Partisan Years

Author's note:

I'd like to give some advance warning that the structure of this chapter is more ambitious than previous chapters. I am trying here to blend memory and present to emphasize how disorienting this experience is for Natasha. I'd also like to apologize for the delay, having a full-time job can sometimes make it difficult to write and edit a serialized erotic novella.

Fever dreams

Lazar slid inside me.

I could feel him behind me as I lay on my side, his strong body, his hard cock, his hands searching, finding so many places. I could cry, I was so happy to have him. His tongue pressed into my mouth, became a second phallus.

My head was full of molten lead. Everything tasted and felt foul. Something scratched at my skin. And the cold, my God, the cold, coming up through the thin bed roll under me. It was all unbearable, aching pain in the limbs and body, the pounding in my head, the dry taste in my mouth like acid and flesh and homemade vodka. Everything was wrong.

Was the parasite dead? Had I killed it, finally? I'd tried intermittently to drown it with liquor since we'd repulsed the fascists from Moscow. But the damned thing was clever. The night before, as our little party waited in the rear echelons of a recently liberated sector for the NKVD to come and pick us up for radios, briefings and new guns, we'd drank up all the liquor.

A wave of nausea gripped me and I swung out from under the horse blanket.

The cold was too cold. I looked down at my body. My legs were bare from the hem of my greatcoat to the top of my boots. The buttons were done wrong. I could feel my field jacket open under it, the heavy wool of the greatcoat brushing over my skin. It was dangerous to sleep without being properly bundled. Cold drafted up between my legs.

I knew then what had happened, I could feel it in every unclean inch of my body.

The close basement spun and I staggered, my breath coming shallow. Heinrich and the other five men were all asleep. I pushed open the cellar door and plunged out into the pre-dawn blue, the liquor still thick in my head. I ran for the latrine, gained it, and vomited. The contortions of my stomach so sharp they hurt, the heat of my vomit shocking as it radiated up out of the cold hole in the ground, some bread, some half-digested turnips, but mostly the hot acrid drink, still stinking sharp with alcohol. The fourth contraction brought tears to my eyes and fetched up hot bile.

And I could hear a voice ringing in my head in Baltic German, "Sie wird sich nicht erinnern."

I was naked under the coat and the field jacket. In the thin, dusky light in the latrine I could only see the worst of it, the dark marks on my thighs shaped like men's fingers, the ringed bruises on my wrists, the mark in charcoal or pencil on my ass cheek, three, another over my pubic bone, seven. I rubbed the marks and heard a gradually rising sound like the howl of wind about the eaves. I reached between my lips, aware now of the deep ache in the muscles of my vagina and ass, drew back a sticky fluid. I brought it up, licked it. Cum.

All the desperate hope-against-hope I'd felt vanished.

A loud knock on the door of the latrine startled me and the keening wail died away and I knew it had been mine. They'd come again. Come to put another mark on my body. I couldn't take that. Not again. They'd have to shoot me first.

I barreled out through the door and struck at the man standing there with my fists, but he seized me by the waist and gave a sharp call of surprise.

"You sick bastard!" I hissed. "You German spy. You fucking traitor. Rapist. Coward."

It was Lev. I burst into tears at the sight of him, my Lev, my brother-in-arms, how could he do this?

"Natasha," he said. "Natasha."

I kept swinging at him. His voice was heavy with profound, shattering grief. Or was it guilt?

"Natasha," he said. "I tried to dress you after they finished but they beat me again. They threw your clothes in the snow. I dried them. Natasha. Be still, be still. It's safe. It's safe. You must dress. It's too cold."

I was too angry to react to his words, so I grabbed the lapels of his great coat and shook him.

"Did you rape me too, Lev? Did you take me?"

"No," he said. "No. Forgive me. No. I wasn't strong enough to stop them. No."

"Why?"

"There's no why," he said. "But you must get dressed quickly. The NKVD will be here soon."

"What happened?"

He held out my clothes, shirt, brassiere, two pairs of trousers, gloves, muffler, hat. I looked at his face, blue-black with bruising and crusted with dried blood, and his bare knuckles, the skin missing, and the abrasions left by cordage tied at his wrists. Then I ducked back into the latrine and dressed as fast as I could. He was right, it was too cold, I could feel the stinging cold in my hands and feet already.

I was unsteady as he walked me the ten meters to the cellar door. My whole body fought against returning to that darkness, and I could remember more then, Heinrich on me, stabbing pain inside of me, fighting, writhing, hands everywhere. The way the liquor dulled pain and made it fuzzy, and how it made my body slow and stupid, easily tricked by a finger on my clit. By a cock inside me.

I closed my eyes.

We packed, Lev and I, then we sat on the woodpile by the door to the cellar, and he held me in his arms like a child.

"Who did it?"

"All of them," he said. "Heinrich fed you drinks and by the time I realized what he was doing I was drunk too. You asked for water, begged for it, they gave you a tumbler of vodka and you gulped it down."

"Then?"

He looked away. "They. I."

"Out with it, man," I snapped at him in Yiddish.

"I fought him," he said. "I'd have shot them. They bound me. You screamed. You fought."

I tried to remember more, but only the sense memories came to me, the animal smells, the sharp pain and the dull burning, the pressure. Fighting them, losing. A heavy blackness descending, wavering on the edge of an unconscious sea as they held me down, rising to consciousness for a few minutes at a time, long enough to beg them to stop, long enough to orgasm as one of them fucked me in the ass and plunged his fingers in my cunt.

In the distance, a truck motor sounded.

The ride to Moscow took the rest of the day. I said nothing, ate nothing, drank a little water, stared at my boots, my empty rifle clutched in my hands. I could hear them talking at my expense.

"I didn't know a bitch could cum like that," one of them said.

"Didn't you hear her moan."

"Must be in heat, the little Jewess."

My cheeks burned with anger and shame. I squeezed Lev's hand so hard his breath quickened. Kiril and I had discussed the chance that Heinrich might hurt me again two weeks prior, when he found me drunk by the radiator in the officer's hut in the little village where we'd learned of the victories before Moscow. I'd sobered, gradually, coming down from the ledge of panic and shame to which Heinrich's assault had driven me.

Kiril thought it was dangerous for me to go. Passing the lines is always dangerous in war. I'd be under Heinrich's power. But I knew what Moscow meant. A warm bath, new equipment, most important a doctor, or a chance at a doctor. Dilation and curettage. My mother had one in the late-20s, just after they were made illegal. Without that I was living on borrowed time.

The outskirts of Moscow rose dark out of the snow, the lights dimmed against the bombers, wind-driven snow piled against the buildings, the new dormitories surrounded by thin trees, the old apartment blocks looking cozy and silent.

The truck drove through an arch into a narrow courtyard. They let us out. I hung back, waiting for the others to drop out. My whole body was quivering. Lev held my hand as I jumped from the bed to the iced paving stones. Heinrich waved us towards a dark door, and as I passed he whispered at me.

"Enough for you?"

I set my face in stone. Then we were close in the darkness, breathing so near, the hard cold in my limbs. The door shut and closed out the sound of the idling truck. A light flicked on.

An NKVD man and a Red Army intelligence officer stood at the far end of the small room.

"Welcome home, Comrades," the NKVD man said.

They divided us by sex, the men went for delousing first, then me. Then a shower with the last of the hot water. There were no lights above the building's basement, and when the moon broke through the clouds, I could see the block opposite had sustained a direct hit from the German incendiaries and burned.

In peace, this must've been a Kommunalka, but the evacuation had emptied much of Moscow. The thought of five or six people crammed into the dark room that now was mine seemed ridiculous and sad. But I'd lived like that with three other girls in Minsk, sharing everything.

I wondered if they yet lived. I paced the room, saying the names of the girls I'd lived with as my mind raced. Of late, in the shower, I could see my belly growing, beginning to push out. I didn't have long to drown the bastard parasite Vladimir had put in me. As they'd raped me, had they seen, or had darkness and liquor hidden me?

Hands on my midsection, cum slick on my belly, cum on my face, spit too. Breathing past the cock in my mouth, head back, as he slammed down. The one between my legs groaning as he buried himself inside my burning cunt. The ground cold under me.

Then the memory was gone.

I fell on the bed, exhausted, nauseous with worry.

Faithful Alyosha

A knock at the door. A key in the lock. I stiffened. I'd felt the NKVD man's eyes on me earlier.

"Yakovlevna," a voice, masculine but kindly, called. I sat up and turned. He was balding, this new man, small, with a black peasant's outfit and a high collared coat. He looked almost like a priest.

"Who are you?"

"Ivan the Terrible," he said. "Come with me."

I heard, in my head, Heinrich's voice addressing one of the soldiers, "Ivan hold her fucking wrists down, the bitch scratched me." Then that Ivan, a boy from Vladimir's squad, crushing my wrists into the ground. Later, his mouth on my cunt and his fingers inside me, and my voice slurring Lazar's name. Then back to my senses, fighting him as he pried my legs open, his hands crushing the flesh of my thighs and I felt the sharp pain of penetration as his cock forced my entrance and popped inside me. And gasping under him as he fucked me hard, shouting obscenities down into my face.

"Do you have another name?" I asked the NKVD man in the doorway.

"Alexey Fyodorovich," he said.

I rose. Stepped towards him. He led me through the building, not blindfolded, but taking stairs and halls and side passages that seemed impossible, until we arrived at a garret, though I was sure we were only on the third floor. A guard stood before the door. They would debrief me, then what? How long would we be in Moscow? What of the guns and the radio?

There was an NKVD man with a pen and paper in the room. A single candle burned in the windowless cell.

"Keep watch on her, Tigran," Alexey Fyodorovich said. "I'll be back in a few minutes."

But he wasn't.

Tigran kept a quiet watch. As the minutes ticked by, I felt his eyes roving over me. At last, he spoke in an Armenian accent.

"Name?"

I told him. He ran down the list of biographical information, party relationships, home village, education, the whole of it, checking it against a dossier and penciling in details that were missing.

"Marital status."

I said nothing.

"Marital status."

"Unmarried," I said. "Fortress City Brest."

He nodded.

"Is there a doctor in this facility?"

"Why?"

"It's a sensitive matter," I said. "But I must see a doctor."

"If it's a disease you should go to the army hospital for formal treatment and quarantine," he said.

"It's not," I said.

"Then it could take a while to get the paperwork in order. Unless."

And I knew what the unless was. I closed my eyes, sighed. One last time.

"Unless what?"

"There's two doctors on staff," he said. "I could fetch one, if."

I leaned forward in my chair, licking my lips, hoping the exhaustion did not show on my face.

"If?"

"You let me fuck you," he said. "Assuming It's not venereal?"

"It's not," I said. Then I thought about taking my field jacket off and the marks on my body and what he might say if he saw them. "But if you don't trust that, I'll suck you off."

There was no anger in his touch and he reached out to caress my cheek. Then he drew close and kissed me, soft. I returned it, hard, knowing I had to show him passion. This was my chance for a doctor. This was my chance to live.

He flashed a quick grin and stood, reaching for his belt.

My memory of the night before surged back, and I felt someone's cock in the far back of my throat, the alcoholic haze making it hard to fight it, hard even to understand it. Someone's fingers were playing in my cunt. Then a burning pain as one of them thrust against my asshole.

I shuddered, fighting away the fragment of memory, looking up at Tigran. He was handsome, short, with close-cut dark hair and eyes the color of varnished walnut, well proportioned.

"How long has it been since you had a woman?" I said, kneeling before him, unbuckling his belt.

"Since before Mongolia," he said. "I was on the Khalkha with Zhukov."

I drew his cock out of his trousers, already mostly hard. It was a handsome thing, smooth and dark.

"I'm sorry I don't look better," I said. "You should see me in a dress."

"Oh when has that mattered, comrade?" He said. I took his tip in my mouth. The candle cast dim shadows on his face, black and gold under the garret. He closed his eyes and leaned his head back, sighing as I slid my mouth along him.

He tasted clean, almost fresh, a man with soap and running water in place of lye, rendered fat and melted snow. The smell of his laundered uniform and his washed body reminded me of all the little comforts of Minsk before the war, and all that disappeared with the roar of cannon. I was grateful for it.

A queer feeling overtook me as I worked him slow, one hand on his shaft, one gripping him by the hip. I wanted this. Not specifically this, but I wanted a man and his body, any man. I felt wounded without one, like something had been torn from me. I could feel this most acutely in the aching muscles of my cunt and the bruised ring of my ass.

I'd felt it with Vladimir, the few times I'd fucked him voluntarily, a sudden, overwhelming need for sex, my skin as sensitive as fulminate. And sometimes when I looked at Lev or Kiril all I could think of was them pressing down on me, thrusting inside of me, overcome with want for me. In these fantasies I was the one who sought them, even though I wanted them to hurt me too.

My body began to respond, and I heard Tigran gasp. His gasp had the same register one of my rapists had, and I felt dizzy, the room sliding around me, my hearing like radio static, my body on fire.

I could remember the order of them.

"Good, now she won't remember," Heinrich had said. Then he'd seized me. Flung me down. Lev shouting, I fought up, staggering in the drunken darkness. Heinrich raped me with my clothes still on, crushing me into the dirt with my trousers pulled down. By the time he came inside my cunt I was so dazed and drunk I couldn't move, couldn't react as he stripped me naked, rolled me on my back, invited the next man, one of Vladimir's. But I could remember Heinrich's words as he showed my body off.

"The little slut," he said. "Volodya caught her reading Kollontai. How long has it been since you lot had a woman? She'll cum for you, you'll like it when you feel her cunt clench around your cock, or her ass for that matter." The memory of incident ended, and all I had after was sense-haze, pain here, pleasure there, slickness on the skin, fire in the muscle, a few specific moments of acute pain or pleasure, the heights of flight and orgasm.

Tigran thrust into the back of my throat, and I pulled away from him. I could feel myself dripping. What was wrong with me? What sort of girl wants this the day after, my mind wouldn't finish the sentence, and my mouth headed it off.

"Take me," I said. "On the desk, now."

I rose and he moved fast. He opened my shirt, grasping one of my tits, then he slid his hand between my legs as soon as I got my trousers unbuttoned and open for him. I still smelled like delousing spray. My hair was still wet from the shower.

"You're fucking wet," he breathed in my ear. "You dirty thing." He shoved me down onto the table, pushed my legs back, bent low and kissed me. "How many do you spread it for?"

"Just fuck me," I said. He put his hand over my mouth to keep my moans from reaching the hall and slid the tip of his cock into my pussy. I shivered. He woke the pain of abraded flesh and bruised muscle, then with one thrust he was in me and I called out into the palm of his hand. It hurt, different from other times, like the memory of my violations, like a long-stiff limb warming to long work, or like your whole body in the pre-dawn of the harvest, still empty of thought and will from the work of the day prior, when it seems there will be nothing but labor and sweat and short food.

He was fast. He hadn't had a woman in a long time. I could feel it in his movements, so sure and so desperate, the long strokes, the painful hesitation between them as he savored the feeling of my body, the rhythmless motion of his free hand on my breasts.

"There," I said. "Harder. Harder."

I alternated between a shuddering high, not quite an orgasm, but something close, and a crushing low as I remembered who and what and where I was, and all that had passed before. But Tigran gave me no chance to dwell, increasing his pace.

"Don't cum in me," I said, overwhelmed by a sudden fear that a doctor examining me would force himself on me too if he found me so used.

"Slut," he hissed. "Whore."

Then he gasped, his orgasm hitting him by surprise and I felt his cock stiffen. A wave of shame and black despair crashed over me. The room lay still around us. I tried very hard not to cry. I couldn't meet his dark eyes.

The door opened. It was Alexey Fyodorovich.

He looked between us, absorbing the position of our bodies, and he went red in the face.

"You do yourself no credit, Tigran, breaking protocol," Alexey Fyodorovich said. "I should have you sent to the penal battalions."

"She wanted some medical attention."

"Don't make me laugh," he said. "Fucking someone in our custody, we're NKVD, we shouldn't take advantages like cowards. I swear Lubyanka churns out the worst lechers these days."

"She wanted a doctor."

"That was not a speculum you had inside her was it?"

Tigran said nothing.

"Then go get the doctor," he said. "She's Komosomol, faithful to the motherland, a fighter for the Soviet Union. She deserves dignity."

I blushed and looked away. Tigran vanished. I moved, slow to dress, expecting that he'd banished Tigran so he could have me himself. It would be my luck. I looked away from him, buttoning my trousers, closing my shirt. Tears welled up in my eyes and I held my breath to forestall a sob.

"A doctor?" Alexey said.

"There are none past the lines," I said. "I won't talk to you until I've seen one."

"Shame," Alexey said. "Lev said you're the best in the whole company when it comes to finding sources. I'd like to know what it is you do."

"The women trust me," I said. "I won't say anymore until I see the doctor."

Alexey nodded, then ducked out of the room and shut the door behind him. His awkward aspect and his monkish attitude recalled to me Alexey Karamazov, and I wondered how many had made that comparison. Alyosha, I thought, faithful Alyosha.

Alyosha. Gone to find a doctor to shame me for my plight, I was sure. I'd let myself be used too easily. The dim gold of the candle faded to a weak grayish yellow, the black of the shadows to a colorless abyss. Tigran had left his coat on the chair. Abandoned coats and I had a bad relationship. But I crossed to it anyways. There was a lump of iron in the pocket, a short Nagant revolver, ugly and crude, a policeman's gun.