The Soul of a Thief

by Steven Hartov

  I was done at last, exhausted though sated with accomplishment, yet when I made to go into the kitchen to fetch some nourishment, I could not rise. My leg, ignored and folded beneath my chair for so many hours, had stiffened like a shank of meat left in a freeze box. I massaged it for some minutes, wincing as the blood tingled through my healing wound, yet even with my palms planted on the chair arms I could not rise. And suddenly I felt a hand beneath my right armpit, and another beneath my left, and I was gracefully lifted to my feet.

  I stood there trembling, my hands braced upon my desk, and I looked sheepishly up at Edward as he wagged a finger in my face. And then I turned, expecting Mutti, but finding instead Gabrielle.

  Her hand withdrew from my arm, and taking in her freshly washed hair and her soft and billowy teal summer smock, I instantly realized that she was not here in attendance to my health. She was here for Himmel, Edward had fetched her, and all was as it had been before my wounding, and I felt my facial expression turn instantly from its momentary glee and come crashing down like a shattered windowpane. Gabrielle’s own expression was as frozen as arctic granite, for to reveal a connection between us more personal than professional could mean instant disaster. Even so, I made to speak, but something in the glitter of her eyes stopped me.

  “Ach, mein Schatz!”

  The three of us turned to the boom of Himmel’s greeting. He came pounding in through the rear door of the mansion, his boots encrusted with mud and his face smudged with powder residue, and with him he carried the wafting, sweet stench of explosives. He slipped from his leather battle harness and hurled it, along with his machine pistol, onto the very same divan upon which I had once seen him fornicating Gabrielle, and with arms outstretched and the warm grin of a Christmas elf, he made straight for her and gripped her shoulders, kissing her hard upon her right temple. She glanced up at him and smiled.

  “Bonsoir, Erich.” It was nearly a whisper.

  “Ach, but I must stink.” Himmel stepped back from her, looking down at his soiled uniform. “Someone should draw me a bath.”

  This had always been my task, and although still wobbly, I bent to fetch my cane.

  “Not you.” Edward gripped my elbow and turned to Himmel. “I shall do it, Herr Colonel. Brandt’s all in.” He cocked his chin at my neat pile of completed labors. “Look, Sir.”

  Himmel stepped up to my desk, his one eye widening as he thumbed through the orders and requisitions.

  “Today? You did all of this today, Shtefan?”

  At some other time, I might have blushed and nodded proudly. Yet here in Gabrielle’s presence I felt nothing but shame for my subservient position.

  “Corporal Brandt should rest, Erich,” Gabrielle stated flatly in her detached nurse’s tone. “He is not nearly healed.”

  “You mean Sergeant Brandt, I should think,” Himmel boomed. “Look at this work!”

  I regarded my master, and he would have winked at me had he possessed two good eyes.

  “You would like to finish up this war as a sergeant, wouldn’t you, Brandt?”

  I hesitated, and then I said, “I would be happy to simply finish it up alive, Herr Colonel.”

  “Ha!” Himmel laughed, then raised an instructional finger. “At some point, life must end, my young adjutant. But glory goes on forever.” I merely smiled as the Colonel gestured at his driver. “Yes, let’s send him off to rest, Edward. You can fetch Mutti and have him prepare something special for our dinner.” He moved to Gabrielle, interpreting her slight smile as he wished, and he grazed the backs of his fingers across her cheek. “And after that, do draw me a bath,” he ordered over his shoulder. “Nothing coarse and unclean should touch purity such as this.”

  That was all I could endure, and I bowed crisply to his back and gripped my cane, hobbling away and out of the mansion as quickly as my leg would carry me. The grass behind the house was wet and the earth soft as pudding, making for clumsy going, but I swallowed great gulps of the early-evening air, praying it might wash my brain of those images of Himmel and Gabrielle that crawled through my mind like black jungle asps. As I made for the carriage house, Edward caught up and gripped my bicep, helping me along and looking straight ahead as he intoned a warning.

  “Whatever is between the two of you,” he muttered, “it shows too much.”

  I felt the blood immediately rise in my face. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “You and the girl.”

  “We have done nothing.”

  “Maybe not. But if I can see it, then others will as well. She asked too many things about you, in the car.”

  “That is beyond my control,” I protested.

  He yanked me to a dead stop and looked at me hard. “Kill it, Shtefan,” he hissed. “Before it kills you.” And he released me to my own struggles and hurried on to fetch the cook...

  * * *

  The evening shadows fell gracefully, quilting the estate in darkness, though I failed to notice the passage of the hours, as to me each minute was an agonizing eon. I sat at the rough dining table in the carriage house, my eyes fixed upon a bowl of rabbit stew and the rough rolls with which I slowly sopped its gravy and brought it to my mouth, tasting nothing. By the flickers of a pair of oil lanterns, Edward sat on the other side, muttering as a deck of cards repeatedly trounced him in solitaire. And Mutti, his uniform armpits stained with sweat, hurried back and forth between our quarters and the mansion, delivering fresh courses to our master and his mistress.

  At one point, the cook halted long enough to take half a cigarette as he stirred a cold plum soup.

  “I’ve never seen him eat so fast,” he complained to himself. “The way he’s looking at her, I half expect to find him fucking her on the table before dessert.”

  He picked up the glass bowl and made his way back to the mansion, and I dared not look up at Edward, for my ears burned with what was surely a deep crimson hue. Edward’s tin of cigarettes lay upon the table, and I stopped eating and reached out for one and ordered my hand to be still as I lit it and inhaled.

  “Would you do something for me, Edward?” I asked.

  He lowered his hand of cards to the table. “What is it?”

  “Would you go to the barn, and have a private fetch me Blitzkrieg?”

  He did not ask why I might not go myself. Edward may have been a simple man, but his emotional instincts were very fine. He knew that in my present mood, I did not wish to face the banter of the troop.

  “You should not ride with that leg, Shtefan.”

  “Would you go?” I inhaled a long stream of bitter smoke and oxygen. “Please, Edward.”

  He rose from the table, touching my shoulder as he left.

  I had never before, nor have I since, felt physical pain such as on that night. The initial shock of a bullet wound often cues the body to shut down, roadblocking the messages between shorn nerve endings and the brain, which is why soldiers are commonly unaware of their own wounds until a battle stills. And in my case, shortly afterward my veins had already inhaled their measures of morphia, and so it was throughout my surgery and hospital healing. But now, splayed upon the rough leather of Blitzkrieg’s saddle, my heavy sutures were bitten by the weight of my own body smashing down upon my leg, and my inner thigh felt as if the naked flesh was mounted on a slab of iron thorns.

  I do not know how long I rode that night, at first attempting to ease my pain with pressure in the stirrups, trying to prevent all contact with the saddle. Yet I quickly realized that simply using my leg muscles caused the sweat to bead upon my face and set my teeth gnashing, and no degree of care would ease the affliction. Just the rhythm of Blitzkrieg’s easy walk was excruciating, a light gallop even more so, and he sensed my imbalance and discomfort and turned his head and snorted at my grunts, as if to say, If it all hurts you so, we might as well run. And so we did.

  We galloped, Blitzk
rieg and I, he with the joy of freedom at last, and I with the rage of a tortured heart. We raced across grasses frothy with rain and we sailed over fences jagged with upturned splinters, and the wind raised his black mane like the standard of a pirate’s galleon and it swept my tears into the runnels of sweat upon my cheeks. The moon flashed between purple and silver fists of clouds, and as we thundered over meadows and crests and splashed across sparkling streams, the pounding of his hooves was matched by distant crumps of midnight bombs, flashing like earthbound storms in the distance. And I leaned forward as far as I could, and I gripped Blitzkrieg’s reins up close and slipped my fingers in to clutch his hair, and as the steam of his heated snorts coursed back over my face there was nothing I could do to keep my thigh from slamming upon the leathers, and it seemed that no matter the speed I could not outrace the images of Gabrielle upon my master’s dining table, and as the blood began to run in rivulets into my boot I screamed, and I kicked him harder, hoping to churn us both into oblivion...

  * * *

  On the next morning, I overslept, which was generally not a forgivable lapse in the German army. Yet apparently Himmel was so pleased with my previous day’s work that he had ordered that I be left to rest. I awoke at last sometime after nine, and I remained cocooned beneath my rough woolen blanket, listening to the murmurs of Edward and Mutti, my ears open wide to catch any hint of indiscretion from the driver. Yet he did not mention his suspicions regarding Gabrielle and myself, and I was grateful.

  My leg throbbed in waves right up to my neck, for upon my return from our midnight gallop, I had inspected it to find three sutures soundly torn apart. I had washed the rent in freezing pump water that sprang tears to my eyes, and then fetched a roll of gauze from the stores and bound it well, after first sprinkling a healthy dose of sulfonamide powder into the wound. By the time I had toweled Blitzkrieg’s flanks and returned him to the barn, I was barely able to crawl into my bed, where my tortured mind at last succumbed to sleep.

  Now, I so fervently wished to remain where I was, protected from a new day’s truths by this imaginary shelter. Yet all at once I realized that such uncharacteristic behavior might sound some sort of alarm in my master’s mind, and I suddenly struggled up, fetched my cane and limped off to shave and make ready, leaving Edward and Mutti to blink at me as I stalked away.

  I steeled myself before making my appearance in Himmel’s quarters, resolving to retreat to those days during which I had been able to engage Gabrielle with utter formality. Thankfully, only the Colonel was present in the salon. He was drinking coffee, and he absently returned my salute as I made my way to my desk. I sat there patiently, watching him as he paced, one hand in his trouser pocket, the other holding his steel mug. He seemed preoccupied, and at last he docked at my desk flank, though he stared outside through a mansion window.

  “Women,” he muttered. “Who understands them?”

  “Not I, Sir,” I replied. “I assure you.”

  The Colonel did not smile.

  “What a horrid night.” He slowly shook his head. “She would have none of me.”

  I said nothing. I stared at my typewriter, wishing I could rudely slip a sheet of paper through the spindle and begin hammering away. I did not want to hear this, and I wanted to hear every word.

  “She cried and fussed.” He slipped his hand from his pocket and whipped his fingers in the air. “She claimed she was having her monthly visitor. She mourned for her mother and father. She was like a little child, utterly impossible.”

  I strove for a reply, but I was mute.

  “I could have taken her anyway, of course.” He turned to me, then raised his shoulders in a comical shrug. “But what fun is that? With those kinds of tears?”

  “None at all.” I finally managed something. “I should think.”

  The door to the bedroom opened, and we both turned our heads. And there she stood, wearing the same dress in which she had arrived, her hair in a single loose braid and her eyes dark and rimmed.

  “There you are, mein Schatz,” said Himmel.

  I nodded at her brusquely and immediately made to sifting through my piles of documentation, and I did not look up again as their conversation continued.

  “Some breakfast, then?” Himmel offered.

  “No, thank you.” Her voice was small and hoarse.

  “I can have Mutti fix up something you like.”

  “I will take some coffee. I am not hungry.”

  I heard her make her way into the kitchen. I imagined her hands as the liquid was poured.

  “There are crowds of flowers in the yard,” Himmel observed with exaggerated brightness. “Perhaps you’d like to pick some, before Edward takes you home.”

  There was a moment’s contemplation. “Yes. That would be nice.”

  I heard the Colonel march off toward the rear entrance, and I heard the light clip of Gabrielle’s shoes approach my desk. My heart began to pound as she moved around in front of me, and I wanted to scream at her, Get away from me, for God’s sake!

  “How is your leg, Shtefan Brandt?” she asked.

  “Fine, thank you.” I glanced up at her for merely a second, cracking the briefest of false smiles while my eyes blazed a warning, and I immediately looked back at my work.

  “Edward!” Himmel boomed into the backyard. “Go fetch the car.”

  “You should be careful with it,” Gabrielle said. “Or you shall wind up back in hospital.”

  She was so bold that it absolutely horrified me. “Yes,” I said into my typewriter. “I shall be.”

  And thankfully she plucked at her dress and stepped away, taking a basket from the kitchen and making off to pick some flowers. I heard Himmel mutter some words and kiss her cheek as she departed, and then he closed the kitchen door and returned to the salon.

  For some time, my master did not speak. He moved through the rooms of the mansion, and I heard the doors of wardrobes opening and closing, the latches of window locks snapping home. His activity reminded me of the superstitious inspections of a child, checking for ghosts and goblins before retiring to bed, until at last he appeared again and moved to the front door of the house, and that, too, he fixed and locked. I had by then fetched a recent Abwehr intelligence report on railway schedules in northern France, including which lines had been pounced upon by Allied fighters and those quickly repaired by Wehrmacht engineers, and I had begun summarizing the details pursuant to Himmel’s request. Yet his silence unnerved me, and even as I sat and worked the tiny hairs at the nape of my neck prickled in the charged atmosphere.

  “We must talk, Shtefan,” Himmel said at last.

  I stopped typing. Had I wanted to, I could not have continued at any rate, for my hands had begun to quake uncontrollably. I looked at my fingers, the tips fluttering like the helpless limbs of a pinned insect, and I laced them together and folded them upon my desk. With a wretched and silent bitterness I cursed Gabrielle and all of her false spiritual valor, for certainly she had spurned my master’s advances and somehow revealed her feelings for me, making me the cause and culprit of his unrequited lust. Perhaps she had fallen into an ambush of Himmel’s design, slipping out a revelatory expression at his mention of me, or perhaps she had murmured my name in her sleep. But what right did she have to invoke me? What right did she have to risk my life?! I felt the fury and fear rise within me as a single helpless scream, as I waited for the hammer to fall.

  “Did you hear me, Brandt?”

  “Yes, Sir.” I sat there, still as a marble statue.

  The Colonel came from behind my chair and walked to the plotting table. He leaned back against it, crossed his boots and came up with a fresh cigar. He lit the tobacco and inhaled deeply, blowing a perfect ring into the air.

  “This war is going to end,” he said.

  “Yes, Sir,” I agreed in a hoarse whisper.

  “Soon, Shtefan. It i
s going to end soon.” He turned his head and his single eye bored into me, and he jutted the glowing cigar in my direction. “What we are about to say shall not pass from this room. Are we clear?”

  My brow creased. “Of course, Herr Colonel.” Whatever was afoot, it was not what I had expected.

  “Good.” Himmel folded his arms, squinting off through the smoke that rose from his gesticulating hand. “I have always been a patriot, Brandt. In order to be a truly effective soldier, one must believe in one’s country, is that not so?”

  I nodded, although it struck me that I was in fact this man’s polar opposite—a boy without a country.

  “However,” he said, as he rose and began to pace, one fist on his hip, “a professional soldier must also be a realist. There is a time to attack, and a time to retreat. There is a time to press for victory, and a time to accept its impossibility. Only fools and tyrants deny the inevitable.”

  I watched him, my hands still clasped together, yet no longer quaking as I understood that this soliloquy had absolutely nothing to do with myself or Gabrielle.

  “The Allies are going to conquer us.” The Colonel turned to me. “Do you accept that, Brandt?”

  I swallowed, searching quickly for the proper response. “I respect your assessment of such things, Sir.”

  “Of course,” he said, though he was unsatisfied with my obsequious reply. “Why do you think there are weight classes in boxing, Brandt?”