|
Inge Blog Entry |
|
May 17, 2024, 12:00:10 AM 5/17/24: r/SketchDaily theme, "Free Draw Friday." This week's character from my anthro WWII storyline is Inge (last name never given). (Her name is deliberately meant to evoke Inga Dobermann.) She appears only in backstory as a farm widow whose property Lt. Hesse's unit is billeted at, and the two have a brief relationship. She has a daughter by him but he never learns she exists. There'll be more about her later in my art Tumblr and Toyhou.se. Regarding her design, like Hesse, she's a blue Doberman pinscher. I'm iffy on her hairstyle, but anyway. TUMBLR EDIT: Inge never appears in the main story; she only appears in an adult WIP featuring Gunter Hesse and herself, set while Hesse is serving in the Waffen-SS near the Eastern Front. Keep in mind my timeline is slightly different, the war starts and Germany and the Soviet Union part ways sooner. At this time, Hesse is living with the Dobermann family--Adelina is around eleven or so, I think--and is easily radicalized by propaganda of the budding SS, since he's still pretty bitter about how the previous war ended (with him badly injured, alone, and addicted to morphine); Inga, who met him and Louis Dobermann recuperating in hospital (they both fell in love with her there, but Dobermann made the first move), insists on him staying with them after she marries, and although he knows she's off limits now, he vows to get clean for her. He never falls out of love with her, but also never tries anything, and grows quite close to Adelina. So when war breaks out again and he decides to enlist--not in the military, which he feels betrayed him, but in the SS--Adelina is heartbroken, and Inga, despite her growing alarm over his political views, begs him not to go. Inga is actually a big part of the reason why he feels he has to go: He privately hopes that time away may dampen his feelings for her, and if not that, that at least SS life might toughen him up so he can handle things better. He replies to Inga's insistence that he's part of their family and has no need to prove himself again that he really ISN'T part of their family--he has no family--and this is why he has to prove himself, as he has nothing else. The SS will be his family now. He promises to do his best to come back to them, and to write to Lina. His application is accepted, he passes the physical, and he heads off to the front. The Dobermanns don't see him again for several years. Discipline and a sense of personal purpose are indeed just what Hesse needs; like I said, he never does break Inga's hold on him, but he learns better how to cope with it and conceal his feelings. The SS also gives him a sense of brotherhood and belonging that he's always longed for yet lacked. He's older and more experienced than many of the other recruits, so is soon placed in a position of authority by his unit leader, General Immerwahr. When not engaged in active combat, his unit often patrols areas near the front to watch out for Soviet troops attempting to sneak in; it's a wide-open area of isolated farms, not too different from where the Dobermanns live, and so, often, farms are the only place to stay. Immerwahr's unit approaches one of these farms one day and is met by a woman with a vaguely hostile demeanor; the Waffen-SS troops are known for their ill treatment of civilians, including their fellow Germans, so of course a woman living on her own--there's no husband or male farmhands anywhere in sight--is understandably nervous. She refuses to give her name, and doesn't ask theirs, making it clear she prefers that they all remain strangers to each other (Immerwahr calls her Frau X), yet she agrees to Immerwahr's request to temporarily billet his men at her place. As they're negotiating terms, the men notice two children, young girls, peering out of a doorway; the woman shoos them back out of sight, obviously distressed that the men know about them now. It's clear she was trying to hide them, which makes it even clearer that she allowed the troops into her home only out of necessity, and planned to offer herself to protect her girls if need be. Immerwahr, picking up on this, says they have no interest in harming her as long as they're allowed to stay, though she plainly doubts. A newer scene not originally in the WIP occurs around here. As the men are talking and the woman is fetching them drinks, since it's late and she has no food prepared, one of them privately accosts her, demanding something to eat; nothing sexual or anything, but he gets more threatening the more she tries to put him off. He grabs her wrist and then is promptly cuffed upside the head, letting her go; she steps back and watches as Hesse smacks the other officer around a little, berating him for disobeying Immerwahr and ordering him back to the group. He reports the inappropriate behavior to Immerwahr, who apologizes to the woman, and sets the guy up outside to take first watch as punishment. After figuring out when to start preparing breakfast for everyone, the woman starts assigning the men places to sleep; Immerwahr gets an unused bedroom, while most of the others just end up where they doze off. The woman directs Hesse to sleep on the floor near the door of her daughters' room, to keep anyone else out; following what happened earlier, she assumes he's the most trustworthy of the lot. It's late, so everyone heads to bed. Hesse gets up in the middle of the night to go outside and relieve himself; on his way back to the girls' room, someone reaches out to grasp his arm, startling him. "Sie...?" ("You...?") he says to the woman, since he doesn't know what else to call her, and wonders what she wants. She doesn't say anything, just pulls him into the bedroom after her. He doesn't protest. Hesse returns to the girls' room a while later without needing to be asked, resuming his spot on the floor. This scene occurs the next morning: She rose again before daybreak and went to peek in on her girls. The older girl still slept in the bed, though her younger daughter had taken her blankets and her pillow and doll and was curled up on the floor not far from the sleeping lieutenant. She stared at them for a little while before leaving them. She headed to the kitchen, getting the coffee ready. The house was still rather dark as she moved silently about the room, fetching all the mugs and cups she owned. At least the soldiers weren't choosy. It took so long to prepare the coffee that some of them received it only warm and not hot, but they hadn't complained. She was mulling over what she might need to do over the next few days before they left when a soft voice behind her said, "Sie...?" She jumped a little and quickly turned. She couldn't make out the features of the man standing in the entry to the kitchen. "Apologies," he said, and she recognized the lieutenant's voice. He spoke very quietly. "Hadn't meant to startle you." She nervously brushed back her hair. "It's...it's all right. Did my girls wake you? I'm sorry, if they did." "Nein, I always wake early. That was why I wished to talk, though. One of them, the little one, she got out of the bed sometime during the night, it appears. Fell asleep on the floor. I'm not sure why. I put her back in the bed. If she mentions it later on, that was how it happened, I hope you believe I tried nothing inappropriate." She let out a small breath. "That's...that's all right. She wakes sometimes. She used to come crawl in the bed with my hus...my husband and me." She flinched a little at her own words, hoping he didn't notice. She saw him nod. "You need help?" "This pot needs only to brew. I'm almost done. Danke, though." "If you don't need anything else I'm going to step outside for a while." "I..." She started speaking without even thinking; he'd been turning to leave, but halted and looked back. "I could join you," she said quietly, "if you don't mind." He hesitated. "Your girls?" "I think they'll be fine. You don't believe your men will bother them?" "They won't." Another pause. "I don't mind," he added. While they're together this time, she asks him his name, and tells him her own, Inge. She doesn't understand why this gets such a startled reaction from him. She does notice, however, that he afterward briefly starts referring to her as "Inga"--it could be brushed off as a mistake, except that he does it more than once. She thinks she understands now. "Your woman," she said softly; he looked at her, brow furrowing slightly. "Your woman is named Inga...?" she asked. He blinked, then reddened. Sat up a bit abruptly so she backed away a little. "My woman..." he echoed, then, "Nein. Not my woman." He lowered his head, looking aside. "Someone else's woman." A pause. "Your name made me think of her...I'm sorry." "It's all right," Inge said, hating to embarrass him. "You remind me a little of my husband," she admitted. He peered back at her. "I...sort of wanted to ask. Where is your husband?" Inge lowered her eyes, brushed back her hair. "I...we lost him. A little over six months ago." He flinched slightly at the latter words. "I'm sorry," he said again. "Sometimes when I wake I still think he's there," Inge murmured. "And then I remember." She smoothed her dress down where his grip had crumpled it over her breasts. "Have you lost anyone?" "I haven't had anyone to lose, yet," he replied, looking away. She furrowed her brow. "No one...? No woman of your own?" "I haven't found her yet." For some reason this response made her twinge inside, a spark of sadness; there was a resigned note in his voice, as if he doubted she even existed by now. She pulled herself closer again and when he turned back to her she placed her hand against his face. Almost automatically, he placed his hand over hers, fingers grasping. Inge makes Hesse an offer: "Come to my room tonight. Come to my room every night until you leave. You can be my husband and I can be your Inga. We can be whoever we need each other to be." Hesse, surprised, consents, visiting Inge's room every night, though he stops referring to her as Inga, and she stops trying to imagine him as her late husband. They accept each other as who they actually are, Inge and Hesse, two strangers who aren't meant to know each other for long. When the time comes for Hesse's unit to depart, it's understandably bittersweet--not only have Inge and Hesse grown rather fond of each other, but Inge's two girls have grown close to him, and he seems to like them as well--but neither of them protests it, neither makes any promises to try to find each other again. It's just understood that this is likely not to happen. Hesse takes his place in his unit, Immerwahr thanks Inge for her hospitality, and the unit heads out. Hesse does cast one last glance at Inge and her girls as the men march off. He, and Inge, both feel a wistful twinge. At some other time, in some other circumstances, they might have made a family, the sort of family Hesse always longed for, but never got to have. Hesse continues in the Waffen-SS, is badly injured, released from service, and then heads back home to the Dobermann estate. Adelina, and Inga, greet him happily; he's stunned that "his little Lina" is nearly grown by now. He accepts Inga's welcome, though when she tries to place her hand against his face, a familiar gesture she's used in the past, he abruptly pulls away. There's a distance between them now, and though Inga isn't sure of the circumstances behind it, she grants Hesse his space. Adelina had expected him to regale her with tales of war, so doesn't understand why he declines to talk much about his service; Inga gently tells her that war takes a lot out of a person, to let him rest, and he'll be his old self sometime soon. She isn't expecting it when, some time later, Hesse receives a letter from SS headquarters, accepting his application to their noncombatant branch...turns out his service to the brotherhood isn't over with just yet. Hesse moves on, takes up his new job as an investigator for the Allgemeine-SS, starts a relationship with Sophie Sommer. He never stops loving Inga--even unwittingly participating in faking her death--though he keeps his distance, always treats her with respect. And as the Third Reich falls, he makes the split decision to choose her and the Dobermann family over his loyalty to the SS, helping them escape at the cost of his own life. His service did discipline him, made him better able to conceal his feelings, but it never did kill them; even though she was never his to have, he loves Inga to the very end. There's a small sad postscript which Hesse never realizes while he's alive. Outside the main story, there's a still-canon section I call "In Heaven"--basically, certain characters getting the chance to see, after life, how things could have gone--and following his violent death at the hands of his beloved SS, Hesse chooses to move on to the next life, by living through the lives of everyone else who was impacted by his actions. It's a process that takes a split second, yet also years and years, as time has no meaning in the next life, and given the awful things Hesse did in his first life, it's excruciating and horrible. Mostly. There's a bittersweet moment here and there, in the lives of people to whom Hesse was kind rather than cruel; and one particular set of lives strikes him rather hard: A few lives are so unexpected they stun him. He lives through the life of a farm woman; it's only when she's newly widowed, and cautiously welcomes a Waffen-SS unit to billet at her house, that he realizes who she is. He starts crying when Inge stands at her window staring at the horizon, straining her eyes for any sign of troops, her hands on her belly. Tells her, in his head, he would have returned for her, if he'd known. He lives through the life of the daughter he never knew and his heart breaks that she never knows him. --"Hesse In Heaven, Part One" Hesse loved Inga, though she was never his to love. He loved Sophie and chose to spend his life with her, though it wasn't meant to be. He did have one other chance for a family and a life, though he never knew until it was too late. I don't believe he loved Inge the way he loved Sophie or especially Inga, but he would have returned to her if he'd known. He would have accepted his daughter, and her daughters, as his own. He would have perhaps lived a happy life and died content, finally having the family he always longed for so much. Alas, that also wasn't meant to be. Hesse dies twice, and both times he dies violently, and alone. [Inge 2024 [Friday, May 17, 2024, 12:00:10 AM]] |