Chapter Text
Nikolay watches the SS-man’s back, reaches out, and ever-so-slowly inches a White pawn one space backwards.
He’s been doing this for weeks: whenever he’s brought to Standartenführer Jäger’s quarters to discuss cadet training regimens, he takes any unsupervised moment to rig the ongoing chess game. He wants White to lose— on the suspicion anyone playing Jäger would let him take White— or, even better, have the colonel accused of cheating.
Anya still watches him from the corner of her eye, though fondly now. She doesn’t understand what joy this brings him, but any joy in their lives is to be seized.
The Standartenführer’s second turns from his commanding officer’s liquor cabinet abruptly; Nikolay’s hand falls inconspicuously to his side. »Well sit down,« he orders with a snappish gesture to the dining table, a glass of whiskey in his hand, and presumably not his first. Nikolay envies him.
Anya takes her seat, and Nikolay his cue; though he understands the odd word of German, it amuses him to pretend he doesn’t. His lack of haste is excused by his injury. Oddly, the SS-man— Anya had been told his name once, but hadn’t anticipated to address him by anything other than honourific— occupies Jäger’s customary chair at the ostensible head. She wonders if the Standartenführer isn’t joining them. »Do you know who I am?«
She knows his position, but not the word for it— Nikolay would, though only in Russian. Why this is suddenly relevant when he’s sneered at eye contact all times previous is beyond her. »Standartenführer Jäger’s assistant?« she chances.
»Hauptsturmführer Thielicke,« he corrects, too impatient to be more than passingly annoyed. Nikolay files away the word for the SS equivalent of a captain, going by his shoulder boards. »I’m his adjutant , so functionally, yes.« With that rueful admission, he takes a swig, and leans over the glass, looking conspiratorial and somehow more serious than usual. »I’m under no obligation to do this. No one knows I’m here, and if the topic should ever arise, this conversation never happened. Do I make myself clear?«
Anya glances at Nikolay, leaned forward in turn, but not having understood a word between them. »Of course, Herr Hauptsturmführer.«
The officer straightens; it appears uncomfortable. »The Standartenführer has asked you to marry him, has he not?«
Anya is suddenly infatuated with the man’s wedding ring. Nikolay is infatuated with her.
»That’s what I thought,« the adjutant carries on dryly. »I processed his request for some rather specific forms, used exclusively to prove a foreigner is eligible to be married in Germany. There was an issue with Ivushkin’s— the DRK apparently had him marked as deceased, but that’s since been resolved. You’re welcome.«
Dripping with sarcasm that passes even the language barrier, Nikolay remarks, « Thank you.»
Thielicke takes a drink, which is definitely intended to taunt him. »My point is, you should be grateful. The both of you.« This is said with a particular glower for the junior lieutenant, before shifting his gaze back to Anya— currently attempting to re-repress the uncomfortable memory of Jäger’s proposal. »The exemption only exists as a holdover from the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact— given of course the breeding pairs are of the same race. I can’t imagine how this is preferable to putting an ad in the paper for a nice German couple, but I suppose he has his reasons—« The Hauptsturmführer nearly cuts himself off to take a long, desperate draw of his drink.
Nikolay’s shoe nudges against hers under the table; he doesn’t know what’s going on, and quite frankly, neither does Anya. »I’m sorry, Herr Hauptsturmführer, I’m afraid I don’t follow.«
The adjutant blinks, slightly more inebriated than anyone had realized. »You've both agreed to join the Standartenführer in a sedoretu. It’s an honour, of course.«
»A what?«
»An honour.«
»No, I’m sorry, that was unspecific.«
Thielicke eyes his drink, and slides it to the side. »You do know what a sedoretu is, don’t you?«
She doesn’t believe she’s ever heard the word before. Beside her, Nikolay inclines an eyebrow. Under the table, he touches her knee.
»Good God,« complains the Hauptsturmführer, marching over to his commanding officer’s desk. He fumbles through the drawers while Nikolay and Anya exchange a glance of commiserative confusion. Thielicke’s halfway back to his seat when he turns on his heel and snags the bottle, which joins them at the table, along with a letterhead paper, fountain pen, and a second glass, which he fills halfway and shoves to Nikolay. The junior lieutenant rests his hand over the top while the Hauptsturmführer scribbles. »What do the Soviets call a marriage— one man and one woman?«
Unaware of an alternative, Anya agrees.
»Well,« says the SS-man, sliding the paper across the table to her, »there’s a better way.«
Four boxes form the corners of a square, and some lines interconnect them. It looks to her like a circuit she has no hope of defusing. Nikolay cranes forward to study the diagram intently, though the neat Sütterlin labels mean nothing to him; he can draw it again from memory if necessary.
»Sedoretu is an ancient Aryan custom practiced by the SS. It’s a four-person marriage, made up of four couples’ marriages. Each participant has a husband and a wife of the opposite moiety, assistance in breadwinning or child rearing, support in the unfortunate event of a death— it’s brilliant, really.«
Anya touches one of two words on the paper: “Morning” and “Evening” labelling columns. »These are the moieties?«
»Do they call them something different in the Soviet Union?«
She nods: they don’t call them much of anything. She knows, anecdotally, her mother was a Morning, which means she is a Morning as well, but the distinction was considered antiquated and abandoned after the revolution. In Anya’s life, moiety has been about as important as blood type— and she doesn’t even know her blood type.
»Yours is in your records, Ivushkin is obviously an Evening, and I know Jäger’s a Morning.« Thielicke points to each square as he names them, and Nikolay labels the copy in his head. »I presume he has an Evening girlfriend that’s bothering him about wanting to be married, given the rush, and you two come conveniently paired, don’t you?«
He fixes them each in turn with a knowing look; Anya averts her eyes, and Nikolay throws back his drink. «I know he’s talking about us, but what the hell’s he saying?»
The Hauptsturmführer tops off Nikolay’s glass; Anya downs it. They both stare at her with surprise and admiration in variable quantities, until Thielicke stretches to take another lowball glass from the bartop behind him, and fills all three with a double. Nikolay nods and holds the adjutant’s eyes as he takes the replacement, but his Russian means, «That bad, huh?»
Anya feels a bit more willing to face the unavoidable with a glass in her hands, even if it’s full of Irish swill. »Each of these lines is a marriage, you said?«
»Correct.«
»But this one links Ivushkin and Standartenführer Jäger.«
»Yes,« the adjutant supplies unperturbed, »the Night Marriage.«
The German language appends words to one another with meanings that cannot be discerned from the parts: she finds this both amusing and frustrating. »By “marriage” you mean…«
He holds his hand open as if this should be obvious— maybe twenty minutes ago, it was. »A partnership in which to make a home and raise children.«
»And these partnerships are— sexual?«
Thielicke leans forward to meet her hushed tone. »Unless you know another method of procreation that I don’t.«
Feeling left out, Nikolay leans in as well. Anya is beginning to wonder if she’s the unreasonable one in this dialogue. »Herr Hauptsturmführer… to my understanding, acts of homosexuality do not result in offspring.«
There’s the version of his face she knows: snarling. »Homosexuality is degenerate because it takes virile young men out of the gene pool, but men have a higher libido than women, so there must be a reason, yes? God doesn’t make mistakes.«
Anya withdraws her hand from the tabletop into her lap. Slowly, Nikolay’s inches to rest over hers. She finds it best not to argue with a man who believes vehemently in pagan plural marriage and has the authority to shoot her.
»Some cultures think this means men are intended to take multiple wives, but the math doesn’t support it— there should be more women than men if that were the case. No, it’s clearly one woman to every man… but where is it written that’s all there is?« The Bible, she thinks, and probably several laws the Nazis haven’t rewritten yet. They’d rewrite the Bible if they could.
Nikolay’s fingers link with hers, and she feels him watching her from the corner of his eye. The captain is clearly inflamed over something, but all Nikolay hears is “men” and “women”, “homosexuality” and “God”. They’re not talking about the weather: that’s for sure.
»If men require more sex to stay in peak physical condition than it takes to keep a woman pregnant, why shouldn’t he take up the excess with a man in a similar predicament? Not only does it make him more effective as an individual, but strengthens the bond between comrades— and never underestimate the importance of unit cohesion.« He breaks to drink, and seems to realize he’s rambling. »It’s not degenerate, because it serves the Reich.«
She never suggested it didn’t.
Nikolay holds his whiskey up to the light with the hand not occupied by hers. «Am I supposed to be part of this conversation, or am I just here to look pretty?»
«I’ll tell you later,» she shushes. Nikolay sips his whiskey, and runs armour penetration calculations in his head. »Herr Hauptsturmführer, are we both to marry the Standartenführer?«
»Yes,« he says, easily, unblinking. Anya thinks, half-hysterically, He must be joking — but she knows he’s not. Of all she knows of the Hauptsturmführer, she is certain he does not do things for amusement. He’s very German in that way. »Well, yes, and no. All the legal facets apply, but the marriages within moieties are conducted differently than you may have come to expect— you can think of it more like a partnership, if it’s easier.«
She clutches Nikolay’s hand, and he squeezes back, reassuring. His calculations do not account for angle.
»It’s much simpler than it sounds,« the Hauptsturmführer assures. »I’m sure you’ll have it all figured out by the wedding night.« He blinks, and snides, »I don’t need to explain that , do I?«
Anya digs a nail into Nikolay’s palm; he tenses, but leaves his hand. The Nazi’s being obnoxious? Who could have guessed? »No, Herr Hauptsturmführer.«
»Good.« He seems no more interested in that conversation than Anya does. »Any more questions?«
She doesn’t know where to begin.