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Naked, with Glasses (the story)
This is how the plan to kill your husband could begin. You come home early from work. You have a headache. A terrible headache. The worst headache of your life. You have this grant proposal to write. It’s not finished, and it was due yesterday. Your boss is gone for a week, so you bring the proposal home with you. After you open the door, you hear a noise.
“George?” you say.
Head throbbing, you wander into the living room. No one’s there, but you hear another noise. Upstairs. You find your husband in the hallway which leads to the bedroom. He’s naked, but he’s wearing his glasses. To see you better. He’s pale. He’s sweating.
“George,” you say, genuine concern in your voice, “what are you doing home in the middle of the day? Are you ill?”
He makes a movement, backward, toward the door. Too late. A young woman steps from the bedroom. She’s also naked, but she’s not wearing glasses. She doesn’t have to: she can see you perfectly well. You can see her, too. She is young. Lovely. Thin. George introduces her.
“This is Monica,” he says. “My assistant.”
This is Monica. That is just like George. Naked, wearing glasses, saying to his wife, “This is my girlfriend.” You say nothing. Your headache, however, suddenly gets worse. That is how the plan to kill your husband could begin.
Or perhaps it begins like this…
Mindfulness & Meditation
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Migraine
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Trauma and Sexual Abuse
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My Books & Blog: Poetry, Memoir, Fiction
The Kommandant’s Mistress (a novel, historical fiction)
Part One: The Kommandant
For who can make straight that
which He hath made crooked?
Ecclesiastes 7: 13
Chapter One
“Then I saw her. There she stood, in the village store, her hair in a long braid down the center of her back, her skin white in the sunlight, and my hand went to my hip, seeking the weight of my gun. As the girl spoke, I stumbled back against one of the shelves, my fingers tightening at the leather around my waist. While the shopkeeper arranged the food in the bag, the morning sun glinted on the storefront windows, illuminating the girl. The wooden shelves pressed into my shoulders and back. Sweat dampened my forehead and ribs. Another shopper spoke, frowned, pushed aside my arm to reach a jar on the shelf behind me, but I didn’t move. My hand slid down over my hip and leg. No, I’d forgotten that I no longer wore my gun…”
About The Kommandant’s Mistress
The rumors spread by the Camp’s inmates, other Nazi officers, and the Kommandant’s own family insist that she was his “mistress,” but was she, voluntarily? Told from three different perspectives – that of the formerly idealistic Kommandant, the young Jewish inmate who captivates him, and the ostensibly objective historical biographies of the protagonists – this novel examines one troubling moral question over and over: if your staying alive was the only “good” during the War, if your survival was your sole purpose in this horrific world of the Concentration Camps — whether you were Nazi or Jewish — what, exactly, would you do to survive? Would you lie, cheat, steal, kill, submit?
Flashing back and forth through the narrators’ memories as they recall their time before, during, and after the War, and leading, inevitably, to their ultimate, shocking confrontation, “Szeman’s uncompromising realism and superb use of stream-of-consciousness technique make [this novel] a chilling study of evil, erotic obsession, and the will to survive” (Publishers Weekly, starred review).
A New York Times Book Review “Notable Book” and one of its “Top 100 Books of the Year,” Winner of the University of Rochester’s Kafka Prize for “the outstanding book of prose fiction by an American woman,” the tales told by the Kommandant, his “mistress,” and their “biographer” will mesmerize and stun you, leaving you wondering, at the conclusion, which, if any, is telling the complete truth about what happened between them.
Awards:
• New York Times Book Review “Top 100 Books of Year”
• New York Times Book Review “Notable Book”
• University of Rochester Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize
“the outstanding book of prose fiction by an American woman”
• Publishers Weekly starred review: “Outstanding Merit”
• Talmadge McKinney Award “Excellence in Research”
(1st edition published by HarperCollins / HarperPerennial NYC; 2nd edition published by Arcade, NYC; 20th Anniversary Edition published by RockWay Press)
My Other Books
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The Alexandria Papers Newsletter on Substack is a monthly newsletter that presents curated articles on mindfulness and meditation, migraine, healing from trauma and sexual abuse, and mental health. To receive new posts by email and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. I’m committed to having the entire archive free, but paid subscribers help cover the costs of research.
