sudden insatiable lust in the face of impending death
There’s only one house still standing on the village when we arrive, painfully navigating through holes and mounds of cold mud bearing the recent traces of tank treads. The white wall is stained brown with dirt. Many vertical trails of blood have drawn gruesome arrows pointing to a pile of naked corpses. The gleaming ashes surround us, the crackling noise of charred wood and the cortege of odours, from the nauseating smell of flesh to the smoke that weaves itself in our clothes and follows us from village to village. On the wall, in black paint, I see german words that I don’t understand.
We stop there, as night is not so far away. As I smoke with my comrades I hear my officer swearing, and he storms out of the house dragging behind him the tiny frame of a childish soldier.
Dirty blond hair and greyish blue eyes, he stands silent with a vacant look on his face. He looks right and left, slowly, register who he’s surrounded with and starts breathing heavily. I’ve seen shell shocked youth before. He’s a striking picture of it. Was he abandoned by his men?
At some point, a semblance of realization must had dawned upon him as he was hiding in that house, knowing what was to come. He pathetically tried to rip off the insignias from his uniform. The eagle hangs on his chest, the swastika still holding it to the rough fabric. The eagle flaps around as the kid’s breath comes out erratically.
Get rid of him, my officer says. I take the kid by the arm and I walk away.
-
The very image of passivity laid bare under my glare. The little soldier of saintly appearance looks at me through eyes of frosted glass. Sometimes he loses his focus, shakes himself back into consciousness then drifts away again. I lightly slap his cheek until his look locks into mine. There’s no defiance, no honour, no anger in it. Is there still someone behind those tired eyelids?
My knee between his legs and my hands around his neck have him pinned against a tree. I could tie him there, bind his eyes and have our own little duet of improvised execution. I’d say a few platitudes solemnly, take a few steps back, and fire. Perhaps he’d beg a bit, and I would not understand him, nor would I care.
There’s no point on putting any strength or resolve on my hands. I’m not strangling a man fighting for his life, kicking and biting, rolling on the floor with spite. I’m merely putting a kitten to sleep. My gloved fingers interlocked around the thin neck, an embroidering of leather over the perfect peachy white. I take my right glove off and shove it on my pocket, wanting a more personal knackery for this german cattle. I feel his pulse with my thumb, dig my fingers under the jaw on that sweet spot of velvety skin.
I take my time to squeeze, ever so slowly. His breathing becomes painful, I look down on his chest where the eagle still hangs miserably, to his shaking legs and muddy leather boots. My knee rubs between his legs and I hear him whimpering. I look at his face. On the blackened orbits, sunken eyes starting to rekindle, as if by choking him I was breathing back life into his brain. The little drowned soldier rises to the surface as I tighten my grasp, he starts to wriggle around but my grip is too strong for him. He’s red all over his pathetic face, a lovely contrast with his white hands holding my wrists as he weakly fights back. His reddened eyes look for mine as little choked noises come out of his mouth, opening and closing slowly like some hooked fish out of its pond.
Fillets of drool stretch between his lips and give a morbid gleam to his perfect white teeth, the teeth of a well fed kid, and I’m overcome by a sudden rush of hate. I squeeze harder until I can feel the cartilage rings of his windpipe rolling under the pad of my thumb. I spit on his cheek and it rolls down, joining the stream of snot coming out of his nose as he sobs like a little lamb astray. My hands are covered with the viscous mixture, turning pink where my nails have raked his skin, drawing blood.
His grip on my wrists becomes stiff, and he stares at me, a long and troubling gaze. His eyelashes are dewy with tears, crumbling under their weight, a grotesque infant with sticky eyes.
Under his half closed eyelids I notice a change of expression. Fear has left, and he looks at me as if I was as tall as the sun, as if I towered him immensely. Animal need disguised as ecstasy, he reminds me of those church icons where saints look upward, look towards something I never saw with my own eyes, but that’s what I’ve become for the little soldier.
I let go of his ruined neck and he drops on his knees instantly with a disheartening noise. Slowly, he wipes his face, soiling his entire right sleeve, then the left one to finish the job, focusing on cleaning his eyes. I look at the black uniform covered in white trails, like snail slime, like sperm. It’s disgusting in a way that fills me with a roaring thunder of pride, a cruelty fit to the divine. I crouch down a bit, face to face.
His torn up hat falls off when I nudge his sweaty temple with the frozen maw of my handgun. Rub the weapon, twist the thin hair growing there. I cup his chin with my other hand, a gloved finger resting under his cracked lower lip and I tilt his head up. It gives him an almost comical look, somewhere between pensive and doubtful, when I look at his mouth. He moans, wordlessly begging me. He’s still catching his breath but he does it in a disciplined way, slowly, seductively. His tongue, a red omen of what’s to come, rests on the floor of his mouth as he pants, lust overcoming him on an intense and vulgar way. A few words come out, in a disorganized flurry, and I don’t have to understand them to know what they mean. Kill me, break me, they say.
I let his head go and he slowly tilts it upward as I get up, careful not to break his gaze. My gun is still resting at his temple. I put my hand on the back of his neck, pet him a bit until his eyes lower submissively and he presses against my crotch.
I feel honoured in a way. Never thought I’d get to embody both death and love in a single day.
