Beauty and the Beast

Memories

She thinks about him all the time. She sees him on newsreels, at rallies—and he doesn't see her. She had consecrated her entire life to him.

She had it aborted. Why it impacted her so much, she didn't know. She didn't know why it surprised her so much, either, when she found out she was pregnant. They hadn't used contraceptives, and he had never even bothered " finishing outside", so certain they had been that they would get married.
They had shown her the remnants of what they had scooped out of her—at her request— after the abortion was finished. She had cried so hard when she had seen it that they had had to give her at least three glasses of brandy before she could see straight. To her, the gelatinous mass of pink and red on the metal tray, flanked with bloodstained metal tools, was not repulsive in the least. It was the product of their love, a love that had been young, pure, and unadulterated.
She asked them if they could tell whether or not she was having twins. They said it was a singleton.
As she walked home after the operation, she wondered whether he would have named it Klaus or Heider had it been a boy.

She had gone into utter shock upon receiving the engagement notice. She didn't even remember the girls name...Meena ...? Dina...? She didn't care. All she looked at was the name at the top, Reinhard T. E. Heydrich. Reinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich.
They had had a lengthy discussion about his name one day. Reinhard was the name of the hero in one of his father's operas, Tristan commemorated Tristan from the play "Tristan and Isolde," and Eugen was a relative who had also been a composer.
She still braids her hair every day. No matter what the weather, her hair is never down the way it used to be.
She kept everything of his that he left at her house. The towel he always used, the blankets they made love on. One of his white shirts that he forgot. She never washed it, never put it with anything that could change the way it smelled. She sleeps with it at night to this day, the cotton material covering her mouth and nose, breathing in his scent.
It's better that way, if she doesn't move on from him. Maybe it's the only way for their love to stay sacred, so that it doesn't fade away for good. If one of them stays trapped in the past, amid towels and forgotten shirts and love letters, well...maybe it is for the best.
She dreams about him all the time. Every dream is different: sometimes he comes and makes love to her, in others she berates him scathingly about what he did. Still in others—in most of them—they're sitting in the grass, his arms around her like a protective shield, encasing her in his warmth.
Her gaze falls to her hands, folded in her lap. Like a gramophone recording, his voice runs through her head, "Silke Heydrich. How does that sound?"
She would have given anything and everything just to be Silke Heydrich. She would have let her father disown her, lose all her friends—just as long as she had him, that was all that mattered. Without him she was nothing, felt like nothing.
Where is he now? What is he doing? What are they making him do in the name or racial purity? What has he become?
She wants to see him again. She wants to look deep into his eyes and tell him she loves him. She wants them to go to the bar one more time, to weave their way drunkenly through the streets once more. She wants to wrap her arms around him one last time, she wants to kiss his lips until she can't do so anymore. She wants him to make love to her the way he used to. She wants to feel his hands on her head as he brushes her hair out after all is said and done. She wants to lie in bed with him for hours on end, making jokes about Jews and talking about their families and their plans for the future. She wants him to teach her to play the violin again.
But most importantly, she just wants him.
She's read Das Schwarze Korps, the newspaper he's had written. She's seen every picture of him, and shed tears over every one.
She imagines what she'd do if they were to see each other in the street. She remembers a time she arrived in Kiel and saw him standing around in the station, looking utterly bored. He had turned around when she called his name. She had run to him like he was a winning lottery ticket; they crashed into the nearest wall and stayed there, much to the chagrin and disapproving looks of the older passerby.
Would he still do the same thing now? Would he lift her off her feet and spin her once, twice, three times, as he had done that day?
He looked so handsome in the pictures printed in Das Schwarze Korps,  in his black and silver SS uniform, and even more so when he wore his ceremonial black overcoat.
She imagined the girl he had married standing with him in the mirror, straightening his lapels ever day, letting him braid her hair. Does he still like braids, she wonders.
She remembers the last time she ever saw him, at the train station. She could still remember how tightly she held onto him, the feeling of his body against hers, of his arms around her shoulders. The feeling of his lips on hers for what she didn't know would be the final time. His voice in her ear, telling her he loved her; that he would miss her terribly. Making her promise to write to him; making her promise to call him.
She did—and for a time, he would pick up dutifully on the first ring. They literally spent the first hour of their first call crying over the phone, as they told each other how separation was so cruel, and how their longing for the other knew no bounds.
She remembers exactly how the call proceeded. She dialed his number and the line connected on the first ring.
"Hello?"
"Reinhard, it's me," she said, talking past the painful lump in her throat.
Silence. She was grateful for that silence, as it allowed her to regain some semblance of her composure, but that was soon lost when she heard a low sniff coming through the receiver.
"I can't believe it." His voice crackled with shed and unshed tears. "Is it really you?"
"Don't cry," she said, "You're going to make me cry as well."
She has never loved another man the way she loved him. She has met many others, much to the jealousy of her friends, and yet they never stayed long. She never allowed them to.
She has never told anyone about him. Even her friends don't know. Her father has long forgotten about him.
If she were to tell anyone about her heartache, they would most likely tell her that eventually she would get over it. They wouldn't be wrong. Eventually, the salve of time would be enough to heal the gaping wounds.
She isn't too worried about the future. She knows that one day she will wake up and she will be happy again, because that's just how life is. But she knows he will always be there, in her heart and mind, like a shadow sticking to her heels.
She won't forget him. She can't. How could she? He was her first; he is her last. She has only ever been attracted to another man because something in that man reminded her of him.

I gave you all some music to listen to as you read at the top where the picture is...just swipe to one side :)