Someday We'll Tell Each Other Everything by Daniela Krien, Jamie Bulloch

surprised. He stops dead, looks at the window, then at me, and I realize at once that this is my one chance to escape. A life can be changed by a single moment. His gaze rests on the envelope in my hand, he flashes a smile, and I realize that my hesitation is fatal. He comes up to me, takes the envelope, opens it, pulls out the note and reads the following words aloud: “. . . and he can have her again.”
    No words can describe the dreadful feeling of shame that forces my eyes to the floor. I want the earth to swallow me whole. As I stand there he doesn’t say anything. I don’t know which is the strongest feeling: my urgent desire for another night like the last one, my present humiliation, fear, my girlish pride, or the wish to see this pride shattered. I don’t move a muscle.
    He takes a step closer; he’s been drinking again. As it hits me, his boozy breath sends my head spinning, making me feel slightly sick.
    “So,” he says slowly, stroking his close-cropped hair. “So, he can have her again, can he? Well.” He goes past me and closes thewindow. “I see.” The dogs are sitting by the door. Even sitting they seem as big as I am. “A haughty one, this girl,” Henner says. “Granting him the favor of a final visit . . . What is she waiting for? Take those clothes off!” I look at him in disbelief, trying to understand what might have offended him, but I don’t understand, not yet, and the dogs are guarding the door. He grabs the back of my head and pulls me toward him. Unwinding the scarf from my neck, he stops. He looks, opens his mouth, closes it again. His fingers touch the bruises he caused yesterday; his eyes ask whether anybody knows, whether Johannes knows, whether the police are about to turn up, what I’m going to do, whether I’ll tell all, whether everything’s out in the open now. Everything.
    My shame subsides. I wait for him to say something. He’s still looking at me, stroking my neck. His eyes are reddened from the schnapps. Maybe we’re both thinking the same thing.
    He’s forty, I’m sixteen. Thorsten Henner and Maria Bergmann. It was not rape, even though it looks like it. I’m the one in control now. But a man like Henner is not going to let himself be dominated by a sixteen-year-old girl.
    This I realize straightaway. I try to catch his eye, which is now roving restlessly around the room. “No, Henner, nobody knows, nobody. I swear,” I say to him. “And I won’t tell anybody, either. I really won’t.” He gives me a penetrating look, trying to read my thoughts, but he doesn’t believe me. “You have to promise me, Maria!” he says, gripping my shoulders. I nod quickly and say, “Yes. Yes, I promise!”
    He leaves the room and I’m standing there alone; but he comes back with some ointment. He rubs it on those areas on my neck, and then kisses them, the bruises, the marks that betray his guilt. And with every one of his caresses I feel as if I’m looking at myself through his eyes. A girl, dark blond hair in a long braid, not especially tall, slim, square-shouldered, serious face. Narrow nose, smallmouth, but with full lips, large eyes, very bright and very green in the sunlight.
    As I’m about to leave he asks me to wait. I wander through some of the ancient rooms, the dogs tailing me mistrustfully; they’re not used to having to share their master. I stop by a glass-fronted linen cupboard. Henner is behind me again, he slips me another note and puts his arm around me. The quietness in this house is greater than anywhere else. The dogs’ growling, the creaking of floorboards, his heavy breath—I cannot hear anything else. There are sounds that have no connection with time. That’s the way it is at Henner’s house. I lean on him and he asks me, “What are you reading at the moment? Marianne says you read a lot . . .”
    “ The Brothers Karamazov ,” I say, rather proud that it happens to be this book.
    “Who do you prefer, Katarina Ivanov or