Chapter 8 Chapter Two (3)

I rescued her from begging and placed her in the camp kitchen as a washmaid. "Sixteen paces from the kitchen to the bed of the constable"—that was what the soldiers said of the kitchen maids.They also said: "What's the last thing the executive political security officer does every morning before he leaves his room?—locks his new favorite in the oven." In this small place, there are all kinds of gossip.There is no such thing as privacy here.Flying and flowing is the air we breathe. Part of the day she washed dishes, peeled vegetables and fruit, and helped bake bread and prepare meal after meal of porridge, soup and stew for the soldiers.Besides her there was an old lady and two girls in the kitchen, the old lady had been working in the kitchen almost as long as I had been the administrator here; Been upstairs once or twice.I was worried that the two girls would form a gang to reject her, but it didn't happen, and they quickly became good friends.Clinking utensils, soft talking, giggling in the steam as I go out and pass the kitchen...

All kinds of voices.I vaguely felt that I had been poked by a little jealousy. "Do you think it's good to work here?" I asked her. "I like those two girls, they are very nice." "At least it's better than begging, isn't it?" "certainly." If they happened not to spend the night elsewhere, the three girls would sleep together in a small room a few doors away from the kitchen.She sometimes comes to me secretly, but I send her back to that room in the middle of the night or early in the morning.There was no doubt that her friends were gossiping about her tryst, and the details must have become rumors in the market.The older a man gets, the more bizarre his sexuality becomes, like the convulsions of an animal before it dies.I can't play the hard-hearted tough guy or the holy widower.The snickers, the banter, the knowing glances—these were the prices I had to pay.

"Do you like living here, in this town?" "Like most of the time. Lots of things to do." "Is there anything on your mind?" "I miss my sister." "If you really want to go back," I said, "I'll arrange for someone to take you there." "Where are you going?" she asked.She lay there on her back with her hands resting on her breasts.I lay beside her, talking softly.This is often the moment when silence falls suddenly.There are always times like this when my hand stroking her belly looks as clumsy as a lobster claw.If there had been an erotic drive, that too had faded.I was surprised to find that when I hugged this strong girl tightly, I couldn't remember if I had lusted after her.I was annoyed whether I wanted her or not.

She was oblivious to my mood swings.She spends her days in a hurry and seems to be quite satisfied.Every morning after I left she came to clean the room.Then go to the kitchen to help prepare lunch.The afternoon is generally her own.After supper, when all the pots and pans were cleared, the floor mopped, and the fire sealed, she left her companions and came upstairs to me.She undressed and lay down, waiting for my attentions which she could not understand.Sometimes I would sit next to her and run my hands over her body, waiting for a rush of heat that never really came.Sometimes maybe I just blow out the lights and lie with her.In the dark she soon forgot about me and fell asleep.So I lay next to this young and healthy body, imagining how this body was healthier before, even imagining those incurable wounds, her eyes, her feet, all restored to their original appearance.

I withdrew my thoughts and tried to imagine her before.I'm pretty sure I saw her the day she was brought into the place, with a rope around her neck by soldiers along with the other savage prisoners.I knew I must have caught my eye as she sat in the barracks yard with the other prisoners, waiting for news.My eyes did catch her, but I have no memory of the episode.That day, she didn't have such scars on her body. I believe that the scars on her body were not born with her. Just like believing that she was a child before, a little girl with pigtails and braids was chasing her in the vast world The petted lamb; and far off there is the world in which I walk with the pride of my life.But even though I exhausted all my imagination, I couldn't forget the first impression she left on me: a girl begging on her knees.

I have never entered her body so far.My desire never went in this direction from the very beginning.Inserting my old man's genitals into that juicy sheath made me think of sour milk, dusty honey, and dusty bread.When I look at her and my own nudes, it's hard to believe that I imagined long ago that the human body is a flower, a flower that blooms from that central point in the crotch.Hers and mine, when turned into a vortex here, feel diffuse, aerosolized, and centerless; The state is just plain and empty.My helplessness towards her body is like one cloud in the sky cannot do anything to another cloud.

I watched her undress, hoping to catch in her movements some hint of her past unbridled past.But even then, when she pulled the smock over her head and threw it aside, it was with an uncertain, defensive, lingering timidity, as if afraid of bumping into something she couldn't see. obstacles.There was a reaction in her expression that she knew she was being watched. I bought a little silver fox cub from a trapper, a few months old, freshly weaned, with a little jagged, jagged teeth.She took him into the kitchen the first day, and the little fox was so frightened by the fire and the noise that I had to take him upstairs, where he curled up all day under the furniture.At night, you can sometimes hear it clacking its paws on the wooden floor as it walks around.It would jump on our laps to drink milk from saucers, grab cooked meat and eat it.I know that it is impossible to tame it at home, because its excrement will make the house stink.But it was too early to put it in the yard.Every few days I call the cook's grandson in and tell him to crawl behind cupboards and under chairs to clean up the mess.

"What a lovely little thing," I said. She shrugged. "Animals should be outside the house." "You mean, I should take it to the lake and release it into the wild?" "That won't work, it's too small, it will starve to death, or it will be picked up by the dog." In this way, the little fox cub stayed.I sometimes like to watch it stick its mouth out of dark corners and poke around.But because of the noise it makes at night and the unbearable piss smell, I was just hoping to grow a little longer to get it out. "People will say that I have two wild animals in my house, a fox and a girl."

She didn't take it as a joke, or maybe she didn't like such jokes.Her lips were pursed tightly, her eyes fixed on the wall.I understood that it was her furious glare at me.I can't help pity her, but what else can I do?When I showed up to her, it made all the same thing to her whether I was in formal gown or just standing there naked with my arms open to her. "I'm sorry." I said, and the words slipped out of my mouth out of inertia.I run five doughy fingers through her hair. "Of course it's different." ** I spoke individually to those who had been on duty during the interrogation of the prisoners.Everyone had the same answer: they had almost no chance to speak to the prisoners and were not allowed into the interrogation room, so they couldn't tell me what happened there during that time.From a cleaning lady, I asked some information about the interrogation room: "There is only a small table, some stools, a cushion in the corner, and the rest is bare... No, not a fire, only a brazier. I went out to clear the ashes from the brazier."

As life returned to normal, the room was re-used.At my orders, the four soldiers who lived there carried their boxes out into the corridor, put the indoor sleeping mats, planks, and tea mugs there, and pulled down their clotheslines.I closed the door and stood in the empty room.The air was stagnant and cold.The lake has started to freeze over.The first snow fell.I heard the jingle of bells in a pony carriage in the distance.I closed my eyes and tried to imagine the scene that must have happened when the colonel came here two months ago, but the movement of the four young people walking around outside prevented me from entering my fantasy.Rubbing their hands, stamping their feet, and muttering, they waited impatiently for me to emerge from the room, their warm breath turning into a white mist in the air.

I knelt down and examined the floor.The floor was clean and was swept every day like the rest of the rooms.There were soot stains on the fireplace, walls and ceiling.On the wall, I wiped that place with my hand and it was covered with soot.There were no stains anywhere else on the walls though.Can I find any markers?I opened the door and told the four soldiers to take their things back.