He didn’t kiss her, though. He put his lips to her ear and whispered, “I want you to beg for this.”
Had she laughed? No, she wanted to, but she saw how fraught that would be.
Then he was on top of her on that couch, shoving his hand inside her blouse, inside her brassiere. Did that hurt? Did she like that? He was drunk. He was drunk and he was big and the weight of his hand at her neck left her struggling for breath.
It was his shame, she told herself. Not hers. And yet she felt filthy. What had she done to allow him to believe the “games” that appealed to him might appeal to her? That’s what it was for him—a game. He’d convinced himself she really did find his pig face and his paunch attractive. That she admired the power he had to humiliate others, to humiliate her. That she “liked it rough.” Obsession. Anxiety. Fetish. As soon as it was over, he told her she knew how to please a man. He said it as if it were a compliment, a way of excusing his own fetish by projecting it onto her.
He was still snoring, still on the couch. She wanted to leave, to flee this horrible room and this horrible man. But if she gave him any hint that she hadn’t enjoyed his attentions, if she left to return in the morning for Edouard, or even changed into her clean clothes before daylight, he might laugh at the idea that he had promised her anything. And what recourse would she have?
THE SUN WAS coming up, finally. Voices sounded in the courtyard outside, more than just the murmur of the men waiting in line at the latrine now. She tried to focus on them, to listen, to pick out from those thousands of voices Edouard’s, which she’d heard on a single night nearly three years before.
Appalled, yes. Her father would be appalled. He might have shot the commandant to defend her honor, but it was her humiliation too, her shame—that was the way he would see it. Her mother too. Her brothers. Anyone who knew. She’d put herself in a compromising position. In doing so, she’d allowed this. Invited it, so many people would think. On a Sunday morning, no less. The Lord’s own day. The very day, a dozen years ago, He’d taken her father.
Out in the yard, the roll call began—by number. She tried not to think about anything but the voices. Finally the guard called, “One hundred and thirty-two.” Edouard’s number. Danny had found out that much.
Silence.
Nausea washed through Nanée, the sense that she might have done this for nothing. But Danny had confirmed that Edouard Moss was here. Edouard’s file was here.
“One hundred and thirty-two,” a voice answered finally, uncertain. Was that Edouard’s voice? She would have said he was younger-sounding, his voice deeper and warmer. But of course he would sound much older. Everyone now aged so fast.
She took her overnight case and her gray trench coat into the commandant’s private bathroom. She longed to shower, but there was no lock on the door. She opened the case to the fresh brassiere and blouse, the panties and trousers and socks, and her flying scarf. Only when they were at the ready did she quickly strip off her jacket and blouse. She dampened the end of a sleeve of the soiled blouse, then stripped off her brassiere, wiped her chest, and pulled on the fresh brassiere and blouse. She pulled off her garters and stockings and panties and cleaned herself up as best she could with the blouse sleeve, only then shedding the skirt to pull on her trousers. She shrugged on the gray trench coat and looped the scarf once, loosely.
She might have left the clothes on the floor if she hadn’t imagined the commandant fingering them again. Robe Heir. The sad little robe heir in his grandmother’s ratty old robe. She stuffed them into the case, closed it, and washed her hands. She looked at herself in the mirror only then, when everything he’d touched had been washed off or stuffed away.
A bruise marked the base of her neck, already purple-blue. I said I want you to beg.
She adjusted her flying scarf to cover it, then pulled the collar of her coat up too. Nobody could know about this. It would change the way they saw her, whether they faulted her or not. They would stare at her, trying to see, imagining.
She returned to the bedroom and made enough noise that he couldn’t help but wake.
“I need to get Monsieur Moss to his daughter,” she said. She knew she ought to say something about enjoying the evening with him, but in spite of Varian’s and Danny’s confidence in her talent for lying, she knew it did not extend that far. I hate to hurry your morning, she tried to make herself say, but could not. I’d be grateful if you would . . . But she would be grateful to him for nothing, ever.