She said something. Whatever tongue it was, he didn’t understand a word of it. He didn’t care. He could have listened to her forever, no matter what she said. Her voice was a honeyed caress.

But she stopped and waited expectantly. He realized he needed to answer. “I’m sorry – I don’t understand,” he said in German. A tiny frown creased the perfect skin between her eyebrows – she didn’t follow him, either. He said the same thing in French, remembered from school, and then in bad Russian acquired at the front. She shook her head each time.

She slowly walked toward him. Little by little, he realized what a mess he was: filthy, unshaven, in a wet, muddy, shabby uniform. He would have apologized if only he knew how.

She pointed to the dead men, then to his machine pistol, and said something that had to be a question. You killed them? With that?’What else could she be asking?

He nodded. “Ja. I did for ‘em, all right.” He stuck to German from then on. Why not? At least he’d be sure of what he was saying. He jabbed a thumb at his own chest and told her what his name was.

“Pemsel. Hasso Pemsel,” she repeated thoughtfully. His name had never sounded so good as it did in her mouth. She laid an index finger between her small, upstanding breasts. “Velona,” she said.

He touched the brim of his coal – scuttle helmet, echoing, “Velona.” He couldn’t make her name seem nearly so wonderful as she did his.

“Pemsel. Hasso Pemsel,” she said again, and then something else that had his name in it. When he just stood there, she laughed at herself. She must have forgotten he couldn’t follow what she was saying.

What she did next didn’t need any words. She pulled off the torn and tattered shift – Hasso couldn’t come up with a better name for it – she was wearing, spread it out in the middle of the road, and, naked, lay down on it. She beckoned to him to join her.