Beauty and the Beast

Diamond Rings

Anna found me the next day in bed, sobbing so  uncontrollably I was literally screaming into the pillow. She hauled me into her arms and held me as I cried, patting my back.
"You poor darling," she said, her voice cracking. "Tell me what happened."
I told her everything. How I would prefer having to fuck Reinhard Heydrich a million times than have to get down on my knees between his—your—legs and...
How I felt so worthless when you would force me to swallow after all was said and done. How I ran to the bathroom and vomited so violently after the door closed behind you that it felt like my intestines were being scooped out with a razor sharp meathook. How my eyes bulged as I expelled what felt like all the organs nestled inside my body.How I collapsed over the toilet, sobbing uncontrollably, unable to stop.
You had forced me to do things like this before to you but only as a prelude to what was to come. This was the first time I had ever gone the whole nine yards performing such an abhorrent act like this on you.
"He destroys me, Anna," I said when my half sobs, half screams finally turned themselves into coherent words. "Every night, he rapes my body and he rapes my soul, too. I want to die..."
"You must be strong, Sophie," Anna said, although she, too, was crying. "Heydrich wants to enslave you, body and soul. You must be strong and resist him for as long as it takes for you to get out of here."
"I can't be strong anymore," I wailed. "I can't take what he does to me anymore, Anna. Every night he always forces himself on me. He makes me do things to him that...that...that completely disgust me. And he does things to me too, sickening, defiling things."
Anna shook her head, hugging me tighter. "You poor dear. Does he say anything to you?"
"Whenever he's on top of me, it's always, 'Lina, Lina, Lina.'" He'll say things like, "Forgive me, Lina' or 'I'm sorry, Lina.'"
"Lina Heydrich is his wife," Anna said, her tone curdling with disgust. "We Czechs call her the 'Heydricha'."
I sniffed. "She must have been quite the beauty in her day."
"Ah, I'm sure she was. But now she's just an old, pregnant shrew in a dirndl. Surely you've seen her?"
"In pictures, yes." I sat up, wiping my eyes: "He never lets me go outside."

Anna hastily wiped my face with the corner of her apron. "You mustn't let him get to you," she said. "Might I tell you exactly why Reinhard Heydrich chose you, out of all the girls in the Protectorate? Might I tell you exactly what was happening in the weeks leading up to your mock arrest?"

"Yes." At that, I stilled myself, swallowed the rest of my sobs. I wanted to hear exactly why you did what you did.

"Heydrich is a womanizer," Anna said. "And although he thinks of us 'Czech bitches' as subhuman, he and his subordinates all agree that we look even better than those sexless German girls."

I had seen newsreels of the 1936 Olympics, of the girls of the Bund Deutscher Madel, or BDM, doing exercises in perfect synchronization on the grassy playing field. With their black shorts, white tops, and flaxen braids, they were supposed to represent the ideal Nordic woman. They also didn't look very attractive either--it was much easier to imagine one of them in a dirndl and hobnailed Bavarian shoes doing farmwork with three children clinging to her skirt and a fourth strapped to her back, than to imagine the same girl in a fancy dress with makeup and high heeled shoes.

"Heydrich had his Gestapo embark on a mission to find him the prettiest girl in all of the Protectorate and bring her to him. He promised them a hefty sum of money and a promotion if they did. So they started with Panenske Brezany. They combed through the entire village to see who had a reputation for beauty. The fact that you were called "Doe Eyes" by the grandmothers of our village only made them certain that they had found the one. They just needed to show you to Heydrich."

It was all making sense now. I folded at the waist and started crying, burying my head in Anna's lap. She patted the top of my head, holding my shoulders as they heaved with sobs.