Sins of the Flesh

by Fern Michaels

  “Erloschen…Fahrplan…Fehler…Feind…Feind…Fliehen…Beeilen…Gleichgültig…Gewehr…Kinder…Gräbe…gehen zu Fuss.”

  Reuben’s blood ran cold. They knew about the children, and the climbers had rifles…. Someone had been careless…and they were…were…going to dig graves…or one grave…something about a timetable and the enemy…

  “Jagd…Jagd…Frau…Kinder…”

  The soldier in command was ordering his men to hunt for the women and children. Reuben’s heart lurched in his chest. Exhausted or not, he had to climb after the soldiers. If only he knew how many there were, he might feel a little braver. His fear almost overpowered him as he started his climb. He estimated he was no more than a tenth of a mile behind the Germans and thanked God for the snow.

  At least he had the advantage now; he knew about them, but they were unaware of him. Everything that was happening to him was happening to the soldiers. Snow squalled at his eyes, blinding him. His footing was unsure, his legs shaking with exhaustion. Snow stung harder, beating at him like a thousand whips, and still he kept going, German words ringing in his ears.

  By now he was shivering…in fear. Ahead he could still hear the Germans moving, their feet stomping into the thick snow. With grim determination he forced himself to move more rapidly, hoping the exertion would warm him. Suddenly his knee struck a huge rock and he barreled over it. Stifling a curse of pain, he bit down on his lip and tasted his own blood. His eyes smarted as he forced his numb hands to massage his knee, and then he hurried on. Moments later he halted under a feathery, snow-laden pine branch when he became aware of the silence around him. The Germans had stopped, and he saw a wink of light through the pines. He must have made a sound! Although he tried to breathe normally, the thin air and his fear forced him to take deep gulps of air. Quickly he covered his mouth with his hand, but he couldn’t take in enough air through his nose. Suddenly he felt a cough in his throat about to erupt, and without thinking he buried his head in the snow. When he came up for air he was forced to struggle even harder for breath. His vision clouded as he strained to listen for a sound from the Germans above him. The winking light was to the right now. At last he heard them talking again:

  “Darf ich rauchen, Kapitan?”

  Reuben almost fainted with relief. They wanted permission to smoke! Fighting his light-headedness, he skittered to the left, a crab in flight, his numb hands and feet moving on his mind’s command. The smoke carried on the wind to his nostrils, and a wave of dizziness attacked him. He, too, would give anything for a cigarette, but he knew his tortured lungs wouldn’t be able to absorb the smoke. He’d probably die of asphyxiation. Desperately he forced the desire from his mind and concentrated on making his exhausted limbs move. It was better on all fours; he could feel for the jutting boulders and rocks and not slip and slide. The bastards to his right must be part mountain goat.

  Now that he was hunkered down into the snow, his movements grew even more frenzied. If he could get ahead of the soldiers, he might somehow be able to divert them from their objective. Instantly he realized that it was a ridiculous idea; staying behind them or at least even with them would give him a greater advantage. Mickey and Yvette would have weapons.

  Eventually Reuben heard other sounds, the slight shuffles and whispers of children being hushed into silence. The Germans stopped, as did he. His heart pumping madly in his chest, Reuben sidled to the right, his eyes strained upward. The Germans were concentrating on the voices from above. One of them muttered, “Schlachten.” Slaughter…They were going to ramrod their way upward and gun the women and children down without a second thought!

  He could see their boots now, perhaps thirty yards ahead of him. There were four of them. Certainly he could take out two of them, but the other two…If he shouted, gave a warning, Mickey and Yvette would be alerted and have the advantage of shooting downward.

  Now. He had to decide now. This instant. Her name birthed in his belly, raged through his chest, and roared out his mouth. “Mickeeeeee!” Instantly he fired two shots in rapid succession; the first struck one soldier in the neck, the second in the center of his back. The third shot missed its mark by a foot. Moving instinctively, Reuben dropped to his knees and rolled to the left, then fired off a fourth, this one blind. He hit something, he knew by the sound of the grunt. From above he heard wild, ricocheting shots. Jesus, what if they hit him!

  “Mickeeeeee!” he bellowed a second time as he rolled to the right. A branch fell over him, pelting him with wet snow. Furious with himself, he moved on, this time scrambling upward.

  The goose-stepping son of a bitch in his knee-high boots would never march again. He heard Yvette curse as she smashed the barrel of her gun onto the man’s head again and again. Pulpy flesh splattered the ground all about him.

  “What took you so long, Monsieur Reuben?” Yvette chuckled. “Did we get them all?”

  “Four…there were four of them,” Reuben gasped.

  Yvette chuckled again. “All accounted for. It’s good to see you again, Reuben,” she said, throwing her arms around him.

  His breathing was easier now. “I guess I am a little late, twenty-one years to be exact, but I made it. Jesus, you don’t know what I’ve been through….”

  “Yes, Reuben, I do know. We have been through the same thing. I’ve lost track of the Germans I’ve killed. Go, straight up. I’ll cover these swine and try to feather our trail. There will be more, many more. You will have only time for a hello and we must move again. Reuben…”

  “Yes?”

  “Be kind. Like any woman, in a moment like this, she is thinking of her appearance and remembering how you last saw her. We have been through so much, endured…more than you know. In her heart she is the same person she was back then.”

  “You are a foolish woman, Yvette,” Reuben said, not unkindly. “Do you think I look any better? I’m still the man who walked away. I’m hoping she will forgive me.”

  “She forgave you the moment you walked away. She’s loved you all these years. Go now, don’t keep her waiting.”

  Reuben grinned. “Still as bossy as ever.”

  “We have a German prisoner. Actually, he’s our pack horse. So be alert.”

  “Jesus. Is there anything else I should know?”

  “There are nine children,…and one dog.” Yvette smiled.

  “It figures.”

  Reuben grinned as he made his way through the thick stand of evergreens. He was here at last. He would see her in another minute. Sixty seconds. The years were wiped away as he straightened his shoulders.

  “Mickeeeeee!…”

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Nellie stomped about the manicured garden seething with anger. Outdone! She’d been outdone, outmaneuvered, and outfoxed. Her stepfather had betrayed her. Philippe had betrayed her. Bebe and Jane…well, they were fighting for survival, so they didn’t count. Technically, she was out in the cold, and it could either be temporary or permanent, depending on what she chose to do.

  Right now her options were pretty dim, she decided. She didn’t have a job, not that she needed one. Of course, she could still go to the studio and sit in Philippe’s office. No one could stop her from doing that. But to what end? No one would listen to her.

  On the other hand, she could…Her mind flashed to the calendar on her vanity and the red X that alerted her to the day her menstrual flow would start. She was in what her mother would have called her “dangerous days,” when she could conceivably get pregnant if she wanted to. But…a baby? The very thought repulsed her. Still they would have to view her differently. A baby would be an heir and a gilt-edged guarantee of comfort and security. Judges were always favorable to mothers and children. Lawyers, too, as well as bankers.

  Her mind whirling, Nellie strode back into the house. The housekeeper was in the kitchen preparing lunch. Nellie looked at her out of the corner of her eye, then quietly made her way to her bedroom.

  Upstairs, she checked the vanity calendar.
Then, apparently satisfied with the feasibility of her plan, she sat down at her desk and addressed several envelopes with blank pieces of paper inside. The first was to her old home in Washington, D.C. The second bore the name of St. Margaret’s Convent, also in Washington. When she’d finished, she carried the envelopes downstairs and into the kitchen.

  “Minnie, I’d like you to go to the post office and mail these,” she said casually. “And I feel in the mood for some fresh fish. Will you go to the wharf and get some? And stop by the farmer’s market and pick up some fresh fruit.”

  “But, miss, I just went to the market yesterday,” the old woman complained. “We have plenty of fresh fruit.”

  “Miss? Mrs., Minnie. Always call me Mrs. Tarz. Yesterday the fruit was fresh; today it isn’t. It’s a beautiful day, I should think you’d be happy to get out of this stuffy house. Of course, if you don’t want to go…”

  Sighing, Minnie pulled off her apron. “Very well, Mrs. Tarz, but it will take some time. I’ll have to take two different buses.”

  “Take all the time you need, Minnie,” Nellie said with a wave of her hand. “I’m sorry I’m being so…so…poopish, but I think—mind you, this is just…intuition—I think I might be pregnant.”

  The old woman, a grandmother of six, warmed immediately. “Mrs. Tarz, how wonderful! Of course, I understand these little cravings. Sometimes they come on at the very onset.”

  The moment the housekeeper was out the door, Nellie rushed upstairs and stripped off her clothes. First she rubbed her entire body with baby oil, all the while admiring her lithe body in the long mirror on the door. Then she slipped into a belted cover-up and walked back downstairs and out to the pool, her long hair rippling behind her. She knew she was a picture of loveliness, a mermaid about to slither into the water—but not until the pool boy arrived. Smiling, she stretched out on a chaise longue to wait.

  She didn’t have to wait long. Five minutes later she sensed rather than saw him as he came up behind her. “I have to clean the pool,” he muttered.

  “Oh, that’s right, I forgot today is the day. You come every two weeks, don’t you?”

  He nodded, his ears pink. A big stumbling boy, tall for seventeen, he wore faded khaki shorts and a sleeveless shirt that displayed his muscular legs and arms to advantage. Nellie rose lazily to her feet. He wasn’t bad looking, she decided. Blond and blue-eyed, possibly Polish.

  “It’s so beastly hot,” she said, smiling. “Would you mind terribly if I just took a quick swim? Better yet, why don’t you join me. You’re all sweaty, and the water will feel sooo good.”

  “It’s against the rules,” the boy mumbled.

  “Oh, phooey. Rules are meant to be broken. You don’t see your boss out here sweating. He’ll never know. Besides, your clothes will dry in an hour.”

  The boy hung back, clearly uncomfortable. After a moment Nellie shrugged. “Well, I’m certainly not going to beg you,” she said, and let the pool wrap slither down her oiled body. She heard him gasp as she dove into the pool. When she surfaced she laughed and crooked her finger, then swam quickly to the opposite side of the pool when the boy dived into the water.

  She was a playful porpoise, he an attacking shark. Twice he almost had her in his grasp, but Nellie heaved herself backward into the water, swimming through his kicking legs. Suddenly she reached up and loosened his shorts, tugging until she had them in her hand. Then she swam to the top, the shorts clutched in her hands. “Come and get them!” she called as she crawled over the side of the pool. She stood there tall and slim, the water beading on her oiled body.

  The pool boy’s eyes blazed with desire as he swam across the pool. There was no sign of embarrassment when he too climbed from the pool, his penis ramrod straight. True, he’d never touched a girl before, but his older brother had told him what to do and how to do it. When he reached out for his shorts, Nellie relinquished them and he tossed them to the side. He was on her in a second, his hands caressing the oiled skin. Several times he tried to kiss her, but she kept turning away. She wouldn’t let him kiss her, but she allowed him to touch her all over. Different girls liked different things, his brother had told him.

  They were sprawled together on the spiky grass, a shapeless tangle of arms and legs. He took a second to register the fact that the girl’s eyes were closed tightly as he pried her legs apart with his knee. And she was shivering, too—but no more than he was. When he thrust hard within her, she squealed once, and he realized with a shock that she was a virgin. But it was too late—he was powerless now to stop himself. He pumped his body in a frenzy, and when it was over he rolled onto the grass, his breathing harsh and labored.

  Nellie grimaced. If that was all there was to it, she didn’t care if she never had sex again. Rising, she slipped into her pool wrap and walked to the kitchen door, calling over her shoulder, “Don’t forget to clean the pool.” The screen door slammed behind her. A moment later she was back outside. “What’s your name?” she called.

  “Stanley,” he replied.

  The boy’s name was not Stanley, it was Frank—Frank Wojesky. After Nellie left, he dressed, cleaned the pool, and drove straight downtown to enlist in the army. Lying about his age, he gave the enlistment officer his brother’s name—Harry Wojesky—and was relieved when no one questioned him. One week later he left for boot camp.

  Frank Wojesky left behind a legacy, a pregnant woman who gave birth nine months later. He died in Bataan, never knowing he’d fathered a child.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  It was an austere room befitting the judge, who’d had no time to remove his long black robe. He settled himself behind his desk, which was covered with manila folders, a box of Havana cigars, and a telephone. The room reeked of jurisprudence, rich leather, furniture wax, aromatic cigar smoke, and the faint scent of Aqua Velva.

  The open folder on Judge Malcolm Taylor’s desk wasn’t thick at all, in fact it held fewer than a dozen legal papers on which he’d based the decision he was about to render to the assembled lawyers and their clients.

  Judge Taylor was a go-by-the-book, eye-for-an-eye judge on the brink of retirement. His colleagues and the attorneys who appeared before him referred to him as “Tight-Ass” Taylor, and that was the only halfway complimentary name among scores of others that had been given him. His sense of humor had long since surrendered to a resigned pragmatism, which only recently had degenerated to a resentful, caustic fatalism. For some time now he’d found himself hating all smart-aleck lawyers and their smart-aleck clients. He hated the fact that these same smart-aleck lawyers made twice as much money as he did and could retire anytime they wanted on the spoils of other people’s misery.

  In appearance Judge Taylor was as austere as the chamber in which he was now presiding. He was tall, well over six feet, with thick speckled gray hair that he wore cropped close to his head. His eyes were blue, faded now to the color of washed-out denim, and they never sparkled; they penetrated. His nose was exceptionally long, a beak actually, that sloped down and then curled under. Once, his clerk who was perturbed about something muttered under his breath that the judge’s nose was like that of a chicken hawk. That clerk was still a member of his court, and every time he came within a foot of the man he sniffed and blew his nose. The clerk thought he had an allergy. The judge did—to him. He had no lips to speak of, perhaps because he sat for seven hours a day with his cheeks puffed out and his teeth clenched as silver-tongued lawyers defended the guilty and prosecuting attorneys damned the innocent.

  All Malcolm Taylor wanted, had ever wanted, was to retire to Baja and fish from morning to night. He sighed now, wearily and indignantly, at the injustice of having had this particular case assigned to his court. Reuben Tarz was an acquaintance of his; he’d played poker with the man once or twice. And he’d even been on hand one time as a consultant when Tarz had filmed a courtroom scene in these very chambers.

  Taylor cleared his throat and leaned forward. He hoped there wouldn’t be any hyst
erics; he hated bawling women. “Ladies, Counselors, it is the verdict of this court that Mrs. Philip Tarz is in the right. This”—he waved Philippe’s second power of attorney in the air disdainfully—“is not worth the paper it’s written on. I’m basing this opinion on the fact that it has not been notarized and that young Mr. Tarz has gone off to fight for our country. However, I should point out that for the past three days I’ve had my clerk checking with the army as well as the navy, air force and Marine Corps, and we have not been able to affirm that Mr. Tarz has joined up. All of this leads me to believe there is some sort of hanky-panky going on. Therefore, in the best interests of Fairmont Studios, and in the absence of Philip Tarz, I must find for the studio. The studio will therefore be closed and all revenues placed in escrow until Philip Tarz returns. There will be no movies made at the studio, and only a skeleton crew is to be maintained.” With a loud bang, Judge Taylor brought his stamp down on his decree. “Good day, ladies, Counselors.”

  “Your Honor,” Bebe’s lawyer interjected, “what about the money the board voted for Mr. Tarz’s television research?”

  “Frozen, in escrow!” Taylor boomed. “You’re dismissed, Counselor. That means all of you!” The court clerk scurried to open the door and usher everyone out into the corridor.