Work Text:
The door of the room was held fast by a piano. Winter of 1944. John came nearly every three days, bringing bread, butter, bacon, and clear water, but Kevin no longer had the strength to move the piano. Each time the opening of the door took a very long while, and this made John unhappy. The water in the room still worked, but only cold came out, and the heating had long ceased. The woman upstairs had shot herself. The night before, Kevin had heard her weeping, her tears falling drop by drop onto the floor, and the sound of the bullet leaving the rifling and then the shattering of the skull—that sound like a crystal chandelier exploding. Kevin knew that in this age, anyone who truly wanted to die never failed, and anyone who wanted to live by any means would go on shamelessly wagging their tail. She had been a woman of dignity. Then she fell, right above Kevin. In the early hours someone dragged her body away. He did not tell John.
John would stay the night in the house. Each time, after John fell asleep, Kevin had to wash himself clean and then lie back down beside him. Before they made love, John would take off his officer’s uniform and lay it on the nightstand. After, Kevin would hang it for him and put it in the wardrobe. In the wardrobe, besides the wool coat Kevin had been wearing when he first came, there were also several women’s evening gowns—bright pink, drunken blue, the yellow of ginkgo leaves—carrying the scent of face powder and dust. Kevin did not know whether they had been left by a mistress John had kept here before, or by the house’s former mistress. He cared about this very much, but he never spoke of it, never asked.
John had once asked Kevin to put on one of those gowns—a moss‑green silk slip dress—and have sex with him. John lay on the bed, waiting for Kevin to change and climb onto him. John would not look at him. On the nightstand sat a small aquarium with two guppies—the one thing Kevin was unwilling to give up. John dipped his fingers into the water and stirred; the waterweed curled around them. One guppy had a large, phantom‑blue tail; the other, smaller, had a thin, moss‑green fan tail that swam into a corner. John swore and shook his hand dry.
He did not seem to care much about Kevin. He only needed Kevin’s face, clitoris, vagina, cervix. But he strictly controlled Kevin’s fertility. If he could, he would have cut out Kevin’s uterus and ovaries, leaving only the parts he could use for his own pleasure. He would not allow Kevin to bear his child here—that would be a shame for John, a pollution of bloodline, a perversion, a betrayal of the Führer. So beneath the loaves he brought from the Internal Affairs Office lay boxes of condoms—though by the end he always forgot their necessity. Sex was very important to him, but the object of sex was not. Childbearing was very important to him, but the one who bore did not matter. Genes—pure genes, the perfect embryo—mattered.
Kevin had been in this room for seven months. His hair had grown long, and without sunlight it had faded from brown back to pale blond. His only cleaning tools were two bars of soap, so his hair smelled only of soap and a faint human scent. As John had asked, he took off the wool sweater that kept him warm and put on the dress. The dress was narrow, clinging to his flesh so that he looked like a child; its neckline lay across his chest. The shelter he received only once every three days had made him very thin. He was always hungry, always afraid of the arrival of food and of the penis. John was his angel of hunger. John’s penis was the angel’s wings. John brought him satiety, slaps, penis, semen, and warmth. John was his angel, his lingering attachment, his Führer, his everything.
In the past, Kevin had studied marine biology at school. He had studied hard, and his studies had been hard on him in return. Still, he had been a strange child, friendless among his peers. When the war broke out on the Western Front, his mother wrote urging him to forge his identity and leave as soon as possible. They both knew what would happen if he was caught, rounded up, packed into a train. But at customs, John had found him out. As Kevin handed over his papers, John smiled at him. At that train station, John stood tall as a building, his coal‑black uniform embracing him like a follower; beneath the majestic, imposing brim of his cap, a pair of blue eyes—like hailstones—struck into Kevin’s heart, struck to kill him. He grabbed Kevin’s arm and felt the scream and sob Kevin was choking down in his throat. That soft, cowardly fear of his, running along his skin, soothed John’s heart. It rained heavily that day. John threw him into his car and locked the door. And so Kevin came here. Seven months. He was still alive. He had not died beneath a Gestapo bullet, nor from rape, riot, or trampling. In five more months, he would have been here for a whole year. His skin had turned pale and white; his waist had grown thin and weary. The dress slid over him like amniotic fluid, yet it was cold, like the skin of a stillborn baby.
Kevin lowered his head and kissed John’s penis. He was always careful with John’s body, afraid of John’s anger and strength. The penis and hipbones radiated a male warmth onto Kevin’s face, steaming—a biological heat. Kevin had grown accustomed to John’s smell. He let the penis enter his mouth, sucking and kissing. The lines of his lips conformed to the texture of the scrotum; the taut veins on the penis stood brittle and erect. Kevin let his tongue follow those veins as they crawled along the skin, moving up and down. He was skilled. He could guarantee that John would feel no teeth, only his tongue and the flesh of his palate. Then John reached out and pulled Kevin’s face off his penis, yanking it up to his chest. John used great force, enough to feel the gums beneath Kevin’s cheek flesh—one tooth after another, like the beads of a rosary. The flesh slid over the teeth, and John felt the urge to twist and bruise.
“What is my guppy whore doing today?”
Kevin huddled against John, wincing at the increasing pressure on his jaw. He said in a breathy voice, “Nothing… nothing, sir… I’ve been waiting for you to come here, I’ve been waiting for you to come…”
John let go of the hand that had been clamping his jaw. He pushed the index and middle fingers of his left hand into Kevin’s mouth, and with his right hand, he slapped Kevin across the face. “Liar.” Kevin’s head turned with the force of it. He could taste the blood of his cheek. Before he could straighten himself, John had already lifted his dress, pulled aside his underwear, and shoved the fingers of the hand that had slapped him—into Kevin’s vagina. Kevin could feel John’s fingernails, the pads of his fingers, his fingerprints.
“This is my mother’s dress,” Kevin said. “You’d better not get it dirty.”
Kevin made a soft “mm” sound, letting the flesh inside his vagina pursue John’s fingers. The fingers were John’s envoys, and Kevin received them like mountain villagers in a famine‑stricken valley kneeling before the statue of the Hunger Angel, raising their offerings above their heads—a lamb and a virgin.
“Kevin, Kevin, Kevin. You’re getting less and less interesting, do you know that? Now all you are is a vagina, a uterus, a mouth. I should get one of those human‑studying freaks to give you a shot and grow you a pair of gills—then you could finally talk to those fish, hm?”
Kevin lay on top of him, shaking his head. “No, sir. I’ll become interesting. I’ll become interesting, please believe me…”
John couldn’t wait any longer. Even if he did no foreplay, his Kevin wouldn’t cry out. After all, Kevin had only ever been fucked by him. And besides, Kevin’s vagina was full of sticky water, sucking the moss‑green dress against his thighs. John pushed his penis inside. Kevin inhaled, wrapping his arms around John’s neck. The sensation was very good—the flesh of the vagina felt like a freshly slaughtered lamb, its vitality not yet dissipated, hot and dissolving around John’s shaft. He thrust, relaxed, and completed a spasm. Kevin sat upright, moving his hips and waist in circles, up and down, until the base of the penis—where the flesh spread Kevin’s labia. John laughed. He found the protruding nub of Kevin’s clitoris and twisted it hard. Then he pushed his thumb between the labia, stretching the frenulum. Kevin let out a beautiful, mournful cry, like a small dolphin whose propeller had been broken. He trembled, the sound stuck in his throat, unable to be swallowed.
“You know your current identity isn’t legal, don’t you? Without me, you’d be dead. If you’re too loud… I’m not sure if anyone still lives next door.”
Kevin shook his head. In a whisper he said, Yes, yes, I won’t make another sound, sir. He closed his eyes. Even as he trembled, his face flushed red. The prolonged sexual abuse had thrown his hormones into disorder—he no longer grew facial hair, body hair, pubic hair—and it also made his sensitivity to sexual stimulation unbearably acute. He was becoming more and more like the boy John had first met. That was the summer of 1940, by the school swimming pool. Kevin sat alone swinging his legs, his back marked with long, thin red weals from a whip, his vertebrae protruding one by one through his skin, speaking to the fallen leaves and faded blossoms on the water as if they were sharks and dolphins. He saw a Horch 901 drive past, a pair of blue eyes watching him from the window. John sat in the back seat, coming to pick up his lover, and saw that thin, depressive first‑year boy by the water. The car drove on, but John remembered that freak boy. The department head in the front seat said, That’s Kevin Moskowitz, but he’s distanced himself from his Jewish connections—he’s taken his mother’s maiden name. Single‑parent family, father dead early. A biology student from a remote area, come to Berlin. Another race. A boy who should be exterminated. Dirty boy. A boy who defiled holy Europa. That was the kind of boy who gave birth to filthy offspring. That was the kind of boy who shamefully reproduced on the glorious land. That was the kind of boy who had stolen their gold coins, their bread, their lives.
Now that boy was on his bed, about to cry again. John was annoyed. He patted Kevin’s hip. “Your crying face is ugly. Turn around. I don’t want to see it.”
Kevin rose quickly. The penis slid out of the vagina with a wet pop—like a kiss. Kevin bent his upper body down, arched his hips high, and gathered the dress up around his arms with one hand—a small animal waiting to be mounted. His clitoris was smeared with not‑yet‑dried semen. John smiled. The sight was truly pleasing. Kevin’s vulva was tiny, and after being ravaged by John’s penis, it would not close—like the mouth of a punished student, idiotically and purely slightly parted, and inside the mouth a tongue, and inside the tongue a throat. So John thrust his penis into it. Kevin cried out again, but at once he covered his mouth with the hand that had been holding up the dress. This time, the thrust had hit his cervix. He tried to relax, but John squeezed his waist tight.
“If you had gills, where would they go? On your face would be too disgusting—I wouldn’t want to fuck you. Here, on your waist. You could fuck the gills too…”
John’s fingernails traced long, thin pink lines across Kevin’s waist—like the veins of a lily. He dug in, as if trying to carve them into Kevin’s viscera. “Disgusting,” John spat. “You should die. The only reason you’re still alive is that your ass, your cunt—they’re not bad.”
When John came, Kevin kept his tongue soft and cried out in low moans: Sir, sir, I will obey you, I will try to make you happy, I want to live, I want to live, you can do anything to me, I love you, I love you, I love you…
After the orgasm passed, in that vague, lustful gaze, the room’s little pink‑purple lamp had grown dim. Behind Kevin’s dark eyelids swam countless little white lights like spermatozoa, fluttering and flickering. A stream of semen spurted into his uterus—like a young, powerful white tower fountain, and at the top of the fountain spun a little golden immortal singing a nursery rhyme. Kevin felt a sudden sour constriction in his lower abdomen. He turned over. John was so beautiful—those magnificent, holy blue eyes, fluttering gray eyelashes in the lamplight, the golden hair—like the handsome prince on the movie posters Kevin used to see in Berlin when he poked his head out of the tram window. The princess was persecuted; the prince would save her. The Aryan miracle. Europa’s dream. Kevin lay down in the train of the dress, like a stuttering lamb burying its head in a meadow. John lay back. He reached his fingers into Kevin’s vagina, scooped out a mixture of semen and bodily fluids, and brought it to Kevin’s lips. He rubbed it into Kevin’s mouth like a lipstick for his female lovers—until Kevin’s lips too were as engorged and flushed as his excited vulva.
“You’re too thin. When I fuck you I only feel bones. Isn’t the food I bring enough? Where does it all go? You should eat more. Eat.”
Kevin’s face was flushed, his eyes vacant. He too had blue eyes—like a guppy’s tail—except that guppy had died when the war broke out on the Western Front. Absently, he began to suck on John’s fingers. He sucked on John’s fingers the way he sucked on his penis, licking off the semen. It was salty, with a faint smell of sex, mixed with John’s own scent and the smell of blood. Kevin liked it. He had always liked it. He wanted to kiss John’s lips, but to kiss John’s fingers and his semen—that was already holy enough.
After that, John fucked him three more times. The first time, on the bed, face to face. John had a prostitute‑red soft leather whip. He tied Kevin’s hands with it and fixed them to the bronze floral pattern on the headboard. Then he put Kevin’s legs over his shoulders. Kevin felt himself sinking into the mattress. John always made him very sore—his penis was long and violent; Kevin’s vagina was bleeding—but after the pain came pleasure and happiness. The second time, John pressed him against the window. The lights in the room were off. On the street below, military vehicles and patrols passed constantly. Kevin was terrified of the headlights and the orderly voices. Searchlights swept the sky and shone on the sealed window. Kevin’s vagina tightened involuntarily. John squeezed his waist and neck. He couldn’t breathe. John said, Every officer has a mistress, but whether she belongs here—that is a question. Kevin, you’re not even a mistress. You’re my tool. You’re my best—my best vagina, cunt, flesh nest. But you are not worthy to bear my child. You are not worthy. Are you afraid of those men downstairs? Remember who kept you here alive. Without me you’d be dead. I am your savior, your god, your angel, your everything. Kevin didn’t dare put his hands on John’s arm where it cut across his waist. He grabbed the curtain. Only when John said it was dangerous did he finally move his hands to John’s arm.
The third time was in the bathroom. To keep Kevin from getting pregnant, John aimed cold water at his clitoris and washed it again and again. When he felt it was clean, he pushed his penis inside again. Kevin had no strength left. Across from the bathtub was a mirror. He could see John’s back, thrusting again and again, the male muscles straining under his shirt, the male bones beneath—hungry sexual desire—and beneath that desire, John’s loyalty: loyalty to himself, loyalty to the Führer. The crooked, inverted swastika. That pure fanaticism. Loyalty to them was loyalty to himself. The penis moved in and out of Kevin’s body, parting his flesh, closing it again. He thought of the little river in his hometown, before he had passed the exam to come to Berlin, when his father was still alive. He used to go to the bridge over the river and throw sticks into the water, talking to the little fish. The mussels on the riverbank had soft inner bodies. He liked to put his hands on the mussels—just as John liked to put his fingers in Kevin’s mouth. Kevin wanted to scream, and he did scream, because the orgasm came, and he tried to pull away, but John’s palm pressed against his neck. “Didn’t I tell you not to scream? How can you be so stupid?”
Kevin nodded. Don’t scream, don’t talk to the fish, don’t kiss John first, don’t say things you’re not supposed to say, don’t go outside, don’t open the window, don’t turn on the light in the room after six in the evening, don’t try to escape, don’t write letters, don’t starve yourself, don’t get pregnant, don’t listen to the radio. Don’t. Don’t. Don’t.
Gradually, he lost consciousness. Kevin fell asleep.
Before that, Kevin had miscarried three times. The first time, he took birth control pills. The second time, he didn’t find out he was pregnant until three months had passed. When John learned, he lay Kevin down on the carpet and kicked him until he miscarried. The third time, John kissed him—because Kevin had been crying when he told him about the pregnancy. He was afraid. Afraid that John would not go back on his word. John had said that if he got pregnant again, he would send Kevin to the laboratory—they were short on human material there, with four hundred bodies a day arriving from the concentration camps to be cut open. But instead, John gave him new contraceptive pills. Kevin took them, then ran a high fever and hemorrhaged from his lower body. During that time, John did not visit him once. Kevin thought he was going to die. This time, truly, he was not going to die in the flames of a crematorium nor in a gas chamber, but in the heat of bleeding out. In his fever, he dreamed that he swam along the Rhine into the sea. Then someone fished him out—a golden‑haired, blue‑eyed boy, whose two hands curved into a shell, holding the tiny fish that Kevin had become, and the boy shouted, “Mama, Mama, look, a little fish, a little fish—” That was John. Then Kevin woke up, and realized that the Rhine and the sea were only the blood and sweat he had shed onto the bedsheet. In the aquarium, the small green female guppy had laid eggs, but none of them survived the winter. When John came again, Kevin was in shock from blood loss. He was nearly dead. John gave him an injection of a compound the SS had developed that autumn—a serum for soldiers on the Western front, still untested in humans. Kevin was the first person, secretly, to receive it. He survived.
After that, John still came every three days, sometimes every day. Kevin would hold him, enjoying his body heat and his words—whore, slut, dirty clit‑bearing boy, virgin freak, filthy thing that talks to fish—my little mermaid, baby, my love, little bride. Kevin knew that John had married a woman with a title, that John had a son. When he hung up John’s uniform, he could often smell on the cuffs the scent of women’s face powder and a child, and on John’s fingers and thumbs the perfume of gunpowder and blood. He had seen the photograph in John’s pocket watch—a boy with blond hair, blue eyes, like John as a child. John still came to this house to fuck him. Besides food, he sometimes brought aquarium cleaner and fish food—but that happened only once. Other than talking to his guppies, Kevin talked only to John. One day he told John that he wished John would stay with him for a while—just a while. He was so cold here alone, so afraid. He always heard, outside the door, the sound of a fish tail slapping the marble floor—that was the woman in the water‑soaked coat, discovered by the Gestapo, dragged down the stairs by her hair. He was very afraid. Please, please, please, my John, my sir, my love, my angel—Kevin heard his own pretty voice, saw himself kneeling at the door holding John, John’s leather shoes kicking out at him. First John kissed him, then he slapped him, then he made him take his contraceptive pills by the dose.
It was the spring of 1945. Kevin gave birth to a stillborn baby in that house across from the Reich Security Main Office building. He cut the umbilical cord with a pair of scissors, then stood holding the infant in a pool of amniotic fluid and blood. The baby had John’s golden hair and blue eyes, but it was dead, its skin covered in clusters of purpura and round bruises, with six marks under its ribs—the gills of a fish. Kevin wrapped the baby in a white shirt John had left behind, held it in his arms, and sat by the window to soak in the sun. The baby’s eyelashes reminded him of the nights when John lay beside him, breathing and sleeping. After sex, John would press his face against Kevin’s chest and shoulder, his breath coming in clouds, like a giant, beautiful infant corpse. Kevin was the chlorinated water, the glass jar that held the corpse. When John took Kevin’s breast, his shoulder, his ribs into his mouth, Kevin felt it was a grace.
From the window, he could see John’s office—a magnificent, blood‑colored room holding John’s silhouette. Beautiful men and women often came and went there, walking in alive and carried out dead. When John left that room and seemed to be going downstairs to cross to the other side of the street, Kevin stood up, humming a nursery rhyme, and carried the baby to the bathroom. He filled the tub with cool water. He could smell the fragrance of blood in the water, and the sour tang of sulfur. He knew that everything here was about to be turned upside down. He knew it would soon be over. He knew he had to do it before it was too late.
Kevin put the two guppies that had watched him and John have sex a thousand times into the tub as well. Then, holding the baby, he stepped in. He fell asleep in the water of the bathtub. The small, jade‑green guppy died after kissing his cheek. The tiny, phantom‑blue guppy came to rest on the stillborn baby’s eye.
The Soviet army was at the gates of the city. John came downstairs, carrying milk and honey. The doorway to Kevin’s room was no longer blocked by the old piano that had resisted for seven months—he could open the door with his key. When he saw his bride who had given birth, lying in the water, the spring of 1945 was also coming to an end.