Sophie's Choice - William Styron [169]
“Then, sir, I will explain how I was put into the stenographic pool. It was because of an altercation I had with a Vertreterin in the women’s barracks when I first arrived last April. She was the assistant to the block leader. Quite honestly, I was terrified of her because...” She hesitated, a little wary of elaborating upon a sexual possibility which the shading of her voice, she knew, had already suggested. But Höss, eyes wide open now and level upon hers, anticipated what she was trying to say.
“Doubtless she was a lesbian,” he put in. His tone was tired, but acid and exasperated. “One of those whores—one of those scummy pigs from the Hamburg slums they stuck in Ravensbrück and that Headquarters got hold of and sent here in the mistaken idea that they would exercise discipline over you—over the female inmates. What a farce!” He paused. “She was a lesbian, wasn’t she? And she made advances toward you, am I right? It would be expected. You are a very beautiful young woman.” Again he paused while she absorbed this last observation. (Did it mean anything?) “I despise homosexuals,” he went on. “Imagining people performing those acts—animalistic practices—makes me sick. I could never stand even to look at one, male or female. But it is something which must be faced when people are in confinement.” Sophie blinked. Like a strip of film run at antic jerky speed through the projector, she saw that morning’s mad charade, saw Wilhelmine’s mop of flaming hair draw back from her groin, the famished damp lips parted in a petrified perfect O, eyes sparkling with terror; looking at the revulsion on Höss’s face, thinking of the housekeeper, she felt herself begin to suppress either a scream or a peal of laughter. “Unspeakable!” the Commandant added, curling his lips as if on some loathsome mouthful.
“They were not just advances, sir.” She felt herself flush. “She tried to rape me.” She could not recall ever having said the word “rape” in front of a man, and the flush grew warmer, then began to fade. “It was most unpleasant. I had not realized that a woman’s”—she hesitated—“a woman’s desire for another woman could be so—so violent. But I learned.”
“In confinement people behave differently, strangely. Tell me about it.” But before she could reply he had reached into the pocket of his jacket, draped over the other chair at the side of the cot, and took from it a tinfoil-wrapped chocolate bar. “It’s curious,” he said, the voice clinical, abstract, “these headaches. At first they fill me with terrible nausea. Then as soon as the medicine begins to take effect I find myself very hungry.” Stripping the foil from the chocolate, he extended the bar toward her. Hesitant at the outset, surprised—for it was the first such gesture on his part—she nervously broke off a piece and popped it into her mouth, knowing that she betrayed a greedy eagerness in the midst of her effort to be casual. No matter.
She proceeded with the account, talking rapidly as she watched Höss devour the rest of the chocolate, conscious that the so very recent assault on her cunt by the trusted housekeeper of the man to whom she was speaking allowed her a certain freshness of tone, even vivacity. “Yes, the woman was a prostitute and a lesbian. I don’t know where she was from in Germany—I think from the north, she spoke in Plattdeutsch—but she was a huge woman and she tried to rape me. She had had her eyes on me for days. One night in the latrine she approached me. She was not violent at first. She promised me food, soap, clothing, money, anything.” Sophie halted for a moment, her gaze fixed now on Höss’s violet-blue eyes, which were watchful, fascinated. “I was terribly hungry but—like you too, sir, I am repelled by homosexuals—I did not find it difficult to resist, to say no. I tried to push her away. Then this Vertreterin grew enraged and attacked me. I shouted at her loudly and began to plead with her—she had me against the wall and was doing things to me with her hands—and then the block leader came in.
“The block leader put a stop to this,” Sophie went on. “She sent the Vertreterin away and then told me to come to her room at the end of the barracks. She was not a bad sort