Read Online In the King's Arms by Sonia Taitz - Free Book Online Page B

faded; as he clicked the shutter he knew that it had faded. The photograph came out blurred: Anna was shown with her head moving downward toward her dress, still looking at the stain. Her arms remained outstretched from the hug that had filled them, and with her lowered head she looked a bit Christ-like, fragile, thin and wavering.
    Even with Lily, Julian secretly relished a self-image as a wolf in sheep’s clothing, a dream of villainous tyranny, even as he caressed the soft-bodied woman he kept in thrall. She trusts me, he would think, nerves prickling with desire, and I could tear her to pieces. He fed on her atavistic nightmares, her worried mouth, the eyes that would not settle. Julian was no longer the victim of circumstance; no, it would be she.
    He sensed his own wild and delicate containment. Would he feast on her, his prey? In the midst of a deep embrace he would shove Lily’s head back and then, having contemplated her fragile skull at arm’s length, render the woman back, squeezing.
    A King may look at a cat, he thought. And be very much fascinated. Pocket it in his purple robes, make it purr at the pulse-points. My Kingdom for a cat, dear Lily. Would you like to be the cat, hmmmm?
    Lily often kissed Julian with a passion he did not yet completely feel, pulling his mouth apart with her jaw, prying his secretive face wide open so it looked wondering, and perhaps he did wonder.
Then, going suddenly soft, she would let him prod her drowsy lips, hanging her head as though drugged.
    He felt himself become a man of meaning, a participant in an old rite. Lily made him quite mad. He would show her just how mad; he would cram her full of his madness. And then, the yielding of her cool skin would appease his spirit, domesticate the fierce young Briton. It was on old rite, with keen new communicants, and an unknown outcome.

14
    Europe, 1944
     
     
     
    A STORY Lily’s mother had told her used to wander in and out of her mind. The story took place in Germany. Lily’s mother had then been a young girl, a teenager of about sixteen. Her family was beginning to disappear because it was Jewish: mischievous Karl, who played in the streets despite every warning of traffic, and lately, of Nazis, and whose supper had remained on the table for days before anyone had had the heart to throw it into the trash; tired, old Papa, who always grumbled about his bad back, suddenly packed off to labor camp, somewhere; Grandmama, whom someone had pushed off the sidewalk, who now remained listless and still in her bed. It was an orchestrated time, as far as the Jews were concerned, although between the cry here, and the rumbling threat there, many hours remained to be spent in a sort of willful deafness.
    The only picture which had survived that time and made it to the New World showed an elaborately crinolined infant (Lily’s mother) sitting like a doll, as was then the fashion layer after layer of petticoat, jointless arms and legs flung out by the photographer, who must have said a merry thing as he tucked under his hood, and bald, except for a sepia tuft. So Lily had to imagine for herself the pale, serious gaze of the girl in the story, the glossy coronet of hair, the decent pinafore dress.

    Lily’s mother had eventually been transported to a labor camp that contained about a thousand women. Her own mother was taken that same day, and they never saw each other again, alive or dead. The young girl was ordered to go right. She noticed, looking backward, that her mother had been ordered to go left, and was walking toward a group of old women. Old women: it was hard to imagine what sort of work they were intended to do. It could not possibly be outdoor work, for it was winter. Much later, Lily would imagine the death of her grandmother as sanctuary from the bitter cold.
    Lily’s mother was one of the youngest in the camp. Children younger than she had been sent off elsewhere. She had cried like a child when all her auburn hair was cut