He is fingering his cock while he speaks. He loves it like he loves his money and his land. He speaks of it as though it is one of his finest horses. In bed it is like a third person.
"You lie with Maria by the stream; then at night you let me come to your bed and fuck you," he says.
"That's one way of putting it," she answers. "Do you want me to stop with Maria?"
"You make her happy," he says, as if happiness is grounds for anything.
"She makes me happy."
"I've never known a woman like you before." He sticks a cigarette into the corner of his mouth and lights it, hands cupped against the evening breeze. "You fuck me and my daughter on the same day without blinking an eye."
"I don't believe in forming attachments."
He laughs his quiet, controlled laugh.
"That's wonderful," he says, and laughs quietly again. "You don't believe in forming attachments. That's marvelous. I pity the poor bastard who makes the mistake of falling in love with you."
"So do I."
"Do you have any feelings?"
"No, not really."
"Do you love anyone or anything?"
"I love my father," she says. "And I love lying by the stream with Maria."
Maria is the only woman she has ever met whose beauty is a threat to her. She neutralizes that threat by pillaging Maria's beauty for herself. Her mane of brown curly hair. Her flawless olive skin. The perfect breasts that are like summer pears in her mouth. The lips that are the softest things she has ever touched. "Come to Spain for the summer and live with me at my family's estancia," Maria says one rainy afternoon in Paris, where they are both studying at the Sorbonne. Father will be disappointed, but the idea of spending the summer in Germany watching the fucking Nazis parading around the streets holds nothing for her. She did not know she would be walking straight into a civil war instead.
But the war does not intrude on Emilio's insolent enclave of paradise in the foothills of the Pyrenees. It is the most wonderful summer of her life. In the morning the three of them hunt or run the dogs, and in the afternoon she and Maria ride up to the stream, swim in the icy deep pools, sun themselves on the warm rocks. Maria likes it best when they are outside. She likes the sensation of the sun on her breasts and Anna between her legs. "My father wants you too, you know," Maria announces one afternoon as they lie in the shade of a eucalyptus tree. "You can have him. Just don't fall in love with him. Everyone is in love with him."
Emilio is talking again.
"When you return to Paris next month there's someone I want you to meet. Will you do that for me?"
"That depends."
"On what?"
"On who it is."
"He will contact you. When I tell him about you he will be very interested."
"I'm not going to sleep with him."
"He won't be interested in sleeping with you. He's a family man. Like me," he adds, and laughs his laugh again.
"What's his name?"
"Names are not important to him."
"Tell me his name."
"I'm not sure which name he's using these days."
"What does your friend do?"
"He deals in information."
He comes back to the bed. Their conversation has aroused him. His cock is hard and he wants her again right away. He is pushing her legs apart and trying to find his way inside her. She takes him in her hands to help him, then digs her nails into him.
"Ahhhh! Anna, my God! Not so hard!"
"Tell me his name."
"It's against the rules-I can't!"
"Tell me," she says, and squeezes him harder.
"Vogel," he mutters. "His name is Kurt Vogel. Jesus Christ."
BERLIN: JANUARY 1944