sirens sounded. We pretended not to hear them.
'Have you a night-pass, Sven?'
'Yes, till 8 to-morrow morning. Pluto organized it. The Old Un has gone to Berlin on three days' leave.'
'Has everybody got leave?'
'Yes.'
She stopped and pressed my arm. Her face was white. The eyes shone wetly in the light from the black-out lamp.
'Sven, oh Sven, does it mean you're going?'
I did not answer but nervously pulled her along and was silent. Soon she said in a whisper as if she had read the irrefutable fact in my silence:
'Sven, then it'll be all over. You are going. Even if my husband returns one day you have given me something he couldn't Sven, I can't do without you. Promise you'll come back.'
'How can I when I'm not my own master? The Ruskies and others decide. I'm not asked. I love you. It started as an adventure. You being married only added to the attraction. But it became more. Maybe it's just as well marching orders will part us.'
Silence again! She stopped by a garden gate and we tiptoed to the house. Away to the east we could see tracer-bullets from anti-aircraft guns soar into the sky.
Carefully she unlocked the door, and made sure the black-out curtains fitted before she put on the light. Just a small lamp with a yellow-shade, it seemed to radiate warmth.
I put my arms round her and kissed her violently, almost brutally. Passion started burning in her. She wildly answered my kisses and bored her slim body into mine. Heavily we fell on the sofa without our lips parting.
My hands followed the seam in her stocking, searching her lithe body. Her skin was cool, smooth, dry and smelling of woman. I forgot the depot, the gloomy armoury, reeking oil, beer and damp uniforms, sweating men, old socks - the ruined city with its barracks, hobnailed boots, bawdy songs, brothels, huge graves filled with corpses. I was with an expensively dressed woman, a woman fragrant with the perfume from the slopes of Southern France, with female legs, slim with one shoe on, the other off, black suede shoes with high heels, and round, dimpling knees in light grey silk stockings. The skirt was so narrow it had to be pushed up over firm thighs to make it comfortable. A fur coat on the floor, Persian lamb, beaver or calf? Women would have known it was Persian lamb, black as night, a symbol of wealth and luxury.
Buttons in the pink blouse have burst open under the soldier's battle-clumsy grip. A breast is made prisoner and examined, not roughly by the soldier but by the eternal lover's tender hand. The nipple smiles into love-hungered blue eyes which have wept and laughed, stared across the snowy wastes of Russian Steppes, searched for a mother, a woman, a lover like her.
She detached herself gently from my embrace.
'Shall I tell you what I think?' I asked.
She lit a cigarette and answered as she put another into my mouth:
'I know what you are thinking, my friend. You wish you were far away in a country behind the blue hills, a Shangri-La without barracks and shouts of command, away from a society of rubber-stamping civil servants, a place without the smell of leather and printing-ink, a land of wine, women and green trees.'
'That's what I'm thinking.'
I picked up a photograph from a table beside the sofa. A man in uniform. A handsome man with fine features. A man wearing the insignia of a staff-officer. In one corner he had written 'Your Horst, 1942.'
'Your husband?' I asked.
She took the photograph, put it carefully on the shelf behind the sofa and pressed her mouth against mine. I kissed her pulsating temples, let my lips brush over her firm breasts, bit her cleft chin, and pulled her head backwards by her dark hair.
She groaned with pain, passion and need.
'Oh, Sven, let us find our Shangri-La!'
From the wall a painting of a woman looked forbiddingly down on us. She was wearing a blouse with a high-necked lace collar. Her grey eyes had never dreamed of Shangri-La, but then she had never seen a city in ruins and women with their
'Have you a night-pass, Sven?'
'Yes, till 8 to-morrow morning. Pluto organized it. The Old Un has gone to Berlin on three days' leave.'
'Has everybody got leave?'
'Yes.'
She stopped and pressed my arm. Her face was white. The eyes shone wetly in the light from the black-out lamp.
'Sven, oh Sven, does it mean you're going?'
I did not answer but nervously pulled her along and was silent. Soon she said in a whisper as if she had read the irrefutable fact in my silence:
'Sven, then it'll be all over. You are going. Even if my husband returns one day you have given me something he couldn't Sven, I can't do without you. Promise you'll come back.'
'How can I when I'm not my own master? The Ruskies and others decide. I'm not asked. I love you. It started as an adventure. You being married only added to the attraction. But it became more. Maybe it's just as well marching orders will part us.'
Silence again! She stopped by a garden gate and we tiptoed to the house. Away to the east we could see tracer-bullets from anti-aircraft guns soar into the sky.
Carefully she unlocked the door, and made sure the black-out curtains fitted before she put on the light. Just a small lamp with a yellow-shade, it seemed to radiate warmth.
I put my arms round her and kissed her violently, almost brutally. Passion started burning in her. She wildly answered my kisses and bored her slim body into mine. Heavily we fell on the sofa without our lips parting.
My hands followed the seam in her stocking, searching her lithe body. Her skin was cool, smooth, dry and smelling of woman. I forgot the depot, the gloomy armoury, reeking oil, beer and damp uniforms, sweating men, old socks - the ruined city with its barracks, hobnailed boots, bawdy songs, brothels, huge graves filled with corpses. I was with an expensively dressed woman, a woman fragrant with the perfume from the slopes of Southern France, with female legs, slim with one shoe on, the other off, black suede shoes with high heels, and round, dimpling knees in light grey silk stockings. The skirt was so narrow it had to be pushed up over firm thighs to make it comfortable. A fur coat on the floor, Persian lamb, beaver or calf? Women would have known it was Persian lamb, black as night, a symbol of wealth and luxury.
Buttons in the pink blouse have burst open under the soldier's battle-clumsy grip. A breast is made prisoner and examined, not roughly by the soldier but by the eternal lover's tender hand. The nipple smiles into love-hungered blue eyes which have wept and laughed, stared across the snowy wastes of Russian Steppes, searched for a mother, a woman, a lover like her.
She detached herself gently from my embrace.
'Shall I tell you what I think?' I asked.
She lit a cigarette and answered as she put another into my mouth:
'I know what you are thinking, my friend. You wish you were far away in a country behind the blue hills, a Shangri-La without barracks and shouts of command, away from a society of rubber-stamping civil servants, a place without the smell of leather and printing-ink, a land of wine, women and green trees.'
'That's what I'm thinking.'
I picked up a photograph from a table beside the sofa. A man in uniform. A handsome man with fine features. A man wearing the insignia of a staff-officer. In one corner he had written 'Your Horst, 1942.'
'Your husband?' I asked.
She took the photograph, put it carefully on the shelf behind the sofa and pressed her mouth against mine. I kissed her pulsating temples, let my lips brush over her firm breasts, bit her cleft chin, and pulled her head backwards by her dark hair.
She groaned with pain, passion and need.
'Oh, Sven, let us find our Shangri-La!'
From the wall a painting of a woman looked forbiddingly down on us. She was wearing a blouse with a high-necked lace collar. Her grey eyes had never dreamed of Shangri-La, but then she had never seen a city in ruins and women with their
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