If you were alive, Reinhard, I would have liked to ask you why you didn't kill me after you and Lina killed my son. The more I think about it, the more stupid of a question it seems. You kept me alive because you knew death would be a much easier way out. For me to live with the death of my two children and the horrific memories of the time we spent together would slowly kill me, and that was the way you liked it. You liked to draw out your victims' suffering as much as possible.
I awoke from a coma-like slumber and realized I was still alive.
It enraged me.
I didn't want to live in this cruel world any longer. I wanted to go where my son went and apologize to him for failing him. I wanted to ask for his forgiveness for being such a bad mother. Most of all, I wanted to use my position as a dead person to torment you and your family. I imagined myself as those ghosts in horror stories, living in people's attics or basements, making things levitate and fall. I relished the idea of haunting your family until all of you went insane and murdered each other. That would be absolutely glorious, I thought.
I still couldn't move. The effects of what was clearly a muscle relaxant the blonde haired nurse had injected me with still hadn't worn off. I could only conclude that they had either doubled or tripled the dosage if it was taking this long to wear off.
It suddenly occurred to me that my throat was dry, and it was hot. Humid, even. My eyes darted this way and that, taking in my surroundings. The window of the room had been whitewashed, and all the lights had been shut off. The tables of medical equipment had all been whisked away, leaving only the metal frame bed I was lying in. There was a pungent, sour, metallic odor in the air, filling my nostrils. I knew it well--it was the same stench that had assailed my nose the night you murdered our first child as I slowly came to in a pool of my own blood.
My first thought was that I was slowly bleeding to death. My mind shouted at me to do something about it, to try and make an effort at self preservation, but I was far from caring. I was tired of running, tired of staying alive, tired of hoping that things would ever get better for me. I just wanted all of it to end. I wanted to go wherever my father and my two children went and stay there with them, far, far away from all the pain and suffering and death and cruelty that this world was comprised of.
Even if I had had a will to live, I wouldn't have been able to do much about the fact that I was allegedly bleeding to death. I still had hefty doses of muscle relaxant in my bloodstream and could hardly lift a finger to staunch the blood flow.
The thing was, I wasn't bleeding to death. I wasn't bleeding at all. The nurses hadn't even bothered to change the bloodstained sheets I had given birth on, nor had they changed my bloodied hospital robe, or even cleaned me up. I had coagulated blood in macabre ribbons up and down the insides of my legs and I didn't even know it. I was lying in my own filth and I had no idea. All I could smell was the salty, coppery stench of days-old blood.
I wondered where you and Lina were. I wondered if you were going to come back for me. I no longer cared that you killed my son, I just wanted to see you walk in the door and take me back to Jungfern Brenschan. What you chose to do with me after that didn't matter to me in the slightest.
There was a loud crash in the hallway, followed by panicked footfalls. Then there was the telltale slam of hobnailed boots on tile and the deep, rough voices of SS men ordering all the windows to be whitewashed and all remaining patients of the wing to be cleared out immediately.
My heart jumped in my throat. The only time SS men went anywhere was when you were there.
So you were here after all. As much as I wanted to see you, I was suddenly afraid of what would happen when I did see you. You no longer had any use for me anymore—my body was in tatters and there was no way you could use me the way you always had. You couldn't afford to let me go out of fear that I would open my mouth. So the only recourse—
I wondered how you would do it. Would you have them shoot me? Would you do it yourself? Would you inject chloroform into my heart? Would you send me to a concentration camp? I hadn't heard much about concentration camps other than that once you were sent there, the chances of you returning alive were slim.
I took a shallow breath of humid, stale air. Lying here and waiting for you to come and administer the inevitable coup de grace was a palatable idea. Trying to escape and dying in the process was, well...an idea that hadn't crossed my mind before.
I didn't want to try to save myself from whatever fate awaited me. I didn't deserve to live. My son was dead; I had nothing else to live for. Even if I did manage to escape, you wouldn't let me out of your sights for very long. You would find me and bring me back to your castle, and the nightmare would begin all over again. And even if you didn't find me, what then? I had no future in my village—or anywhere in Czechoslovakia for that matter. Word would eventually spread that Reinhard Heydrich had fucked a Czech girl and kept her as his live-in whore. Ata would no longer want me. I could never marry a Czech man—or a Slovak one for that matter. I could probably never have children again after all the damage my body had sustained. Even if I did—they would never be able to live with the shame of what had happened to me under the Nazi occupation of our country.
I couldn't even see myself leaving the country. I didn't have any proper college education, nor did I have a high school diploma thanks to you. I was an uneducated woman by all standards, all because of you. I couldn't build a future for myself if I tried.
So what difference did it make to me whether I died by your hand or not? I shouldn't have cared. And for a while, I didn't care.
And then—to this day I don't know why—I had a change of heart. I think it's because of that sudden will to live that I'm alive today. If I hadn't felt the need to outwit you at your own game all of a sudden, you probably would have succeeded in silencing me forever. I would have stayed there in the dark until one of your SS men kicked the door to my room down and emptied his pistol ceremoniously into my head.
I suddenly felt that this wasn't how I wanted it all to end. I didn't want it said that in the end Sophie Gabcik gave up and allowed the Nazis to kill her. I didn't want to make the task of killing me any easier to your men. If they wanted to do it, I would make them have to work hard for it.
I flexed my fingers—or at least, I tried to flex them—and to my surprise, they twitched, but only slightly. I tried again, harder this time, and they straightened outward. I tried to bring them together to make a fist and found I could, albeit a very loose fist.
I could move. Just barely, but it was still something. I uncurled my fingers and slowly stuck my arm out as far and as straight as it would go so that my forearm was parallel to the floor. Using that as a sort of weight to help pull me to the floor, I began to inch my whole body off the bed.
It hurt. Every movement sent a million pins and needles into my whole body. I felt like all my limbs were asleep and I was putting weight on them. I didn't know why I was even bothering. To lie there and wait for my executioner to come end me was a lot less tiring, not to mention painless.
It took me a while to sort of rise above the physical pain I was feeling and register that my heart was hammering in my chest and there was this tingly, heavy feeling in my stomach like someone had just released a colony of butterflies into it. I didn't know whether I was scared of the door flying open and an SS man walking in and riddling my body with bullets or scared of escaping and being caught again. Both options were equally terrifying, but I wasn't quite sure which one I could expect to happen.
It hurt just to move, but it was nothing compared to the pain that fanned out through my body when I hit the cold tile. I floundered like a beached whale on the unforgiving floor as my numbed muscles and nerves shrieked in protest.
Outside, the shouting in German escalated. Pairs of feet stomped up to my door and stood still. I pressed closer to the floor, flattening myself against the tile like it would somehow make me one with the cold stone. I watched the shadows of the men outside move erratically from the space between the door and the floor and wondered why so many people were needed to kill one defenseless girl.
I would later learn that after my brother and his co conspirators tried to kill you in the Prague-Liben district, you were brought to the hospital and immediately gave orders for me to be removed from the hospital and taken to the Gestapo headquarters in a hidden wing of the Hradcany Castle. You ordered that I be extensively tortured until I gave information I supposedly had on my brother and his comrades. You assumed that just because my brother Josef had been one of the assassins that I knew things about the operation too, which was absolutely preposterous. How could I possibly have had any contact with anyone from the village, let alone my family members, when I had been holed up in a room in your chateau the whole time?
The rattle of the chain looped around the door handles on my side of the door roused me. I gripped the edge of the metal bed frame with shaking hands and began to pull myself to a sitting position. It was slow, hard work, and the painful slam of my heart against my rib cage and the knot of trepidation in my stomach didn't help matters. I eventually managed to raise myself shakily up on my feet.
Outside, there was the telltale jangle of keys being shaken on a ring. I let go of the metal bed frame shuffled away from the bed only to promptly fall on my face. I shut my eyes, pressing my clammy cheek to the cold floor. Just let it be over, I told myself. Let them come in and shoot you, and put a end to your suffering.
But then I thought of you. I thought of your reaction to my death. I thought of how you would think to yourself that I truly lived up to your image of me as a spineless, lily livered, watery kneed Czech who was too cowardly to stand up for herself. And I realized that by lying here and letting myself die without a struggle, I would surely prove you right. I wasn't about to give you that satisfaction, even in death.
There was a deafening clank as the key was inserted into the lock of my door. My arms felt like red hot skewers were being driven into them as I lifted myself to my knees and began to slowly crawl over to the whitewashed window. The key turned in the lock just as I reached the windowsill. The men on the other side threw the door open—at least, they tried to. The person who had been put in charge of sealing the door to my room shut had somehow looped a length of chain around the door handles from the inside and secured the chain with a padlock. There was more shouting and furious curses as the SS men fumbled with the lock, shoving key after key into it.
I heaved myself to my feet and literally fell upon the window. My fingers felt like melted sticks of butter as I tried to undo the lock at the top. Behind me, I could hear the men wrestling with the padlock and the chain, ramming their shoulders against the door. A few of them even shouted in broken Czech for me to come and open it. I didn't have the heart—or the voice—to tell them to kindly fuck off.
By some miracle, the lock clicked open just as the men inserted the correct key in the lock. I threw open the window not without difficulty and leaped onto the windowsill just as the heavy doors burst open with a deafening crash. I was perched on the windowsill like some bird of prey, my fingers and toes gripping the edge of the frame. I must have looked quite the madwoman to them, a crouched silhouette in the gray mid afternoon light that now shone brightly into the room.
The machine gun fire that they sprayed the open window with never hit me. The moment they drew their weapons, I leaned backward and let myself fall...My brother's face, his eyes wide with horror, tears streaming freely down his cheeks. My brother, who never, ever cried. Behind him, Libena's face swims into view, her hands over her mouth, muffling her sobs. I haven't seen Libena in months. She looks so different now...
"...they injected poison into his head. They killed him, Josef. They killed my son. They killed him—they killed him—you need to find him for me—"A bright, well-lit room, a hospital room. Everyone I know is here—Ata, his mother, my mother, my brother, Libena. They all watch in horror as a nurse wearing a gauzy surgical mask comes into my view. I hear someone screaming hysterically. Then there is a sharp, intense pain in my chest, followed by a light pinch in the side of my neck...
I black out instantaneously.
I always have this one dream, Reinhard, and I think I should share it with you now that you are dead and beyond my reach. It has occurred less frequently with the passage of time, but I still have it from time to time.
In it, I'm on the porch of your chateau, looking out at the manicured lawn. My son sleeps silently in my arms, his eyes closed. I hold onto him tightly, so tightly that he squirms in his sleep and I loosen my grip.
There's a hand on my shoulder. I turn around and I see you standing in the doorway of the house. You hold your arms out, and I hesitantly give you my little boy. You brush past me and step off the porch, fixating me with an unreadable expression.
"I'll come back soon," you say, and set off across the lawn.
For a moment, I stand stock still, and then I set off at a run after the two of you. It feels like I'm wading through quicksand the faster I run, and I'm forced to slow to a walk, watching the two of you disappear. And then I wake up. And I know you're never going to come back.Why should it matter to you, Reinhard? To leave someone is not the same as being left by someone. You died eight days later, and left me with nothing but a broken, abused body and an even more battered spirit. The reprisals that swept Czechoslovakia in retaliation to your death saw to it that I was truly alone in the world, a chicken without feathers. You were all I had ever since that night when the Gestapo stopped me and my friends on the street—and when you died, you just had to take whatever else I could call my own, too.
When I fell out of that window, I didn't die. By some miracle, I fell straight into a dying tree that was growing behind the hospital, in the grimy alley separating it from the other buildings. The tree had cushioned my fall enough so that when I hit the ground the impact injured me but not as fatally. Libena and Josef had been taking a discreet walk through Prague to take Josef's mind off they notion that he had failed to assassinated you. Somehow, Josef recognized the body lying in a crumpled, bloody heap beneath the tree as that of his sister and had me immediately taken to another hospital, where I was put under a sedative and operated on. I had broken both my legs and my left arm, and I had sustained a severe concussion. Later on, Libena told me that Josef didn't eat for days after I told him in my delirium that I had had two children by you and you murdered them both.
Sometimes I wish I could have died that day, Reinhard. I would have been able to witness your reactions to my story as I tell it to you, instead of feeling like an idiot talking to a patch of grass where your headstone once was.
I suppose this is what I get for staying alive. I had to contend with the realization that you shattered my world into a million pieces and left. I had to pick up the pieces—alone.
YOU ARE READING
Beauty and the Beast
Historical FictionWhat do you do when the one who stole your future is the only one who can give it back? Eighteen year old Sophie Gabcikova led a completely normal life in the quiet village of Panenske Brezany--until the day her beauty caught the eye of Deputy Reic...