	Clung Together
        ==============


The rags Rebekkah wore barely covered her modesty. It 
was impossible for them to cover both breasts. As she 
struggled along the muddy track, the rotting shoes on her 
feet let in the moisture from the earth while each step 
exposed her bare crotch to the chill of the late March wind. 
But Rebekkah had long ago lost all sense of propriety or 
dignity. And if her mind ever rose above consideration of 
her current misery would anyone see her as the pretty 
teenage girl she knew herself to be? So bruised and battered 
was her skin, so filthy her bare legs and, with her stomach 
caved in from malnutrition, she was no better than the brute 
animal her captors treated her. 

She was surrounded by other women in as much misery as 
she, all of them condemned to march across the German 
countryside while the Soviet forces chased from behind, but 
not rapidly enough to bring the deliverance that was all the 
hope Rebekkah allowed herself. Despite the futility of these 
last few days of Jewish persecution by the murderous Nazi 
regime, the Police Battalion was determined to keep order 
of their charges, systematically denying them food and 
lashing out beatings on the slightest pretence.

A plane roared overhead and all heads raised to the sky: a 
column of the ill-fed and ill-treated, female flesh bared and 
exposed, hair still soaked from an earlier downpour when 
the Jewish women prisoners were denied any shelter whilst 
their guards moaned about their fear of Soviet retribution. 
The plane was almost certainly a Soviet one, but the 
likelihood was that rather than effect their escape, it would 
just add to their misery. Fortunately, the plane roared away, 
no doubt taking its payload to the cowering Germans in the 
towns.

But there was no pause in the march, despite the fears 
shared with the police guards. A few women who had 
halted in their steps were brutally beaten to force them back 
on their weary way. Rebekkah nodded sympathetically at 
the middle-aged woman clutching the hand of her nearly 
naked daughter who huddled beside her, but the woman's 
blank eyes registered no acknowledgment.

The column marched on in a landscape that seemed almost 
peaceful under the clouded sky, but offered Rebekkah no 
comfort at all. The only thing she wanted was rest, blessed 
respite from the kilometres of aimless procession past 
deserted untilled fields and abandoned livestock. If she had 
the opportunity, she doubted she had the strength or energy 
to run away. And if she should, the likelihood was that she 
too would be shot by pursuing guards and her corpse left 
unburied by the roadside.

And then, as she knew it would eventually, the weariness 
and misery overwhelmed her. She stumbled and fell onto 
the ground. Her knee caught on a loose stone and added 
another spasm of agony to the constant pain that wracked 
her battered body. She fell onto her palms, her arms unable 
to bear her weight. And this despite having very little 
weight to support after all these months of starvation.

"Bitch Jew!" were the words that greeted her from Ilse, the 
police guard who came to her attention. "Get on your shitty 
feet, you cunt!"

"Sorry! Sorry! I'm so tired!" Rebekkah wailed, gazing up at 
the young woman towering above her. 

Ilse was a slender woman who clearly wasn't as 
comfortable adorned in her police uniform as she would 
have been in the clothes of the school student she would 
still wear if the war hadn't worsened so dramatically. Her 
blonde hair was stuffed under her hat and although by no 
means starving, like the other police she no longer looked 
nearly as well nourished as she might normally. A streak of 
dirt smudged her face and a lock of hair fell over her high 
cheek.

"Don't fucking talk back, bitch!" Ilse ordered. "On your 
fucking feet!"

Although Rebekkah was complying as best she could, she 
was sufficiently slow for Ilse to strike her again and again 
with her police baton, adding more bruises to the many 
scars, scratches and swelling red and blue marks on 
Rebekkah's mottled skin, each unnecessary blow felt that 
more acutely on a frame ill-equipped to withstand them and 
not at all inured by familiarity to the ringing pain that 
shuddered through her body. 

In another time and from another perspective, Rebekkah 
would know that Ilse's cruelty did not come from the 
pleasure of meting out punishment. Like all the German 
guards, whether Nazi or simply functionaries in the Nazi 
cause, Ilse had come to see this as normal and natural 
behaviour. She would never have inflicted such treatment 
on Rebekkah in the days when she relied on her deceptively 
non-Semitic looks to pretend she was of Aryan birth. That 
was before an anonymous informer had betrayed her. 

But the benefit of sympathetic hindsight at the last relics of 
the Nazi regime trembling before the unstoppable onslaught 
of the Slavic foe was not accessible to her at this time.

Rebekkah hated Ilse, as she hated all Germans. And if she 
had the opportunity to return to Ilse the punishment that 
was mercilessly met on her battered head and shoulders, 
she would have gladly done so. And not only in reparation 
for her own wretchedness, but for that of all Jews. And 
most especially for her parents and family whom she was 
more and more certain she would never see again.

Rebekkah staggered on, the pain from the nascent swelling 
on her cheek a fresh distraction from the sick emptiness of 
her stomach and the bleeding scratch on her knee. And 
behind her, Ilse tucked away the baton, ready to be used on 
one or other of the many Jewish prisoners should the 
excuse arise.

It was in very different circumstances that Rebekkah next 
met Ilse, by which stage her stomach had recovered 
somewhat thanks to the beneficence of the Americans 
whose food aid the Soviet troops distributed. She was still 
sporting a prominent discolouration on her cheek as a result 
of Ilse's brutality. But on this occasion, two weeks later, it 
was Ilse, not Rebekkah, who was most in need of attention.

Like everyone else in the chaotic days as the war remained 
unresolved, Rebekkah was scavenging for food and shelter 
in the bombed and desolate towns, no longer troubled by 
any mould on abandoned bread and already insensitive to 
any sympathy for the domestic fowl she killed to sate her 
appetite. She had slept on the straw of a deserted barn 
along with other refugees, only a few of them Jewish and 
most being Germans that the Red Army tanks had 
overtaken on their rush to Berlin.

She heard Ilse's sobs from the hallway of the ruined house 
she had wandered into long before she knew who they 
belonged to. Curious, she cautiously mounted the stairs on 
the ragged carpet past the detritus that was almost certainly 
the result of the vandalism of Soviet or even German 
soldiers. The house was no longer a welcome place, but 
one of shadows and redolent of despair. 

The door was open to the bedroom where Ilse lay naked on 
the bare stained mattress on the metal bed frame. The 
morning sun shone through the grimy lace curtains onto her 
pale shoulder. At first Rebekkah had no idea who it was 
collapsed in this state of piteous despair. Although she had 
seen the desperation of so many people in the last few 
months, as her health improved she had gradually regained 
her sense of compassion. And even though this naked 
figure was so obviously a German, her accent apparent in 
every bitter curse, Rebekkah had rediscovered pity from 
having seen the fear and desolation of the German refugees, 
now almost pathetic in their chorus that it wasn't them but 
others who had supported the Nazi regime and its 
persecution of the Jews.

Ilse lay huddled in a foetal crouch on the mattress, her 
hands squeezed between her thighs and protecting her 
crotch. Her face was pushing against the ragged fabric of 
the mattress, her hair partly obscuring her eyes. Rebekkah 
placed a hand on the girl's shoulder, and shivered slightly 
from the first glimmer of recognition, but not yet sure 
exactly where and when they might have met before.

"Are you alright?"

Ilse looked up at Rebekkah, clearly startled, but with a 
blank emptiness behind her stare. Her pale blue eyes were 
red and raw and the streaks on her cheeks bore the memory 
of the salt she'd squeezed out of them with her tears. She 
nodded.

"What happened to you?" Rebekkah asked.

Ilse was still unable to speak. She nodded her head towards 
her crotch and grimaced. Then she dropped her head down 
again. "Fucking! Fuck! Shit!" she moaned.

It was then that Rebekkah at last remembered who this girl 
was. The voice, slightly husky, with a distinct Berlin accent 
was exactly the same one who called her a bitch and a cunt 
less than a fortnight before. At this moment, Rebekkah 
made a decision that was to haunt her for the rest of her 
life, the consequences of which she had no inkling at this 
stage. Although she could so easily abandon Ilse, perhaps 
satisfied that the vengeful retribution she had harboured had 
indeed come to be, she chose instead to stay by Ilse's side.

It was a long time until Ilse recovered her composure 
sufficiently for Rebekkah to learn just what had happened 
to her. And her account came out falteringly and in 
disconnected sentences. Even at the end of the day when 
the two of them nestled together under the thin tablecloth 
that Rebekkah made into makeshift bedclothes, it wasn't 
clear whether Ilse had yet managed to recognise just who 
her saviour and new companion was. But there were 
glances and long puzzled stares that told Rebekkah that Ilse 
had at least identified that there was some link that bound 
the two together.

Ilse had scattered like the other police guards when the 
Russian tanks stormed towards the wretched column of 
prisoners, knowing that in her uniform she was the obvious 
target for Soviet bullets. And while Rebekkah and the 
others greeted their saviours with as much of their 
weakened energy remaining to them, Ilse ran off, losing all 
sight of her companions. 

Eventually, after days of wandering and scavenging, having 
exchanged her uniform for a stolen dress, she was 
staggering down the street of this small town, so weak from 
hunger and depressed from the total destruction of the 
German motherland that she didn't notice the approach of a 
group of Soviet soldiers, exactly how many she was never 
able to establish.

She was easy prey to them. She was forcibly dragged up 
the stairs of the nearest house, her dress torn from her 
before they had even kicked open the front door. And here 
on the mattress, the bedsprings resonating still in her 
memory as one after the other, or maybe more than one at 
the same time, the soldiers raped her. And she a girl who 
was betrothed and had held fast to her virginity even in 
these despairing last days of the Reich that lasted only 
twelve of its promised thousand years. 

And it didn't stop at just the one violation. It continued for 
what seemed like, and very probably was, hours of 
penetration and the accompanying slaps to subdue her 
struggles. Taking her virginity not only from the front, the 
blood of her virtue coated on her inner thighs, but forcing 
her to undergo indignities she had never imagined were 
possible. Her anus was sore and bleeding. Her mouth had 
been as roughly violated as her crotch. And it went on, 
another soldier ready to replace one when the other had 
finished.

There had been a pause in the ordeal. In fact, there had 
been more than one, but these occasions were mere respites 
in which Ilse wept and swore unable to understand a single 
word her captors said either to her or to each other. But 
then, from a signal that Ilse was unable to recognise, the 
brutal assault would resume. And continue with, if 
anything, less respect than before as one by one the 
Russians lost what few inhibitions had restrained them in 
their previous violations. 

Rebekkah comforted Ilse as best she could. She found 
clothes to cover her and after a day or so Ilse had 
recovered sufficiently to accompany Rebekkah on her 
foraging. But her recovery was slow and halting. She 
would burst into tears at the smallest excuse and she carried 
about her a look of someone so traumatised that even death 
would be a kind of welcome relief. Her eyes reflected a 
darkness and vacuity that her high cheekbones merely 
accentuated.

In retrospect it seemed obvious that the two girls should 
become lovers. They nestled close each night, clung 
together in their shared misery, enjoying the comfort and 
warmth from the other's body. Rebekkah was certain that 
Ilse now recognised her as the Jewish prisoner she had once 
beaten so cruelly. It was evident from Ilse's guilty apologies 
for her crimes during the Nazi regime and her evasiveness 
regarding her activities prior to her abandonment of her 
position in the police battalion. But the truth of their earlier 
ties was not discussed at all. It was just something that both 
girls knew full well, but was not to be mentioned.

Rebekkah wasn't sure, as Ilse was also later unable to 
specify, exactly when the cuddles and consoling hugs 
became the first kiss or the first truly passionate embrace. 
But both recalled with a clarity that remained with them 
forever as the only memory of those dreadful days that they 
would choose to cherish that moment when the kisses and 
embraces became something much more passionate, wholly 
abandoned and altogether unambiguously the act of 
physical love.

The memory that remained distinct was not just their 
mutual application of tongues and fingers to those parts 
never willingly surrendered before, Rebekkah having 
retained her virginity more from the Germans' racist disgust 
than from any act of kindness, but those moments of 
tenderness when their perspiration-soaked bodies separated 
and the two naked girls could reflect on just what it was 
that they had just enjoyed. And also discovered not the 
feeling of disgust and shame that Rebekkah might have 
imagined before that time, but an appetite for yet more that 
had a greater urgency than any she had ever felt before. 

The delight and joy that her appetite was reciprocated made 
Rebekkah smile. This was the first smile on her face for 
over a year and one that became a fixture for all the night 
and for most of the following days.

Ilse's vagina, the surrounding pubic hairs, so soft and silky, 
the smell of her juices strengthening and later souring, the 
perfect folds of her labia were not as pristine now, 
Rebekkah reflected, so many years later, as her tongue and 
fingers probed, her mousey brown hair now much shorter 
and no longer able to brush on Ilse's thighs. But the coarser 
bush of hair, the sourer smell of Ilse's stimulated vagina, the 
ragged edges to her vulva, might now belong to a woman 
as menopausal as she, but it was the same Ilse. 

And a woman who, despite the many intervening years, was 
still very much the love of her life. 

Ilse gasped as Rebekkah pushed three bunched fingers into 
the open hole, less elastic but more loose. Her head pushed 
back and her greying hair, kept long and now untied, fell 
onto the pillow as she gave vent to the guttural cries of 
passion that Rebekkah knew so well. Her voice huskier 
than it was possible to imagine it could become was 
deepened and coarsened by a cigarette and whiskey habit 
that had only slightly lessened over the years.

And then Rebekkah pulled herself forward, over the rising 
hump of Ilse's stomach, no longer taut and flat, and let her 
tongue encircle the nipples on a bosom that had never been 
especially large, but was now spared the sagging from 
which Rebekkah's slightly larger breasts suffered. The 
nipples were long and hard, and Ilse gasped in short urgent 
intervals as Rebekkah gently nibbled at the areola. 

It was indeed a miracle that the two lovers remained 
together. It had been a love tested so many times. By Ilse's 
many infidelities. By Rebekkah's several guilty 
indiscretions. And most of all, by Rebekkah's doomed and 
wholly unsuccessful marriage to the Communist Party 
officer at the state bank where she had worked at the time. 
It was a marriage to a man many years older than Rebekkah 
was then, but many years younger than Rebekkah was now. 
Her marriage had not wholly failed, as it had resulted in 
Katrina, her daughter. 

If Rebekkah turned her head, she might even be able to see 
Katrina on the television screen. She knew that her 
daughter was somewhere amidst the jubilant crowd in 
Berlin celebrating the destruction of the Wall that had so 
long divided the East from the rest of Germany.

But the excitement of this day, so long hoped for but 
almost too soon when it arrived, had become an excitement 
that engulfed Rebekkah and Ilse in passion, soon taking 
their gaze from the screen where East and West were 
joining hands over the rubble of this visible evidence of 
Communist paranoia, and focused their exhilaration on each 
other. 

Rebekkah hoped that she could catch a glimpse of Katrina, 
as did Ilse who had become strangely much more a father 
than a second mother to her daughter. Perhaps it was the 
shared love for the growing girl that had brought Ilse back 
from the arms of her many lovers. All of whom had been 
women, and often ones she'd picked up in the Berlin bars 
when they lived in the capital city. Although Rebekkah's 
indiscretions, and of course her marriage itself, betrayed a 
lack of total commitment to her sex, Ilse was so 
traumatised by her experiences at the hand of the Soviet 
soldiers that the mere thought of a man touching her body 
repulsed her in a strangely frightening way. Even an 
innocent hand on her shoulder or a peck on the cheek 
would cause Ilse to shudder and her body to become rigid. 
Real hostility flashed from her pale blue eyes that only the 
most insensitive man could fail to notice.

Rebekkah pulled her body further up Ilse's so that their 
stomachs pressed against each other and their crotches 
ground together. She ran a finger tenderly over Ilse's red 
lipsticked lips and studied her lover's face. She loved every 
one of the lines that coarsened her face, the slight sag of 
jowl over her mouth, the furrows on her brow, and the sags 
under her eyes that contrasted with her high cheekbones. 
She kissed Ilse tenderly on the lips and then responding 
from the bright flash of desire in Ilse's eyes her mouth 
locked itself in place, tongue doing battle with tongue, 
imagining she could taste the gold of Ilse's upper incisor. 

It was impossible to say whether Ilse would always have 
preferred women so exclusively over men. In a country that 
sometimes treated the love they felt so strongly towards 
each other as a medical condition, there was no shortage of 
unsympathetic explanations, but Ilse was sure that their 
love was one they felt more for each other as lovers than 
for each other's sex. 

But now the passion was rising and the two of them 
responded to the grunts and sighs of the other to bring each 
other upwards and forever toward the climax that came less 
readily now, but was accompanied with a sparser 
expression of vaginal release and that they expressed 
towards each other with rather less frequency than in those 
early days of Soviet occupation when there was no excuse 
too slight for the two of them to abandon discretion and 
clothing for their conjoined lust.

And then, later, the sweat damp on their skin, Ilse's hair 
plastered to her cheek and long ragged neck, the two of 
them collapsed, their bodies still entwined, and returned 
their gaze to the destruction of the wall on their spluttering 
East German manufactured television. 

The drama of the event they watched from the West 
German channel was interspersed by frequent interviews 
with dignitaries, politicians and celebrities from both sides 
of the forty-five year old divide. So accustomed had 
Rebekkah become to watching West German television that 
it was actually those people from the East with whom she 
was least familiar.

"So, it's happened! At last! One Germany. One fatherland. 
United!" exclaimed Ilse with genuine passion and emotion, 
a huge grin on her face.

Rebekkah nodded, hoping to catch a glimpse of Katrina, 
perhaps amongst those bashing down the wall or amongst 
those gathered in the evening shadows. She knew Katrina 
was there. Her excited phone call from the capital where 
she worked had left her mother in no doubt as to her intent.

"At long last, after all these years of Honeker and the DDR, 
the business is finished!" Ilse exclaimed.

Not quite all, reflected Rebekkah. Despite the closeness of 
their love and their many nights of passion. Despite the long 
pillow chats and the tearful confessions of guilt about the 
women she had seduced or let herself be seduced by. 
Despite a love the two had tried to rescue from Ilse's 
infidelity by a failed night of making love together with a 
third woman, a lover from whom Ilse was reluctant to be 
parted. Despite all their many ups and downs, trials and 
tribulations, and their shared parenthood. Despite all this 
there was still one issue wholly unresolved.

"You know, Ilse, there is a matter we haven't discussed."

"There is?"

"Yes."

"And what's that, Becky?" asked Ilse, perhaps quietly aware 
what Rebekkah was alluding to.

"The time we first met."

"In that house? After I'd been... after that awful... when..."

"No. Not that. The first time."

"What time? What do you mean?"

There was real fear in Ilse's eyes. She looked towards 
Rebekkah, not really at her, perhaps even through her. 
Colour appeared to be draining from her already pale face.

"You know exactly what I mean. It wasn't there we first 
met. It was earlier."

"I don't understand. What are you saying?" asked Ilse, with 
a distinct tremble in her voice.

"On the forced march. The death march. You know what 
I'm talking about. You and your baton. I know it was you 
who beat me then. And I know that you know it was me 
you beat."

"You can't! You mustn't! It's not true!" said Ilse, with 
genuine panic.

"It is true. It is the most true thing there is."

There was a silence between them, but not a silence in the 
room, as the cheers and cries of excitement continued to 
stream from the television set and the commentators 
described the exultation around them, unable to disguise the 
very real one they also felt.

"Yes. I know. It is true," said Ilse at last, in a soft and 
tremulous voice.

And then, like a dam that had suddenly been broken, her 
eyes flooded with tears, her face cracked into fragments of 
misery, and her mouth contorted into ugly rubbery 
trembling. And from deep inside her came huge sobs, 
welling up and exploding, her chest and her bare breasts 
shaking with convulsions with each guttural explosion of 
misery.

"It was me! I know it was! I did it! How can you ever 
forgive me?"

Then, desperately, she clung to Rebekkah's waist, arms 
clasped about her hips and her face, damp now from the 
unstoppable torrent of tears, on Rebekkah's sagging bosom, 
her body shuddering with each sob.

"Please forgive me. Please. Please! Please say you forgive 
me! Please!"

Rebekkah was silent. She placed a hand steadily on Ilse's 
head, not stroking her hair but just keeping it in place. 
Could she forgive Ilse? 

The memories of those months of humiliation flooded back. 
The times she was forced to strip naked. The times she had 
been spat on and beaten. The times she had witnessed the 
most appalling brutalities. The woman beaten to death, 
although she was so weak from hunger she would have 
soon died anyway. The woman shot in the back as she ran 
desperately across the fields, followed by a bullet shot to 
the skull. The bloody mess that was where her face had 
once been. The constant cruel taunts. The systematic denial 
of food that was permitted for the Slavs and Poles in the 
same company.

But somehow, although not especially the worst in kind, 
there being many beatings and many humiliations worse 
than that, the worst memory that haunted Rebekkah after 
all these decades was the beating she'd received from Ilse.

Rebekkah looked down at her trembling lover. 

What was Ilse saying?

"I know I did wrong. I know what I did was wrong. So 
very wrong! It was then. We were taught that the Jews... 
that people like you... that you were less than human... that 
you deserved to die... I was so very very wrong!"

"That's an excuse, Ilse," Rebekkah said firmly. "No one 
forced you to beat me that day. And I'm sure, in fact I 
know because I saw, that I wasn't the only one you beat 
and tormented. I wasn't the only one you called a bitch or a 
cunt."

"Cunt? I called you that? Bitch?"

"You did!"

 "Oh, Becky! I'm so sorry!"

For a moment, Rebekkah viewed this as her time of 
triumph. She could now abandon Ilse as she could so easily 
have done so many years before. Leave her Teutonic lover 
to rue her viciousness. But Rebekkah knew that the reason 
she remembered that moment so very vividly, and why, of 
all the torments she'd suffered, the one she received from 
Ilse was the one that hurt the most intensely, was precisely 
because of the intensity of the love she felt for Ilse and the 
passion they had shared so often and so equally intensely 
over the many years. Perhaps they had clung together so 
tightly because of the strength of this unspoken guilt that 
Ilse had carried with her, but there was also the true love 
Rebekkah knew Ilse felt for her. A love that had always had 
her returning to her first love whatever the desire and lust 
she expressed towards and experienced from other women.

She stroked Ilse's hair, slowly but firmly. Ilse was quiet 
now, her sobs fewer, but fresh tears were still seeping free 
and leaving a trail on Rebekkah's bare breasts.

"Do you forgive me?" asked Ilse again, looking up, her face 
as miserable as that day they met in the abandoned house 
when the object of her misery had been violent and 
prolonged.

Could Rebekkah ever say anything else?

"Yes, Ilse. I forgive you."










