The Masterpiece

2

Three Weeks Later
Col. Wilhelm Klink drove into town now on his Friday evenings with what might have seemed an odd agenda. The forty-nine-year-old Prussian career officer had always held a soft spot in his heart for all things related to arts and culture, stemming from his schooling; he had taken dramatic workshop, studied violin, read essential literature, went to see an astrologer a few times a month, and was currently visiting a painter's Hammelburg studio every week, a leather sketchbook under his arm in the hopes of getting in touch with his creative side.
The fact that his art teacher was an adorable little woman half his age and lovely as an edelweiss greatly motivated him to keep attending lessons.
She lived in a one-room loft apartment across the street from the Hauserhof and above a gnarly old woman's bakery; the ancient lady always eyed him with a hawkish glare when he went up the stairs to her door. The slight unpleasantries were always stifled by the warm scent of baking pastries, the gentle breeze from the single window she always had open, and the mere sight of her simple beauty.
Presently he knocked on her door and waited.
She pulled it ajar, letting him in and showing him the soft cotton dress she was wearing.
"Good evening, Herr Colonel," she sweetly greeted him, automatically moving to slip his greatcoat from his shoulders. "How are you?"
"Quite well, quite well indeed," Klink hummed. "I've been working on what you showed me last week."
"Oh, excellent! Do let me see," she said, sitting down at her rickety dining table, a nook in the corner where she always sat to review his work; she would show him a skill and give him something to accomplish on his own in the time between lessons, just as she did for the two other learners she worked with. Of her three pupils, Wilhelm Klink was the outlier; besides the POW camp kommandant, Elsie taught two Gymnasium-age students, both girls.
Klink was also the least skilled out of the three.
Something told her that he hadn't taken arts courses as a young man, for he knew next to nothing about the simplest perspective, nor value, nor color. She'd asked him to produce a still life drawing as a preliminary test of what he could do and had been unpleasantly surprised; his bluster about knowing art had been far greater than his ability. She could say, however, that he had been remarkably diligent, remarkably apt with notetaking and understanding, and remarkably willing - especially as a German officer - to listen to a woman and try to learn from her. He'd also curbed the flirting after just a few unsuccessful attempts, and he'd frankly become pleasant company.
He'd improved a bit over the couple of weeks he'd been taking lessons, enough for Elsie to recognize his latest sketch as a view of what must be outside his office window.
She scrutinized the drawing for a moment.
"Herr Colonel, this is from your office?"
"Yes," Klink concurred. "This building to the left is the Unteroffiziersbarracke. The water tower is meant to be here," he indicated, "but I couldn't quite figure out the curved part—"
"—That's alright," she quickly said. "We'll get into the curvilinear later." This piece - the first of Klink's work that she felt could be rightly called a piece - was still very elementary, slanted in areas and sloppy in others, but it had feeling. Emotion. It was viewable as a step toward art, and his art was mournful. There was an absence of life to the view, something lost lingering in the negative space he'd centered on the page; it told a crisp and honest story of the war. "You've done a very good job, Herr Colonel," she whispered.
"You really think so?"
"Yes. There's still quite a bit we can work on," she tactfully said, "but this is you, sir. There's a lot of yourself happening on the page, and that's what we want."
"Thank you, my dear," Klink oozed, melting to pieces at her compliments, for she gave them so rarely and meant them when she said them.
"Of course. Would you care for tea before we begin tonight? I've just put some on."
Klink gave her a trademark lopsided smile as he realized he was still wearing his scarf; he removed it and stood to hang them on the stand with his coat. His cap, however, he kept on as always. He'd been wearing it when he met her, and when he took her for dinner that first night. She hadn't yet seen him without it, and her youth in comparison with his age spurred him to continue hiding his insecurity. "No need to trouble yourself," he absentmindedly said.
"Nonsense, Herr Colonel, I have two teacups. I also have some fresh-baked cookies from downstairs," she teased.
"Alright, alright," Klink folded immediately, momentary melancholy gone as he sat back down at her table; he had quite the sweet tooth and she frequently catered to it. "Elsie, that woman - the baker woman, she scowls at me every time I come here. What is it with her?"
"She doesn't like you," Elsie lightly said, taking the teapot off the stove plate and pulling cups from the cabinet. "She knows who you are and she thinks you come here to take advantage of me."
He looked ruffled, insulted. "I would never."
"I know you wouldn't," she laughed. "Just wait until we get a little farther in your lessons. She might take a little more kindly to you if she sees you lugging canvases up the stairs."
Klink chuckled. "Perhaps I'll sell her some of my work one day."
"I doubt it. She doesn't appreciate the arts very much, not unless they come in the form of dough or cake. Her husband was a sculptor... he left her for the woman he met at a modeling studio."
Klink blanched. "Oh, that's truly terrible, I..."
"That is life, Herr Colonel. Oh!" She suddenly cried. "I'm sorry I'm being so dismal. Do you take one sugar cube or two?"
"Two," the bald German gently said.
She obliged and brought him the tea and a plate of cookies, his favorite - snickerdoodles.
"How are things at the camp?" She murmured, still a little tense when she asked that question. She had learned he took great pride in his no-escape record, so much so that it was almost its own personality trait, yet she also had come to understand that he tried his best to be a fair and just commander, so unlike the violent pigs who often wore the same uniform.
"Oh, marvelous," said Klink. "Red Cross packages are due soon for the prisoners. Just between you and me, my dear," he added in an undertone of dramatic secrecy, "is there anything you would like me to get you? They send chocolate, jelly beans-"
"-Herr Colonel, you wouldn't!" She cried.
"For you, in a heartbeat," he professed.
Her heart twinged and performed that acrobatic feat it was beginning to do when he said such ignorant and selfless things; she was finding it harder and harder to ignore her growing fondness for the older colonel. He had become handsome, his deep blue eyes and hawkish nose so harsh compared to his soft lips, the lips she had begun to think about all too frequently. "Oh, please do not steal from your prisoners for me. Or for yourself," she admonished. "It isn't right."
"Alright," Klink humoredly folded as he sipped the hot tea and dipped a cinnamon-dusted cookie in it. "But I would like to give you this, my dear, if you'd accept it."
"You didn't get me anything, Herr Colonel-"
"-Oh, yes, I did," he cooed as he reached into his pocket and withdrew a bracelet of jade as if it were something he had no qualms with giving away; she knew how much such a thing could cost and she had an inkling of his rather small salary.
"I, oh," she breathed, "it's beautiful... you didn't need to—"
"—Yes, I most certainly did. You've been an excellent teacher and I daresay you deserve a bit more than what your students pay."
"T-thank you," Elsie stammered as she clasped the bracelet around her wrist and smiled down at it, her thoughts a whirlwind as the casual conversation continued.
Klink spoke candidly about POW camp regulations, about visits from generals, about all sorts of information she might have guessed was classified; he so obviously made strides to impress her, and in large part he succeeded.
She interjected with commentary on the weather, on how dapper he was looking, on the possibility of his promotion, while her naturally wandering mind latched onto the stray hair that stuck out beside his left ear, at odds with the hair she could see smoothly tucked inside his navy-colored cap. She felt herself seized with a sudden need to tuck that lock behind his ear, to brush it back, to touch him. It was so alien a desire that she acted on it before she could even decide why.
"You've got a fleck of lint on your collar," she dumbly lied, leaning over and pretending to pick a fuzz from his shoulder before she quickly slid her thumb across the wild hair to fix it.
Klink tried not to panic as his hand automatically went to his cap to keep it steady, his eyes finding hers as both of them merely stared at each other, a silent communication of fears and desires. The colonel worried for but a moment that Elsie might suddenly prove to be like that insane Weidler woman, insist he take off his hat to show her his hair... he banished the thought. Elsie, he felt as if he could truly connect with. She never pushed him, never ignored him, she listened to him for as long as he wished to talk. She wasn't like that.
Slowly he took his hand off his cap.
"I apologize, Herr Colonel," she whispered as she drew her hand away and tried to ignore the soft scent of his cologne.
"No need, no need at all," Klink simpered as he registered how instantly his heart had begun to pound. She didn't address his strange reaction to her touch at all, and he hated himself for how badly he wanted to kiss her. Still, she had turned him down on that front more than once and he was definitely too meek to try it again.
"Thank you again for the bracelet, really," she quietly said.
"You're quite welcome, my dear," Klink preened before finishing his cup of tea and briskly clapping his hands as if to get to business, to change the subject. "Shall we start the lesson?"
"Of course," said Elsie. "I planned something a little more... fun today."
Klink hummed as he stood and helped her clear the tea set from the table; she directed him to place them in the sink. "I'm all ears."
"Alright," she announced, sitting and sliding his sketchbook back toward him; she seemed to deliberate for a moment before pulling a little potted hydrangea between her chair and his. "We'll be doing what's called a blind contour," she said. "Sit here... and put your book in your lap."
Klink complied, scraping the chair across the floor as he adjusted.
"Now, what we'll do is - first, just have a look at this plant, hmm?" She laughed. "Do you like it enough?"
The colonel nodded, a little lost but trying to conceal it for the moment to pay attention.
"This is sure to sound very odd, but trust me," she airily said. "Focus on the plant and try to understand it: how tall it stands, how it moves, what sort of flow and balance it has. It's a form, just like a piece of architecture or a person."
Klink's autocratic blue eyes at once narrowed so intensely onto the defenseless purple flowers that Elsie burst out in laughter. She could very well imagine the plant quivering under that Prussian death stare he had mastered so well; if she hadn't known the colonel to be a marshmallow, that stare would chill her bones. "Colonel," she giggled, clutching her side, "you needn't focus quite that hard."
Klink blinked and refocused, allowing himself a moment to relax. "Oh. Alright."
"When you feel like you're done observing, you can place your pen to the paper... but here's the catch. This drawing has to be comprised of a single line with no raises of your pen, and you can't at any time look at your paper."
Klink fumbled. "What? That's impossible—"
"—Not at all," she gently corrected. "It's fun, come on and try it."
He looked uncertain as he placed his pen to the fresh surface of the book. "I - I'm not sure where to begin."
"Anywhere," she cooed. "The point of this is to connect what your eye sees to what your hand draws; above all it's an exercise in working with yourself - in trusting yourself to make the right mark."
He nodded slowly and pressed the tip of the pen onto the paper, his eyes trained firmly on the plant.
"Now, don't look down," she teased. "If I catch you sneaking glances at that paper, I'm going to make you start over."
His full pink lips pinched together in a determined expression as he began to follow the visible edges of the object, let his fingers feel for the boundaries of the paper as he explored the possibilities of drawing without looking; Elsie watched him for a few minutes before joining him in the process, pulling her grocery pad toward herself and studying the little blooms and stems.
Only after about twenty minutes had passed did the two realize that their secret glances at each other had morphed into a staring contest that passed through the tiny foliage between them. Elsie cleared her throat. "Are - are you finished with yours?"
"Yes," Klink softly said.
"Alright, go ahead and look at it."
The colonel's gentle blue eyes widened in distaste as he let them drop to the creation in his lap. "I..."
She giggled. "Would you like to see mine?" Without waiting she held it up for his view, a tattered continuous weave of a line that vaguely resembled a plant; had he not known what her intended subject matter was, he couldn't have guessed.
It gave him the confidence to hold up his own mess of squiggles.
"That looks magnificent, sir," she gaily said, humor in her brilliant smile.
"Yours... looks like a giraffe," he smartly said, pulling forth another burst of gay laughter from the young girl; she scooted her chair next to his and plopped her pad on the table in front of him. "How?"
Klink pointed with the nib of his pen. "This curve... this is the long neck here."
"Well, I guess it does, doesn't it," she mused. "I think - yes, I see it. I found a tower in yours."
"Hmm?"
Her hand brushed over his as she leaned near enough to feel his warmth; her index finger trailed along his drawing. "There."
Klink narrowed his eyes. "Do you ever watch the clouds, my dear? Look for shapes in them on sunny days? I've been told it's quite childish of me to do... I am a colonel in the Luftwaffe after all."
Elsie couldn't resist touching his hand again. It was so warm, so large, so protective. "I do that all the time," she murmured. "I see little things in the patterns of wallpaper and floor tile, in the cracks in old paint, in everything. It isn't childish, certainly not for you. You used to be up there touching those clouds, didn't you, Herr Colonel?"
He staunched a shiver he hoped she didn't see. "Y-yes, I..." He cleared his throat and pivoted, made a strong effort to use the opportunity to impress her. "My squadron used to call me the Iron Eagle. I was unstoppable up there in the blue, my dear."
Her huge brown eyes found his and looked at him in awe, not quite like he was a hero but as if she were frightened for him, as if he'd gotten orders to go up tonight. "Do you still fly?"
"No, darling, I don't. They need me on the ground at the camp, I'm the only one who can keep those prisoners tame."
"How long has it been?"
Klink sighed as he realized he'd have to tell her the truth, a needle in the steadily inflating balloon of his bravado. "Not since the war."
She made a bold move, edging a little closer to him and daring to rest her head on his shoulder; she knew she was pushing it, testing him, but his presence and his gentleness were irresistible as night began to fall and chill crept into the shoddy apartment. "Tell me what it was like?" She whispered.
Wilhelm Klink, stunned, gingerly wrapped an arm around her, the drawings entirely forgotten. His train of thought vanished, destroyed by the fact that he could smell her honey-scented hair. "Oh, surely you wouldn't want me to regale you with stories of war," he hummed.
She smiled at his reciprocation of the embrace, felt confident in letting her fingers trace the ribbons and medals on his crisp, elegant uniform. "I'd listen," she tenderly said.
Telling a woman anything about his military career was a metaphorical minefield, that much Klink knew; he remembered his conversations with Hogan about how to woo a woman yet again, recalled the American colonel's sly advice to lie. Appear like a tall, invincible war hero. He struggled to find any facet of his past that would truly charm her, but he resolved to attempt it, holding her close as he leaned back and told her about his time as a flight instructor.
She was a brilliant audience.
She gasped aloud at his pauses for effect, laughed at his quips, listened intently to him for as long as he wished to rattle on about his old achievements. It was during the story of how he earned his Iron Cross that it all fell apart.
He looked down at her in the midst of the tale of his great escape from the British reconnaissance plane and saw tears sliding down her cheeks; he panicked and tried to search his words for whatever might have disturbed her. She was crying silently.
"I - I bailed out over Wiesbaden," he faltered, dropping the facade of heroism. "They hit the engine, but I already had the information... I knew all about the shift in the lines. Elsie..."
She looked up at him and he saw new beads of water bloom and fall.
"What is it, my dear?" He softly asked.
Her trembling hands, moist with the tears she'd wiped away, cupped both his cheeks; the glimmer in her eyes made him feel things he'd never felt for a woman.
Elsie couldn't believe herself. Somehow she'd gotten lost in the story, in the reminders of Britain and the Allies his words had conjured up, even if he had been talking about the first world war. She found herself remembering the fading sensations of what safety felt like, of what Midwest summers had felt like, and it was with a terrible pang that she realized the feeling of being nestled against him was so frighteningly similar to those happy memories. He'd caught her crying, his concerned crystalline eyes were searching hers, and in that vulnerable moment, she said three words.
"Kiss m-me... Wilhelm."
He had only just moved to acquiesce when her lips met his in a hard kiss.
Klink rejoiced. She was shaking in his arms, startled perhaps by what she wanted; he kissed her with all the tenderness he had begun to hold for her.
It lasted only a few moments before she broke away, nervous; he took control and gently pulled her back, sliding a hand into her luxurious hair and feeling her swoon against him. Yet again it was her that slipped away from the beautiful touch, nervous reflections dancing in her eyes as she silently scanned his face for some kind of answer.
"It's alright, Liebchen," he softly said, one hand still threading through her hair. "I would never hurt you."
"I... I didn't mean to- sorry—"
"—There is no need to apologize," he insisted, pulling her closer and letting his large palms rub her shoulders. "You are more than welcome to kiss me, my dear, any time you like."
His light tone made her smile, though she still seemed uncertain. "I've - you see, I've never kissed a man before and I can't believe I just..."
Her confession completely befuddled the older man. "Never?"
"N-never."
He couldn't believe the possibility that she, in all her loveliness and youth, had never been kissed - obviously never been touched. He scrambled to collect himself and treat her with gentility. "Do you want your first kisses to be with me?" He kindly asked.
Silence fell for a long interval before she finally found the courage to nod. "Yes."
Klink gingerly moved toward her again and touched his lips to hers ever so carefully, wanting so badly to be rougher but unable to fight her innocence.
She pulled herself into him, holding onto him tight and wanting to be as close as possible; he guided her and completed the embrace, leading into a kiss that lasted a long time.
He broke it.
"Wilhelm," she whispered again.
He rocked her comfortably in his arms for a little while, sharing softer and sweeter kisses with her when she silently asked for them. When he left her apartment that night, his silly squiggle of a drawing was tucked safely within his sketchbook, now a prized possession because she had also pressed a kiss to its dog-eared corner, a mark of mauve lipstick he could remember always.
-
Wilhelm Klink had just downed a glass of schnapps at one in the afternoon. Nothing in particular was bothering him sans a general feeling of unease; even his daily stack of paperwork was minimal and his evening was mostly free. The one thing that kept coming back into his mind, however, was Elsie.
There was something about her, something about her that he couldn't stop thinking of, marveling at, for she was so unlike other girls - and he knew girls.
Klink's dalliances with members of the finer sex were interesting to say the least. Candidly he had never been in a serious relationship; when bravado was called for he would proudly say he was uninterested in one, that the life of a swinging bachelor was more befitting to his tastes. In most cases he was being truthful; he liked carousing, partygoing, mindless fun, for he preferred not having to think about women. Thinking about women caused a man trouble. The fact he struggled to admit even to himself, however, was that women didn't flock to him, not like they did to men like Hogan; he swore Hogan could make anyone fall in love with him while he, Klink, usually could only pull a month or so of flirtatious fun out of some barmaid before she spurned him. And that was how he had accepted the concept of a girl, of dating, of pleasure.
Elsie was nothing like any girl he'd ever met.
The way it had felt when she kissed him was both new and strange.
Every other woman he'd been with was confident. In the lead. Dictating what would happen and who would be seduced. Their lips had been intense and demanding... Elsie's body had trembled in his arms, her kiss had been quick and nervous, and yet she tasted so sweet... and she was intelligent and funny and kind... Klink sighed as he realized his affliction, realized how much he wanted her.
It would never happen.
There was no way.
As soon as the longing feelings started, the deprecating ones sprang up to ride alongside them like horsemen of the doom of Klink. Why would a girl like Elsie truly fall for a man like him? She was merely being sweet to him, for she was incapable of anything else.
The noise of a group of prisoners outside swelled as their volleyball game grew intense and Klink's mind was drawn away for a moment before he returned to his previous subject with more ammo to use against himself. He was a prison camp kommandant. She was an artist.
He sighed as he pulled the mirror on his desk closer to himself and observed his aging face in the glass, admitting that his hair loss was only the biggest problem in a whole lineup of issues. He looked tired and old, the hair he still did have was graying, and little crow's feet around his eyes were making appearances. He missed having hair almost as much as he missed peacetime, he had to cynically admit. His hair had been just as dark as Hogan's when it had crowned his head, yet now all that remained were signs of age, of a dwindling lonely life. He'd recently tried a list of ointments he'd grilled the town doctor about when he'd last went in for a physical - a physical he'd only passed through skillful bribery - and none of them had worked. One gave him headaches, but that had been it.
A vivid image of Elsie running her fingers through his hair made the colonel a little weak-kneed as he gave in to imagination so intense he considered retiring to his quarters early and pulling out an old issue of Mädchen magazine. That was certainly easier than trying to figure out his feelings.
With that thought in mind, the possibility of a relaxing evening that most certainly would not occur, the afternoon of supply forms felt twice as long as usual.