Love and Desire in 1945 by Harry Leslie Smith

When we entered the apartment, a sullen old man greeted me. It was the cuckolded grandfather. He snarled at me in unintelligible German.

“What’s up with him,” I asked.

“Oh, he is in one of his moods today. Isn’t that right, Opa?” she asked sarcastically.
Friede turned to me and explained,

“He has been on his hobby horse all day: About how everyone is stealing from him. How he never gets enough to eat. Stealing what?"

"He hasn’t had a pfennig to his name since 1913. Before you arrived, he screamed that Mutti and I showed him no respect. We were just illegitimate guttersnipes."

"I gave the ingrate an earful. I told him he was lucky Mutti let him stay here, considering he chucked her out at twelve years old."

“That is when he got nasty. Isn’t that right, Opa? You went on about how the Nazis knew how to do things and wouldn’t allow an old man to be treated like rubbish by the daughter of a whore.”

The unshaven old man sat on a wooden stool. He wore thick, uncomfortable woolen trousers held up by bulky suspenders. He looked as thin and as fragile as a tall blade of grass in the dry season. The old man muttered, “Thunder and lightning.”

“Harry, please give him a cigarette or else we will get no peace.”

I pulled out my cigarette case and offered him a Player’s. With shaking hands, he pulled one to his mouth. For a moment, our eyes met; his were filled with watery hatred for everything around him.

“Come,” Friede said. “Let’s get out of the kitchen. I don’t know how long we’ve got until the Gellersons come back. Bring a bottle of wine with you. We’ll take it to my room,” she said playfully.

It really wasn’t a room, but an alcove that housed a woodstove and a chaise lounge. The walls were thin and covered with heavy floral wallpaper. Along the wall, Friede had pinned up small photos of her girlfriends and glamour shots of German movie stars cut from defunct magazines published during the war.

We put some pillows behind our back and propped ourselves up on the day bed. We drank warm Rhine wine out of a shared coffee cup and ate slices of bread slathered thick with butter.

“Did you hear,” Friede said excitedly, “the British have started up Radio Hamburg again. So we can finally listen to jazz and dance music banned by the Nazis.”

I laughed and sipped back my wine. I thought these moments with her were the closest to paradise I had ever got in my short and squalid life. Lying beside Friede was like a wish come true from Aladdin’s lamp.

To me, she was as mysterious as the sphinx and as sensual as nightfall in an exotic garden. I clung tightly to the hope that my desire for her was more than physical want, and that her interest in me went beyond food parcels. Perhaps that was all we could demand from each other after a long war.

Maybe the best we both could hope from each other was the shared warmth from our curled up bodies and to forget the incinerated city waiting outside.

We finished half a bottle of wine and I sang silly songs. I made extravagant compliments to her eyes, her hair, her body, and her soul. After a while, we undressed each other. We made love on the chaise lounge, which was just large enough for us to hold each other tightly, in a selfish and generous longing.

For a long time, we remained in Friede’s small lair, while outside the thin shuttered door, the old man raged against the occupation, his life, and his new lodgings. The din slowly dissipated and faded into the background like a smudge on the wallpaper.

I must have dosed off because I woke to the nakedness of her back and the curve of her spine. I traced my fingers against her skin and noticed that just below Friede’s left shoulder; she carried a horrible discoloured scar.“What are you doing back there?” she asked in a sleepy voice.

“Nothing,” I replied nervously as if I had been caught eavesdropping.

“You are staring at my war wound, aren’t you?” she asked, turning over to kiss me on my forehead.

“Come on then, give us a cigarette,” Friede demanded, hungry for nicotine. She drew her knees up underneath the blanket and blew a smoke ring from her lit cigarette.

***

By Harry Leslie Smith

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