The Second Winter (14 page)

Something wasn’t right.
Nothing
was. Hermann had helped her gently from his car, shown her solicitously up the stairs. Now she stood in the center of the room hugging her own shoulders, trying to suppress a shiver, turning slowly about on her heel. And then it dawned on her. It was the very same thing that had attracted Hermann to the space. It was that which was making her uncomfortable — it was the light.

“I don’t have anything to offer you,” the German said in broken Danish.

Polina shook her head. Her Danish wasn’t any better than his, though she had been brought to Copenhagen over a year ago now. “I don’t want anything from you,” she replied.

“I mean, I don’t have any food. Some rye crackers, but nothing else. You must be hungry.”

“I’m not hungry, no,” Polina said.

“Would you sit down?” The German indicated the bed.

“No.” Polina’s fingers dug into her shoulders. “I prefer to stand.”

The German took a step toward her, then stopped. “I want you to be happy here,” he said.

Polina didn’t answer, because there was nothing to say to this.

“I know it’s not much, but —” Hermann followed her gaze to a dark corner of the room. Polina had the impression that
he was seeing the apartment through her eyes. Perhaps he hadn’t noticed the grease stains on the floor before. There was a layer of dust on everything, dirty plates stacked in the bathroom sink. The parts of a broken camera were scattered across the desk. A yellowing page torn from a newspaper was tacked askew to an otherwise bare, unpainted plaster wall. Everything inside the room was filthy and worn — except for the mirror on the wardrobe, which was polished to a bright shine. “What’s your name?”

The German’s voice broke into Polina’s observations. She lifted her eyes from the mirror, dragged them back to the man’s face.

“The gentleman at the hotel told me that they call you Polina, but he didn’t give me the rest of your name.”

“He isn’t a gentleman.”

“He said that you speak Polish — that you’re from Poland.”

“He’s a pimp. He owns girls, that’s what he does.”

Hermann examined her through a squint. When he opened his mouth, she noticed the gaps between his teeth. Like a baby’s teeth, she remarked, not yet fully developed.

“How much did you pay him?”

“What?”

“No one has ever paid to take me out before.”

Hermann continued to stare at her, until the silence became unpleasant. Wind scratched the windows like fingers clawing the glass. The smell of baking yeast seeped through the floor.

“I’m wondering how much I will get.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Behind the crisp gleam of his spectacles, Hermann’s eyes reflected his disappointment.

“Normally, I don’t see much. Søren doesn’t have to pay us anything at all, you understand what I mean? He has his hands
on our throats, and he can squeeze them into fists whenever he wants to. I breathe because he lets me. I eat because he feeds me.” Polina was listening to herself speak. She had never articulated these thoughts before, and they were as much of a surprise to her as they were to Hermann. “He only gives us a few crowns every now and again to keep us working. It isn’t payment — it’s a bribe. So I have a pocket full of coins I can’t spend, and Olga has heroin in her veins. It’s like that, you see? But I’ve never been taken out of the hotel before, not by a customer, only by Søren’s partners, so I don’t know what to expect — how much I’ll get.”

Behind his spectacles, Hermann blinked. This girl’s pragmatism hadn’t just caught him off guard, it sickened him.
He was saving her
. He wasn’t paying her. Couldn’t she see that? “How old are you, Polina?”

The Polish girl wrinkled her nose. Her eyes were so pale, in this light they lost their color. “How old are
you
?”

Hermann loosened his tie. It was cold in the room, but he was suddenly hot. He took off his coat, draped it over the back of a chair. From a few feet away, Polina could smell the sweat beneath his arms. He was nervous. “I’m thirty-five,” he said.

“You have a wife.” Polina had noticed the thin gold band on his finger.

“I have a daughter, too,” Hermann admitted. His hands were still resting on his coat. The fabric pricked his fingertips. It wasn’t luxurious cloth. It was durable, powerful. “Ten years old.”

“My age,” Polina said.

“What’s that?” Hermann raised his eyes. This girl was confounding him. Was this a joke? He laughed, but it was an uncomfortable laugh. Beneath her heavy sweater, he could see the swell of her breasts. They were a young woman’s breasts,
yes, but they weren’t undeveloped. Her hips gave shape to her skirt. Angela was a child. Angela had nothing in common with this girl —

“Who is Angela?”

“What?” Hermann was stunned.

“You were speaking the name,” Polina said. “Just now.”

“Was I?”

“Is she your daughter?”

“How old are you, Polina?” Hermann asked, repeating his question.

“To tell you the truth,” Polina replied, “I don’t know anymore. I turned sixteen. That’s the last birthday I remember. But that might have been more than a year ago, I forget. Time doesn’t run in circles for me anymore. It travels in a straight line now.”

“What are you talking about?”

Polina considered the question. “I’m as nervous as you are, I guess.”

“Come here.”

Polina didn’t move.

Hermann nodded toward the bed. “Come here with me. Sit down.”

“I am comfortable standing.”

“I told you. I want you to be happy here.”

“How long will I be here?”

“What?” Hermann hadn’t understood the question.

“Do you want me to suck you off now?”

“What —”

“Or are you going to fuck me?”

“You have it all wrong.”

“Do I?”

Hermann straightened his spectacles on the bridge of his nose. “Yes.”

“So you aren’t interested in me.”

Once again, Hermann felt confounded. “I didn’t say that.”

Polina held him in her gaze, then stepped across the room to the window. Smoke swirled from a brick chimney a block away. The sky was every bit as gray as it had been in the morning. On this side of town, away from the water, a light snow was falling. The façades of the buildings lining the street formed a colorless wall. Still, the light stung her eyes. Behind her, she was aware of this man’s breathing. Shallow, through his nostrils. No, nothing felt right here in this room. She couldn’t remember feeling safe. But here things were out of balance in a way that they hadn’t been before.

“Take off your sweater.” Hermann’s voice was barely more than a whisper, but the command was clear.

Polina flinched, but she tried not to show it. She remained at the glass. A truck was rumbling down the road toward the bakery. When it reached the building, it came to a stop. The driver stepped outside, bundled himself in his coat, trudged to the back of the truck, yanked open the doors.

“Didn’t you hear me?”

“So it is to fuck me,” Polina said to the window. “That is why you brought me here.”

“You don’t understand.”

“Don’t I?”

“No.”

When Polina faced him, Hermann had taken a couple of steps toward her. He stopped, returned her gaze. This reminded her of a game she used to play as a child, where your opponent could only approach when you weren’t looking. Then his eyes dropped to her sweater. She could feel them on her breasts. A man had told her once that they were beautiful. That she had the most glorious breasts a girl could have. But
that was a year ago, in her puberty. They were fuller now, she had noticed it herself. They were still firm, but heavy enough to want to drop a little. She thought about complying, but her hands wouldn’t budge, they wouldn’t lift the sweater over her head. Instead, she turned away again. Outside, the driver was carrying a tray of bread from the bakery to the back of the truck. She watched him load it then make his way back inside for another steel tray.

“I am going to take your picture,” Hermann said.

“Why?” The question was so simple — there was so little inflection in Polina’s voice — that yet one more time Hermann became confused. How could he impress this girl? Why didn’t she appreciate what he wanted to do for her?

“I am a photographer,” he explained.

“I can see this in your eyes,” Polina said. “And in how carefully you maintain your spectacles.”

Hermann took another step closer. “Take off your sweater.”

“So you can see me naked.”

“So I can take a photograph.”

“Do you want a photograph,” Polina asked, “because you don’t trust your mind to remember? Or,” she continued, now switching to Polish, “is it because you can’t touch me with your fingers?”

“I want your photograph,” Hermann said, “because you’re beautiful.” Another step, and he was directly behind her. Polina took a deep breath through her nose. Her body wanted to shiver, but she wouldn’t let it. “Has anyone told you that before? How beautiful you are. I can’t believe it —”

“I don’t want you to touch me.” Polina spoke the words abruptly and clearly. But, again, she spoke them in Polish.
Nie chcę, żebyś mnie dotykał
.

“What?”

“Stay away from me. Don’t get any closer.” She was speaking in a language Hermann could not understand.

“Let me help you.”

“I’m warning you,” Polina said, now in a whisper.

Hermann’s fingers found the bottom of her sweater, clasped it, began to raise it. When the shirt underneath lifted, too, and he caught sight of her slender torso, his throat tightened. Her skin was made of paper, of silk, of ivory. It would be cold to the touch. Captured inside the lens of his camera, it would radiate. He raised the heavy wool fabric up to her armpits, stretched it to pull it over her shoulders. He gasped when he noticed the bruises that darkened her ribs and arms.

“No,” she whispered, “I’m not challenging you, I’m begging you instead.”

“Polish has a brutal tongue,” Hermann said. “Like German.”

The sweater got tangled in her hair, then slid off, over her head. Outside, the driver was climbing back into the cab of the truck. When the engine started, a plume of diesel exhaust shot from a pipe behind the cab, mixing with the snow like wine in water. Polina’s shirt was crumpled, pulled up onto her breasts. Hermann’s fingers were sweaty. He was fumbling with her bra. “Don’t touch me,” Polina said. Now she spoke in Danish again, so that this man would understand.

“You have a beauty that will translate onto film,” the photographer said. “I can see it. I will show it to you, you will see.”

“I won’t let you touch me,” Polina said.

Hermann stopped moving.

“Your fingers are sweaty,” Polina said.

“A hundred and eighty reichsmarks.”

Polina froze into a statue. The man’s breath sank into her hair. She didn’t have to ask him what he meant. She understood what he was telling her.

“That is how much I paid your pimp,” Hermann explained anyway.

Polina’s heart touched her ribs. His moist breath was continuing to warm her scalp, now to creep down her cheeks like tears, slide beneath the collar of her shirt, slither around her breasts. This was an absurd amount of money. Goose bumps pricked her arms. Sweat trickled down her ribs.
She wasn’t going back
. She would never leave this place. This man had bought her from Søren.

“Now turn around,” Hermann said. He managed once again to sound a tender note. “I want to see you.”

When Polina still didn’t move, he placed his hands on her shoulders. Gently, not like Søren had. Softly, so that she could feel how smooth his skin was — as smooth, she thought, as the feathers of a swan. He twisted her around to face him. If she had resisted, he wouldn’t have been able to force her. But she didn’t resist, and now she was standing beneath him, looking up into his eyes. His breath streamed from his nostrils onto her face, into her mouth. And she tasted him. “It’s just you and me now,” she said.

“What?”

“In this room,” she said. “It’s just you and me. Can’t you feel how strange that is?”

Hermann didn’t respond. His fingers slid from her shoulders, slipped beneath the collar of her shirt. He ripped the fabric off her. The buttons popped from their threads, landed on the rough-hewn floor like pearls bouncing on marble. The sound recalled a memory.
What do you think of her? Isn’t she pretty?
In the apartment in Kraków, her uncle’s fingers had directed her into the bedroom, where the black-haired doll was lying against a dirty pillow on the unmade bed. Her thighs were still tingling where the sharp, cold edges of the
bicycle rack behind his seat had gouged her skin.
She’s pretty, just like you are
. She had held on to the doll while her uncle undressed her. When she dropped it, its china face cracked. One of the ears had broken off and skittered across the floor — just like the buttons of her shirt now, on the floor of Hermann’s apartment. Her eyes had tracked the broken ear until it stopped moving.

The German’s clammy fingers traveled down the length of her arms, peeling off the sleeves of her shirt like a second layer of skin. Hermann stopped when he reached her hands, and he intertwined his fingers with hers. Specks of his spit flecked her cheeks, but when she looked at him, it was Czeslaw’s face that loomed in front of her. When the German’s hands found her breasts, her nipples didn’t harden. They remained as soft as desiccated plums. He tried to touch her sensually, but she was only aware of his sweat and his eagerness and his breath.

When his hands dropped to her skirt and ripped the fabric, she slapped him. The violence was sudden and unexpected, and he reared backward. For a moment, Polina imagined that he would strike her back. Instead, his lips rose in another false smile. “Perfect,” he said.

She didn’t understand. She watched him straighten his spectacles on his nose, then take a step in retreat.

“Don’t move.”

One of her hands had found her skirt and was holding it up. The other was covering her breasts. She had no idea whether or not she was breathing.

He continued to stare at her, then turned and walked across the room. In the corner next to the wardrobe, he found his camera. It was a heavy piece of equipment. He hoisted it onto his shoulder by lifting the tripod, carried it back to her, set it down in front of her. “No — this won’t do.”