Wolves Within (A Mythic Remembrance of a Holocaust Sexworker)

Republic of Poland

December 13th, 1938

Chapter 1

The Bergemeister's hand dripped blood onto the wooden chest. He stuck his thumb into his mouth to extract a piece of rusty clasp, spitting it onto the floor,

"Collie, get that wench in here to clean this up!" He bellowed. I was watching him through a peephole in the wall. I had drilled holes this summer when the Bergemeister first put hands on me, around the time his wife started giving me trouble. More chores. More washing. Meager portions of rotten potatoes and moldy bread. They called me gypsy. They called me whore. I didn't argue.

I began wiping his blood, putting strain into my elbows. My hair falls into the burgundy stains. I wipe it off. "Did your parents teach you to keep your hair short? Surely, a peasant's child should know the protocol for farm work." He'd say. I told him my parents died in the last war. I'll tell you the truth,

My father drunkenly pushed my mother down the stairs on Christmas. He left her bruised corpse laying in the root cellar. He wept and drank five days before we buried her on New Year's Eve. Nobody sang.

Papa died two months later while checking traps and cutting wood. He expired, frozen in a heap next to an empty bottle of vodka. I was orphaned off to the highest bidder. I merely survived job after job, farm after farm. I refused a haircut. A part of me wouldn't be tamed. My reminder that something in me is honored, familiar, and beyond domestication.

I see how others turn against themselves. Rip themselves apart. My father thought he slayed his own wilderness & wildness with alcohol. Instead he slayed my mother and later his own body, not knowing he was trying to kill something immortal.

There was a grey wolf that lived in the forest near us. My Aunt spoke of him. We called him Settiwoke.

I grew my hair down to my knees in braids. Looking in the mirror, I see the colors are dark and stormy, like my eyes.

The Bergameister tugs a braid and brings his mouth close to my neck. I can feel his stubble and smell the schnapps on his breath. He grabs my haunches as if I were livestock, a thumb between hip buttocks. He offers me a raise while trying to stick his pale tongue down my throat.

I politely decline, frozen and angry. He clucks his wretched tongue and walks off heavy on the heels down the stairs.

Four days later, he makes another pass at me while holding a pair of golden earrings,

"I found these in your quarters. I cannot be allowing a thief to go unpunished." He grabs my ass again. All I can think about is swinging a dull cutting axe into his thighs, watching the look in his eyes as he bleeds out.

"I am not a thief." I protested.

"Nobody will believe you. I am the Bergemeister. I can have you hanged for this. Nobody will miss a forgotten orphan girl, no matter how beautiful you are."

That was the first time sex bought me freedom from execution.

He was a poor lay. Forgettable. His shriveled excuse for a penis was like a starved and weary forgotten soldier. I grew in sympathy for his wife, though she only grew to loathe me with a black look in here eyes. She constantly glared and glowered over me & my daily tasks.

She put the phonograph on and sipped laudanum in a tea cup 'til her hands stopped trembling. Outside, it's beginning to snow heavily. I am reminded of summertime, when planes rained pamphlets of propaganda overhead promoting the rise of a new political party in Germany, something to do with a man named Adolf. Like my grandfather's name.

The snow comes down heavy and hard. The roof is sagging. The chimney sputters smoke, smoldering pine and spruce crackle and hiss, a smell of coffee and schnapps in the kitchen, sausage roasting with onions.

I am planning to make an escape but first I need money.

The wife has a caged look in her eyes as she paces around the study like an angry lion, clutching a necklace of pearls that frames her neck like a collar. Gold bangles around her wrists dangle like handcuffs. Her eyes are sunken and low, her bones sag like a skeleton; somehow she still moves quickly.

I wish I could help her. I wish we could team up and murder the burgemeister together. Steal his car and leave this place. I want to help her become liberated but she does not want it for herself, yet. Swimming in a sea of shadows, a glare cast by opium, she projects all her hatred onto me. I bare its weight and use it to my advantage.

I pocket silverwear, earrings, a flask of schnapps, a flask of water, bread and cheese. I use leather from old books to mend my old shoes. I pack a quilt and some extra layers. I am watching, waiting, and planning my escape.

The Bergaester has me captivated in another one of his trials. Him, accusing me. Me, always guilty. Him swinging a limp gavel to condemn me to be continually pillaged and plundered, drawn and quartered in satin bedsheets.

The wife barges in on us. He throws me off the bed like a wet towel. I crash into the wardrobe loudly, bruising my shoulder and neck as I meet his gaze. He levels a crooked finger at me, trousers around his ankles,

"Get away from me, ye foul temptress!"

The wife looks simultaneously humiliated and infuriated. She storms down the stairs as the Bergameister follows. I tip-toe swiftly to my quarters in the attic, gathering belonings and tying my shoes.

Downstairs they're yelling high and shrill. She goes into the kitchen rummaging through drawers as a mug shatters against tile followed by metal against wood, hard footsteps into the living room.

I nearly make it through the door as a violent tug brings me down. She is holding a carving knife aimed at my neck, froth and spittle flow from the corners of her mouth while unintelligible statements of fury tumble from her like so many pebbles on a breaking levee.

Her hand comes down toward me as I jolt to the left sparing my scalp by a margin. My braids are cut near the roots, two thirds severed from my head. I yelp in pain and sorrow.

The Bergameister intervenes, screaming hoarsely and pulling her off me. He's immediately stabbed in his thigh. His blood flows onto the floor while bolt down the front steps.

The wife comes again, only able to grabs my flailing hair, trying to pull me back into the house so she can presumably butcher me. I let out a shrill howl and push forward. The braid tears and fully rips off, catapulting me through yard covered in snow as I peddle deeper into a grey horizon. She is chasing me barefoot swinging the braid in one hand, the knife in the other.

I run for two hours weeping uncontrollably. I make it into an abandoned church and find an old stock pot to make a fire in. I find a copy of the Good Book, burning Leviticus to get the fire started. I burn pieces of loose floorboards and moldy pews to keep warm.

I scan the remaining pages of Leviticus. It's all laws, judges, sheep, and shepherds. They warn us about wolves, marking them as villains and monsters. They're used as a common enemy to unite the otherwise divided masses.

The sad thing is that the shepherd eats more sheep than the wolf.

I look outside and swear that I see Settiwoke, the grey wolf from my childhood. I remember his faded starlight coat and arctic blue eyes. A look of pity on his face. Running my hand around the back of my neck, I feel bristles where my own mane once was. I fall asleep in a heap of tears.

To be continued…

Stories carried, shared, and organized by T.Green

Written by J. Rapp

This is part of a larger work that will be finished soon!