Velvet Waltz [An Inglourious Basterds fic]

The Interrogation

"Do you mind if I smoke?"

Greta, still handcuffed, squinted at Landa through the glare of the overhead lamp, and shook her head.

She watched him pack his meerschaum pipe with nimble fingers. He was in no rush, apparently. Behind him, she caught a glimpse of herself in what was surely a two-way mirror. She looked, appropriately, like hell.

So this was an SS interrogation. She imagined the iron gates of her mind swinging closed, and her sweet, dumb cover identity taking over. Like a lobotomy.

"Well, then," Landa finally began. "Name?"

"Greta Van Horn," she dutifully replied.

Landa frowned. "Born?"

"1918, in Luc-"

"STOP! STOP AT ONCE!" Landa shouted so fiercely she jumped. "No more of this desecration! You are not Swiss. This accent is as "Swiss" as Mickey Mouse. It is, frankly, very offensive."

"But I"--

"None of the music of the Alps." He sniffed with contempt. "More goat than alphorn."

A pause.

"Pardonez moi--" she tried.

"You're an American, yes?" Landa said in flawless English. "We'll continue in English. Is that acceptable to you?"

She felt her years of study, those grueling night courses in French and German, evaporate into nothing. Ditto her cover. She could not have felt more naked if she were stripped and spread-eagled.

Landa leaned in. "What is that...sound, anyway? Those flat vowels. Like the terrain. Midwest? ...Illi-noys?"

She focused harder than she ever had in her life.

He chuckled and took another puff on his pipe. "I'm just teasing. I know it's Illi-noy."

Did he know where she was born? Or a lucky guess?

His eyes were studying her face. Memorizing it. "Not Greta. You're not a Greta. Perhaps...Sarah. Or Rachel."

Her stomach turned to ice.

Landa stood, strode around the table, and observed her face from the side. Her nose. She'd always been told she didn't "look" Jewish, but that nose of hers was as loud as a brass band. He paused, tilted his head. "Hannah? Am I getting warm?"

"Ice cold."

"No matter," he continued, circling the table in the other direction. "What I'm most curious about, however, is your unmarried status."

She couldn't believe what she heard. "Excuse me?"

"It's a fair question. How does a lovely girl like yourself end up unwed and undercover in a foreign country?"

"I'm not....it's not a priority for me right now."

Landa stopped. "But it was, at one time."

"No. I put my career first."

"Until you met him."

She was visibly shaking. "You know nothing about my life."

The Standartenführer zeroed in for the kill. "You were so sure of him, weren't you? And he hurt you. Deeply. Humiliated you. Left you for another woman. Left you to clean up the mess. You must've felt so alone. So abandoned."

She felt like she was going to be ill. He had opened up her up right there on the table, like a dissection. And every hurt and shame was on hideous display.

Landa stood behind her and took her shoulders in his steady hands. "You saw your dreams dissolve. So it was easy to run away, risk your life, fight a war on the other side of the world. It all makes sense now."

Tears rapidly filled her eyes, and of course, he noticed. Congrats, she thought. You broke me. You goddamned asshole.

"I have so much more than that," she stammered. "Than him."

"Smart girl like you?" he said, pulling his handkerchief from the pocket of his grey SS uniform. "I don't doubt it."

He stooped and began to gently dab at her tear-dampened cheek with the handkerchief. The absurd tenderness of the gesture undid her.

"I swear I'm good at this," she sniffled.

"You're doing wonderfully." Landa held the handkerchief to her nose. "Blow."

She gave a half-hearted honk. "Please just break my kneecaps, Standartenführer. At least I was trained for that."

He waved this away.

"I don't mean to inflict further distress, but I must ask you," Landa ventured, returning to his seat. "Your comrades at the café."

She tried to remain stoic. "What comrades?"

His steely eyes bore into hers from a "don't play this game" angle. "None of your comrades were found at the scene."

He must have registered her immediate relief.

"It's very bizarre. Why did none of them rescue you?"

This thought genuinely had not occurred to her yet. "They must've ran, I'm sure they just didn't see me..."

"I saw you immediately from the doorway," Landa corrected.

Her head spun. "No, no, they wouldn't abandon me. They're smart. They know what they're doing."

Landa put up his hands. "I was only making an observation."

"You can't turn me against my own," she spat. But the damage was done, and her heart was in freefall.

A long, tense silence followed while she imagined her fellow agents calling her house, cycling around Paris looking for her, reaching out across resistance networks, leaving notes at their usual dead drops only she could decipher...or they weren't. But surely they were.

Smoke from Landa's frankly ridiculous pipe curled ominously towards the lamp.

"Can I ask you a question?" she finally said.

Landa gave a tight-lipped smile. "What would you like to know?"

"Germany invaded your country. They were the enemy of your people. Why did you join them?"

He set his pipe on the table very slowly. "They offered me a job. A good job, tailored to my skill set."

"Yeah, hunting Jews. Killing innocent people. Some job."

"I'm a detective," he warned. "And the crucial difference between us, Fraulein, is that I like to be on the winning team."

"What if you chose the wrong side?" she pushed, exhilarated by her own ballsiness.

"I will cross that bridge if I come to it," he said, standing. "But I am quite good at winning. And even better at taking down enemies of the state who think they're clever."

A solid 10 seconds of eye contact before Landa signaled the guards.

"What happens now?" she asked as steadily as she could.

"You're our prisoner," Landa whispered, leaning in close. "Now, go to your room and think about what you've done."

His eyes never left hers as the guards roughly pulled her from the chair and dragged her out.