THE POLISH GIRL He was an ordinary, normal middle-class American youth - that takes you pretty far. Call him Bob. He came from a suburb on the west side of Cleveland, and lived in a good-sized brick house, I imagine, though not fancy. The natty suburbs are all on the East side. I can imagine him as a kid wearing tennis shoes (Keds they were called when he was a boy, no matter who manufactured them). He must have owned a baseball glove, and surely he went to Sunday School. Pretty well-off family - the boys would expect to go to Ohio Wesleyan, maybe, or Western Reserve. A nice boy. He wore glasses, which made him look a little dim; in fact he was a pretty clever student in high school, with no particular academic talents. He got along with the teachers. So he was drafted in 1943, when he was eighteen, was moved through several units, then sent to an infantry division training for battle at a camp in Colorado. There he learned about soldiering, and in August of 1944 the Division was sent to Europe for the fighting there. He got along all right - wet and cold, carried his rifle, fired off some rounds, etc. Routine, routine - a surprising number of people know about this from having done it. Then he was captured, in a little town east of Aachen called Lucherberg. His platoon, what was left of it (twelve men and the platoon sergeant), was trapped in a factory - high black sooty walls with panels of windows high up. The platoon sergeant and three others were killed by shellfire, and four others wounded. A tank appeared, which fired in at them from a range of forty yards, then backed off a way as a voice called out a request for surrender, in perfectly good English. The survivors were not quite ready to be serious about this thing - none of them was ready to die right then by choosing to; and the war was coming to an end ... They agreed to surrender after some agitated whisperings - and so a little later there Bob was, walking along without a pack or rifle or cartridge belt ... There was some serious marching to be done, and some riding in trains listening for the American bombers that were after the German railroads night and day. Finally in the middle of December (in 1944), he and the others reached a prison camp near the Elbe River, and there he stayed, getting thinner pretty rapidly and toward the end getting very weak, for he lost weight spectacularly, and his physique was not of such a nature as to tolerate this - It is said about the Piutes and Shoshones of the Great Basin that the fat ones have survived because they could live on their fat when the rabbits and deer were scarce, and this may be true Bob was almost skinny, six feet tall and weighing maybe 145 pounds when he was in good condition. At 115 pounds or thereabouts, he was tottering as he walked, and even lacked the energy to curse his captors, who surely could have done a better job of feeding if they had wanted to. He was gaunt (not quite emaciated) when the prison camp fell open. The prisoners just walked away. Nobody cared. The Russians were approaching from the East, the Americans from the South and West; Bob and some others set out for the American lines, a ragged crew - listlessly they strayed along, and on the second day, Bob, unable to keep up, found himself alone on the grounds of a factory. He didn't like the look of a factory, naturally, but there was no other place nearby, and he wanted to hide. There was a house on the grounds; he entered - the manager's house, all the furniture gone; and there he encountered a girl in a black coat much too big for her. All by herself, a waif. He was to learn that she was accustomed to going her own way. She looked at him with large, tranquil black eyes; they spoke a little German; she was not afraid of such a scarecrow. She came up to him, touched the sleeve of his combat jacket. "Amerikanisch?" she said. This was enough for an introduction; she took pity on him, and got a piece of bread out of the pocket of her coat. This he ate while standing there, his dull eyes watching her. She was an ordinary medium-sized girl who had been working in this plant until the menace of approaching battle had frightened the managers away. What's there to say to such a girl? She had a pleasant bosom, he learned later: it was not to be seen under the black coat, at this moment. She had a lovely back; and most women have a lovely back, it may be. Not pretty? Well, she might have been pretty under other conditions. She well knew herself as a woman, certainly, who might have been twenty-one or two at the time. Her name was Zosia, and she took him up as she might have taken up with a stray dog, wanting a substitute for a baby, perhaps, like those college girls who arrive at parties with a dog on a leash. She fed him, having a little stock of three eggs that she had stolen at a nearby farm. He lay down in one of the rooms, looking vaguely at the wall, and heard her stirring about in another room. She found a way to cook the eggs, and brought them to him in a porcelain cup. He ate a little, maybe half of what was offered him; she finished it, and then encouraged him to get up, indicating by her expression that there were very good reasons why they should leave this place. He was reluctant to go, however, and sat down with his back to the wall. She spoke to him in some foreign tongue (Polish, it turned out to be), an outlandish noise he thought it. Then she sat down beside him and took him in her arms. He was dizzy; she kissed his forehead several times and then pulled him over on his side powerfully forcing her body against him, and shocking the hurt child which he was into sleep, in a minute or two. She imposed herself, who for him was all a letting go. There were odd lights in his darkness. Powers bending near, learning over out of heaven; he was really happy, and felt himself smiling stupidly. Then slept. She held him in her arms all that day and night; and after dark, she worked her hands in under his voluminous clothes - too big for him now, sadly large - and warmed his back with her palms and fingers. He thought about marrying her, and knew she would not do it. Early in the morning he began to stir - feebly moved against her, as he might have moved against a pillow, if he had been on a bed. His hip bone caused her to turn a little. His hand came to rest on her thigh, just above the knee. Quite naturally she interpreted these movements as a sexual advance, and so she helped him by slipping off her pants, raising her skirts, and turning over on her back, rather gracefully. There before him suddenly visible was the topic of his most anxious meditations. He stared at the triangle of dark hair like an arrow pointing the way to felicity-his mouth opened; he gasped, leaning on his elbow, swaying slightly. Again he thought about asking her to marry him, for he wanted to keep her now that he had seen how valuable she was. He had never had a woman. His girl friend at home, to whom he wrote letters and who answered them promptly, was the kind of girl you might kiss, and once he had touched her left breast, under the blouse, making her ashamed, and left himself with hot cheeks, confused - On that occasion, he had gone home to masturbate, and this had been his solitary pleasure right along. His ambition was to give it up for real sex, of course - or had been. There had been no masturbation for some time now, since his body had gotten strange with hunger. She was not prepared to be entirely passive, this girl with naked legs trembling against the floor. She availed herself of him by unbuttoning his pants, and taking hold of his penis. She encouraged him - kissed him tenderly on the mouth, and then passionately, biting his lower lip; embraced him, cupped his penis in her hands, whispered and whispered at him. His penis remained inert and soft, defying their best efforts, for by now he had joined her in this enterprise, and was touching her, feebly at first, then with a certain tenacity. The pubic hair astonished him by its tangled liveness. He was afraid to press down where it led, but he was able to touch her belly; he expected that his flesh would come around. It did not, however, and he fell into profound despair. Given his age and education, his general position in life, here was a disaster that made the fear of death go pale, in his imagining. He did not move for hours; refused her attentions, though not in any hostile manner, and he thought that soon he might die and be glad of it. That was not in the cards, of course. She went away for a considerable period in the morning, and when she came back had things for him to eat, and he ate them. Early in the afternoon, she persuaded him to start traveling, on the grounds that the Russians were coming. You could see them coming -a high smoke prevailing over the eastern horizon ... Once started, he could travel pretty well, and they made several miles that day, stopping for the night in an abandoned farm house. They were accurately between the armies now, with only a few German soldiers occasionally to be seen, hurrying somewhere. She knew where to go in the houses for preserved fruit, and she found other food with her sensitive hunger. Once she was able to dig up a ham out of a garden; it had been buried there by some perplexed German woman very probably, who had not quite covered up the traces of her enterprise - a saving woman, a good housewife, doubtless ... Every night he slept in her arms, and after the first few nights they developed those styles of intimacy which occur in a marriage - he learned how her body was, and how it might be embraced without inducing numbness in his arms. They fit together very nicely, her head light and warm when she chose to rest it on his shoulder, a thing she did occasionally, out of flattery, it may be. A week passed, and he was getting stronger; one night he touched her breasts through the cloth, and this led to his introducing one hand under her blouse, and there it was, that breast, heavy and free. It was wonderful, how heavy! She liked having him hold it, and put her hand over his in order to make this clear; he learned ways of caressing her breasts, and this was an art he practiced every night. Then one night she guided his hand down to her sexual parts and showed him how to achieve the masturbatory effect, and his feeling at this kindness was a deep, sighing gratitude. When she came - hips jerking furiously several times, and she was groaning, too - he hugged her with a strength that surprised him. Thereafter they had a sexual routine, and he began to be sorry that they were approaching the American lines, for he would have to give up this new-found pleasure. He was humble. He understood his role. It was clear to him that when she found a proper man she would have to leave him. Then one night he was able to make love to her; he was engaged in his sexual drill designed to please her, discovered that he had an erection, and went right into her. Moments later he was well again. They were lovers through the next three nights, and he had some color in his cheeks when they reached the Americans on the fourth day, who took pleasure in being excessively kind to him. They swept him away, for there were procedures established for such cases as his, and he left his Polish girl as he might have stepped away from a curb on a street in his native city, when the light changes. He left her in a little crowd of refugees waiting for trucks to take them to a displaced persons camp, and these were unpleasant places, by the way. He was a soldier, subject to orders - you can't blame him. He was in love with her, and for several nights he wept bitterly, as even healthy men will sometimes do, on such occasions. Their lives came apart very finally, nonetheless, and now he's at home in his American life, married (with two children), and really pretty fat, right close to 190 pounds. He has eaten his way into this plenitude, starting right away with the food in the army hospitals and continuing after his discharge in July of 1945. His American girlfriend had sympathized intelligently when, a month or so after the wedding, he told her about the strange malady which had overtaken him not so long before. The shared secret became a bond between them, and naturally she understands by it that she must not lecture him about being overweight. He wants to be fat; and as for the Polish girl, I suppose she's behind the Iron Curtain if she's alive, and has a family of her own.