been told many times the proper work-dress is to be worn at all times.”

“But I'm off!” protested the girl, smoothing out the front of her blouse.

The officer shook his head and looked away from the girl, then tapped his toe against the side of the suitcase on the floor. “Corporal!' he angrily said.

The soldier blinked and reluctantly turned from Wanda. He snatched up the suitcase and heaved it atop the registry desk. Helmut looked at Friska; she shook her head once. The soldier began untying the ropes and straps, easily undoing the looped metal buckles. He opened the top of the case.

“Ah ha!” cried the officer, exchanging a look with the soldier.

Frau Friska stepped to the desk and also glanced at the suitcase's contents. She reddened. “We are not responsible for what the guests have in their luggage,” she said, trying her best to show embarrassment and disgust.

“Of course not,” the officer agreed, and pulled out a pamphlet from the tied stack.

Petya also inched to the desk and peered into the case. Books and pamphlets and bundles of photographs lay tied in bright blue ribbon. Petya looked at a top photograph: a naked man knelt before another naked man, his head buried in the other man's crotch, the blue ribbon lacing over and covering the kneeling man's mouth. It was obvious what he was doing.

“Schoolboy Girls,” read the officer and flung the pamphlet down.

Friska glanced at Helmut.

“We wiped this filth out in Germany, and we'll do it here too,” the officer said. “The scum!” He picked up another pamphlet.

“I, Androgen,” he read, struggling with the word. He flipped through the pamphlet and looked at a photograph of a breasted figure bobbing in a pool of water. He tossed the pamphlet down. “Shut the case!” he ordered, his face red and looking from Helmut to Friska. “I hereby confiscate this suitcase and its contents as evidence of crimes against the Third Reich!”

The soldier buckled the bag shut.

The officer turned to Frau Friska. “When is this...this guest due?” he asked.

Frau Friska glanced at Helmut.

“We've had no confirmation,” Helmut said.

“But the case is here...” the officer looked at both of them.

Friska shrugged. “Perhaps a Jew,” she said. “Perhaps he lost his way getting here.”

The officer scoffed. “Perhaps the good Viennese,” will do us a favor and get rid of that walking filth!”

He glared at the shut suitcase and suddenly looked up at Wanda. She forced a quick smile at him and tried to conceal her own emotions. She, too, had seen the case's contents, but unlike the others she had instantly orgasmed. Another stack of ribbon-bound photographs was definitely for her: two chubby women clad only in silk stockings lay on a bed, their faces buried in each other's open crotch; the ribbon wove down and knotted their waists as an exclusive present for Wanda. Her shoulders sagged.

22. Medicus Castrare

Kurt was certain he had an erection. A morning erection; he could feel the stiff penis standing up from his groin, lifting the thin sheet about him, and wondered why morning erections were always so much harder and stiffer than any he could arouse during the day.

He opened his eyes and looked across the ceiling to a small window high up on the wall. The sun shone through the window, and though its bright light fell directly on his eyes and face, Kurt did not squint or turn away and stared into the sunlight as if basking on a park bench or in a country meadow.

He was certain his penis twitched again, but it wasn't morning, more like early afternoon. What time was it anyway? Noon? Three in the afternoon?

He looked away from the window and scanned his eyes across the room. He no longer seemed to be in the basement cell, but on a long table in what appeared to be a makeshift laboratory room; obviously the daisy-patterned curtains open at the window were not part of the laboratory-decorating scheme, but maybe the crucifix on the wall was.

His penis twitched.

Kurt looked at his groin and grimaced. The sheet lay flat across his belly and dipped into the open space between his parted legs. There was no erection; there was no penis. Like people who lose an arm or leg, and years later still reach to scratch an itch on the missing limb, so, too, Kurt felt his missing penis rise up to erection again and ache to be touched; would he, too, years later, try to clasp and jerk at a memory?

He shut his eyes and shook his head from side to side. This should not have happened; not the way it did. He should not have been summarily punished; not without any legal proceedings or judicial order, and certainly not by the police themselves, no matter what Paragraph 175 of the German anti-homosexual laws stated about the punishment for homosexuals. A trial should have held where he could defend himself, protest against the barbarism, the inhumanity, and at least then, if castration had been so ordered, it could have been performed by a trained medical doctor and not by some frightened medical student.

Unfortunately for Kurt, the student, showing off the skills and training of the venerable Viennese medical schools, performed too ably. He had injected Kurt with enough anesthesia to ease him into an immobile physical coma, while keeping him conscious and aware of the operation he was undergoing. The student performed expertly, making his painless and almost bloodless incisions beneath the scrotum, removing the testicular sacs, gliding them delicately into a small metal bowl.

But when he tried to stitch up the wound and the police realized what he was doing, the suture was snatched from his hand and he was ordered to continue the surgery, which he protested was not necessary now that the vital sexual sacs had been removed. To his credit as a future healer, he found the personal courage of his medical ethics to stand up to the police and explain that castration did not mean the entire elimination of sexual organs, the penis and scrotum, but rather, the simple removal of the two testicles from the scrotum.

The police weren't having any medical school scheisse crap and ordered the student to get on with it and do what was proscribed by law or face the consequences of being a homo-sympathizer, for which the punishment was most likely the same, and which they certain was codified somewhere in the German law books due to arrive any day now.

"That's what controls the sex drive," the student naively argued, holding out the metal tray and indicating the little gleaming ballocks. "He won't even get an erection now."

The tray flew out of his hands. Someone hit his head; he fell and heard the clang of metal strike the floor beside him, glimpsing a blood-veined gray ball shimmer in the tray.

He felt his trouser belt flapping open. "I'll do it!" he screamed, thrashing at the hands at his waist. "Let me go! I'll do it!"

A policeman laughed and knelt on his chest. "I'll do it! I'll do it!" he mimicked, snipping a pair of forceps before the student's face. He grabbed the front of student's shirt and hoisted him to his feet. "You do it!" he glared, thrusting the forceps into the student's groin. "Or I will!" Snip! Snip!

The student whimpered but quickly readjusted his belt, glancing at the floor for a torn-off trouser button, and spotted the mucous puddle of Kurt's testicles. One of the balls had been stepped on in the scuffle and lay smudged in a jellied pool, as the other ball, oval and gleaming, clung to its useless partner by a wrinkled whitish cord. The student gagged.

"Do it!" ordered the policeman, shoving the student toward Kurt.

The student took the forceps from the policeman and set them down on an instrument tray next to Kurt's shoulders. "A scalpel is needed," he said coldly, holding up a thin long blade for the policeman's inspection.

"Get on with it," snapped the policeman.

The student looked into Kurt's open eyes. He knew the anesthesia was making his patient see everything in a slow dream-like incomprehension, bewildered images seeming unconnected to other images, pointless, meaningless, as if one step behind the reality of the nightmare.

The student bent over and examined Kurt's scrotum. A small puddle of blood had gelled under the open emptied sac. The student picked up a small towel and pushed it between Kurt's thighs.

"I'm getting quiet fed with this," the policeman glared at the student.

The student glared back at him. "The law says castration," he said firmly, picking up a sheet of cotton gauze and pressing it to the bleeding scrotum. "Not execution."

He turned his back on the policeman and looked at Karl. "I'm sorry," he said quietly to Kurt's open eyes, holding Kurt's hand and pulling it gently to the penis. The student circled his own hand atop Kurt's limp fingers and gently wrapped them around his flaccid cock. For a moment Kurt, staring at the student, held his penis, then the student let go and Kurt's hand dropped back to the side of the table.

The student bent over Kurt's groin and lifted the tip of the penis with his thumb and forefinger, tugging at the flabby loose skin around the base of the cock. He deftly touched the sharp scalpel to the stretched separating skin and circled the blade twice, cutting into and pulling up the stretched separating skin. He wiped the bloody edge of the blade on the gauze of Kurt's scrotum, then ran the blade around once more on the skin and freed the penile-sheath from the groin, sliding the soft skin up the cock and pulling it inside out. He made a final incision at the tip of the cock to free the foreskin and held it out of the policeman.

"Jesus Christ!" someone said, and gagged.

The student casually tossed the at the testicular puddle on the floor and leaned back over Kurt. He examined the raw penile muscle; it was small and shriveled and looked as much an object of sex and pleasure as did an aborted fetus resemble the end result of that sexual pleasure. The student sighed.

"I don't know much about this," he said quietly to himself, squinting and studying the penis. "I'm afraid I might damage the urinary tract."

He looked at Kurt; the man's eyes were open but his face had sagged into a drugged comatose indifference. He gazed back at the student as though uncomprehending and unconcerned over the entire situation; still, the student noticed a lone tear easing out of a corner of the man's eye and flow to his brown stubbled sideburn.

The student looked away, wiped the scalpel, and dipped it in a small jar of alcohol. Once more he lifted the raw penis, certain the drugged torso winced from his searing touch, then cleared his throat. Just as he had done with the covering sheath, he made a few rapid arcing incisions at the base of the groin, moving the blade underneath the cock, then quickly slicing over the top.

The blade cut easily, and the bleeding was intense, but the student wondered at his own expertise and indifference to what he was doing. They had never practiced castration, or mutilation, on the cadavers in school (the subject never came up), yet it was quite simple. Anyone with more than scant anatomical knowledge could discern the proper and improper way of going about it without inflicting too much damage.

Sure, it wasn't as though a brain tumor or cancer cyst was being sought out for removal, but then again, maybe it was. The man was a human being, but what he did with others was disgusting, and anyway, the law was the law. If the police were empowered to enforce the law, it was the student's duty as a medical practitioner to ensure that medical treatment to injured lawbreakers was dispensed as humanely as possible.

That's why he had chosen to intern in the clinic at the prison house and police station, caring for the prisoners who were constantly fighting and beating on each other and for the criminals brought in with various stabbing and gunshot wounds. This was the first time he had been called upon to create a wound rather than mend one.

But the man was a homosexual, caught on his knees with another man's penis in his mouth, in a public lavatory. If it hadn't been for his Party uniform, he probably would have suffered the same fate as his lover and been tossed out of a third-story window. The uniform saved him, but whether it would do him any good afterwards or not was in question. It was up to the student to keep him alive at least till then.

The student cut, and wondered if perhaps, now that Austria was reuniting with the Fatherland, castration might not become a part of the medical curriculum. It might even lead to a whole new specialization. Medicus Castrare. Doctor of Castration. He might even be called upon to give the first courses. And to write the first textbook.

The penis came off.

For a moment the student stared at the stared at the severed penis in his fingers as though surprised and unable to recognize what he was holding. Then he shuddered, gagged, and doubled over, dry-heaving and dropping the bloody cock back into Kurt's lap, where the damp warm clump struck Kurt's thigh and slipped down between his legs.

The policeman grabbed the student, spun him around and slapped his face. Kurt tried to move his thighs and shake the unbearable clump away. The policeman snatched it up and grabbed the student's throat, squeezing until the student's mouth opened and he gasped for air. The policeman forced the small red clump into the gagging student's mouth.

Kurt also gagged, and wretched, and saw the knobby bulb of th student's Adam's apple suddenly jut out over the policeman's fingers and just as suddenly ease down again as he swallowed.

The policeman let go of the student and stared in disbelief into his open mouth. Kurt passed out.

When Kurt came to, he was alone, and the window seemed to be growing dark, or so he thought. Once more he glanced at his flattened groin, and he was certain of it: he had an erection. Just as on mornings he was greeted by his stiff cock boring into a bed sheet, a blanket, a pillow end, so too he was certain his penis was once more hardening and rising up between his legs.

He squinted down at his torso. He was still clad in his Nazi Brownshirt, but his leather chest-belt was missing, the front and sleeve buttons torn off, the breast pocket gouged and ripped. Except for a white sheet covering his groin, his legs and feet were bare.

Kurt again felt the involuntary jerk of his stiff penis, and he pushed down the sheet to look. The blood-dried gauze taped under his belly button had come free in the moist tangle of pubic hairs and curled over itself, reveling the unevenly cut and blood-gelled curve of his rounded crotch.

He touched his stomach and edged his fingers down his groin, wincing at the soft clumps of gelled blood and stiff-pointed suture ends. Someone had sewn him up; the student? Unlikely, after what the policeman did. Kurt groaned and shook his head; they had probably brought in another student to finish the job.

He moved his fingers lower and felt a few more sutures poking between the moist hairs and scabs. He reached the top of the now useless fleshy flab of his scrotum and realized he had unknowingly inched his fingers over the spot where his penis should have been. 

He screamed out. Though he had witnessed his own castration and mutilation, the anesthesia had somehow held him back from fully comprehending the reality of what was being done to him. Only now did the awareness of the barbaric loss breach into his consciousness and bestir him to anger and rage.

He screamed out again, gripping his empty scrotum, squeezing and pulling it in his fist. The sutures instantly opened, and blood splashed over his fingers and thighs.

He screamed, let go of the scrotum and slammed his fist down on the curved sutured groin. He struck once more, flinging his arm over his face and eyes, sobbing and shaking his head from side to side.

In the doorway, a disheveled uniformed soldier stood placidly watching and stroking his own limp soft cock.

23. Helmut and Inga

THE GESTAPO OFFICER, after confiscating the pornographic suitcase and ordering it be held in the hotel safe, dismissed the soldier who had brought it in, then properly introduced himself to Frau Friska and went off with her into breakfast room. Wanda glared at the young boy running up the stairs past her, then turned and went back up.

Wanda was right. Helmut did have an erection, and though he would have liked nothing better then to go and rub against Frau Friska, the shouting coming from her apartment above him interrupted his daydreaming. He darted behind the lobby office and out the back passageway which led from the cellar past the office and up the stairs to Friska's apartment. He took the stairs two at a time.

Cunt! Helmut mumbled to himself and pushed open the disguised sliding door, stepping into the front corridor of Frau Friska's apartment. He saw Frau Orehstein fanning herself and pacing about the living room as the fat girl paced behind her, grinning and mimicking the woman's movements and expressions.

“Oh, stop it!” Frau Orehstein shouted. “You're not a little baby, are you?”

“Oh, stop it!” mimicked the fat girl and stuck out her tongue.

From the other room Helmut heard male voices arguing. He quickly shut the sliding door behind him and entered the living room.

Spotting Helmut, Frau Orehstein exclaimed “Thank God!” and stopped her pacing.

Helmut saw the fat girl soundlessly mouth the same and also stop pacing, but she dropped to the sofa, sighed heavily, and gave him a dirty look for interrupting her game.

“Herr Direktur,” gushed Frau Orehstein in relief, holding her hands to her chest. “Herr Direktur! Herr Kaufmann has intentionally injured himself.”

Helmut noticed the girl's moving lips couldn't keep up with the older woman's gush of words, simply mouthing, Herr Kaufmann Herr Kaufmann, as she grimaced and bobbed her head from side to side. He glanced about the room. Everything seemed to be in order; at least there had been no fighting.

“In the bathroom?” he asked.

Frau Orehstein nodded, and he turned and crossed the room.

“In the bathroom?” he heard the fat girl mimic behind him.

Helmut reddened and walked down the hall.

Kaufmann sat slumped on the toilet seat, white-faced and sleepy, as Herr Orehstein stood in the blood-splattered bathtub and struggled to hold Kaufmann's bleeding arm while von Belse spun and tightened a makeshift towel-tourniquet around the forearm just above the gashed wrist.

“Can't you keep it still!” von Belse complained, as Orehstein coasted about in the slippery, curve-bottomed tub, shaking Kaufmann's arm from side to side.

“I'm trying, damnit!” Orehstein said. “I'm trying!” He saw Helmut on the doorway. “Oh, thank God!” he exclaimed in a mimic of his wife, and for a moment Helmut expected the fat girl's voice to echo behind him.

Helmut stared at Kaufmann. The man sat calmly, almost contentedly, on the toilet seat, his eyes shut, his lips smiling oddly in a smeared, uneven circle of dark red lipstick that circled his mouth and was now smudged onto his cheeks and chin and under his nose. His white-stockinged legs splayed out awkwardly from his short girl's dress he had forced on himself, the frumpled hose crimping and splattering the dense black hairs on his shins and calves.

Idiot! Helmut thought; Kaufmann was probably enjoying their concern and pampering. Yet dramatics should have been expected from Kaufmann; it was the same with all Viennese dandies and idlers who were able to get along on their youth, charm, and good looks. Overnight they turned into ridiculous buffoons at the first rejection, wrinkle or gray hair. Helmut noticed a brown wig on the floor at the foot of the bathtub next to Kauufmann's worn wool pants and faded shoes.

“Keep his arm up!” von Belse snapped at Orehstein.

Von Belse seemed to know what he was doing, stanching the flow of blood, keeping the arm raised above the heart, even telling Kaufmann to bend down and lower his head if any nausea was felt.

Helmut glanced around the bathroom. Except for the bloody bathroom and a few overturned wig molds on Frau Friska's vanity table – Kaufmann must have tried various ones on – the rest of the bathroom was orderly and seemed untouched. Helmut picked up the brown wig off the floor and placed it on a small wooden table. He picked up another wig, a tawny blonde one, and cursed; one side of the wig was smeared in moist blood. He dropped the wig into the sink and glanced at Kaufmann's image in the mirror.

“What did he do it with?” he asked loudly, turning to von Belse.

Von Belse and Orehstein looked at each other. Von Belse continued winding some cloth around Kaufmann's wrist but the arm shifted slightly. Von Belse glared at Orehstein but said nothing.

“The razor is missing,” said Helmut.

Von Belse was almost done with the wrist, expertly biting into and ripping apart a strip of cloth to wind around Kaufmann's hand, lacing it a few times in the crook of the thumb and forefinger and tying the two ends together.

“Check his clothes,” von Belse said, nodding to Kaufmann's pants, jacket and undergarments near the vanity table.

Helmut looked at von Belse, then snatched up the jacket and immediately found the folded razor in a side pocket. He hesitated, then turned his back to the other men and slipped the razor into his own breast pocket, continuing to rifle through Kaufmann's jacket. Identity booklet (Helmut frowned at the dandified photograph), a handkerchief, a small medicine bottle – Helmut had never heard of the medication but also pocketed the bottle to show Frau Friska – and a silver tube of lipstick, obviously Friska's. Helmut opened the tube: same color as on Kaufmann's face but the lipstick itself was almost used up. He pocketed that, too.

Helmut held open the jacket and inspected the inside breast pockets, pulling out a familiar-looking tan envelope. He opened the end flaps, peered inside, and immediately flapped it shut again, confirming his suspicions: photographs of naked boys. The man was a fool to be carrying them in his pockets. Not only a Jew, but a self-destructive one at that. Helmut slipped the envelope into his own inner pocket and tossed the jacket back on the floor. He turned and saw von Belse staring at him.

“Found it,” Helmut mumbled, his face flushed, dipping his fingers into his breast pocket and pulling the staight-razor halfway out.

“It belonged to my father,” he said quietly, then gestured at Kaufmann. “How is he?”

Von Belse shrugged. “He'll live,” he replied. “The wound gelled easily. It seems some veins and tendons were cut, but maybe not. Blood stopped quickly. Probably superficial, but he needs to see a doctor to make sure.”

“I'll inform Frau Friska,” Helmut said, “but today of all days, well, it's going to be hard to get one.” He looked at Orehstein still standing in the tub and holding up Kaufmann's arm.

“Please wipe the bottom of your shoes before stepping on the floor,” he admonished Orehstein, and pointed to a stack of tissue paper on a shelf next to the toilet. Orehstein bristled, but said nothing and waved his free hand at von Belse to get the tissues. Helmut walked out of the bathroom.

In the living room Frau Orehstein and the fat girl were still tormenting each other, the woman pacing, the fat girl following behind and mimicking her pleas to be left alone. Helmut grinned to himself, then looked at Frau Orehstein and burst out laughing. For a moment the girl seemed discomfited by his laughter, then she also smiled and started to laugh.

“I do not see anything funny!” Frau Orehstein flared.

Helmut and the girl continued to laugh.

“I demand to see the hotel manager!” Frau Orehstein shouted. “I will not be ridiculed by the staff or other guests. Fritz! Fritz!” she suddenly screamed for her husband.

The laughter grew louder, and Helmut stared through his tearing eyes at the girl's wobbling belly and shaking breasts. He moaned and tried to catch his breath but laughed and shook even more and held a hand to the girl. There was no hesitation or distrust – she immediately placed her hand in his and they continued laughing.

Von Belse came into the room. “What is this?!” he immediately flared, seeing Helmut squeezing his daughter's hand.

Helmut stopped laughing, surprised at the man's vehemence and anger, but glanced at the girl and chuckled slightly. Herr Orehstein also came into the room, holding his damp shoes in one hand.

“A joke, Papa,” the girl panted in between her giggling, but still clinging and squeezing Helmut's hand. “The old bag is angry and it's funny.” She looked at Helmut and again laughed, but he had grown quiet and tried to free his fingers from her clasp.

Von Belse approached, grabbed his daughter's wrist, and jerked it out of Helmut's grip. “You are not to touch my daughter again!” he hissed angrily.

Helmut shrugged, but nodded. “It was a joke,” he said. “There was no harm or discourtesy intended. I apologize.”

Von Belse scrutinized him a moment, then also nodded slightly and clicked his heels. “A misunderstanding,” he said. “I also apologize.”

But Helmut clearly saw that the explosive un-forgiveness and anger remained etched around von Belse's tightened lips and narrowed eyes. Helmut nodded again but decided against a hand in conciliation. None was offered him.

“Sit down, Inga,” von Belse said, turning to his daughter. “And leave madam alone.”

He beseechingly looked at the flustered old woman and offered his apologies. They both agreed they were in unusual and stressful circumstances but must remain clearheaded and calm and not lose control. Von Belse glanced at Herr Orehstein, clicked his heels, and snapped his head.

“Herr Kaufmann doesn't want to get dressed,” said the older man, looking at the damp soles of his shoes.

Von Belse sat down next to his daughter. “Please be a good girl,” he said gently, putting an arm around her shoulder and proffering his cheek for a kiss.

The girl craned up her head, opened her lips, stuck out her tongue, and surged at her father's mouth. Von Belse jumped away in embarrassment, his face reddening, as the girl grabbed his waist and pouted her lips. “Papa, please,” she sulked, slightly rocking her open legs.

“Inga!” von Belse shouted, and shook her hands off. He looked at the adults, frowned, and walked across the room. “I'll see to Herr Kaufmann,” he mumbled in the doorway without turning, and left the room.

Inga looked at Helmut, shook her legs, then raised her hand and sniffed her open palm; Helmut felt the warmth of the girl's hand in his own empty palm and also raised his open hand to his face.

“Disgusting!” scoffed Frau Orehstein, turning to the window. “Fritz!” she suddenly exclaimed, and gestured to her husband.

Helmut reached into his pocket and pulled out the blunted lipstick tube he had found in Kaufmann's jacket. He held it out to the girl. She looked at him, then reached for the canister, sniffed it, and held it in her fist on top of he belly.

“I know, I know,” said Herr Orehstein, pulling his wife away from the window.

Helmut and Inga smiled at each other.

e

24.SS

FRAU FRISKA SCOWLED at Wanda's bobbing breasts and glanced down her own small bosom to check on the cramped erection pushing into her panty crotch. The front of her skirt was smooth, the stiffening penis and shrinking ballocks stuck in the tight hold she positioned them into each morning.

She glanced at Petya and the Gestapo officer, and once more felt her penis jerk and strain between her legs. Not that the sight of female breasts was something which normally would arouse her, but Helmut's earlier frottage of her bosom, even though he was squeezing and rubbing himself against padded cloth, and her too-quick sex with the new boy this morning, has stirred her to an alertness for the possibility of still more sex with someone, anyone.

Even, perhaps, von Belse and his strange daughter, who had clung to her father's arm but warily eyed Frau Friska as she escorted them earlier to her apartment. Friska recognized the assured sexual self-confidence which permeated the man's handsome face and solid gait, and she also glimpsed the same pleasure and satiety on the daughter's face, though neither had been out of the hotel since the previous evening. They'd not had any guests to their rooms (Helmut or Kurt would have noted the visits down) during their entire three-day stay.

Friska turned from the officer and looked up at the giggling and blushing Wanda as the girl tried to control and balance her freckled breasts back into her low-cut blouse.

“Oh, these things!” Wanda spluttered, and coyly cracked a smile.

Friska shook her head and scowled even more. This would cost her, she knew, but once again Wanda had used her body not only to remind Friska of the inadequacies and sham of her own, but also how indispensable Wanda was in getting the hotel out of a jam.

Many times Wanda had seemingly accidentally sauntered into a room as an official inspection was under way – either by the police after some malicious complaints from neighbors about strange comings and goings late at night, or by the Tourist Board for their bi-annual inspection and ratings review.

She diverted the inspector's attention from questioning or examining the upstairs cubicles too closely, while coyly blushing and shaking her bosom or bending over for a dropped towel and angrily pouting when Frau Friska recommended Wanda be their inspection guide for the rest of the hotel visit.

“But I've not even started on the beds!” she'd protest and sulk, as the officials gawked at her bosom and promised they wouldn't take long. They rarely did.

Of course Wanda's role as a sexual naif never went further than the flirtations and teasings she was so adept at. The few times someone was bold enough to actually attempt to reach for a breast or brush a buttock, assuming her show-off hussy exhibitionism to be her real character, a swiftly raised knee to the groin dispelled all notions of what an easy lay she could be.

Not that Wanda didn't enjoy the attentions and attractions of males; as long those attentions served to further her own needs and desires. In Vienna, as in Central Europe and indeed, the rest of the world, it was men who held the power to dispense favors and prestige. Wanda would never have taken on her position at the hotel – no matter how much she needed the job – if there hadn't been any male supervisors or owners. She presented herself to Frau Friska at her job interview wearing a demure tea-length skirt, her bosom flattened under a brocaded blouse, taken in by Frisk's own demure female appearance. When she reported for work the following morning, having been told that Helmut (a man!) would explain her exclusive duties tending to the second floor, she wore a working skirt a bit shorter on her legs, a bit tighter around her hips, her blouse lower-cut and clinging, her perfume lush and fragrant. Helmut spluttered all over himself.

Naturally, Frau Friska had the girl's background examined as soon as she inquired about maid's position. The story of a lesbian maid caught in bed with another maid had quickly made the gossip rounds of the Viennese hotel world. Though Friska felt reticent about taking the girl – her lesbianism having already lost her three positions in Vienna and one in Graz – Friska also noted that there had been no complaints about her labor prior to her sexuality having underscored itself.

As long as the work is done, thought Friska. And if another maid is willing, what is lesbianism but another form of sexual search and release to find and accept a partner that only you have chosen and been accepted by, and only you can please and be pleased by.

It was what Friska had been doing and seeking all of her life and was offering to the boys and men of the hotel. If an employee's sexual leanings were an outrage to the staff and owners of Ringstrasse establishments, at Friska's they would be more than welcomed. She had no regrets or qualms about hiring the Polish redhead, though she did jealously eye the seemingly still-developing and budding body of the perky young miss.

But this time Wanda's flirtations didn't work; Wanda was either too late in showing herself off, or the soldiers too disciplined and professional to be distracted from their duties. The suitcase was opened, its goods confiscated, the soldier dismissed, and Wanda bustled back upstairs.

Friska immediately noted the officer had not been as flustered by Wanda's appearance and exhibitionism as she hoped he would be, though her penis tinged at the certainty of erection in him.

The officer clicked his heels at Frau Friska and finally introduced himself. “Oberstrurmfuhrer Krumf,” he said, removing his cap and snapping his head in a nodding bow. “SS” he added as an afterthought, aware that the sibilant initials might not provoke the same compliance and fear he was accustomed to in Germany. But it won't take long.

Frau Friska's face was a blank, though Krumf knew she had been studying him intently while all eyes were on the big-titted girl.

“Frau Friska Bielinska,” she replied quietly, then turned to Helmut and instructed him to store the suitcase in the safe for good keeping. She excused herself a moment to go to the Brownshirted boy and whisper in his ear, shaking her head and sending him scurrying up the stairs after Wanda. Only then did she smile at Krumpf, shrug her shoulders, and suggest perhaps a cup of coffee or some brandy in the breakfast room. Krumpf readily accepted.

Krumpf spun the brandy in his glass and looked at the woman. He took a sip and cleared his throat; for all his military and police training, he could never feel comfortable with civilians. It was the hazard of the trade; once a cop, always a cop, and no one else could really be trusted. The world divided itself into two camps: law-enforcers and law-breakers, and there was no middle ground. Society existed by an ongoing truce between the two and if something went wrong, if the truce was violated, what did it matter if the so-called innocent were rounded up with the properly-named guilty. Everyone was guilty of something: a person's individuality – his dreams, his desires, his wanting to go his own way – was as much a liability and hindrance to the progress of the group as a whole as a group would be destructive and disabling to the actions of a thief or murderer.

The simplistic idea of democracy, of individual rights, was but a foreboding to anarchy and the death of civilization. Only a police state, in constant vigilance against lawbreakers and responsibility-shirkers, could ensure the growth and development of humanity.

It was good the SS took this responsibility upon themselves; the populace could not be trusted. Still, the surprising welcome the Austrian people were giving the German army as it crossed the frontier and marched toward Vienna was something that had not been predicted or even imagined in any pre-invasion intelligence briefing or engagement scenario. Resistance and occupation had been expected, if not from the countryside then certainly from the Leftist and Communist centers in the cities (that's why the Gestapo and Krumpf had infiltrated, to identify and put a stop to any potential outbreak of resistance). The hails and salvos of cheering throngs that lined the streets and roads only reaffirmed what the Fuhrer had predicted all along: the occupation of Austrian lands would be the liberation of German people and territories who wanted nothing more than to rejoin their Northern brothers and sisters. The general staff had agreed: for the Fuhrer, it would be a homecoming celebration.

Obersturmfuhrer Krumpf once more cleared his throat and looked at Frau Friska. He smiled. Though he was probably half her age – an age when others only a few years or a decade older seem an

incredible distance away – he could not help but be struck by her confident and well-controlled demeanor and appearance, her makeup and lipstick visibly adding to her appeal. It was the one characteristic of German women he missed since Hitler had come to power: facial adornment. Whether it had been a personal edict of the Fuhrer's, or something which evolved in the unwritten ethos of the new regime, women in Germany were no longer allowed to display themselves in public wearing lipstick and mascara, or even nail polish, which some restaurants and establishments took to calling painted talons and posted signs prohibiting entry to wearers of the same.

For five tears the neighborhood Nazi Watch Committees had manipulated the dress and appearance of German women, eager to taunt and harass a whore on the street if she so much as showed a tinge of makeup. They tried to de-feminize and de-sex the image women patterned themselves on after movie starlets and perfume manufacturer advertisements, and tried to enforce a sense of plain motherhood appearance which attracted few, a country-air healthfulness which was outlandish in industrial-smoky cities, an asexual milkmaid camaraderie which only brought about innuendoes of lesbianism and homosexuality against a regime which was trying to stamp out just that.

One of the readily identifiable quirks of a revolutionary movement, be it Leftist, Rightist, or militarist, is that once in power, or still attempting to seize power, the first order men of revolution issue is an edict prescribing how their women should dress. Be it Parisian sans-culottes, outraged that their women donned the red cap of revolution and tried to fight alongside of their men – who ordered them to stay home and knit trousers instead – or be it Russian Marxists who freely enlisted women in their cause, then had them stuff explosives in their bodices set to go off at the first grope of a Tsarist minister's hand, women have always gotten short shrift in the participation of what role in life, liberation, and politics is to be.

Even the donning of makeup is a manmade credo; women's underclothing designed by men; the rise and fall of hemlines man-ordered; and women's ultimate destiny of finding a mate determined by a man attracted to or disinterested in them. For Hitler to order No Makeup! was but a repeal of another man's edict to render the opposite. If he tried to alter a nation of demonic Marlenes into one of frumpish Brunhildes, he was attempting nothing more than what men from bedrooms to boardrooms have expected of their women for millennia. Women have complied with their expectations.

Obersturmfuhrer Krumpf, shocked, dismayed, and aroused by the elusive Wanda was even more fascinated by the unusual restraint and appealing demureness of Frau Friska Bielinska. It was if she had taken on the trampling overbearing of a Brunhilda and tamed it with a tinge of a Marlene's seductiveness, melding a line between the two which was not only destructive and revolutionary, but creative as well. The Wandas of Austria were exposing themselves to female-flesh-starved German soldiers on every street corner, but the fascination and hunger lay, at least for Obersturmmfuhrer Krumpf, in things which could not be seen or readily revealed. He saw this fascinating strangeness in Frau Friska, and he discovered his personal quest and reason for Austrian Anschluss. Yes, it was just a like a homecoming.

25. In Rooms

PETYA RELUCTANTLY SCURRIED up the stairs, glancing back at the seemingly disordered Wanda, and ran up the hall to Friska's apartment. He had tried to tell the gnadige Frau that he saw the man from the hotel arrested at the train station, but his hurried and vague whispering – not knowing the man's name – made no sense and she hushed him and gave him instructions to go and wait for Helmut in her apartment. Still, he doubted she was as abashed as she acted with the clumsy bosomy maid, or that the other men were as naive as to think the maid's breasts rose out of her blouse as innocently and accidentally as everyone pretended. It was all crap, Petya began to suspect.

Petya rattled the locked gate made of wrought-iron grille-work that was securing Frau Friska's apartment on the second floor, then spotted the push-button buzzer at the side of the gate, almost unnoticeable in its natural melding with the elaborate grille-work design. He pressed the small gold nodule and heard a faint muted ringing behind the large double doors on the other side of the gate. He pressed the nodule again and tapped out a staccato Morse-code rhythm of his name he had learned at the reformatory: dot-dash dash-dot; dot;dash; dash-dot....The apartment door opened before he beat out the entire letter Y.

Petya blinked in surprise. As always when first confronted by males he assumed had some authority over him, Petya immediately shrank back from Helmut, looking quickly around as though he had been caught at something, or at least hoping he would not be noticed or singled out for something else. He stood poised to leap and flee, even though he was simply delivering a message for Helmut and should have little to fear from him.

But how did the man get up to the apartment before him? No, Petya did not trust adults; not only did he feel belittled by them, but also he felt guilty in their presence, as though he were responsible for their moods, as it was up to him to allay or appease those moods or emotions, be they in lust or anger. Because his contact with adults had always been limited to the men he sold himself to along the Danube canal or the police he avoided in the Leopoldstadt alleys, he knew little of how adults functioned, acted with each other, or pursued their livelihoods.

Even at the reformatory – whose purpose was to instill the boys with some sort of adult ethos of self-respect and pride in a meager skill for an even more meaningless labor – the adult overseers were not much different from the sex-starved men or authority-obsessed cops back in Vienna. You were eventually forced to your knees to upturn your face or pushed to your belly to upraise your back and suffer someone's pleasure or outrage. In Petya's life male adults meant only one thing: trickery and abuse. Still, he could not help but be struck by Helmut's appearance and his distracted, confused demeanor, whereas earlier the man seemed so controlled and proper.

Petya rattled the gate and gestured to Helmut.

The man peered out of the apartment door, nodded, then stepped out into the hall and approached the gate. For a moment he studied the boy as if trying to place him, then snapped a lock to the grille and swung open the narrow gate. Though Petya immediately saw the man had retained the previous disciplined self and whatever distraction had occurred in the apartment was perhaps but a momentary lapse, he rushed through the gate, glanced around and behind him, then conspiratorially gestured Helmut's ear.

“Frau Hotel-Mistress said to move the people into the little rooms,” he whispered.

Helmut straightened back up and squinted down at Petya. “Tell Frau Hotel-Mistress it will be done,” he said slowly, stumbling over the boy's odd nomenclature.

“I'm to help,” said Petya.

Helmut looked past the boy, then took a few steps neared the corner. He peered down to the quiet lobby and gestured to Petya.

“Stand here and watch. If anyone starts for the stairs or uses the lift, ring the bell.” He looked at Petya. “Anyone in uniform,” Helmut corrected himself.

Petya nodded.

“But ring only once this time, okay?”

Petya winced and blushed, glancing down at the lobby. He nodded his head, fingering in his pocket the crushed metal thimble he had picked up near the train station. “Only once,” he repeated.

Helmut also nodded, then turned and disappeared behind the apartment door. Petya slouched against the corridor wall and looked down at the lobby. He thought he heard voices coming from the breakfast-room and he looked back at the grille-work gate; whatever had distracted Helmut in the apartment would soon be coming out, he thought. Or was it Wanda? Had she somehow gotten past him into the apartment? Petya looked down at the lobby again. He jumped back as the front door of the hotel opened and another group of soldiers came in.

26. Homo Pussy

EACH TIME KURT closed his hand and made a fist his palm pulsed with the remembered sensation of his penis – small, flaccid, but quickly thickening and rising up to erection, searing out of his clasping fist. He jerked his empty hand up and down, pounding his bloody groin till he fell back exhausted in a pool of blood, urine, and feces.

He drifted in and out of consciousness, sleeping, waking, thinking, remembering, in and out of pain, realizing that this was not a botched accident caused by some overzealous cops who had gone too far in imposing their standards of punishment for a crime he had been caught at, such as a thief being roughed up on the way to the station, but a deliberate act of mutilation for what he was: a homosexual.

Homosexual. The word seared through him as a curse and accusation. He winced in shame and shook his head in denial.

Homosexual: a male lover of males. He grimaced and squeezed his fists together.

Homosexual. But what was he really?

A dedicated Party member, loyal to and believing in the message of the Fuhrer and the destiny of Germany-Austria: certain that only the ideals of Nazism could save the purity of the German-speaking peoples from the depraved Slavic-Bolshevik hoards of the East; positive his uniform and symbols had earned him respect, honor, acceptance.

But all that meant nothing.

He was a homosexual, and all his accomplishments were instantly dispelled by that one failing: homosexual. The word was anathema to the regime, signifying only depravity, impulse, narcissism. Signifying death.

The Party had not hesitated in ridding and cleansing the SA forces of Colonel Rohm and other blatant homosexuals under his command; civil and legal authorities quickly followed suit. They vented their own anger and justified their outrage, allowing old scores to be settled, purifying entire bureaucracies, ousting unpopular tenants, or freeing themselves of financial debts with one anonymous phone or letter.

Listen there's a queer in apartment 3 of Wagnerstrasse 18...

In the Court Clerk's Office two homosexuals meet during lunch in the file room...

She has women friends stay the night and the bed springs rattle just like a honeymoon joust...

He followed a boy into the park; it looked strange...

She admired my sweater and touched the side of my breast; it was no accident, I'm sure...

How could one prove his legitimate sexuality? Stand naked before a nude woman, who herself is accused of lesbianism, and await the spark of attraction and arousal? There is no defense; there is no chance of proof; once the accusations and indictments of homosexuality reach the courts, the victims by then are homeless, penniless, mutilated, starving, or imprisoned in a detention camp with little chance of mounting a defense or returning to a previous life or job, much less raising an erection to an equally starved or beaten female.

Kurt had heard the rumors and scant accounts of roundups and purges in Germany, yet felt no commiseration with the victims or fear that such a thing could befall him. He felt himself to be a man, like all other men, and if the authorities in Berlin and Munich and other German cities were arresting homosexual men, then they were probably Jews or Gysies to begin with, or child-molesters and perverts, and if not, they were most likely those namby-pamby skirt-wearers and chasers such as Fraulein Friska and her freakish boys and clients.

Kurt had never been attracted to the feminine impersonation of homosexuality: the exaggerated gestures, the over-accented movements, the grotesque mimicking at femaleness. Why a man would pretend or want to be a woman was beyond him, and if he wanted a made-up mascara-ed tart or tramp he could have purchased a real one on the Kartnerstrasse, or sat on the Ring benches and eyed his fill of Viennese skirts and flirts.

What turned Kurt's head was a well-molded body clad in a well-cut suit or over-strained worker's woolens; a sculpted face, a confident stance, a ready laugh. Men, for Kurt, were not just objects for sex, to be bought and used or even conquered and enjoyed, but individuals to mingle with, to be adored and loved whether or not they eventually delighted him with their undressed physicality. It was the company of men Kurt sought out, in cafes and wine cellars, at sporting events and Party rallies; and these dreams of men sustained him in his solitude when all he could do was await the next event, the next parade, gathering, or rally.

For Kurt was, as all clingers to crowds, a lonely man. Much like loners, he was inexperienced in the give and take of typical discourse. Everything was mechanical, thought out, rehearsed, and executed. If he planned an action, he'd be riled by an unanticipated response; if he rehearsed a conversation, he'd be discomfited by the natural turns it took to other topics and interests, leaving him stuttering, unprepared, and finally muted.

So, much like loners, he drifted from person to crowd, from lover to cafe, from arousal to search, to brief satiation, to sudden panic, fear, and flight. He was never able to prolong the unity or embrace the commingling but shrugged if off and denied he ever cared for or desired the person he had just experienced in yet another perplexing scenario.

For Kurt, like all loners, could never entice the spontaneity that nurtured the possibility of love. He could get then into bed, but not into his life. It was as if the well-thought-out scenario went no further than the weak satisfaction of dribbled semen straining out of a repetitive drawn-out jerk-off dream.

Kurt pulsed his fist and looked up at the bright window. The hotel would be empty by now, he thought; it must be noon: Friska in her office, Helmut probably still awake and behind the front desk, the maids' chores completed. Is there something special for today? It was a Saturday. No, Sunday. Friday was his day off, so it was a Saturday. He had gone off Friday evening and was due at work on Saturday. So it was Saturday. Unless he had lain here Saturday and Sunday. And therefore it was Monday.

He grimaced and moved his legs a little, the dried blood crackling under his thighs, a gelled mucousy bubble popping at the crotch. He still felt no pain or discomfort, only extreme tiredness, a tiredness which demanded sleep and rest, but each time he dozed off he'd stir into even more exhaustion and tiredness. The only strength remaining was the weak energy to pulse and squeeze his fingers together.

He thought he ejaculated: his torso sprang up and down slightly but there wasn't any release or satisfaction. He heard a step behind him. Cringing and blushing he looked at the sunny window.

Are the drugs taking effect again? Obviously they are. What will they do if they catch me masturbating? Cut off my fingers? My hand?

Kurt moved his hand and saw a uniformed figure a few feet away from him. It was the young soldier who had masturbated in the cellar and who once more had his flaccid penis slung out of his pants.

Kurt clenched his fist and felt his fingertips pressing into his palm. His eyes widened, as though recognizing something, and he stared at the soldier's limp penis and gagged. The spasm rocked his body, lifting his torso in a rising ripple from his shoulders to his ankles. The gag elicited another gag and once more his body jerked up and down, then he lay still, his breathing strangely calm and even, as though unrelated to his body's sudden seizure and heaving. An odd peace soothed his tiredness and he seemed content, almost bemused, as he stared placidly at the approaching soldier.

The young man, probably just out of his teens, was red-faced, bloated, and tired-looking, yet he seemed to be driven by some mindless determination which impelled him with little purpose or meaning to his act of masturbation other than the act itself.

Kurt had often done the same, masturbating without lust or desire, often without memory or imagery, simply stroking until his body reacted to the stimulus – hardening, teasing, forcing itself into arousal, erection, ejaculation, and just as uselessly falling back spent, exhausted, angered by the boredom and routine and sameness, yet driven once more to the repetition of habit.

Kurt pulsed his hand and once more recalled the sensation of his penis. That's all it is: a memory.

The soldier touched Kurt's wrist. Kurt drew his arm back slightly, hesitated, then opened his hand and let the soldier place his cock and scrotum in his palm.

“Homo,” he chanted, pumping and swaying, once pulling back too far and out of Kurt's hand, cursing and pushing back in, grabbing the table for support, and mauling Kurt's flabby blood-crusted hair-pasted thigh.

Kurt felt his own empty arousal as the soldier's hand gripped and rose up his thigh. Kurt lifted and lowered his torso up and down, his phantom erection stabbing the air above him.

He yelped in surprise. The soldier was pawing his blood-wet crotch, first gently, as though hesitant, unsure, cupping his fingers around the moist flabby flesh, then squeezing and tearing, pushing into sores and wounds and breaking the clotted globs which had sealed and pasted the gash in the empty scrotum, ripping through flesh and meat and finally forcing an opening wide and deep enough for his fingers to enter, enter, whirl.

Kurt screamed in pain and grabbed at the soldier's hand but the soldier had already drawn his fingers out and was clambering onto the table and between Kurt's legs. Kurt saw the young man's penis was hard and stiff, and he lolled his head to the side and lay still, one leg dropping off the side of the table as the soldier lowered himself on top of Kurt.

“Homo pussy! Home pussy!” the soldier grunted, probing Kurt's wet crotch with head of his cock.

Kurt groaned, his eyes wide, and clutched the soldier's body, his arm around the young man's waist, his leg braced over his thigh.

The penis eased into his torso.

Kurt shuddered, and the soldier fell atop him, his warm moist face snuggling against Kurt's gray-stubbled cheek. Kurt moved his head and pursed his lips to the young man's neck. The soldier jerked upright and bored his crotch into Kurt's.

“Homo!” he groaned, his torso jittering and shaking and ejaculating into Kurt's. “Homo pussy!”

Kurt was certain he felt the explosion in his belly, of something spitting and searing, yet flooding his body with great satisfaction and peace. He smiled meekly at the soldier, raised a hand to the soldier's chest, and pursed his lips for a kiss.

The soldier blinked in surprise, focused as if to make sure what he'd seen, then raised his fist and struck Kurt's face. Kurt immediately passed out, but the soldier punched again and was about to repeat a third blow when Kurt's torso jittered as in a reminder of release. The soldier eased his penis out slightly but then pushed back in.

“Homo pussy!” he grimaced, and resumed fucking the comatose body. “Homo pussy!”

27. Inga and Sex

THE ONLY OTHER man Inga had ever been attracted to and had the opportunity to be alone with besides her father was her older brother Andreas. He, more worldly and mature and living away from home at the University in Hamburg, was certainly uncomfortable with the inappropriateness of his sister's flirtation and teasing when he came home on holiday visits.

By the age of thirteen Inga had developed into a physical figure most women double her age had given up hope they could ever shape into. It was exactly this mature-looking attractiveness which made Andreas shy away from and flee the room whenever they happened to be alone.

Goddamn her sex! he thought, even the meek aren't spared. With anyone else, yes, if they looked and acted like that – a cousin, an aunt, a mother- or sister-in-law – he would not hesitate to strip their clothes and immediately satisfy each. But Inga? His confused little sister, lingering in doorways, staring out windows, waving goodbye for hours after he left, and standing for days in anticipation of his return? Where did she learn this? Was it a natural instinct of her blossoming sex?

Goddamn her sex! he repeated and dismiss her teasing as the inevitable desire of little-girl probing – who else could she try out her budding womanhood on? – and curse himself for being enticed by her easy simplicity. If she didn't know what it meant, he certainly did. One time in Hamburg he'd gotten some skinny unwashed whore, probably even younger then Inga, and he found it dispelled the lust of a holiday visit home. It did little to wash out the memory of his hands being pulled by his sister to her breasts, and his cowardly hands responding, squeezing, exploring, groping, then just as cowardly letting go and fleeing.

Andreas soon found various excuses to skip out on holiday visits home. By then, and unbeknownst to Andreas, his sister had been having sex with their father almost nightly for a year, and she was puzzled as to why her brother had resisted in doing the same.

Inga squeezed the lipstick tune in her dress pocket and stared at Frau Orehstein pacing near the bathroom corridor. Inga rose from the couch and also began pacing at the other end of the room, near the apartment front door. Ever since being a little girl Inga did not have much contact with other females, her slowness and un-adaptability hindering her with other children, her irascibility and stubbornness driving away over-stressed sitters and tutors. Still, the few females who did have dealings with the von Belse household – mostly elderly shop clerks and washer women – warily discerned the distance the little girl had from children her age.

It wasn't so much her intellectual slowness – that was evident – but her glaring sexual superiority, easily recognized by other females, which was an affront to the sensibilities of the local work women. Not that Inga was blatantly over-sexed and promiscuous – no, she dressed prettily in laces and frilly little-girl gowns – but her eyes and demeanor shone with the pleasure and fulfillment of a young bride, finally satisfied by her curiosity though remaining mysterious and aloof, unwilling to share her secret, the wonder of that secret discovery suddenly separating her from others and keeping her in self-centered distraction and preoccupation.

The old women started talking. In another time the talk would have been hushed up, shrugged off, ignored, and taken for commonplace among the townspeople, but with political change in Germany and the National Socialists in their fifth year of power, nothing went unnoticed. The least bit of rumor or innuendo was now seized upon, investigated, followed up on, traced to its source, confirmed, and used for whatever benefit the Party could gain from it.

Unfortunately von Belse had been unconcerned with the rise of the Nazi Party, sporadically being unaware of the machinations and abuses in Berlin and Munich from his Karlsruhe home at the foot of the Black Forest, sometimes following the news reports which were usually days or weeks old. He never read the papers as they arrived but had them piled in his study for later perusal, eventually sending the mostly unread and skimmed over lot to be burned. He never really noticed the strength or power and change the Party was wielding throughout the country.

A few of the local Party officials paid their courtesy calls on von Belse – it was only proper since the von Belse name, or some variation thereof, had been associated with the building and defense of the town since medieval times. Belse GmbH still controlled the monopoly on all street and building excavations, though it was run by a board of directors and von Belse no longer took an active part in day-to-day operations.

Still, as an absentee owner he became an even more interesting and enticing target for the Party to get something on, not to mention that Belse company equipment and expertise could serve a beneficial purpose to the Party's long-term plans of rebuilding Germany from the ground up, spiritually and materialistically.

The rumors of the rich man's strange daughter caught the Party's attention.

Inga turned her back to Frau Orehstein and uncapped the lipstick tube, staring into the empty top. She glanced at herself in a wall mirror near the front door corridor, then back at the lipstick canister. She shifted the empty tube to the light but could see no deeper than the slight inner circles of the spun-steel tube, the arcing shadow of light dipping into the dark oval as she spun the tube in her fingers.

She looked at the blunted tongue of lipstick in the other canister. Twirling the canister, she easily discovered the revolving bottom piece and was surprised when the blunt red lipstick tongue spat out of the tube. She eyed the red rouge, looked at herself in the mirror, then back at the lipstick.

Somehow she had always known that the colors of women's faces – the red lips, the thin and narrowed brows, the long dark eyelashes, the pink cheeks – were all manufactured and made-up and would not come from age naturally and certainly as something inherent in a woman's development, yet when she looked at herself in mirrors she could never imagine herself as such.

Her face was round, chubby, with high forehead, and her blonde hair was usually pulled back tightly into a matronly braided bun her father combed and positioned each morning. Lately, though, since they began their travels, he had begun to let her wear it loose on her shoulders.

Her eyes were almost round but seemed too close to each other, the blunted tip of her small nose jutting out beneath them, but they were clear and alert. Though she often seemed aloof and unfocused, Inga retained the childlike ability and ease to see things completely, every object in a room at a glance, each person and vehicle and building individually, each blemish and asset in a person's dress and bearing, rather than the important, vital, and necessary while dismissing the rest. Inga was much more aware of things around her than her father or anyone else presumed her to be.

Inga stared in the mirror and raised the lipstick to her mouth. She hesitated, then lifted the rouge to her nose and sniffed. The aroma was pleasant, a bit fresh and fruit-like, yet tinged with a musty mysteriousness, as though beckoning to something once known and cherished but now dimly vague and unremembered.

Inga smiled and put the rouge to her lips. It took four strokes: once on each side of her upper lip, and twice on the bottom. Expertly, as though knowing innately how it should be done, she compressed her lips together and evened the adornment of reddened rouge.

She smiled at herself again and heard footsteps approaching at opposite ends of the room. She turned around. Helmut entered from the hall corridor, gawked at Inga, then looked across the room as von Belse stepped out from the other corridor and also gawked at his daughter.

Inga leered from man to man, and her smile widened.

Helmut heard the rapid steps of von Belse approaching, but he seemed intrigued by a smear of rouge on Inga's jutting front teeth. His penis stiffened; von Belse's fist knocked him to the floor.

28. Krumpf

IT WOULD HAVE been easy for Krumpf and his soldiers to simply march in without a word of explanation – much as they had done throughout the other Inner City buildings – but the entire Austrian operation was not supposed to be an invasion or occupation but a reunification. Though he was never averse to strong-arm tactics, he stressed force only when necessary and even then, only the minimal force to get the job done.

After all, he lectured his men, these are supposed to be our Southern brothers. But being underground for weeks in Vienna, abstaining from good food, good drink, and sex of any kind, it was difficult to come out into the open and be polite and considerate to a brother who had it better than you.

Krumpf knew human nature and his men well enough to know that though the operation was proceeding smoothly, and previously reconnoitered positions had been taken over, bloody tracks were being left behind: men beaten, women molested, goods looted. He saw it in the sudden contentment of his men: they followed orders, acted professionally, but everything was theirs for the taking without a word of reproach or reprimand from their superior.

Krumpf felt no concern over their actions behind his back; they had sworn to die for each other, so what were a few trinkets – a watch, a pastry, a woman – taken along the way? Did Alexander the Great put his men on trial? Caesar? Napoleon? Would the Fuhrer?

Still, for his part, Obersturmfuhrer Krumpf preferred a modicum of respect, an appearance of civility and consideration, even if his politeness was instantly replaced by the crude rabidity of the men behind him. Though he had never expected it of himself, and he had never issued such an order, the word passed among his men that the gnadige Frau, the Fraulein Mistress, Frau Friska Bielinska, was not to be touched...for she was his.

29. Petya and the Dead Boy

PETYA JUMPED BACK at the sight of the soldier entering the lobby below and edged along the corridor wall between the two gates to the different wings. He wanted to run for Helmut but he knew the noise might stir the soldiers' attention. He looked at the grille-gate across from the one enclosing Frau Friska's apartment. The swinging portal seemed shut, but the spring lock had not fully snapped into place and a slight touch in any direction could either bolt the entry shut or spring it fully open.

He heard the soldiers' voices and from somewhere on the street, the sound of glass breaking. He pounced on the unlocked gate, then pushed it open. He jumped, certain he heard shouting from gnadige Frau's apartment across the way – had they gotten up there the same way Helmut had, by a back way? He hesitated, clutching the gate, then went through and edged it as near as possible to the lock but leaving it imperceptibly open as he found it. He darted to a nearby door, which luckily was also unlocked, and stepped in.

A body lay on the bed, clad in a white long-sleeved frilly dress which came to just above the knees, her arms at her sides, her legs in stockings together, but the shod toes crudely splayed to the left and right. Petya knew it was a boy and the boy was dead.

A straight-haired black wig covered his head, the long side strands neatly tucked in behind each ear, and his face was made up in dark mascara, rouge and lipstick. Beneath his chin, a dark brown line circled his neck where a garrote had strangled him. On a chair next to the bed a sprig of flowers lay facing the dead boy, the short stems ragged and torn as though plucked hurriedly from the flower garden in the nearby Volkspark.

Petya stepped closer to the bed and looked down at the dead boy, a tinge of jealously crinkling about his lips at the dead boy's prettiness. He didn't think he had ever met him on the canal or Leopoldstadt and doubted he'd recognize him without the wig and rouge and frilly dress.

He seemed a year or two younger then Petya but had that young-boy pubescent ambiguity of sex. Perhaps in some distant past an epicene being was once allowed the choice of either becoming a boy or becoming a girl. Why be cursed by an accident of birth? Yet another year or two and the indecision would be permanent, the choice irrevocable, the boy either accepting and living his masculinity, or tormenting himself over the lost possibility of his femaleness. The dead boy was beautiful.

Petya stopped down and picked up a flower sprig off the chair, a purple and white sweet William, its small colored petals still fresh and vibrant though the green leaves along the stem were already limp and drooping. He raised the scentless flower to his nose and sniffed. He had once watched a couple meet on a bridge over the Danube canal and saw the man present the woman with just such a sprig of flowers which the woman also sniffed, then rewarded the man with a kiss; hours later he spotted the same couple return over the bridge, the woman still clutching the bouquet, though now halfheartedly, as if the previously welcome gift had become an irritating intrusive burden she could be rid of.

Petya pressed the flower stem into the dead boy's palm, balancing the petals against the white dress, then leaned over and kissed the dead boy's lips. He had expected them to be cold and hard, but was surprised to feel them as faintly warm and soft as his own. Perhaps the red lipstick held off the sense of death, preserving as much of a facade of unreality and pretense as the dead boy's life had been.

Petya stuck out his tongue and inserted it between the red lips. They separated easily, and he ran his tongue along the boy's dry teeth, though unable to taste the enticing flavor of another's watery saliva.

The boy's jaw slacked open; Petya jerked back, peering into the wide open mouth. He was surprised at the unnaturalness of how far back the tongue had curled into the moth, almost disappearing at the back of the throat, the boy's uncared-for teeth dotted with large cavities and protruding almost from the roots at the pale receding gum line. Petya tapped the boy's chin and pushed the mouth shut.

A smudge of the creamy makeup came off onto his palm, and Petya held it to his face, breathing in the frothy aroma. He liked the smell of female makeup, especially the creams, the lipsticks, the lush perfumes he had lavished himself in last night. Until, that is, Frau Friska came in and told him he was making himself grotesque instead of attractive, repulsive rather than enticing, a caricature of a girl rather then a real one. She took over and wiped the excess off and eased him into a more natural-looking femininity.

Petya wiped the tan makeup off on his brown short pants and sat down on the bed, bracing his arm over the dead boy's waist. The name Stefan suddenly came to mind, but it was followed by a slew of other names, male and female, and he doubted he could place the boy correctly. He had never given much thought to the boys he met: they came, they went, they came back, they disappeared, and no one took much of an interest in where they had been or what finally happened to them.

Often, a mutilated body was found in the Prater or in the Vienna Hills, but once it was discerned the body was that of a street urchin with unknown parents or other ties, who probably had a hand in some murder somewhere himself, the authorities shelved the case as though the murder of a child was no more important or significant than spitting on a sidewalk. If anyone had come to the canal to investigate and able to keep the children together long enough to question them, by then another child would have come and gone, disappeared or reappeared, and who knew who was who, much less what anyone's name was.

Petya sighed and leaned down over the dead boy, reaching up for a small breast. It was soft and pliant – Frau Friska having had rubber pads sewn and molded into the brassieres the boys wore to give their breasts more authenticity and fullness – and Petya felt himself grow hard. The last man he was with before he was sent to the reformatory had Petya pretend to be asleep while the man hovered about, fully clothed and masturbating, stealthily feeling a thigh or raising a skirt, and darting away each time Petya shifted about in his comatose act.

Petya let go of the breast and lifted the boy's dress. His brown stockings were loose around his thighs and it was obvious someone had dressed him after his death. Petya shook his head and stood up. The brown stockings were obviously not only the wrong size but also did not match the boy's white dress and shoes.

“Idiots!” Petya mumbled. He shook his head once more and glanced at a small cabinet in a corner of the room. Since the cubicles were used on different nights by different boys, the dresses and other clothing were kept in a master closet in Friska's apartment. The various undergarments were stored in the rooms, most of the boys being roughly the same small size and weight. They usually fit into the panties and bras with only minor adjustments.

Petya pulled open a drawer and in a glance spotted the right size stockings to fit the boy, folded neatly in quarters, the toes perfectly aligned on top of the folds, and white, to match the dress and shoes. Petya returned to the bed, removed the boy's shoes, unsnapped the garters under the dress, and rolled the unseemly-colored hose down his legs. Once more Petya's penis snapped with arousal, and he lightly brushed his fingers along the downy blonde hairs of the dead boy's bare legs.

He sighed, then fluffed out a white stocking, crimped it with his fingers down to the toes and drew it over the boy's foot, pulling it snugly up his leg. He attached the garter, bracing the metal pin over the top of the stocking and pushing in the rubber nodule from inside the hose and looping it in place, then pulled the second stocking up the other leg. The white stockings were wrapped evenly about the boy's thighs, the frilly garters inching higher up the legs and easing into the bottoms of his panties, his shriveled penis and scrotum bulbed and rounded at the crotch.

Petya sighed and touched his own crotch, squeezing and tugging his erection, then stooped down and snuggled the face between the dead boy's legs, running his tongue along the outline of the limp penis puff. He kissed the boy's penis, then leaned back up and lowered the white dress over the boy's legs. He stood up, readjusting the flowers in the boy's hand, then stooped once more.

“I love you...dead boy,” he whispered.

The cubicle door open behind him.

30. Faggots!

THE SOLDIER FELT the blow to his head and looked at Kurt's face beneath him, misunderstanding the shudder which had rocked his head and torso. He was struck again and collapsed atop Kurt's lifeless body.

“Get him off!” screamed the officer who had ordered Kurt's mutilation.

But it was difficult to free the soldier off the corpse; not only had he twisted his arms under and around Kurt's shoulders, clutched tightly the ripped shirt-collar in his fists, but his torso also seemed to be stuck to the bloody mess of Kurt's crotch.

Three soldiers maneuvered the unconscious soldier off the dead body, balancing him until he was dislodged from the corpse. He slipped down onto the floor. One of the other soldiers erupted into uncontrollable gags and heaves at the sight of the bloody erection plopping out of the mucous-filled cavity.

“Bring him to!” snapped the officer. Then he glared in the disgust at the heaving soldier. “And get him out of here!”

“This one's dead,” said a military medic, examining Kurt and holding open one eyelid. He touched the exposed eyeball with his finger, waited for a reaction, and shrugged. “Dead,” he repeated, and shrugged again.

“Well, this one isn't!” blurted the officer, eyeing the soldier on the floor. “Get him up!”

The soldier began to come to. He gazed stupidly about, his eyes watery and unfocused, his head jarred and buzzing from the blows. His hand automatically and protectively reached for his penis.

“Get him up!” the officer screamed, unbuckling his pistol from a side holster.''

The other soldiers pulled him off the floor and leaned him against thr table the dead man lay on. They quickly stepped aside.

“Let go,” the officer said quietly.

The dazed soldier blinked at the gun aimed at him; he squeezed his penis.

“I said let go!” the officer repeated.

The soldier suddenly looked about again, as though slowly comprehending his situation, and moved his hand off his penis. A broken sigh shook his lips and he raised his hand, looking curiously at his bloody fingers. He glanced down at his crotch and once more reached for his penis. He glanced up at the officer's gun; a single vein puffed out on the inside of the officer's wrist.

The soldier fell, the bullet tearing into the back of his hand, slicing through his penis, striking a pelvic bone, and exploding out of his left buttock. The stench of urine and shit swooned over the room; the gagging soldier vomited. The officer took a step to the shot soldier, leaned over him, and pressed the gun barrel to his temple; he fired again, then straightened up and re-holstered his gun.

“Schwuler!” he cursed, and clicked the holster strap over his gun. “Faggot!” He looked at the other dead body on the table top. “I want that shirt off him and burned,” he ordered. “His, too,” he gestured to the dead soldier on the floor.

“And get him out of here!” he shouted, drawing back his leg and kicking at the gagging soldier. The soldier jumped up and bolted out of the room.

“I want a detail,” the officer said, “to accompany me to where this faggot worked. Where there's one, there's always another.”

He stared at Kurt and spotted a swastika stickpin in the lapel of his shirt collar. He spat in disgust, then pulled the pin out and crushed it under his boot heel.

“Burn these faggots!” he ordered, and left the room.

31. Kimono

KAUFMANN KNEW BETTER than to be taken in by his own melodramatic wrist-slashing. The cutting was done, severing veins and tendons – which puzzled him as to what they were and how they had entered his body – but he knew suicide only succeeds when done in solitude and if the suicide remains in the solitude long enough for death to shuffle its slow approach.

As it was, Kaufmann wanted to be found, certain that someone would use the bathroom eventually – he even left the door unbolted; why break good wood and locks? They'd see the blood, see his wrists, make the connection, and lavish their pity and compassion on him.

It had been a lifelong pursuit, wanting people to like him and care for him. Kaufmann had that almost selfless insight into others to discern quickly their wants and needs, and he acted on those wishes and desires as though it would elicit in turn their respect, concern, and interest in him.

It never did. People simply tolerated him, taking his cultured gentility and Old World bearing as a remnant of a different time, worth preserving, but also worth taking advantage of. It was quickly obvious to the people he came in contact with that Kaufmann's noblesse of gesture went beyond the Viennese cliché of Servus – being ready to serve, which everyone in Vienna mouthed but rarely gave evidence of – to a pathological need of being ordered to serve. Kaufmann had always been told what to do, and he always obeyed.

He winced from the raised voices in the other room and stared at the shreds of a torn towel laced and tied around his wrist. Von Belse certainly knew what he was doing, rinsing the wound, tying a tourniquet, ordering the old man to stop being so squeamish, and if there had been a medical suture kit available Kaufmann was certain von Belse would have known how to use that, too.

Still, he had not expected von Belse's fat daughter to stumble upon him, or the old woman Orehstein to shriek out as she did. He had purposely used the bathroom in Frau Friska's bedroom rather then commode in the passageway near the front door, assuming Friska would be the one to find him.

In the three years since he had become an almost nightly patron of the hotel, slowly squandering more of his investments, holdings, and savings than were coming in, he had grown enamored by and attracted to the gnadige Frau more than any other woman he had come across. Of course Kaufmann never had much need of actual women, finding their physicality repulsive and threatening, but was secretly enticed by them at a distance: their clothes, their hair, their perfumes, their looks. It was impossible for him to look into a mirror and not see himself similarly made-up and dressed and scented.

It was presumed by his acquaintances that in private he did just that. Kaufmann didn't; he found others willing to do it for him. He had already attracted the attention of neighbors by the almost nightly appearance of a different boy at his front door – “just business messengers and clerks,” he'd explain to the snooping landlady. “Gute Nacht, Frau Wirtin.”

The discovery of Frau Friska's (mentioned to him by a boy who had refused to preen himself into a girl and said sarcastically, “Try the Hotel Redl...”) was a revelation to him. He pressed the disgusted boy for more information concerning Hotel Redl – facts, times, names. “Are you sure? Are you certain?”

The next night Kaufmann presented himself at the hotel and requested a room, preferably on the second floor, winking and making it obvious he knew all about the service provided. Afterwards it became an almost nightly excursion to the hotel, as though he were reporting for a job, coming home late, but looking and feeling fitter then he had in years.

Of course the landlady now gossiped he had a girlfriend and even leaped out of bed to spy through her peephole perchance he brought her home at dawn; he never did, leaving her at the hotel, some nights two or three in one cubicle.

Kaufmann jumped; something crashed in the other room and he heard von Belse's raised voice and cursing and a woman screaming.

Idiots! he thought. Why did Frau Friska get involved with idiots? She could have let him stay up here all alone. Why did she have to bring everyone up? Guests she had never seen before. How much money had he spent at the hotel over three years? There had never been any let up. No discounts. No free nights. No holiday treats. Not even when he arrived with Christmas presents for everyone.

But he had always tried too hard. Too hard to please. To be accepted. To be acknowledged as someone who had an effect on people's lives beyond the mere intrusion of his presence. Yet it always turned out the same. Filled with self-consciousness, meekness, doubts, he found it hard to imagine a life otherwise. He always hated himself for his acquiescence, vowing to stand up to those who used him, took advantage of him, intruded on his ready and innocent goodwill, but the few times he did protest, demanding due recompense and respect, he was brushed aside as though his outrage was out of line and a totally unjustified attack on the other.

He had waited too long. Been patient for the wrong reasons. It had turned too late to even stand up for himself. But then Kaufmann didn't care. If he had raised his voice at the first slight or insult, the first outrage, the first word or act of debasement, he would not have remained mute and compliant at harsher words and actions to follow from still others.

Kaufmann often pondered how people he came across, strangers to those in his past, treated him with the same disrespect and un-civility as though they were acquaintances of the past one. Had word gotten out? Why was it difficult to meet anyone impartial?

He heard more raised voices but he knew it best to stay where he was. He doubted the Nazi gangsters had tracked him down and burst into Frau Friska's apartment – the only one cursing and threatening was von Belse. He knew that if he went out dressed as he was, he'd only stir up more. The man had been outraged by Kaufmann's clothes, ordering him to take off the dress even as he was tending his wrist. But when he finally grabbed the back of the torn dress – Kaufmann had ripped both shoulders forcing the dress on and snagged the zipper up the back – and Kaufmann began to flail his arms and fell off the toilet seat, the dress falling over his waist, the white girl-stockings barely covering his knees, his erect penis poking out off the top of his over-strained white girl-panties, von Belse surged out of the room in disgust.

It was the first time Kaufmann had ever put on actual female garments – he had once fabricated a bosom out of towels on himself and circled his arm and legs around piled pillows as though a body was laid atop him – and he regretted not having done it sooner.

I could have been a beautiful woman.

No wonder the boys at the hotel enjoyed dressing up so. No wonder Frau Friska readily accepted his offer to pay for extra outfits if the boys played roles for him: uniformed school girls, convent maidens, naive and innocent flirts. It didn't matter which, he left it up to the boy (or girl) of the night to surprise him, and he was never disappointed.

There is a basic allure to feminine clothing and behavior which Kaufmann, as did Frau Friska, her boys, and her clients, found to be as vital and necessary an expression of their personalities as others expressed themselves in brutish masculinity.

He once read in a pamphlet Frau Friska sold him – from her usual stock of books and photos and journals from Berlin – that homo-sexuality was a rejection of the cultural demands of the modern age to mold one into a specific role no matter what the longings of one's sex may be, and the more tempestuous the times a society lived through, the more evidence of homosexuality there would be as people rejected their ordered roles and took up once more attuned to their inner sexual and psychological longings.

Is that why he suddenly dressed himself as a girl? Because of the well-ordered invasion of the Nazis? Would altering his sex save him from what he was? But what did he really know of the other sex or femininity? Was his desire for boys as girls actually a displaced longing for a compliant female, one who would dress and act as he wished and ordered her to?

If perhaps he had been more forceful and decisive as a young man, he might have married, raised children, become a father and family man. But that was never the image or quest of his younger years. Instead he found most of the females presented to him at balls and dinners as pathetic creatures who flitted their eyes from male to male as easily and alluringly as they pretended to gaze at him. It was all a game to become a wife before the term of spinster was muttered too often behind one's back.

Kaufmann could have had his pick of any of them; he was wealthy (inheriting, though later mismanaging and squandering the newspaper empire had created), handsome in an old European way and keeping up with the fashion dictates of Paris or Geneva. Yet for all his elegance, riches, and appeal, he remained rather aloof and dull, unable to carry a conversation or give compliments beyond the basic preliminaries, refusing to be drawn out, unable to ask questions, propose dates, or engage in small talk. He was, however, clever (or frightened enough) to back off when contact with a prospective match became too intimate or too close.

Kaufmann was easily, though regrettably, written off as an unsuitable match by resentful time-conscious mothers, yet he remained bemused at how easily and quickly a young girl who had seemed to be so interested and enamored of him got married to another once he was out of the picture.

Love with a woman? Kaufmann always laughed; nothing but drivel they could easily speak, promise forever, then just as readily offer to another.

The loud voices and cursing from the other room stopped. Kaufmann sighed and crossed his legs, tugging the dress hem to cover his thighs. It was still too short, his knobby knee jutting out, the white frill lacing around a hairy shank. He looked ridiculous, and he knew it. Von Belse was right; he should get out of the clothes he'd found in Friska's bathroom. But then what? Put his own back on?

He glanced at his clothes on the floor – the trousers, jacket, shirt and tie, socks and undergarments – which in the past few year he had worn almost daily (having pawed all his better clothes). He washed his own linens, and worried as to how long he could hold onto the suit before the already over-frayed fabric gave way fully and separated to shreds. He never wanted to wear it again.

He shook his head and looked around the elegant bathroom. A Japanese kimono hung on a hanger near the door, and Kaufmann suddenly sat up and smiled.

Of course, he thought, that's what I need! A woman's garment!

He stood up and went to the kimono. The blue silk fabric shimmered in long muted weaves of light and shadow, the flowered embroidery lacing up the long sleeves into a lush bouquet at the chest and shoulders, a fire-breathing dragon rearing up the back.

Kaufmann reached up for the kimono: a spasm tore from his elbow to the slashed wrist and his arm buckled and shriveled against his chest and belly, his hand and fingers dangling limply. He knew he wouldn't be able to get out of the little girl's dress. He reached for the kimono with his good arm and pulled if off the hanger. He held it to his face and breathed in the remnants of perfume and sweat; a whitish of arc of dried perspiration circled the armpit of each sleeve.

Kaufmann slung the open kimono over his shoulder and slipped his , good arm into a sleeve, the collarless satin brushing his neck like the remembered touch of a lover, a mother, a caring friend. Kaufmann reached over his head and tugged the kimono onto his other shoulder and draped it over his folded arm and bandaged wrist. He pulled the kimono together over his chest, one empty sleeve flapping back and forth, and succeeded in lacing a wide obi-sash around his waist, though unable to fully tie a holding knot.

The sash and kimono came undone. Kaufmann sighed, clutching his bad arm, and sat back down. He crossed his legs, tugged down his dress, and began to rock his legs back and forth, swaying on the toilet seat.

He suddenly heard high-heeled steps crossing the other room. He jumped up, ripping the towel-bandage off his wrist, and inserted the hurt bleeding hand into the empty kimono sleeve. He swung at the obi-sash and successfully tied a loose knot around his waist.

Frau Friska entered the bathroom.

32. Photograph

WANDA VOMITED. The vomit rose up her chest, punched past her throat, and spewed out of her mouth and nostrils, splashing and spraying the side of the white toilet bowl.

For a moment she relaxed, easing back on her haunches, then gagged and retched again, her head bobbing over the bowl. It was always the same: a man, his erection, and vomit. Not that she had any qualms about a man eyeing her breasts and growing hard, especially when she exposed herself for him, but the thought of actual sex with a man, of bodies touching beyond distant exposure, of an erect penis approaching, pushing into her, pulling out and pulsing back in, was what brought about the nausea and sickness.

She gagged and heaved into the bowl again. It wasn't so much the sight of male erections which brought about her disgust – Helmut's was stiff each time he saw her, but his was safe and she always laughed it off – but the actual touch and feel and taste of one. No way!

She could walk through Vienna for days and weeks ignoring admiring eyes and evident bulges in pants, desperate leers and exposed cocks. Sometimes she paused in a quiet park lane to smoothen an over-strained blouse or adjust a shoulder strap as a masturbator hovered nearby, stroking himself and gawking, disbelieving or too afraid to approach, until he doubled over as Wanda smirked, puffed out her chest, and continued on her way.

She had always been aware of and enjoyed men's attentions and desire for her as well as her own unresponsive but brazen teasing of them. She made no pretense to disguise her allure or femininity, yet only a few men had even succeeded in actual intercourse with her. Of these the majority had raped her before she was old enough to know of her right to resist, while the rest were simply lucky to have come upon her when she was hungry, destitute, and willing to do anything for a meal, a bed, or a bath of warm water on her face and body.

It would have been easy to join the ranks of girls on the Kartnerstrasse, stand in doorways, wink from windows, barter flesh for shillings, and survive with the minimum effort or exertion to earn one's bread. But Wanda couldn't do it. To willingly lay back, even for pay, or bend over and get fucked by a man was as degrading as being a favorite sheep or sow of some demented farm boy.

Sex with a man had always been brutal: a ripped blouse, torn off drawers, a punch to the face, a shoved-in dick, and a stream of piss as if a reward to her battered torso and thighs. Even when they were kind, gentle and considerate, their kindness reeked of abasement and purchase.

Wanda gagged once more, a sharp, buckling dry-heave, then sat up and wiped her face. The rumbling in her belly had started as soon as she went upstairs, safe from the eyes, the leers, the lusts of men.

Why didn't she vomit in front of them and splatter their bulges, disgust their bulges, dispel their craving? No, most likely they'd wallow in female vomit as though it were thickened vaginal fluid – Did I make you come, dearie?

Wanda wiped her brow and thought of the officer. From his insignia she suspected he was of minor rank – no matter how courteously Frau Friska treated him – with overblown pretensions of self-importance. He was probably overseeing the stay of even more minor officials being put up in a minor hotel while the rest of the Nazi entourage were ensconced at the Imperial or Sacher hotels on the Ringstrasse.

Probably a bunch of secretaries with typewriters, thought Wanda, and brightened instantly.

The girl in her flat was a secretary (had been a secretary, that is, smiled Wanda) who resisted the constant advances of her supervisor, finally a little too forcefully, sending the pompous idiot to his knees and clutching his groin. She was out of a job as soon as he straightened and regained his breath. She sat fuming on a park bench as Wanda waked past admiring the meaty calves and ankles on the pretty, chubby girl.

As much as male erections were an inevitability in Wanda's day, so too, at the sight of the angry girl Wanda felt a sudden slight hardening and tensing between her legs, the folds of her vagina drawing in, tightening, shivering, and loosening in a tingle of moisture and wetness. She collapsed at the opposite end of the girl's bench.

It didn't take long to invite the girl for coffee at a cafe, and just a bit longer to further invite her to Wanda's flat. The girl moved in the same evening, and though Wanda had often brought females to her place, it was the first time anyone had actually moved in for a stay of more than a night or two.

After two weeks the girl was bristling from Wanda's possessiveness and control. Fortunately for Wanda, her short work hours gave her the minimum amount of absence from the sleeping girl in the morning, four hours from six to ten. Even that brief leave was too much for Wanda's jealousy, which spun into conspiracies and betrayals, abandonment and desertion.

Wanda carried a small photograph of the girl in her pocket, a palm-sized snippet cut off from a larger picture. It showed the girl, short-haired, smiling, one side of her mouth down-turned in contrast to the other uplifted side. A dark-sleeved arm, obviously a man's, scissored at the wrist and bicep, was draped over her shoulder. The front of her blouse was unbuttoned at the top of her chest, but the picture was also cut just below the too-daring too-low open blouse. Wanda was certain the girl was posing with her breasts exposed; a corner of a rumpled unmade bed peeped out above the arm and side of the girl's face.

Wanda had come across the photograph the first night the girl stayed with her, while rifling the girl's belongings. Wanda immediately pocketed the small memento, pulling it out countless times during the day to examine the pretty girl's round face, the eyes, the skewed smile, the teeth, the chin, the bared neck and chest, the arm, the bed, the cut edges of the photographic paper, and pouring over the back as if for promiscuous clues and hints.

The slut! Wanda always cursed, shoving the photograph back in her pocket.

What else had been in that photo? Wanda imagined, If she was showing off her beasts, was the arm revealing his dick? Was the girl holding it? Was her smile skewed from swirling a mouthful of scum?

Wanda gagged again ad spat into the bowl. She was already more than half an hour late in returning home; the girl would probably be stirring by now, rubbing her eyes, expecting coffee, irritated at any noise or movement, and angrily pushing away Wanda's hands groping for her breasts and thighs.

Wanda got off the floor and flushed the toilet, then rinsed her face and looked about the small slop-closet/commode where she kept her cart and towels and cleaning supplies. The girl suggested that even though she had no experience, perhaps she, too, could get a job as a hotel maid and had prodded Wanda into making inquiries.

“What could be so hard,” she asked, “in cleaning a room or making a bed?”

Wanda, frowning at the disarray her apartment had taken since the girl moved in, shrugged and said simply, “We'll see.”

But Wanda knew the girl was getting restless; wanting a job was just the first step of going away, just as all the others had done. It never seemed enough to simply provide for them, give them a bed, a room, a pampering most seldom had; she was still faced with accusations: I'm bored. We never do anything....You never take me anywhere....

People do not want love, Wanda concluded, but diversions and amusements.

Let's go and eat! Let's see that film! Let's hear that new band! A bustle of constant chatter and activity. Let's do everything and maybe Love will leave us alone.... Where are the great love stories of a couple enamored and sustained in themselves? Was there love?

Wanda dried her face, straightened her blouse and bosom, brushed the sides of her thick red hair, and felt the blunted edges of the girl's photograph in her pocket.

She was jealous. There were no photographs of her and no one had ever requested one as a keepsake. Sure, somewhere perhaps one or two still existed, in a family pose, serious, the males self-conscious, the woman terrified and wide-eyed, the children looking elsewhere or inappropriately leering or gesturing as the image was taken. Perhaps a photograph closeted in a memory or cabinet of a wizened grandmother or a great-aunt or uncle, seldom gazed at, fading, curling at the edges, its underside stuck to another forgotten photograph of other images, older and younger, some now missing from latter pictures, other new arrivals now standing or being held up in their places. All had that guilty look of never belonging, of never finding one's place or proper pose, as though the photograph would serve as a record and evidence of their passage, their lives, their hopes, in a fleeting instant of time, as fleeting and insignificant as the frightened faces staring out from the photographic measure.

Wanda left the girl's photo in her pocket and put on her coat. Even if the girl decided to leave, two weeks had been a long time, and it been worth it. She left her coat unbuttoned – never knowing what gauntlet of leering soldiers she might have to push her way through – and stepped out to the hall. A second later and she would have missed the hint of a dress moving into a cubicle at the far end of the hall. It was certainly too early for any of the boys to have arrived and it was the cubicle Suze was in. Wanda hurried down the hall after the vision.

33. As in Business

VON BELSE KNEW he had acted cowardly and impetuously. Not since his student days had he struck a man, his class giving him the natural authoritative demeanor the lower classes passively complied with. Seeing Helmut's head snap to the side as his body sagged brought back the immediate regret and disgust von Belse felt even as a young man with the sensation of flesh striking flesh.

Physically he was much smaller than the broadly-built Helmut and in a prolonged fight the other man would certainly tower over him, but what alarmed and frightened von Belse most was how easily he had lost control of his anger and struck the man unexpectedly from the side much as a coward, a drunken student, or someone from the lower classes would do.

As an adult he had never thought he could act unfairly with anyone or take advantage of a suddenly revealed weakness, his sense of fair play allowing him and his opponent equal chance for success. He never took advantage of a man's weakness as a liability, even overlooking personal defects in character which had nothing to do with the negotiations or contract talks at hand. As in business, where von Belse always assumed he could face circumstances squarely and evenly without concealed maneuvers or underhanded stratagems entering into play, so, too, in life.

But Germany had changed, and fair play could never be a political reality under the new regime. Though he had sneered at the Nazis' visions of a new Germany, dismissed their requests for his company's technical expertise, and remained unimpressed by their posturing, von Belse could not dismiss the reality of power and the temptation of determined men to use that power.

He may have ignored their vision of a new rebuilt Germany, shrugging off their innuendoes of the grandiose wealth that could be made by his company's participation, but he was not so deaf or naive to think that independence or unwillingness to go along could remain respected much longer.

In his usual sense of fair play, von Belse committed the fatal flaw of expecting the same from his opponents. Though he acted respectfully and with decorum in his meeting with the local Nazi officials, he was certain something was being skirted about, hinted at, but left unsaid.

As a guilty man with a guilty conscious, von Belse's imagination and paranoia stirred him into actions he knew were as unreasonable as any he had ever undertaken. He dismissed servants, boarded up windows, ignored company meetings, lost interest in the changes of the outside world, and did all he could to shield Inga and himself from the curiosity of the outside world.

What he was doing was a crime, and he knew it. Knew it was a despicable moral crime and knew the penalties for that crime, official and self-imposed. Each time he approached his daughter, seeing only the desire and budding womanhood of a confused child, he did so with as much tenderness and gentleness as he would in wooing a willing but still-coy woman, being careful not to prompt too quickly, respecting her resistance, acquiescing to her reluctance. Each time he began anew and with successful patience attained more

intimate squeezings, more daring kisses, and further disrobings, finally entering and erupting inside her, clenching his eyes not from the torrent or release into the conquered female, but from the image of his daughter's face staring blankly up at him.

Though he would leap off and flee the room, he would have to return and redress her, for the third or fourth time that day, re-explain the lie of what they had done, and avoid looking into that expressionless face and eyes as seemingly unconnected with her body and feelings as von Belse had disconnected their lives from the world.

It was more than a crime, it was depravity. It was this same withdrawal and flight from daily life which led to his undoing and physical flight from Germany. The company board of directors, not even giving notice to the owner von Belse, after outraged pressure from Berlin finally voted to commit Belse GmbH to assist the Nazis in all aspects of their plans for a new Germany, in peace or in war.

As an aside, but carefully worded in the meeting minutes, they also voted to strip von Belse of his authority over them due to reasons of State, reasons of his health, and “other personal reasons.” It was a gentlemanly way of keeping Inga's name un-besmirched and unsullied. Though there had been no direct threats afterwards, no suggestion of any interference in his personal life, no attempt to touch his wealth or garnish his earnings, von Belse's paranoia and suspicion convinced him to flee.

Immediately. Under the ruse of visiting his son in Hamburg, von Belse with his daughter was last observed in the Karlsruhe station with two small satchels, as though off on a weekend jaunt, waiting impatiently for the train. Once on, von Belse discarded their Hamburg tickets, purchased new ones, and the next morning crossed the Austrian border at Salzburg on a Vienna-bound train.

Von Belse looked down at Helmut where he still lay on the floor. “I'm sorry,” said von Belse, shaking his head and sighing, obviously disgusted with himself. “I do not know what came over me. I will accede to any judgment or recompense you wish.”

Helmut shook his head once, as though to dispel the surprise of the blow, then grunted and straightened himself up. His eyes were misty and a slight swelling gleamed on his high cheekbone where he had been hit. The buzzing in his bad ear, the struck one, usually constant but bearable, now echoed and spun down the side of his face from the temple to his lower jaw, then loomed up again. He squinted at von Belse and wiped his eye. He wasn't angry; he knew his flirtation with the girl was too bold and brazen, especially with her father so close by. He shook his head again and blinked hie eyes.

Von Belse clicked his heels loudly and suddenly looked about the room. His eyes widened. “Inga!” he cried. “Where's Inga?”

Helmut tried to grab him before he darted away.

“Inga!” von Belse shrieked, his voice echoing down the corridor through the open apartment door. “Inga!”

Helmut sprinted after him, drawing his gun from his pocket.

34. Vienna Gloriosa

FRAU FRISKA BIELINSKA entered the bathroom and looked at the ludicrous Kaufmann. Her talk with Oberstrumfuhrer Krumpf had put her in a good mood. He didn't care about the hotel; it was access to the roof he and his men wanted, nothing else. But why? She didn't care, because his eyes above the brandy glass, his wet lips as he smiled, his ease and comfort in her presence made Friska as muddled as if he had asked for the world and for her to accompany her through it.

There comes that hesitant certainty in a couple when they both know, perhaps at the same instant, even if they just met, that they are destined for sex together, that the stars have it in for them, the fates, the gods, the furies. There is no denying or fleeing from it. Left alone, with no intrusion, help, or prodding, they'll act out that fleeting incident of the universe. That's exactly what Friska knew she had to avoid, to run from, to flee and deny the reality of, before imagery exploded and reality revealed itself in outrage and disgust.

Love or lust? It wasn't as simple as that; at times both had to be denied.

Friska frowned and shook her head. She had always been certain that the presumption of gender could easily be altered if done so at the right moment; but for Kaufmann it was much too late. She had seen it with the boys who came to her, forsook their street clothes, and donned the dresses which turned them into girls and altered their mannerisms, their expressions, their existence.

The failures were the ones who overdid it (such as Petya last night), boys who really had no concept of femininity but acted as they presumed a girl would act or should act, flitting around or over-stressing a sexuality which did not exist but in the imagination of lustful boys. What they were portraying was not a girl, but a masturbatory fantasy of what they wanted to fuck!

It was difficult to judge which boys could be successfully turned into girls, the evident small-framed timid ones becoming unappealing grotesques under the makeup and satins, while the gruff and bullying ones often melded into the security and safety of a new identity, a new appearance, a new sexuality, as though their re-emergence as females allowed them the freedom to dispel and forsake the falseness of being male. It all depended on the psychological need of a hidden personality to come forth, not necessarily a homosexual one, but a personality that yearned for a change in its lifestyle and existence.

It is difficult to give up oneself, and Frau Friska knew that many of her boys were successful just for that reason: they gave themselves over to their girlishness because it gave them a chance to rise out of the failure of their masculinity. For many it was their masculinity which had been the real disguise.

Homosexual boys did not last long, their need and appeal as boys lost under the flurry and confusion of skirts. The boys just in it for the money and gifts also quickly departed, their inability to alter their maleness only turning them into caricatures of impatient and hurried street tramps, who, as true females, were as much failures in their allure and femininity as the boys who mimicked them.

The turnover at Frau Friska's had always been large, yet in the past year she succeeded in maintaining her cubicles with an accomplished set of boys – probably the best she'd seen since Berlin – and a few of them were so adept and natural in their femininity that they dared accompany her on her walks along the Ring and into shops on the Graben and Kartnerstrasse, where they selected clothes and accessories as expertly as any lifelong-trained female.

Frau Friske was proud of the naturalness of her boys, and just as she had long ago stopped thinking of herself as a male, so too would she gaze upon her favorite boys and see them only as they were, true females, females which she had nurtured to come forth. Still, the only way these females could hope to remain as such was through the selling of their assumed sex.

Without the hotel there was little chance they, or Frau Friska, could continue their identities as females – what society allows its citizens the right of gender-alterations? Without the hotel what could Frau Friska have done otherwise? Secretarial typist? Cafe waitress? A beautician perhaps?

The only thing she had ever known was the selling of her body disguised as a woman. She doubted she could do it dressed as a man; could she sit on the benches of the Prater or saunter the Leopoldstadt or prowl the restrooms of the railroad stations and entice a man of approach? Probably, yet she had never done so. Her attraction to men was not homosexual; she did want a man who was interested in her as a man, but as a woman, and who recognized the different femininity of this woman.

Except for Helmut, who never groped further than her false breast, and a few of the boys, who were as shy of her as they would a brazen older sister. Friska had never had a man as a woman would: there were no lovers, there were no mates. The clients who came to the hotel, though they deferred to her as a woman, simple treated her respectfully as a mere go-between to the girls in the upstairs cubicles, much as one would be aware of but immediately dismiss a waitress or shop-girl. Was she getting too old? Too tired-looking? Destined to be alone?

Friska looked away from Kaufmann and shut the bathroom door behind her. This is getting too ridiculous. Love-struck soldiers downstairs, idiots upstairs. She was losing control of the situation; events were playing themselves out and she was unable to steer them to her benefit and will.

It was much like the Ukraine, where she lived as a little girl, like Poland and Berlin: you lived your daily life, pretended to a sense of accomplishment and peace, but always the outside world had other plans.

“History in flux,” she had heard somewhere, and the phrase always came to her when some new outrage was noted in Germany, Russia, Europe, or the rest of the world. The problem with “history in flux” was that it was always the people who had little awareness or concern for the mobility of history who were most affected. What was “history in flux” if not people in turmoil? History was but a man, or a few men at most, who put their vision and will on the people and created the flux and turmoil and wars which obliterate the past and present and trod their historic mark on the future.

If History was anything, people or a single man, it was always pain. As soon as one sensed being a part of history, of being alive in historic times, one also sensed one's mortality and death and insignificance in the face of the history in flux. There was nothing that could to change or alter its path. History, by its very connotation as a word, signified Death, the passage of the living and their time into a memory for the future. This would have importance only as something to be examined and in which mistakes would always be repeated. Once again history was stirring, and stirring in a deadly way.

Frau Friska looked back at Kaufmann. The old man, wizened from his blood drain, stood in her kimono and white dress Petya had worn last night. Kaufmann's skinny legs shaking as if from cold or fear, a slow steady drip of blood falling from his wrist to the floor.

Kaufmann blushed and turned away from Friska, who frowned. She had always suspected his enamorment of her – love-struck fools are always so obvious – but she could never feel the same attraction for him.

He was probably in his late sixties, more then twenty years older then she. All that Frau Friska had come to despise in men was evident and stressed in his daily demeanor; the high-thinking of himself, the over-concern with fashion and appearance, the rehearsed posturing and facial expressions, the self-control and aloofness of his bearing, as though he was doing the world a favor by his mere presence in it.

This attitude was typical of most men who visited the hotel, and over the years Friska had accepted it as symbolic of old Viennese class and status, a charming remnant of the past, of Vienna Gloriosa, but it was ludicrous to watch Kaufmann exhibit his pompous self in his poverty and neglect. Friska hated him more for that. His world had fallen apart – destroyed no less by his own inability to halt his own depravity and lust – yet he kept up his image of himself as though nothing had changed, and he expected the world conform to his needs and tastes.

Friska shook her head and approached Kaufmann. He shriveled before her.

“You killed Suze,” she said calmly.

Kaufmann's eyes widened. His mouth grimaced. “I did not,” he sobbed and sank to the toilet seat.

Friska grabbed his hair and snapped his head back. “You murdered Suze!” she glared.

Kaufmann groaned and twisted on his seat. “I did not,” he sobbed. “I loved him.”

Friska let go of his hair and slapped him.

He rocked on the toilet seat and his torso swayed up and down. “I loved him so much!”

“Enough to kill her?” Friska asked.

Kaufmann's eyes widened. Friska winced at the hate in them.

He said I was old!” Kaufmann jerked upright, glaring at her. “Old and ugly!”

“You are old and ugly,” Friska snapped and struck his face again.

Kaufmann whimpered and began to weep. Friska stepped away from him and looked about the room. Besides the dress and kimono, Kaufmann hadn't touched anything else except a couple of wigs. Friska tossed the bloody one into the sink and arranged the other, a blonde bob, on a wooden wig-mold.

She went to the small frosted-glass window in one corner of the room and peered through an almost indiscernible slash in a bottom section of the window that she had scraped away years ago. She squinted out at the street and cursed. At the Mozarthaus an enormous photograph of Adolf Hitler had been hoisted up and positioned over the bust of the composer, the statue probably used as fulcrum to keep the photo balanced in place.

Friska cursed again and turned away from the desecration. She glared at Kaufmann, and saw his arm draped into the bathtub at the side of the toilet bowl. He continued sobbing and rocking back and forth. Friska sighed and went to her vanity table. She glanced at herself in the mirror, brushed back her hair, then picked up a small jar of makeup, a tube of lipstick, and a tin of eyebrow-darkening kohl. She snatched the blonde wig off the wooden wig-mold and returned to Kaufmann.

“Jesus!” she said, looking into the blood-splattered tub. She sighed, and braced the wig under her arm.

“Lift up your head,” she told Kaufmann.''

Kaufmann looked up at her, his eyes tearing, his face wet. “I loved her so very much,” he sobbed.

“I know,” said Friska, stooping down and wiping his face with a loose section of the kimono. “I will make you look young.” She opened a small jar of makeup, pouring out a dab of tan cream into her palm and applying it to Kaufmann's grizzled and lined face. “I will make you young.” she repeated. “Young and beautiful.”

Kaufmann beamed up at her, sniffled, and smiled meekly. “I love you, too,” he mumbled, and relaxed in the soothing coolness of the makeup.

Frau Friska frowned, tenderly running her moist, makeup-dabbed fingers along his tired, old and ugly face. She didn't say a thing.

35. Police Inspector Gusthausen

THE AUTOMOBILE SPED down Gurtle Road, its twin swastika standards flapping stiffly in the morning breeze; a police wagon followed behind. A detail of Austrian policemen, Austrian Brownshirt volunteers, and a few German soldiers made up the rear, clutching their rifles, smoking cigarettes, and staring at the gray buildings and rooftops of the fabled city.

In the automobile Reich Police Inspector Gusthausen, newly assigned from Berlin, snuffed out a half-smoked cigarette and tried to ignore the voice of Viennese police official beside him chattering about the nondescript architectural gems which lined the broad boulevard near the Ringstrasse and Inner City. Inspector Gusthaisen had just killed a homo and wasn't interested in any historical guidebook nonsense.

“Marvelous,” he muttered, in reply to the mini-architectural history lesson and the cacophony of Jew-sounding names who had not only changed the face of modern Vienna, but modern art and European culture in general: Gustave Klimpt, Otto Wagner, Adolf Loos, Egon Schiele.

Good God! Thought Gusthausen, glancing up at speeding tree-tops and graying sky. If he mentions Sigmund Freud I'm getting out of here!

But the talkative police official went on, speaking of Vienna's favorite sons as if knew them personally. Though Inspector Gusthausen had never heard of any of them, he was certain, since they were artists, they represented all that was decadent and immoral about twentieth-century society. In the quest for modernism, they had abandoned all morality and duty which allowed and helped society to function. To be an artist meant to be running away from some kind of responsibility. To Inspector Gusthausen, Art had but one purpose: to uplift and inspire, not to question and doubt and drag one deeper into despair, as was the tendency of so-called modern art.

“Is it much further?” he asked suddenly, ignoring the Viennese official and leaning to the driver.

The driver looked into the rear-view mirror and flicked his eyes from his superior to the German inspector. “We're almost there,” he replied, nodding at Gusthausen's image. He turned off the Ringstrasse toward the Inner City.

“The Secession!” beamed the Viennese official, gesturing to a squat white building on the left with an ugly gold globe stuck between what looked like four stunted chimneys. The outlandish globe encircled with green and gold leaves reminded Gusthausen of one of those military mental tests of fitting blocks and balls into proper slots. Vienna has obviously failed, he thought.

“It was here,” nodded the official, “that the young artists of fin-de-siecle Vienna broke with the traditions of the past.”

The automobile skirted past the Secession and drove by a massive pink terra-cotta building. Inspector Gusthausen noted the words Fine Arts Academy above the building entry and glanced at the talkative official. Strangely the man had no comment on the building, where the young Adolf Hitler had tried to go to school but failed miserably, and instead pointed out the statues of Schiller and Goethe across a small park from the Academy.

“We Austrians have always considered ourselves Germans,” he said, though Gusthausen noted, with a little less enthusiasm than he did in mentioning the names of decadent Austrian artists. “And we have always,” the official added, “paid homage to the genius of our Northern brothers.”

Gusthausen glanced at the statue of Goethe seated. A true German son: sitting down. He was a writer, wasn't he, or something? Gusthausen looked away. He couldn't be bothered with that literary drivel. When told about the Nazi book-burning that had taken May 1933 in Berlin, he was to say, When they start burning writers, call me; only idiots pay attention to writers.

The automobile pushed into the throngs on the Ringstrasse, its two small swastika ensigns instantly clearing a respectful path between the cheering crowd – Gusthausen sneered in disgust as the Viennese police official waved at the happy crowd – and finally turned into the twisted street of the Innerstadt.

Gusthausen grimaced; he hated all historic districts of cities. Nothing but ghettos where the rabble could revel in cabals. Isn't that why Baron Haussmann rebuilt Paris? He shook his head as the automobile inched down twisted streets. He sighed. Setting up memorials to honor the past was one thing, but to actually preserve wasted tenements and cobbled streets and decrepit churches was idiotic. Level it all! Create a park! Put up a plaque!

“We are here,” the driver said, and turned onto the Mozartstrasse.

Gusthausen had already noted the soldiers milling about the street, the portrait of Hitler suspended from a second-story window, and the hotel entrance blocked by two determined-looking sentries. The SS, he frowned, noting the wide distance the regular troops kept from their elite comrades.

But no, Gusthausen steeled himself: this was a criminal investigation, and he had been given full authority over all police matters in the conquered city of Vienna. But the SS? How did they come into play? Whatever they were guarding would not be so easily rescinded to his jurisdiction; for with them around, the criminal always became the political, and there were no gradations of punishments for the crime. In a perfect society there was no crime, only political rebellion and reaction, with the swift terror to uproot it.

Gusthausen looked up at the curtained windows of the small three-storied hotel, then shouted at the driver of the police van to keep the men in back; the Viennese police official remained seated, rifling through some papers in his valise.

The coward! thought Gusthausen, and approached the two sentries at the door; they snapped to attention though did not part to let him pass.

The SS, Gusthausen grimaced again. Without the proper insignia on his collar or sleeves he might as well be a lowly private reporting for duty and awaiting orders. Politics had done this, bestowed authority and power on the favored, but it ignored or swept aside the truly dedicated and the hard working. As a career police officer, promoted from the ranks, Gusthausen had used only his skills and learning to get ahead; and he despised any provocation or questioning of his authority, especially from over-glorified bullies, even if they did wear uniforms.

The SS had made a shambles of all police work. Originally created to protect and provide safety for the Fuhrer and other party leaders, it had quickly evolved from a bodyguard-detachment into an investigative arm of its own, rousing not only those who were an actual physical threat, but anyone suspected of being detrimental to Nazi goals.

Gusthausen had never hesitated in using force to get his way, and beatings of suspects was not uncommon in his command if it gleaned knowledge into further criminal activities. But the SS had taken police authority into the realm of personal vendetta. They operated under the guise of looking out for the whole, while systematically eliminating anyone out of favor with the whole.

In the early years of the Party raging street battles between Brownshirt SS and suspected Reds, trade unionists, and workers were a daily occurrence throughout Germany, and it took Adolf Hitler's personal interdiction to stop what he saw as a discredit to his booming popularity and efforts at legitimacy. Of course, he had no qualms against the terror burrowing underground, and it was not uncommon in the mornings for the police phones to ring incessantly with reports of bodies found in alleys, hallways, backyards, riverbanks: bodies disfigured, dismembered, mutilated, beaten beyond recognition.

It was Gusthausen's job at the time, his first year as a full-time detective, to determine the cause of death, file his report, and await further instructions on how to proceed with the investigations, instructions which rarely came. But what irked him most was not the alarming rate of unsolved murders – political murders he could understand as being deemed vital to the cause – but that most of the victims had little, if any, political connections or convictions and were simply done away with at a convenient moment by jealous spouses, disgruntled creditors, unpleasant coworkers, surly neighbors, rejected suitors, and sexual perverts who found the political disorder of the time a boon for their lusts or a chance to be rid of their own private enemies.

It was not a good precedent for police work, and Gusthausen resented it, knowing that the sloppier his work became, the harder it would become to restore and maintain the discipline and professionalism that investigation work called for.

He looked at the SS soldiers, their faces gaunt, bony, clearly underfed in their slack uniforms, and wondered: What is Germany doing invading another if she can't feed her own? Still, their death's-head insignia marked them as elite troops, and as a policeman familiar with his branch's own militaristic rituals, Gusthausen couldn't help but be impressed by their famed discipline and determination, even if his own toes were being stepped on. This was the Fuhrer's personal police force, which went beyond the mere duties of upholding the law (and their services as his protectors) to an almost giddy sanctification of the Fuhrer as the essence of being the Law. They'd starve for the Fuhrer and Germany, then give up their flesh and bones for other starving disciples. Gusthausen swallowed and rubbed a moist palm on his pants, then snapped his arm upright.

“Heil Hitler!” he said, hoping his intonation was loud and respectful enough. “An urgent police matter,” he added, after coldly stating his name and rank.

Gusthausen had been through this so many times in the past few years; whereas in the civilian world his position and authority opened doors without question, in the military the lowliest sentry could halt and ask him his business and keep him waiting as long as he saw fit. Whatever the SS was doing here, it was best to be patient and remain as unobtrusive as possible, heed their orders, and accomplish what work he could.

He wasn't too enthused about his sudden posting to Vienna from Berlin, nor did he like this homosexual business. If he could pass it onto the SS, so much the better. Over the years he had participated in and supervised the various roundups and purges of homosexual haunts, even overseeing the deportations of foreign homosexual nationals to their home countries, and still thought it was a waste of time and expense that the government even bothered with such

drivel. He'd rather have shot them all. But the roundups made good press: the morals of the country were upheld, family values protected, degenerates imprisoned or exiled, the nation's manhood and youth preserved to serve the Fuhrer.

Gusthausen snapped to attention again. Behind the two SS soldiers a tall officer in black SS uniform was approaching from the hotel lobby. The two soldiers, somehow sensing their superior's approach, also snapped to attention and parted in the open doorway; the Viennese police official quickly scurried out of the automobile and bustled at Gusthausen's side, holding his arm out over his head.

“Ooh, the cops!” beamed the tall SS officer, halfheartedly returning their salutes and gesturing for them to enter the hotel.

Gusthausen frowned. Behind the officer, on the lobby stairway, he saw the grotesque figure of a man in woman's clothes, broad-shouldered, throat-bulged, thick-shanked – no wonder the castrated man worked here. Next to the homo, a stunning big-breasted redhead beamed down at them.

Whores of every kind, thought Gusthausen.

“Ah ha!” the SS man smiled, looking up at the two figures. “Ladies!” he gestured for them to come down. “Please!”

Gusthausen frowned again, squinted at the SS man, and looked up the stairs. The fucking homo looked nervous, but had better know well enough not to offer his scummy hand in greeting.

Frau Friska and Wanda descended the stairs.

36. The Fat Girl; Petya Curses...

PETYA SPUN AND saw the fat girl standing in the cubicle doorway, her rouged lips apart, her arm laced under her belly, her fingertips repeatedly twisting around each other and squeezing each one.

Petya sighed. He knew right away she had been used by someone, her slow-wittedness evident in her glassy eyes and lax expression; still, he respected her effort to focus her attention and interest on him. He smiled and got off the bed. “I'm Petya,” he gestured to himself and moved toward her.

The girl shrank back and crossed her arms over her bosom, skirting around him as he moved behind her to shut the cubicle door.

“Relax,” he said and stood beside her, his Brownshirt sleeve touching the loose lace frills of her own. “I'm new here,” he nodded. “Just got in last night.”

Inga looked at him then turned to the body on the bed. “Your sister?” she asked.

Petya frowned and looked at the dead boy. “A girl-friend,” he sighed. “Don't you know her?”

Inga shook her head. “No,” she blushed.

They stared at the body.

“Flowers,” Inga said finally, as if trying to remember something but staring at the petals in the little girl's hands.

“Flowers are pollinated by flying insects moving in the wind,” she recited carefully, then looked at Petya and frowned. Then, as if remembering, “But a flower left in a room,” she continued, more confidently, “will wither and die and its unseen beauty die, too.”

She looked uncertainly at Petya, biting her lower lips. “A flower in a room...” she said again, then grimaced. “A flower in a room...I forgot!” she suddenly cried and shivered.”

Petya quickly moved away from her and went to the bed. “Here,” he said, picking up a loose flower from the bedraggled bouquet on the dead boy's stomach. “A flower for you, too.”

Inga blushed but took the proffered sweet William sprig. She sniffed it and brightened. “A flower in a room will wither if unloved,” she gushed, remembering whatever it was she had forgotten, “but loved will live in beauty forever.”

Petya beamed at the girl as she stood smiling merrily, swaying back and forth, pleased with her recitation.

“And,” Petya asked, “that's it?”

Inga frowned. “It's a poem,” she pouted.

“Say it again,” he suggested. “From the beginning.”

Inga groaned, but began once more, her eyes wide, glaring at Petya.

“Flowers are pollinated,” she recited, stressing each syllable slowly, distinctly, almost teacher-like before a classroom of children. “Flowers are pollinated by flying insects in the wind.”

She stopped and looked from Petya to the sleeping little girl. “When I say the poem,” she said loudly, “you can lie down, too. My father always does it,” then looked confused for a moment.

“Huh?” Petya grunted, but shrugged and went to the bed.

“A flower left in a room,” the girl continued, as Petya lay beside the dead boy and snuggled up to the corpse, “will wither and die and its beauty die too.”

Petya felt a quickening erection as he placed his arm under the dead boy's fake bosom and pulled himself closer to the body.

“A flower in a room will wither if unloved...” the girl went on.

Petya shifted himself atop the dead boy and tugged up the white dress, unbuttoning his pants and prodding his stiff penis onto a leg-hole of the dead boy's panties.

“But loved will live in beauty forever!”

His ejaculation was immediate, barely two strokes in and out of the leg-hole, and he collapsed in a shudder, clenching his eyes and just as instantly drifting to sleep.

Inga nodded her head contentedly. The cubicle door opened. Inga looked at the redheaded woman and smiled. The woman looked at the bed.

“Flowers are pollinated by flying insects,” Inga said to the woman. Wanda nodded and silently shut the door to the hall.

Inga stood quietly as the woman approached, leered at her chest, then raised her hands and touched the girl's large bosom. Inga shivered. Wanda grabbed the girl's wrists and pulled her hands up to her own bulged bosom. They leaned into each other.

***

Petya cursed himself for having fallen asleep atop the dead boy. Though it hadn't been more than three or four minutes, his body instantly ached with the languor of overlong sleep, his eyelids pasted and struggling to open, his head throbbing, his mouth pursing at its own putrid taste. He moaned, nestling deeper against the body beneath him, his saliva-streaked face burrowing into the crook of the body's shoulder and neck, his sleep-stiff penis lodged up the panty and pulsing against the semen-wet belly.

It was rare for Petya to resist wakening and snuggle back to sleep. Usually, he'd spring upright and glance about him – alert, wary, straining to recall where he was, who he was with, and how he had weakened enough to trust his surroundings enough to fall asleep in the first place. For sleep was one thing Petya nightly tried to ward off. With Frau Friska the previous night, it was not until dawn that he finally dozed off, lying on his side, her body on her side nestling over his.

Usually he'd walk the night streets, pausing in doorways, sitting on benches, shutting his eyes, and he dozed by the jumble of images, scenarios, faces, recollections – the strange logic of their chaotic disconnectedness coming together in his mind, as though this, his unadorned past, could free him for some brief moments into a semblance of peace and safety. But he'd jerk awake, discard the images, flee, run, then pause and drop into chaos once more.

It took nights of walking, cursing, resisting, and mumbling before he'd collapse and allow the disorder free reign and control. Sleep was not the haven of safety and refreshment but the demon who bored into his mind intermingling falseness and conceit, who brought about the imagery which forced him to scream out at their lies, despair at their realization, long for their possibilities, and sigh at his eternal loss. Sleep – and the dream which ensued – was never fair or just...

Petya sprung up and spun off the dead boy, wincing at the burning tug of his unsheated penis snapping out of the panty leg-hole. He looked at the redheaded maid standing at the foot of the bed, clutching and squeezing the rounded knob of a bedpost with one hand while tweaking the blunt nipples of her exposed breasts with the other; her skirt was pulled up around her waist. She was gyrating her torso and crotch into the uplifted face of the fat girl kneeling before her.

The woman scowled at Petya, shaking her head, a contemptuous snort burping from her lips. Petya blushed and frowned and quickly pushed his shrinking penis into his pants and crawled off the bed.

“Pleasant dreams?” smirked Wanda.

Inga pulled her face from Wanda's crotch and looked up at Petya. Her eyes were wide and moist, her wet mouth open, her cheeks flushed. Petya noticed a red pubic hair lacing from her upper gums and curling around a yellow incisor. The fat girl smiled shyly.

“Nice missy,” leered Wanda, stroking the girl's neck and drawing her face back to her crotch.

Inga grunted and began to scratch her face furiously.

“Leave her alone,” snapped Petya.

Wanda blurted a laugh. “Ha!” she snorted and waved her hand dismissively at him. “Go back to sleep, little boy. Play with your corpses and pricks and dresses. Not one of you sissies would know what to do with a real woman!”

She stuck out her chest and shivered at the dead boy. “Just because you look like one,” she said, “doesn't mean you are one!”

Petya glanced at the mussed dress on the dead boy. The flowers on the dead boy's stomach were crushed and flattened. His legs were splayed and parted, his white nylons loose and wrinkled, the dress material pushed into bumps atop his thighs and belly. Petya leaned over and snapped the dress down over the boy's legs.

Wanda snorted again, and again drew Inga's face to her crotch. “Come, missy,” she cooed. “Nice pussy for missy.”

Inga held back, scratching and rubbing her face.

A muted cry froze them all.

“Papa?” Inga cried, looking at the shut door.

“Inga!” a voice echoed again from out in the hall.

“Papa?” Inga repeated a bit louder and struggled to her feet; Petrya rushed to help her.

Wanda snorted again and shook her breasts. “What a gentleman!” she said, pulling her skirt down.

Petya gestured for Inga to keep quiet and bustled her to the door.

“Papa?” she mumbled again.

Petya opened the door and stuck his head out, nodding at someone, then tugged Inga's hand to follow him. Wanda glared after them, snorted, then smoothed her blouse over her breasts and brushed the front of her skirt.

The girl was useless, Wanda thought, using her teeth more than her tongue and lips, and she had failed in stirring even the first pulse of orgasm in Wanda's crotch.

Wanda looked at the dead boy, Suze: one of his fake breasts had flattened and shifted off his chest and bulged from his armpit. Wanda leaned over and realigned the breast with the other, then puffed the two out. She reached under the dress, pulled up the loose stockings – then daintily rearranged the dress about the boy's torso and legs. She also adjusted the flowers in his hand, discarding the crushed and broken ones, then pulled back a loose curl over his forehead.

She sighed, shivered, them stooped over and lightly kissed his brow. “We all get it where we can, don't we?” she said and shrugged, leaving the cubicle room after Petya and Inga.

37. Big, Roomy House

HELMUT GRABBED VON BELSE'S shoulder and leveled the revolver in his face. “Shut up!” he hissed, shoving him against the corridor wall.

Von Belse stared at the gun and began to whimper, as if beseeching Helmut to understand. “Inga,” he sobbed, his voice breaking. “Inga's gone...”

“I said shut up!” Helmut repeated, holding the gun inches from von Belse's face, his finger in the trigger loop, but straining not to touch the trigger itself; Helmut had never fired a gun.

Von Belse looked from Helmut to the gun, biting his lower lip. He glanced down the corridor, his eyes widening, growing more desperate and panicky.

Helmut moved his finger out of the trigger-hold. “She's out in the hallway,” he lied, gesturing past the grille-gate to the rising lift cage.

“There's another bathroom by the stairway, you don't expect her to go with Kaufmann, do you?”

Von Belse remained still, staring down the corridor, then lunged at the grille-gate; Helmut grabbed his shoulder and flung him back, once more aiming the gun in his face.

“Inside!” he hissed, and hurled him back into the apartment. He glanced at the elevator cage; it was Friska. He quickly opened the grille-gate for her.

“Are they in the cubicles?” Friska asked.

Helmut shook his head; Friska stalked angrily into her living room, mad that she had to do duties already assigned to others.

Von Belse sat in an armchair, his face in his hands, whimpering softly and rubbing his forehead. Helmut sighed and turned to the Orehsteins. “Please gather your belongings.”

Frau Orehstein leaped from the couch. “We'll pay,” she blurted at Frau Friska. “We're well off,” she continued to Helmut. “My husband is a noted musician. He has well-known friends. He's respected. You can telephone Linz. We were at the Burgermeister's house for dinner just two weeks ago. We're not just anybody!” She glared at von Belse. “It's him who should be tossed out!” she huffed.

Von Belse looked up and wiped his nose.

“No one's getting tossed out,” Frau Friska sighed, shaking her head and gesturing for Helmut to put away the gun.

“You're all being moved into private quarters,” she told them. “The soldiers are not here to round anyone up. They're getting for some parade with the Fuhrer.”

“Oh, thank God!” gushed Frau Orehstein, dropping back to the couch and squeezing her husband's hand, then jumping back up. “Thank you!” she girlishly blinked her eyes at Friska and Helmut, her cheeks reddening, her lips moistened. “When this is over you will be our guest in Linz.” She smiled at her husband. “We have a big, roomy house.” Her husband nodded back at her.

Helmut turned away and looked at von Belse, who seemed to have calmed down, though still looking nervously at the front door. “Get your things, too,” he said with authority.

Helmut then turned to the corridor. All was quiet, the outer gate shut; but the one beyond it, enclosing the cubicles, was slightly open. Where is the boy? And the slow girl? Someone laughed in the lobby below. Helmut turned back to the apartment. The Orehsteins were standing and holding their bags, while von Belse remained seated, though looking up expectantly.

Helmut went to Frau Friska and without a word emptied his pockets of the envelope, documents, pills, and razor from Kaufmann's jacket.

Friska looked at him. “Get these people out of my apartment,” she said, then turned and went to the bathroom.

Helmut's face reddened. He nodded and put his hands in his pockets and felt the gun. His hands were shaking; he may have succeeded in scaring von Belse, but he doubted he could scare any soldiers downstairs.

Helmut gestured for the Orehsteins and von Belse to remain where they were and poked his head out the apartment door. Beyond the two grille-gates a cubicle door opened and the fat girl and the new boy came out, followed by Wanda behind them. The fat girl was red-faced, panting heavily, and picking constantly at something on her tongue. The boy's face was also flushed; he pulled the fat girl down the corridor to the gate, hesitated a moment when he spotted Helmut, then rushed toward the locked apartment gate. Helmut quickly opened it and let them all through. Wanda pushed out her chest at Helmut and put her arm around Inga's shoulder, her fingers tapping the top of the girl's right breast.

“Leave her alone,” hissed Helmut, tightening his fingers around the pistol in his pocket,

Wanda smirked and inched her fingers lower down Inga's breast.

“Shouldn't your hand be in your pants pocket?” she leered, cupping the large breast in her palm.

A clatter broke behind Helmut; he quickly turned around. Von Belse came running out of the apartment. Wanda jerked her hand off the breast and pushed the girl toward her father.

“Papa!” Inga took a step toward her father. She suddenly gagged, coughed, and spat out. She gagged again.

Her father bolted to her as the girl struck out her tongue and furiously brushed it with her fingertips – a tiny curled red hair lay pasted on her tongue. Inga gagged again.

38. A Life for a Life

IT WAS THE most beautiful experience Kaufmann ever had; even better than his first sex with a boy, or later, two or three boys at a time. It was so beautiful that if he thought about it he'd have realized how much he had wasted his life by not having experienced it sooner. But Kaufmann didn't think; he simply sat on the toilet bowl, his face uplifted, feeling relaxed and secure, as the beautiful Frau Friska hovered above him, shaved off his days-old beard, and applied rouges, tints, colors and creams to his ashen skin.

He always suspected she disliked him and tolerated him as a paying customer, certain her businesslike approach meant nothing more than that of a supplier providing a service to a client. But didn't this prove otherwise? Maybe she did like him. He was a good customer: he always paid his bill, in the early years even weeks in advance so as not to be bothered with the nightly interruption of business when he had only pleasure in mind.

But in a way it was clearly self-deception: with his debt out of the way Kaufmann was able to approach Frau Friska's as one would the domicile of a lover, where one was expected, awaited, longed for, and loved, until, that is, next month's notice of payment due.

Kaufmann never missed a payment – nightly, weekly, or monthly. At first he flitted with the idea that since he had such a steady customer, a few weeks or a month's payment could be extended till the next due date, but he knew full well that the following month, if he left the previous one uncovered, life would be depressingly unbearable without his visits to the hotel.

So there came a time when there were no requests for advances or payment-delayed services. Kaufmann was forthright with himself and Frau Friska, simply explaining he would once more prefer a payment-per-visit schedule as certain embarrassments would be keeping him from making his usual nightly drop-ins.

“Perhaps things will get better,” Frau Friska had said and showed him out.

Was it then their relationship chilled? Kaufmann wasn't sure, but what relationship was he thinking of? Once payment had been made they had little to do with each other until the next pay-date, and it was only during these recent transactions that he began to suspect her animosity toward him. But by then, his looming poverty and inability to forestall financial disaster made him suspicious of all contact and conversation.

Enemies are everywhere, he knew, and mostly, where they know you best.

Still, as with most suspicious people, there were brief moments in Kaufmann's day and night when a smile, a greeting, a friendly look gave a halt to the usual trembling of distrust and suspicion. Maybe it isn't as it seems; maybe I have it all wrong after all.

Yet once alone and away from the fleeting smiles, the trembling always returned, and always worse, for what did the sudden friendship really entail or signify if not the bait to lure him into naive openness and trust once more and the smirking betrayal which always followed?

He squinted up at Frau Friska. She was studying his face, his features, turning his jaw to examine his cheeks, applying more rouge, wiping some off, but showing no sign of either approval or dissatisfaction. Kaufmann smiled; he hoped she would hand him a mirror so he could see himself, too. He always suspected that as a woman his life would have been different, that there would be none of the pretense and curse of manhood and masculinity, the role-playing of self-assurance and certainty, the charade of knowing who he was.

The few women he once did know – someone's mother, a sister, a few prospective possibilities forced on him – all seemed to be timid and hesitant creatures just waiting for a man to decide their lives for them. The balls he attended, the functions he went to, were all like a childhood fantasy he had: the women, arrayed in brocades and finery, stood aligned about the rooms as goods in a market, simply there to be selected, haggled over, paid for, and taken home at one's convenience.

Though in reality he had his choice of the lot of them and never selected one, in his recurring dream and fantasy he was the one on display, the object on the shelf, the mannequin in the window, the brocaded prize which lured the customer into the shop, to look, to make the selection, to purchase, to take home, unwrap, and use over and over as seemed fitting.

Frau Friska moved away, and Kaufmann looked at the back of her seamed stockings, the thin black hose line rising from the back of her shoes, up her calf, and disappearing under the hem of her straight black skirt. He licked his lips and his face felt twice its usual weight, strangely puffy and bloated. He dared not smile or talk or twitch lest he dislodge and smudge the makeup on him.

Frau Friska picked up a hand-mirror from the vanity table and turned to Kaufmann. They looked at each other; she held the mirror up and he squinted at a small unfamiliar image framed in the round glass.

Frau Friska took a step toward him, and the image grew and fattened until the mirror was inches from his face. Kaufmann opened his lips and craned his neck up; Frau Friska lowered the mirror to his face. For a moment, Kaufmann licked the glass, then opened his eyes and glared at Friska as if she were an intruder, pushing at her arm, and snatching the mirror from her. He briefly studied his smudged reflection, then once more kissed and tongued the image.

Friska stepped away and watched him fumble his bloody hand under his skirt and reach into his panties. There was no stirring of sexual arousal or sexual reciprocity in her, and she watched aloof as Kaufmann masturbated and stared at and kissed his reflection. A few times he let go of his cock and brushed his hand over his thighs, under his crotch, up his belly and flat chest, then desperately returned again to his stiff penis.

Is this how he groped at Suze? wondered Friska. Mauling her soft little body? Drowning her little face in old-man spit? Ripping her little boy-cock?

Kaufmann pressed the mirror to his face again and tilted his head back, murmuring and moaning. Friska picked up the razor, the one Helmut had loaned her years ago, the same one Kaufmann used to slash his wrist, and which she had just used to shave his face. She would probably never use it again.

She took a step toward him and held the open razor poised at her side. Kaufmann yelped, and buckled off the toilet seat, the first splatter of pre-cum spurting out and arcing to his thighs.

Friska slashed the razor from side to side across his neck. He made no sound but his head snapped back, bright red blood spitting out onto the blurred-image mirror, white semen pulsing onto his still bobbing hand and fingers.

Friska reached out to grab the mirror but Kaufmann's arm suddenly sagged, and the mirror shattered face down on the floor, a crisp sliver of black glass jutting out from under the frame.

Frau Friska stepped away. Kaufmann was dead, or at least dying. Fortunately only a spurt of blood lashed onto her black vest, and she barely got any on her hands, though Kaufmann's short-sleeved white dress quickly grew sodden with blood. Blood spread down his chest and began to stream down the lace material and drip to the tiles floor.

A life for a life, Friska frowned. Your death for Suze's.

She sighed and wiped off the razor. Shouts echoed from the outer room. Friska folded the razor and tossed it to the vanity table, then dropped a few towels on the bloodying floor around the toilet bowl. She went to the door and looked back at Kaufmann: he sat still, slumped, one arm dangling down his side as if reaching for the broken mirror, the wrist-slashed hand still gripping his bloody and scummed-over cock, his head crudely splayed from his neck, the open gash at his throat pulsing like a drooling smile.

Friska left the bathroom.

39. Westbahnhof deviants

INSPECTOR GUSTHUSEN KNEW that the SS man Krumpf, for all his familiarity and ready friendship, had not risen in the ranks of the Hitler elite by his good cheer and camaraderie, Gusthauusen was certain the man could easily be as ruthless and brutal as he was now pleasant and outgoing. Krumpf carried himself with the bearing of a man in control – confident, self-assured and trusting – not because he was naive to the circumstances of a situation, but because he knew the situation revolved and responded to his expectations, demands, and orders.

It was this semblance of control which gave the entire SS its visage of legitimacy: they never doubted their actions or their authority to act as such. Gusthausen had never come across as SS man, be he officer or underling soldier, who hedged in giving or following orders. As an officer himself, Gusthausen was well aware of the benefits and need for quick decisive action, but as a police detective he also had great respect for the rewards of careful deliberation and the thoughtful pondering which went into solving a case. Patience was the core of his professional career.

But now he wondered if perhaps he hadn't been too hasty in rushing to this hotel, in starting this homosexual hunt. Wasn't it the notorious Colonel Rohm, a homosexual himself, who founded the Nazi Party and nurtured the elite SA corps? Even if he had been purged, was it possible to have purged them all? What was the dictum his old vice-squad officer taught him? Where there's one, there's always another, and where there are two, there's probably a third watching and masturbating.

Gusthausen stiffened as he watched the two female figures descend the stairs – the slim slender brunette growing more grotesque as she neared the bottom, while the redhead's bosom, already overly large in the distance, seemed distended even more as she came closer to view. He cleared his throat and turned to the SS man.

“I'm sorry for the intrusion,” he said crisply, ignoring the sudden flare of anger tightening about Krumpf's mouth as he looked away from the women. “But we picked up a man this morning who was employed by this hotel, and who displayed clear deviant characteristics.”

Krumpf narrowed his eyes and stared at Gusthausen. Fray Friska and Wanda had reached the bottom of the stairs, but they turned away from the officers and went to the registry desk. (Frau Friska had also recognized the flicker of suspicion and disgust on the policeman's face and wanted to avoid him as much as de did her.)

“Deviant?” Krumpf asked. “In what way?”

Gusthausen glanced at the registry desk, where Friska and Wanda were looking over the log book; Gusthausen looked at the Viennese police official standing by the lift cage and lowered his voice. “The man was arrested at the train station,” he said quietly.

“The Westbahnhof,” the talkative Viennese chimed in. “On the outer ring road, not far from the Schonbrunn, the beautiful yellow-colored summer palace of the former emperor Franz Josef...”

Gusthausen grimaced and shook hid head. “Yes, yes,” he interrupted angrily. “The Westbahnhof. The suspect was caught in the station men's room.”

He paused, glancing from Krumpf to the brunette behind the registry desk (who was looking at them from across the room); the redhead had stepped into the rear office behind the desk. Gusthausen lowered his voice. “The suspect was caught without his trousers,” he continued, “and on his knees before another trouser-less man.”

Krumpf snorted, and erupted into laughter, lifting his cap and running a hand over his short blonde hair. “In flagrante delicto, as they say, eh?”

“Yes, sir,” said Gusthausen, flustered by Krumpf's frivolity. He glanced at the registry desk: the brunette had also stepped into the rear office. “But it seems one of the men,” he continued, “was employed by this establishment. The criminal code specifically demands a thorough investigation of each suspect arrested for deviant behavior and why that behavior was not brought to the attention to the authorities earlier.

Krumpf shook his head. “But we just got here this morning,” he said. “Well, alright, where there's one, there's always another nearby, eh? He certainly knew what he was talking about, no?”

Gusthausen reddened.

“My dear man,” laughed the bemused Krumpf. “Take it easy! The German army has just crossed the frontier this morning. Don't you think it'll take time for the citizens of Vienna to report deviant behavior? Relax,” he said, and put his arm around Gusthausen's shoulders. “They'll be coming in in droves, mark my words!”

The two men walked to the front door, out of earshot of the Viennese official still standing at attention near the lift cage.

“Pretty soon,” Krumpf continued, “they'll be turning each other in so fast you'll not have enough time or manpower or space to keep them all investigated or locked up.” He squeezed Gusthausen's shoulder. “As for now, let's just assume command of the city, eh?”

Gusthausen bristled; he hated the seeming lack of seriousness on Krumpf's part, and he would have instantly dismissed an underling for such indifference to duty. “My duty calls for an investigation,” he said calmly.

“Ah!” shrugged Krumpf. “But my authority supersedes yours.”

Gusthausen tensed. Krumpf moved his hand off his shoulder.

“Listen,” Krumpf said. “Whatever perverts you may have picked up at the station means nothing to me. You can have all the arrests you want; I'm not looking for numbers to add to my record. Anyway,” he winked, “I've already gathered evidence about something or other and you're welcome to it, eh?”

He explained about the confiscated suitcase, and glancing at the Viennese official, lowered his voice and confided to Gusthausen, “My own duty here is to secure the area around the Ringstrasse, particularly all the buildings in the vicinity of the Imperial Hotel on the other side.” He nodded toward the stairway.

Gusthausen tried to place the Imperial in distance and direction from where they were, but once indoors Gusthausen's sense of direction was always askew. Often, glancing out a window, he'd be struck by a view he had assumed should be facing him from another side.

“The rooftop of this building,” continued Krumpf, “gives a clear view onto an entire wall of Imperial rooms. My immediate concern is not some deviant sitting in a room and pulling on his dick, but a sniper taking aim with his gun. Is that clear?”

The two men looked at each other. Gusthausen slowly nodded his head. Of course, he thought. The Imperial Hotel. One of the finest on the Continent. The talkative Viennese officer had pointed it out as they turned off the Ringstrasse. If the Fuhrer returned to the city of his boyhood dreams, where else would he stay but at the most lavish establishment in Vienna, the Imperial.

Better get out of here, thought Gusthausen, and let the SS do their work. Who cares if there are perverts jerking-off upstairs? They'll only be doing it in prison cells soon enough. The man is right: there will be time for everything.

“I understand,” Gusthausen said, nodding and clicking his heels. “I'm sorry for the intrusion, and for my impertinence to your priorities.”

“Nonsense!” Krumpf shook his head and waved his arm in dismissal. “We must do out duty. Your professionalism is highly impressive. We could use men such as you in the SS.”

Guusthausen again clicked his heels and nodded at the compliment.

“Did you get a look at the redhead?” Krumpf winked and gestured to the registry desk and the office beyond. “You wouldn't believe what occurred just moments before your arrival.” He blinked at the registry desk, as if focusing on some remembered image, then leered. “You've no doubt heard of the Hitler-Madchen salute? Whoever made that up is certainly the deviant to be investigated, eh?” he smirked, and nudged Gusthausen's elbow.

Gusthausen also smiled and imagined the sight of a full female breast tugged up by a raised saluting arm. He had already noticed the abundance of women on the city streets, and they certainly were shapelier and better-formed than their lumpy German sisters. Their clothing was finer and tighter and stressed individual body parts rather than a cumbersome whole. The so-called Hitler-Madchen salute – no different from how German saluted each other – was shouted out to every shapely Austrian woman who passed by, and every woman responded, their breasts weaving and bobbing into skewed S-like configurations, shrieking, “Heil Hitler! Heil Hitler! Heil Hitler!”

Krumpf once more nudged Gusthausen's elbow. The redhead stepped out of the rear office and blushed at the men.

“Heil Hitler!” shouted the Viennese official.

The two Germans tensed, wondering how much the Viennese had heard, but neither turned away from the bosomy redhead, raising her arm to return the salute.

40. All Idiots!

IT WAS AN outrage and an insult. Von Belse was certain it was Helmut's doing. How dare he put them in a room which was obviously fit for only a prostitute and her client? A bed, a chair, a wash basin on a small side table. Von Belse looked over at his daughter.

The girl was on the bed, one arm draped over her eyes, her stomach shivering with each raspy breath exhaled. Von Belse grimaced. It can't be time yet, he though. Surely there's at least a month to go, if not more.

He shook his head and sat down in the chair by the bed. So it had come to this: a prostitute's room, his daughter on what probably a semen-stained bed, and himself, one of the wealthiest men in Germany, cowering from and ordered about by ruffians with pistols, homosexuals in skirts, and Nazis on the street below.

What idiocy! If anyone suspected or knew he was the Otto von Belse of Belse GmbH Karlsruhe, they would certainly think twice about ordering anyone about.

Yet what was there to fear? What had he done wrong? It was only six weeks since he left Germany with his daughter. Is it a crime to go on holiday? The company was in the hands of the Board; let them vote as the please, his money was still being deposited and transferred through various European number-accounts. If they couldn't touch or hold up his money, how could they touch him?

No, this is all idiocy! He had nothing to do with this: Jews, homosexuals, prostitutes. All idiocy! Nazis on the street below? So what? As Germans, they should be welcomed and greeted by a fellow German. They were probably cold and tired. He'd order coffee and Vienna torte for all! I'll bet they never had kaffe mit schlag!

Von Belse stood up and looked at Inga. She seemed asleep, her breathing somewhat peaceful now, though still rankled by a slight gurgling as though something was stuck and vibrated in the pit of her throat. He glanced at her rising and falling bosom. This was his downfall. For a moment he felt that pleasant tickle of craving in his gut, but he shook his head and stepped away from the bed.

Inga coughed and von Belse turned around. Her breasts quivered, but she again lay peaceful, smacking her lips in deepening sleep. He looked at the water basin on the side table. Flecks of dust drifted atop the water and von Belse shrugged; the whores will use it to wash their clients. His face cringed. He went to the bed and unlaced Inga's low black boots, gently pulling them off. Tenderly he massaged her warm feet and toes, then straightened up and tugged at the front of his jacket.

He went to the door, opened it, peered down the quiet hall, and juggled the knob on both sides; he wished he had a key. He looked back at his daughter, then stepped out into the hall and shut the door behind him. He opened the cubicle gate and approached the lobby stairs. The familiar threatening-like monotone grunts of spoken German drifted from below. Von Belse stepped back.

41. Fascination

KRUMPF'S EYES NEVER left Friska as she came down the stairs with Wanda. Though the girl's earlier exposure had been enough to turn everyone's head, Krumpf merely squinted at the exposed bosom and looked back at Friska, smiling faintly and running his eyes up and down her slender frame.

Was there recognition? Love? Just to fall, to be held, to be protected...

Friska had also focused on the handsome officer, tall, slender, but built, his uniform perfectly form-fitted to his shapely frame, not like the grotesqueries on the newsreels from Berlin or the obese Brownshirts parading in Vienna. Goering, Himmler, the Fuhrer – they probably looked even more grotesque in civilian dress. What did a uniform do? What was the point of any adornment if it only created assholes and buffoons?

She smiled at the officer, knowing the other soldiers had already dismissed her and were goggling Wanda. Just as a man's eyes, staring at a woman, will focus inevitably on a particular body part, be it a breast, a buttock, a leg, so too did Friska run her eyes over the man, his solid chest, his even waist, his trousered crotch, and settled on his arms and shoulders.

A dream of being in love...what's wrong in that? Because it isn't always sex, it isn't always lust, sometimes it can be love. What is the search for love if not the seeking of compassion, concern, protection?

Friska came down to the lobby, frowned at the glaring officer behind Krumpf – the one drooling at Wanda – and went to the registry desk. She glanced at the new arrivals with Krumpf, then focused back on him, discovering other longings, other perfections; the way his shirt collar circled his neck, the way a short tuft of hair struck out at the bottom of his cap, the way his wristwatch tilted and hung over the back of his hand, the way his lips sneered at the man, then curled in a full smile at her.

This was absurd. Dangerous. Suicidal and deadly. Not only was he a Nazi officer. But also a male attracted to her, another male. It was all right to play games with Helmut, with the boys/girls, with her clients, with her imagination, but the reality was that nothing could ever happen. Love, though stirred by appearance, would be just as easily dispelled and destroyed by the exact reality of that convincing appearance.

Friska shuddered and turned away. She went into the back office, nodded at Wanda standing next to a bookshelf, then the two immediately leaned against a wall and pushed open a small camouflaged chest-high doorway to the back passageway and cellar stairs. Friska opened her desk and retrieved the various record books of her night-clients, passing the books to Wanda, who had stepped into the secret passageway. After stacking the books on some suitcases and parcels Helmut had already carried down from the apartment, Wanda turned back to Friska, who stuck her head into the passageway and looked down the dark cellar stairs.

There had always been a way out; out of Ukraine, out of Poland, out of Germany, and now out of Vienna...but now out of love also...

She sighed, then shook her head and pulled herself back into the office; Wanda slid the passageway door shut behind them, and they quickly stepped back to the outside registry desk.

“Heil Hitler!” one of the men screamed. Friska looked at Krumpf and he smiled at her, she blushed and turned away and looked at Wanda, who giggled at the soldiers, shook her bosom, and raised hir arm out stiffly in reply.

42. Orehstein Stirs

FRAU OREHSTEIN LAY sleeping quietly on the bed, the crook of one arm shielding her eyes from the weak but irritating ceiling lamp, her other hand resting on the top of her stomach but clutching a frilled flower-decorated ladies handkerchief.

Her husband sat stiffly in a chair by the bed, frowning at the shut door. Unlike von Belse, he had not made the logical connection of the smallness of the room with its obvious utility, but simply bustled his wife into the cramped quarters, grateful for the space and relieved to have gotten away from the lunacy which seemed to have overtaken the others. They certainly are an odd lot, thought Orehstein, listening to a thud of footsteps passing in the hall outside.

He shook his head, and recalled an odd phrase his father had often used to explain some new lunacy in the press: There's lots of fools in the world. Fortunately they stay to themselves and never meet up with each other.

Orehstein had once asked, And what if they did?

His father laughed and solemnly shook his head, They'd either kill each other, or start killing us...

Orehstein glanced at his sleeping wife and saw a loose thread and a narrow tear in the seamed underarm of her dress. We're too well-off for this, he sighed, and retrieved his billfold from an inner breast pocket. Return tickets to Linz and only enough spare cash for another day or two in Vienna. How much will we be charged for this room? Orehstein looked around. Still, he would have to wire his bank in Linz, or visit their Viennese branch. Have them transfer funds to the hotel. To the front desk. All of this idiocy will be over by Monday. A weekend binge.

He returned the wallet to his pocket and quietly stood up. He looked at his wife, then went to the door and listened. Who had just passed by?

Orehstein looked at the doorknob and frowned; no lock or keys. He turned the knob and edged the door open. The hall was empty, muted in weak chandelier lights, the dark maroon walls and red carpeting casting a permanent night-feeling through the entire floor. He looked at the line of shut doors down the hall.

Orehstein suddenly stiffened, grimaced, looked back at his wife. It made sense. They had been placed in a whore's quarters. That's what this was: a whorehouse! How much are we to be sold for?!

He shook his head again and stepped out into the hall, shutting the door softly behind him. The hallway grille-gate was open and von Belse was pressed to a wall near the stairs, gesturing for Orehstein to keep back.

43. Water

INGA ROLLED ONTO her side. The spinning in her head ceased instantly but then her mouth filled with saliva and she gagged, the saliva spewing out to the pillow. It was useless; on her side the gagging and retching rocked her body, and on her back, the spinning in her head and the clenching pain in her belly forced her to twist to the momentary relief on her side.

She gagged and spun on her back, wiping her eyes and squinting at the ceiling. She had glimpsed her father pacing the room and was surprised to see him suddenly brighten as though he remembered something. He had immediately left the room.

We'll now stay another day and night, Inga thought. But she didn't care. She never complained about their almost continuous journeyings and constant hotel changes and had come to enjoy the transience and the surprise of their daily lives. She did, however, find her father's quirk of always discarding her old clothes and undergarments and purchasing new ones a curious ritual, as though barely soiled clothing was a parting gift to the room and bed they had occupied the previous two or three days and nights.

Since she was wearing a new dress this morning, and they were staying an extra day, should she expect a new one tomorrow? She had grown to expect the change of apparel, and a few times even resisting checking out until her father returned with a new wardrobe. Inga never expected much else; however, her father's fashion-consciousness may have nurtured her into a continuous change of style.

Each day was much as the preceding one; she awoke with her father, ate with her father, was dressed by her father, partook in his daily activities or silences, and at night retired to bed with him. It was evident they were going somewhere, yet also evident they were getting there in a slow and roundabout way. Inga finally gave up pestering her father as to where they were going and if they were nearing their destination or still a ways off.

Marveling at some sight – a monument, a building facade, a garden (which they often passed three or four times a day) – became in reality the chosen destination. She had grown up protected, secluded, isolated from the world outside her father's house, retaining only faint memories of a dying mother, of a town street, a church interior, and village houses, until her father's deluded flight out of Germany evinced in her a silent clamor to witness all she could before they got back.

For Inga new clothing was not the fickle self-indulgent obsession of an exceedingly shy young girl over-concerned with her appearance, but the manifestation of a respectful young woman wanting to look her best for the sights she marveled at daily and was certain marveled back at her.

Young girls have always dressed their best and preened for a potential suitor. So too Inga arrayed herself to witness and experience the newness of where she would walk. Sometimes she shied away from the unexpected beauty and awe of a sight – the splendor of the Viennese skyline from the Hofburg Palace, the bobbing hills from the Neptune Fountain at the Schonbrunn Gardens, the murk of a bend in the Danube canal twisting off in the distance – as young girls do from a suitor, tempted and enticed by the possibility of nearness and touch.

Still, for all the interests and fascination which new sights may have held for her, it was her limited and brief contact with other people that Inga pondered and mused over the most. Nightly she would question her father about the people they had come across that day. Why did that man look at me as he did? Why did that woman gesture to another to look in our direction?Why shouldn't I be so readily open to a stranger's friendliness? Until her father explained to her: don't expect too much from people in life.

She shut her eyes to stop the spinning and turned once more on her side. The clenching in her belly grew worse and she doubled over, groaning but holding her breath. For a moment the pain lessened, as though something had let go, twisting inside her. She laid still, her mouth once more watering, the saliva dripping to the pillow.

The pain and spasms were an almost daily occurrence now, often keeping her in bed all day as her father paced worriedly, consulting some large text, drying and cooling his brow, but doing or explaining little as to why she hurt and suffered.

She had once asked him to read her a story from the book, but he mumbled it wasn't that kind of storybook, his face reddening. He shooed her away and continued with his studies. One night after her father had fallen asleep in his chair Inga glanced at the open book on the table before him, and lifted her nightgown to compare her vagina to the elegant line drawings in the book: a round baby's head protruded from the book vagina. Inga stooped over to look in her own and poked in a finger but felt nothing and shrugged and lowered her shift.

Carefully, she turned the page: half of the baby's torso had now risen out of the vagina. Inga turned the next page and saw the baby full-length, held upside down, a twisted cord extending from the baby's belly back into the vagina. The next two pages were filled with words and Inga turned back to the open page her father was reading and went to bed.

Inga moaned and turned on her back. She felt something snap at her groin and the feeling of something splashing on her thighs. She leaned up on her one arm and tugged up her dress, shocked at the red mucus liquid spreading out at her panty crotch.

“Papa, pee-pee!” she screamed, struggling off the bed. “Papa, pee-pee!”

44. Riding Jews

WHAT HAD BEEN a sudden burst of activity – troops in the street, vehicles parked on sidewalks, orders shouted, feet obeying – had just as suddenly ebbed away as the soldiers took their places, melded into doorways, patrolled corner streets, and watched from eaved rooftops.

One lone vehicle, its swastika banners limp in the afternoon calm, remained before the hotel. Except for a sporadic echo of cheers from the nearby Ring, it seemed an almost typical Viennese day: a few hurried passersby, a dog urinating, a boy on his bicycle, coffee cups clattering in a corner cafe filled with Nazi officers.

Gusthausen surveyed the windows of the Imperial Hotel, then moved his binoculars over the city skyline. Dotted along adjacent rooftops, marksmen stood poised; some at the ready with their rifles pitted under their arms, others lolling but alert against chimneys, smoking and talking amongst themselves.

On the taller Ringstrasse buildings the guards stood precariously close to the roof edge, looking over the crowds, each soldier studying a particular quadrant in his view, alerting the next soldier if some suspicious individual of activity in the crowd moved out of his milieu and stepped into the other's.

With his binoculars Gusthausen looked over some more building rooftops and windows. Suddenly he snapped and focused on a gap between two buildings and what looked like construction scaffolding beyond them. But it was the oddest-looking scaffolding he had ever seen, rising in hilly bends and turns and peaks as if constructed to gird a giant puff-cake, trailing and falling to each delectable and tasty sweet morsel.

He remembered; Yes, yes, there is one just like it in the Tiergarten in Berlin: a roller-coaster! And he smiled to himself. Suddenly, from one high end of the scaffolding a train of coaster-cars shot down and careened down the scaffolding, disappeared from Gusthausen's view, then looped around a few low bends and shot upwards to disappear once more.

He waited. The cars shot out, and he was right. They were people – elderly, strapped and slumped in their seats, their beards flailing in the wind, their matron-wigs blown off in the chaotic speed, and most probably unconscious or dead from the maddening ride. He turned to the talkative Viennese official. “How long has that been going on?”

Thr Austrian blushed but also squinted at the gap between the buildings and saw the black blur of coaster-cars careen and loop and disappear. “Jews in the Prater,” he shrugged. “They were put on last night. The control mechanisms were faulty. There's no way to get them off.” He lit a cigarette and shrugged again. “We're just going to wait until it breaks, I guess.”

Gusthausen studied the Austrian and once more looked at the scaffolding, then handed the field glasses to him.

Gusthausen walked across the roof and looked back at the Imperial Hotel. “Look over there,” he said, pointing toward the Vienna Woods west of the city.

A low-flying convoy of four airplanes swept down from the knobby hills and steered toward the city, flying over the rooftops and church spires, a tangling tail of chaotic exhaust streaming behind each plane.

The two men joined Krumpf, and he angrily snatched the binoculars from the Viennese official. No, it can't be exhaust.

He focused; the gases did not die out in the air but spun down to the rooftops and streets, covering a wide line of the city in what appeared to be round leaflets and bits of paper. The planes approached the Ringstrasse and turned in formation above the arcing boulevard.

Krumpf lowered the binoculars as the planed flew over the hotel. Black and blunted, their roar was deafening, and the sound was immediately re-echoed by the roar of the crowds on the Ringstrasse below. The cascade of exhaust followed: Krumpf smiled.

Thousands of small, hand-sized cut-out paper swastikas streamed from the planes, their four bent points rotating in the air, falling, each one alike, as though finally disproving the theory of a snowflake's uniqueness and individuality. Krumpf looked after the planes and raised an arm to protect himself from a falling clump of stuck swastikas. The planes crossed the Danube canal and moved over the Leopoldstadt, the swastika-snowfall seemingly increasing in volume over the Jewish quarter. Krumpf plucked a swastika stuck in his jacket buttons and glanced over the swastika-littered rooftop. The planes circled the perimeters of the city and continued toward the eastern flatlands.

Krumpf looked at Gusthausen and the Viennese police officer, also flicking off swastikas from the front of their jackets and shoulders. “Irritating little things, eh?” Krumpf laughed, catching a swastika and twirling it away.

He looked over the cluttered rooftop. “Clean this up,” he snapped at some soldiers catching handfuls of swastikas, one soldier actually squeezing together a rolled-up ball of paper swastikas and tossing it at a chimney: the swastika-snowball ricocheted off the edge of the chimney and puffed out slightly, then dropped over the side of the roof.

Krumpf brushed himself off again and glanced up at the sky; a few lingering swastika-flakes still floated downwards. “What's that church over there?” he asked, gesturing to a tall spire above a blue and white zigzag-patterned roof.

“St. Stephen's,” chirped the talkative Austrian. “Finished in 1340, it was from there that the funeral cortege of Mozart set out to carry him to his final resting place in immortality.”

“I thought they simply dumped him in a potter's field,” interjected Gusthausen. Krumpf erupted in laughter.

“Times were different then,” the Austrian glared at the two Germans smirking at each other.

“Times are always different,” Krumpf shrugged and quickly turned to the pounding steps coming up the rooftop stairway. A winded soldier pounced out of the doorway, stared at the swastika-covered roof, then snapped to attention and marched up to Krumpf.

“Sir!” he saluted, raising his arm. “We have two men downstairs who claim to be a rich German and a Jew.”

Krumpf frowned, and studied the soldier. “Now what?” he asked, rubbing his chin and turning to Gusthausen. “A rich German and a Jew, eh? Funny how the two always go together. Or the other way around?”

He turned to the soldier. “Let's go,” Krumpf said, kicking at a tangle of swastikas. “Let's have a look at these rich Jews and rich Germans.”

He saw the soldier's face and neck redden and he looked once more across the city skyline, winking at Gusthausen. “I always get the two confused. Rich Jews or rich Germans? A poor Jew, a poor German. How the hell do I know?”

The Viennese police official pocketed a paper swastika and looked toward the Prater; the roller coaster ride went on. He followed the two Nazis downstairs.

45. Helmut Sees to Kaufmann

HELMUT TILTED KAUFMANN'S bloody body off the toilet seat, draped it over the edge of that bathtub, then hoisted the torso up and slung it in.

Hide the body, Friska had said, but hide it where? There was already a dead body in one of the cubicles – the dead boy Suze – and now the killer himself – Kaufmann – lay slain in Friska's bathtub.

Helmut turned on the hot and cold water taps in the tub, rinsed his hands, then twisted the body around face up. He grimaced.

He never liked Kaufmann; the type disgusted him. Foppish suits and cravats, carefully combed and pomaded hair, overbearing colognes and powders. It had been almost gratifying to see him sink so quickly into poverty and disgrace, yet he still pranced about in a semblance of his old self as if nothing had gone wrong.

Still, as Frau Friska often reminded Helmut, it was Kaufmann's money and not his personality which paid the bills, and if he presented himself as the last of the Habsburgs and had the money to show for it, the hotel would do all it could to treat him as such.

“Long live Franz Josef,” frowned Helmut, and drew out a small pocket knife, opening a serrated blade and flicking his thumbnail along the jagged saw-like teeth. He stooped down and inserted the blade at the blood-sodden neck of Kaufmann's dress and jerked the blade up, sawing through the white lace material. He cut the cloth down to the belly then grabbed one end of the parted lace and ripped it off the torso, snatching at the resistant remnants caught under the body's weight and cinched around the hairy armpits.

Helmut stepped back and looked down at the frail body: it was white and wrinkled, with wisps of thin hair covering the arms, shoulders, and chest, but clearly shaved and bare beneath the panty crotch like a small child.

Is that why he desired boys so much? wondered Helmut. To recapture and repossess his own hairless innocence?

Helmut never really thought of what went on in the cubicles; sure, he knew it was all homosexual, boys (that is girls) and men, penis against penis, but if he let his imagination wander to the actual act sexual relations between two males, it'd be difficult to conceive what they did or how they consummated the act. One would play the female part, he assumed; the other the male. So how would the male enter the male penis?

Helmut grimaced and shook his head, then leaned over the tub and once more rinsed his hands. He screwed on a twisted metal shower hose to the water tap and spat a weak sprinkle of water over Kaufmann's legs, thighs, and shriveled scrotum.

He moved the shower nozzle to Kaufmann's chest and grimaced again: the open gash at the throat shone as though a bright red ascot had been spun into a gleaming, bulging knot around the throat. The water streamed onto his shoulders and chest and ran behind his back. Helmut watched the pinkish droplets run between Kaufmann's legs and eddy in a small pool around the tub vent-hole.

He leaned over and stuck his fingers into the hole and drew out a clump of wet matted hairs. The water surged down into the hole and Helmut flung the hairs into the toilet bowl, then reached back into the tub and plugged the hole.

He draped the hose onto a small hook at the base of the water tap and looked about the blood-stained tile floor; a carpet remnant peeped out from under the tub. Helmut drew it out with his foot and pushed it into a thick gelled blood-pool at the side of the toilet. He saw a footprint outlined in another gelled blood-pool and glanced at the soles of his shoes; he'd have to rinse them, too.

He looked back at Kaufmann; the water was quickly filling the tub and lapping his raised shins and thighs, the white panties crudely puffing with air in the rising water about them. He leaned over and clasped Kaufmann's shoulders and pushed him deeper into the tub, but as he pushed the torso lower, the man's knees buckled and rose higher out of the water.

Helmut cursed, turned off the water, and unhooked a metal tub-cover off the side wall, lowered it over the tub. As he suspected they would, Kaufmann's knees jutted out too much. Helmut re-hooked the cover, rolled up his sleeves, and dipped his hands into the murk. He grabbed Kaufmann's ankles, crossing them over each other, and pushed the knees below the tub edge.

Suddenly, the torso seemed to shiver with the cold and rise slightly out of the water. Helmut jumped back. A gurgle of bubbles broke from the puffy panties and sprinkled and popped between Kaufmann's thighs.

Helmut noticed the tip of the shriveled penis bobbing inside the air-trapped sodden panties. He leaned over and angrily ripped the panties off the torso and flung them into the dead man's face. He quickly unhooked the bath-cover and dropped it on the tub; it lay flush over the oblong tub, evenly covering the rounded corners.

Helmut looked at the floor; he'd better hurry and clean up the mess. He shuddered: another gurgle of bubbles broke from inside the tub.

Helmut bent down and began wiping the floor.

46. Wanda Gets It

IT WAS WHAT Wanda had always feared: her flirtatious teasing being taken as evidence of her desire and lust for the one teased and led on. But what had she expected? At first it was laughter, leering, playful touching; then the hands got rougher, bolder, and the laughter turning to grunts, curses: Cunt! Whore! Pig! The mauling became desperate, her clothes tearing. Rape!

Around thirty seconds? Forty seconds? Certainly less than a minute and her blouse was torn off, her skirt up around her waist, and a soldier atop her.

Perhaps he had been the first to start the ribbing – eyeing her beauty, winking an eye, asking her to be nice to a soldier – but to even think of sex, group-rape...they moved as one onto her, into her, fucking, cursing, her arms and legs spread-eagled, held down by boots, by clawing hands, her face now and then sprayed by slaps, by sweat, by sputum, by semen. They all came again, twice, three times, their sexual energy and frustration, their lust and anger, their spirit of elitism, of being conquerors, of taking their due, of being as one, thumped into her – justified, vindicated, complete.

How many? Six, seven? One or two? Seven, eight, nine in as many minutes. Two per minute. They were all as one. The in/out strokes never missed a beat, one's withdrawal was another's split-second insertion.

Of course she orgasmed. Six, seven, eight, nine. As many times as she was fucked, she orgasmed. But after the first, the second, the third orgasm, there was no pleasure, no heightened leaping or clasping, only a mechanical response, much like sweating: you feel it, are irritated by it, then begin to ignore it and sweat some more; you fuck, you come, you fuck some more.

The faces, the young baby ones, probably their first fuck: the older ones, probably their first in a long time, all melding as one – puffy noses, grimaced mouths, angry eyes, wrinkled brows.

Blink and squint and focus and they coalesce to one; blink: a father; blink: a brother; blink: an uncle; blink: a teacher; blink: a soldier; one man, one man on top of you, one man surrounds you, one cock ready, cunt open.

Wanda lay still, her arms crooked at the elbows and pulled slightly above her head, her legs open, her thighs sore and bruised from boot-stomping, pounding, thumping. A single soldier remained before her, one hand mauling from breast to crotch to breast, as if indecisive which was the choice, fulsome body part, his other hand gripping his cock

He ejaculated; a weak bubble blistering from the flapped opening of his foreskin and oozing onto his gripping fingers. He shook his penis above Wanda's breasts but the semen was too weak to drop off and had already smeared itself into a wet sticky stain around his cock and fingers.

The soldier said, “Hure!” quietly, as if mouthing an indifferent Danke, and got up off his knees, buttoning his pants and walking out of the small office behind the registry desk. Wanda lay still, then rolled onto her side, tasting a salty sweat drop at the corner of her mouth – hers? a soldier's? or was it semen?

She looked at a bite mark on her tit and blood bubbling slowly from a ripped areole.

At least no one pissed on my face, she thought, and began to sob.

47. Pee-pee

“PAPA, PEE-PEE!” Inga said quietly and clutched her belly, rocking up and down..

She squinted at the shut cubicle door lining the hallway and focused on the open grill-gate at the end of the corridor. Slowly she straightened up and took a few more steps, grimacing but tenderly rubbing her hand around the side of her belly; if she could just get to the bathroom in the gnadige Frau's apartment it would be all right.

She took another step and winced at the liquid running down her legs to her bare feet. It can't be that again, she moaned and leaned against the corridor wall.

Until she was ten years old Inga had difficulty controlling her bladder, not only in her almost nightly bed-wetting incidents, but also the daytime accidents which encumbered her with bulky diapers long past the reasonable age of bearing such an onus. The suddenness of the incidents surprised and disgusted her as much as they did those around her.

But when she did cry out of her need, suddenly breaching the intensity of distance from the outside world – stop at play, at staring out the window, at listening to a story – it was always too late: the stench of urine wafted about her, her dress soiled, her eyes tearing, her face flushed.

Of course the doctors who saw her explained nothing. They made their examinations, diplomatically presented their diagnosis and, of course, their bills, and were followed by other examiners equally unable to implement remedies or cures.

But Inga stopped on her own.

One night she awoke from the heavy pressure in her bladder and jumped out of bed, the rubber-sheet covering her mattress crinkling angrily beneath her. She darted to the bathroom where the toilet flush awakened her sleeping nanny, who came running to see her charge kicking off her thick cotton diaper.

Though there were other accidents after that night, by Inga's effort to understand her body's signals the daytime lapses abated to where she no longer wore the irritating diaper – running to the bathroom at the first squeeze of pressure in her belly – while the lingering night-time incidents, seldom more than two a week, still kept the protective rubber sheet crinkling beneath her sheets and blankets.

Inga turned the doorknob and stepped into Frau Friska's apartment. Just the brief time she had already spent there made her familiar with the rooms, and she easily found her way past the entry corridor and large living rooms, to the rear bathroom where she had come upon the wrist-slashed Kaufmann earlier that morning.

The bathroom stank of cleaning solution and the tiled floor gleamed in wet spots around the bottom of the toilet bowl and covered tub. Inga grimaced and clutched her belly. The pain had abated somewhat as she crossed the halls and rooms, but now it gripped her as a claw wrenching her inside out.

Inga dropped on the toilet seat, lifting her dress up her legs. Something kicked inside her stomach. Inga clenched her fist and struck back. She groaned; though her father awkwardly hinted at something growing within (a miracle of life, he blushed and used a doll as an example), he was always too flustered to explain fully the process of conception, gestation, and birthing which was about to reach fruition.

According to his calculations there was still a month's time before the baby was due and he kept putting off Inga's questions, dismissing her belly's widening to the rich Austrian pastries she savored, her morning nausea and pain to the strain of travel and unfamiliar cuisine, the kicks and movement inside her to gas and traveler's indigestion.

If Inga hadn't come upon the drawing in her father's medical texts, it's doubtful she would have learned anything from him.

Inga tugged down her wet panties and stockings and opened her legs, propping her hands on her knees. She bore down, holding her breath and cinching her body from the top of her stomach to her anus and crotch as though forcing out a resistant turd.

She farted, and a fleshy mucousy glob budded out of her vaginal lips.

Inga spread her legs wider and touched the red-viened glob and looked at her fingers. It had been eight months since she last menstruated, three months before she realized it, five months when her father asked her about it. The reappearance of fresh of blood brought back the confusing recollection and memory of disgust at having finally conquered her bed-wetting only to awaken one night in the torpor of menstruation.

Inga ground her teeth and bore down harder. The glob straining out of her vagina looked larger and Inga frowned at the wet black strands of hair plastered to the baby's lumpy oblong head.

She stifled a gag, poking her tongue in between her black molars,

and bore down still harder.

The baby's large ears shimmered out and with one push the head fully plopped from between Inga's legs and dangled into the bowl. For a moment she relaxed and wiped her brow, then shook her lower torso, bobbing the mucuosy red-veined head under her thighs.

She took a deep breath and down again, gripping the back of the infant's neck and tugging it down.

Two moist and wrinkled little arms plopped out. Inga let go of the neck and stood up slightly as the rest of the baby's body surged out on its own and slid head down into the toilet bowl. Inga grabbed the toilet flush and pulled the chain. A quiet spray of water spun around the head and arms, gurgling and rising over the eyes and nose and mouth, reddening with blood, clogging and rising and finally spewing over the sides the sides of the bowl.

Inga grimaced and snatched at the umbilical cord still attached to the baby and tore it off the infant's belly. The slight movement circled the long head off the flush-hole and the rising water instantly lowered and sucked itself out.

Inga's face whitened as if about to vomit and she raised one leg to expel the child's afterbirth, the bloody placenta splattering onto the child's upturned buttocks and splayed legs.

Inga spat into the bowl. She heard the hiss of the refill tank on the wall above the toilet come to a stop and she grabbed the baby's ankle and pulled it up, then flushed again. The soupy red water flushed out easily.

Inga set the baby down on the covered bathtub beside the toilet and glanced around the room. She felt very tired and sleepy. She yawned and stepped out of her panties, then slipped her wet and soiled stockings off her feet. She walked about the room, peering under the vanity table, opening a few closet drawers, then returned to the toilet bowl and tub. She turned the baby over and examined the tiny penis and scrotum, then picked him up, raised the bathtub cover slightly, and pushed the baby inside.

She was surprised by the soft splash of water and breaking bubbles, but lowered the cover without glancing underneath and shuffled out of the room.

She fell asleep as soon as she lay down on the living room sofa, her large dress dangling loosely about her slimmed body.

48. Idiot!

THE JEW OREHSTEIN was under arrest. The charge was quite specific: Jude, and that was criminal enough. His Austrian citizenship, his social standing, his talents, abilities and contributions to European cultural life meant nothing with the stigma of his racial past.

Jude, and as a Jew, the cowering Orehstein stood with a millennia of Western disgust, bigotry, and hatred. No one had physically touched him, yet he shriveled as though wincing with pain or from his own guilt and embarrassment. His gray back-swept hair now peaked in pointed tufts, his almost-smooth round face was etched with deep worry lines, and his clean well-cared-for clothes hung limp and misaligned about his shoulders and waist. A fidgety movement had loosened a front shirt tail and it poked out obscenely from the bottom of his buttoned suit jacket.

He cursed himself. Idiot! Idiot! Idiot!

The word skittered about his skull, taunting his predicament, reminding him of other errors, stupidities, embarrassments. To the bank? At this time? If ever a Jew needed money it certainly wouldn't help him now.

Idiot!

He recalled a sweet roll. Stolen and eaten. But not by him. A boy rounded a corner, bit into a pastry, then flung the half-eaten tart at him, laughing and running into an alley. He cringed at the memory of a man grabbing, shaking, and accusing him of stealing the pastry, the crumbs and white sugar clear evidence of his guilt.

Idiot!

He recalled other boys. He watched them pawing and groping a girl in a building courtyard and his eyes met the girl's and she pointed him out and the boys quickly caught and dragged him onto the girl, who circled him with her open legs, and suddenly screamed, as the boys scattered and the girl's father pummeled and kicked his head and back and legs.

Idiot!

It went on and on. He looked up at a soldier. Memories, incidents, stupidities. Confronted by bullies, by authorities, by disappointments. How had he lived so long in the face of frustration, of accusations, of insult, of brutishness, of disrespect?'

Idiot!

A memory or an early concert. He had longed for the position. He should have rechecked his violin. Not placed it down after tuning, gone to the lavatory, then returned to expect all would be well. Who lied that there is a feeling of comradeship in the Arts? Well, they will beat and despoil each other as any greedy capitalist businessman. The smirks of the other musicians should have warned him. But he sat, eyes on the conductor, raised his bow, and shrieked un-tuned un-keyed, jarring the expectancy for familiar notes and bars and phrases with the screech of amateurish insult and intrusion.

Idiot! Idiot! Idiot!

He looked at the soldiers. Boys. In uniform. And like boys and soldiers everywhere, awaiting orders and instructions. Poised for his humiliation. At the ready to attack and destroy. Military logic was impeccable. Its raison d'etre was a constant state of waiting, of preparation, of maneuvers, of war-games, of alertness and attack. Much like a musical composition – orderly, structured, even during the seeming random chaos of disparate instrumentation, notation, and motive, all interlinked and meshed to a succinct whole, a force of power and inspiration. Were not the great composers – Beethoven, Wagner, Richard Strauss – militaristic in tone? Authoritative, brutal, unyielding, certain. Conquerors of the spirit, their own and their listeners'. Usurpers of the meek, the petty, the self-indulgent. Yet vindictive and confrontational. What would man's fate have been if each artist – each musician, poet, and painter – had set aside his tools of creation and wielded a weapon instead?

Orehstein glanced at von Belse. He had been surprised to see the German slicking about the corridor on his own, especially with his ludicrous possessive behavior over his daughter's absence just a short time ago, but it was no surprise, when suddenly confronted by soldiers seemingly stepping out of shadows, from behind curtains, and out of corners, to see the man break down and slobber that he was von Belse, the great German industrialist, and who did they think they were, pushing him down the stairs, leveling their guns at him, guns, whose metal, he need not remind them, most likely was refined and smelted at one of his factories. Probably by one of their relatives in his employ and still lucky enough to be holding a job in these times.

Orehstein sighed and lowered his eyes. Germans! he thought. Ready to blame everyone but themselves for their problems. Typical. But at least I am Austrian and have maintained my dignity...that is, I shrivel up, cower, and keep silent.

The soldiers suddenly snapped to attention, their heads and rifles clicking and clattering. Orehstein looked up.

“What's this?” said a German officer coming down the stairs. He was followed by two other officers, their uniforms as different from each other's as Orehstein's silence had been from von Belse's blustering.

“Which one is the rich Jew?” the officer asked the red-faced soldier who had preceded them down the stairs. Orehstein saw the soldier clench his jaw and flush even more deeply.

“A rich German!” the soldier snapped, more for the benefit of the smirking soldiers across the room than for his superior, but the officer had already come up to Orehstein, looked him up and down, grunted, then turned and scrutinized von Belse. Orehstein saw the industrialist wince and lower his eyes.

“Why are you people here?” the officer asked, turning to each of them and gesturing to the registry desk.

The red-faced soldier looked uncomprehendingly at his superior but Gusthausen had already picked up the obvious registry book – glanced curiously at the cluttered back office – and brought it to the SS man Krumpf.

Krumpf looked at the entries and spun about to von Belse. He once more eyed him curiously then held his hand to a soldier standing next to the industrialist. The soldier took a step forward and held out some papers – identity cards, passports – then stood back at attention behind the detainees.

Krumpf handed the registry book back to Gusthausen and flipped through the documents. He suddenly turned, as if exasperated, shaking his head. “Where's the staff of this place?” he looked about him. “Where's the mistress Fraulein? Where's the desk clerk? Who's in charge here?”

He turned to Orehstein. “Who are you?”

The old man winced. “Orehstein, Fritz,” he muttered. “Violinist. Linz Mozarteum. On a holiday in Vienna.”

“And you stayed in the hotel?”

Orehstein nodded.

“With your wife?”

“Yes.”

“You checked out this morning?”

Orehstein narrowed his eyes and shook his head. Is that what is written in the book? He cleared his throat. “We requested another day's stay,” he quietly answered.

Krumpf turned to von Belse, glancing at the passports. “And you? Herr Otto von Belse, eh? The Otto von Belse? Great German industrialist? Father of German Progress? You're a guest here, too? You and your daughter?”

“I beg your pardon,” von Belse answered, straightening himself slightly from a meek slouch. “We were due to check out this morning. Events had delayed us.”

Krumpf studied him a moment. “Your daughter. What is her name?”

“My daughter has nothing to do with anything,” von Belse snapped.

Krumpf glanced at the passports. “Yes, Inga,” he said, holding out the photo-page to Gusthasen. “Poor, poor child.”

“Forgeries?” Krumpf asked.

Gusthausen shrugged. “They look real enough,” he said. “But I'm not sure of the Austrian visas.” He reluctantly handed the passports to the Viennese police official who was more familiar with the authenticity of markings on travel documents.

“Expertly done,” said the Austrian, beaming and nodding his head. “Most likely the work of Heinrich von Heinrich.” He looked at the two Germans, “Yes,” he grinned. “An unusual name, but an expert forger. One of Austrian's best...”

Krumpf snatched the document from his hands. He gave a slight nod to the soldier behind von Belse who instantly leveled a handgun to the prisoner's back.

“The von Belse mansion was burned to the ground in a freak explosion over a month ago,” he glared at von Belse. “Only scant bones of the millionaire and his daughter were found after the fire. The story was kept quiet to prevent any economic confusion and panic. The Fuhrer sent his personal condolences to the surviving son, who unfortunately was killed in an automobile accident on the road from the funerals of his father and sister. Whoever you are,” he shrugged, “you'll soon be telling us why you're posing as a dead man, eh?”

For a moment the two men looked at each other, and Krumpf felt his body tingle with that stirring of alertness and intense concentration he always experienced before a physical fight. He almost regretted it when the soldier behind Krumpf, also expecting the prisoner to leap out, jabbed the gun once more into the man's back. Von Belse grimaced and looked up at the ceiling, as if trying to comprehend the reality of everything around him.

Krumpf handed the document back to Gusthausen. “They're yours,” he shrugged, then turned to a nearby group of soldiers. “Find the girl! If there is one,” he ordered, and suddenly looked up as a scream echoed from the top of the stairs.

“Fritz!” screamed Frau Orehstein. She tried to dart down the stairway but she was held back by the soldiers who had found her sleeping in the cubicle.

Krumpf yelled angrily at the soldiers. “I don't care what the registry says; I want the building searched from top to bottom!” He glared at another soldier running down the stairs. “Round up the staff!” he ordered. “Find me the staff!”

“Sir!” the second soldier ran up and swallowed. “There's a dead body in a room upstairs!” He hesitated, his mouth contorting. “And a dead baby in a bathtub with another body,” he gushed out.

Von Belse screamed and pounced at the stairs, “Inga!” he shouted.

A rifle butt struck the side of his head and he fell.

49. Petya and Inga

THROUGH A SMALL peephole in the back passageway that Helmut had shown him Petya first spied her: sweaty, bloody, barefooted, and wet, moving across the living room and collapsing on the couch.

Just a while ago he had thought of her as the fat girl but he could no longer call her that. Her wide dress fell flat against her belly and even her large bosom and puffy face seemed to have dilated and shrunk.

The baby! Where's the baby? Wondered Petya, and stepped out of the passageway into Friska's apartment.

He'd wanted to take the dead boy. “It just isn't right,” he kept sulking to Friska, to leave him to the gawkings and humiliations of the soldiers when they discovered the pretty girl in bed was a dead boy.

“I know,” Frau Friska had said. “But Suze is dead. Moving him won't do him, or you, or us, any good. You watch after the girl Inga. She is your responsibility...”

Petya knew she was right, but he still had frowned and mumbled a curse. Now muted shouts echoed from the hall, probably in the lobby, so Petya darted to the bathroom, snatched up Inga's shoes and stockings and underpants, and looked about the room.

A red sheen of blood shimmered on the metal bathtub cover: a head-shaped splotch, a small blob, four stubbed projectiles. Petya looked at the pink-splattered toilet bowl. He jumped; the shouting was louder, closer.

He hesitated and lifted the bathtub cover. His eyes and mouth fell open and he imagined he was viewing one of those strange pornographic postcards of models posing in outlandish positions and incongruous surroundings: photos like a raised-skirted woman, bare-bottomed and spread-legged atop a butcher's chopping block, varieties of meat hanging from hooks behind her; or a bare-breasted woman in harem surroundings, a young girl nursing at her breast, a tall satin-clad African slave kneeling before the girl, his erect penis poised to enter her hairless crotch; or a Godiva-fat woman, her long-hair wig draped down her front, gripping a photographer's prop-horse with her lumpy thighs and gazing at a naked little boys, each gripping another's penis and gazing back at her. Petya blinked and shuddered. This was no photo he was looking at, but the real thing.

The baby floated in the pink tub-water, its lumpy head drifting onto Kaufmann's chest as if washed up on some ugly shore, its legs outspread, its little penis and scrotum bobbing out of the water, Kaufmann's own shriveled cock bobbing up beneath the baby's. A steady drip leaked from the faucet, a smooth wave weaving the two penises back and forth, but the water had already reached the star-patterned vent-hole and would rise no higher.

Petya heard the voices from the living room. He set the bathtub cover down quietly and went to the door. Helmut and Wanda were pulling the sleepy Inga to the back passageway entrance in Frau Friska's hallway. Petya ran to them. “The baby's dead,” he blurted. “And a man...he has panties on his face.”

Helmut grabbed him, too, and pulled him into the passageway to the bathroom, quickly sliding the little covering door behind him just as the soldiers broke through the front door and poured into Frau Friska's apartment.

50. Friska

THE ONLY THING to do was get out. Friska knew it, Helmut knew it, Petya (holding Inga's hand) knew it, and Wanda would agree to anything they suggested – the girl now even refused to leave Helmut's side.

They had to get out before the soldiers deduced the main business of the Hotel Redl, and before any vindictive neighbors sidled up to a soldier and whispered of strange comings and goings at all hours of the night. They had to get out before a boy (girl) betrayed their secret for an apple, a cigarette, a swastika pin.

It was also likely that someone in authority – in the police, in the bureaucracy – knew of the hotel's existence and what actually went on behind the second floor cubicle doors. Then it would only be a matter of time before they were all rounded up.

Like Ukraine, Poland, and Berlin. Friska knew it was all over, and that Vienna was slowly dying, if not already dead.

Yet could it have been otherwise? None of this would have happened if...if...if what? If Kaufmann hadn't slain Suze?...if Vienna hadn't been invaded?...if she hadn't given refuge to Jews and incestuous Germans?...if Hitler hadn't come to power?...if she had been born a woman?... If, if...if was certainly a curious puzzle, the word if; its possibilities were limitless.

Unfortunately, possibilities were of little help in time of action or need. Events simply moved too quickly to really think and plan, much less grasp the significance of one event in relation to another. Everything was a reaction to something else. What skewed the entire process still more was the misinterpretation of an event, an incorrect response, a wrong gesture. It was as though life were one long examination, and all the answers you gave, whether right or wrong, stupid or brilliant, in any case doomed you forever.

Yet it wasn't so at all. Life is not an examination or an interrogation; there are no right answers, because the only possibility, reaction, and answer you can give is the one that you do give. Never mind the sighs of disappointment, the sneers of conceit; you have lost nothing. The only loss and failure is to accept their judgment and the grading of your answers...because no one is qualified to do that.

“Get going,” Friska said to Herman and the others. Petya went into his pocket and retrieved the bothersome thimble he had found that morning. Though he'd held and played with it, a sharp point had been gnawing into his side. He let it drop to the cellar floor where it fell into the darkness of the corridor.

The five of them quickly bustled down the long dark passageway from the hotel, under the street, to an opening and stairway which seemed safe, quiet, and far enough from the Mozartstrasse. Helmut forced open a stubborn street cellar door outside the shuttered drugstore Apoteka, more than a street-length away from the hotel. A few passersby glanced at Helmut peering out of the cellar but continued on their way; what would they do if women and children started coming out? Would a law-abiding Viennese call the cops or the Nazis?

“I'll join you later,” Friska said softly to Wanda.

The girl buttoned herself up to her neck, her black hooded Loden coat flattening her bosom and making her appear simply lumpy and fat. She clutched the front of the coat and held it slightly off her bitten and gouged right breast; Wanda hadn't cared if Helmut had an erection or not as he bandaged the bleeding areole and nipple.

Wanda nodded and smiled slightly at Friska, then hurried up the street cellar stairs at Helmut's signal.

“Take care of the girl,” Friska said to Petya, as the boy clutched Inga's hand and pulled her up the stairs. “I'm glad you came last night,” Friska called after him.

Friska looked up at Helmut and they nodded at each other, then Helmut lowered the street cellar door. The musty cellar darkness was comforting. Friska sighed and turned to the long passageway leading back to the hotel. Flecks of light streamed in from narrow openings onto the street and squeals of sleep-disturbed rats yelped in the corners around her.

Why was she doing this? Why was she going back? To see if Krumpf's attraction was recognition and acceptance, or perhaps more than that? If it wasn't, going back meant only one thing: arrest, imprisonment, death. They had already gotten the Jew and the girl's father. These were no jokers.

But she had to go back. Running away was not the proper response. Not this time. Even if they arrested her once more? Stripped off her clothes? Shaved her head? Deported her anew? Sodomized her across the Continent?

No, she was acting responsibly. She cared for the people in her life: Helmut, Wanda; helped those who came in need: Petya, Inga, von Belse, and even the old Jews, the Orehsteins. She had acted honorably. There was no shame. No regrets.

What man can say as much for himself? What woman? All the right and proper family men and women, including their disciplined children, were marauding on the streets, attacking other family men and women and children, stealing, pillaging, raping, humiliating. Modern Austria. Modern Germany. Modern Europe. Civilization's offspring, heirs, and pride. All bastards!

Friska hesitated at the bottom of the wooden cellar stairs. A rat scuttled under the bottom step, its cold wet tail flicking at her ankle and shoe. She shivered in disgust and jumped up a step. A cacophony of thuds and boot-steps echoed from the floor above.

Wasn't she acting stupid? What had she just told Petya? That the dead can do us no good. Suze was dead, killed; the hotel was also dying, murdered; why was she committing suicide?

Friska turned and looked down the long cellar corridor. By now Helmut and Wanda and the children should be halfway to Wanda's flat. But even there they'd only be safe for a day or two; well, with the Nazis in charge...who knew? Someone would betray them.

Friska sighed and glanced down at her shoes. They were scuffed and splattered with dried blood. The rat was again sniffing at a back heel. Friska kicked at the creature and jumped a few more steps. She certainly was not dressed for flight, but then, neither was she the previous time. What, five yeas ago?

She looked up at the cellar landing and at the suitcases and parcels they decided best be left behind. There was nothing to take, she thought, and glanced at the cellar door, imagining the upstairs rooms and cubicles, the guests and boys and old men who came and paid for a night's lodging or a night's love.

Vienna had been a good mistress. Prague and Budapest might even be better. Maybe even Paris.

Friska squinted down the long dark cellar passageway again. If she turned back, she might catch up to Helmut and Petya and Inga and Wanda – her family – before they reached the girl's flat. What is of more importance here? Delusion or reality?

She heard a muffled cry above her; an old woman's cry; Frau Orehstein. She jumped with the echo of a gunshot above her.

“Damn!” Friska cursed and jumped off the stairs into the corridor.

Behind her the cellar door to the hotel broke open. Someone yelled, “Halt!” Another gun fired. She fell, and imagined her footsteps racing and echoing down the long dark cellar passageway. It was very quiet for just a moment, then the soldiers came. Petya's thimble was just inches from her reach.

END