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Her stolen black dress is in tatters The collar is so saturated by both fresh and dried blood that it looks as if the fabric is rusting

“Again, Hans” The Gestapo officer has a soft voice, an insinuating, regretful, but slightly bored voice

Hans is a big brute in a sweat-stained unifor, white butcher’s apron It protects his unifor sprays of blood that are an occupational hazard for Hans He wears leather gloves to spare his knuckles, and he wears a fat gold and e that looks as if it was looted fro down over his gloved pinkie He’s an expert at the backhanded blow that will bring the emerald into contact with flesh But this is a less artful, more brutal blow, a punch, a clenched fist not to her face but to the side of her neck It snaps her head sideways and sends waves of pain into her shoulder and rocketing up through her brain

For a while she is lost, wandering on the drea visions She has tried to focus her thoughts on a single happy moment, her date at the Stork Club with Halev But thatpassages of happy conversation and now can only hold on to snatches, moments, and then only for a few seconds at a time

“Let’s begin again”

“My nahtly through broken teeth “Serial number—”

The slap is almost perfunctory this time The Gestapo man has accepted that her name is Rainy Schiller That she is from New York That she is an American soldier And he has memorized her serial number

He has not accepted her lie that she is in Italy solely to at In fact, Xavier Cugat is a bandleader known for his Cuban rhythms It’s not even an Italian name, but it was the first Latinate na them Tomaso’s or Cisco’s name, but that sort of cleverness could turn around and bite her

The Gestapo agent, Heinrich Berman, reation, freezing cells, little food, and no sanitation, Rainy would happily tell hiif she can be sure the Allies have landed in Salerno Once the landing is secure, her secret is of no value

If she can confess, she will be taken to the grim courtyard she can see from her cell, and like so many she has seen over the course of these terrible weeks, she will be placed against a wall, have a lit cigarette placed in her mouth, and be shot

She is afraid to die, but death is preferable to this Her body is one massive bruise Her face is bruised, cut, and swollen so she is barely recognizable She is filthy and stinks so vilely that Berman keeps theopen at all tis are matted with dried vomit, piss, feces, and s She had just started her period when she was captured It is this fact alone that saved her fro raped as a sort of Gestapo “welcome” And now she is far too vile an object for that particular indignity

On a few occasions she has heard distant explosions and has begun to hope that itAllied artillery, but it could just as easily be bombs In the early days of captivity, she had applied her intelligentescape, but her cell door is thick wood, and the bars on the tiny, dirtyare strong and firmly fixed in stone Thatis at her head level when she stands on tiptoes, and it is placed directly beneath and behind the stake where the condemned are tied Her view is of the feet of the doomed, and the three or four black-uniforain she has seen the condeain she has seen the execution squad line up, cigarette sain she has heard the orders snapped out, seen the rifles rise, heard the crash, seen the feet splay sideways, seen a body slulass

After the first beatings she knows escape is a pipe dreahts require all her energy Her focus drifts Her thoughts splinter and go off in tangents before petering out in futility

Her best future now is death: bullets are quick She has co

At first she had tried to keep their spirits up, crying out, “Be strong!” in Italian, as most of those executed now are Italian partisans But that bravado is one That Rainy has been beaten, leaving only this filthy, despicable, weak creature