The maid entered and released Batya from the confines of her dress and underthings. She helped her to the commode, where Batya retched again. The maid washed her face and had Batya rinse her mouth in the bowl with mint water, then slipped over her head a shift that was too thin for the chill in the room. Batya tried to tell her that there was a nightshirt in the drawer, but the mush in her head jumbled her tongue. Words turned into pebbles impossible to spit out even if the maid had understood Yiddish.

No sooner had Batya sunk into deep sleep when something rattled her foot. She opened her eyes a slit. Grabovsky stood by her bed, naked. In the light of the lamp on the dressing table, his belly was huge.

“No!” She tried to sit up, but the room swerved around her.

He slapped her face hard. She collapsed onto the pillow, shocked by the sting of his slap. He fell on top of her, knocking her breath out. “No!” she tried to scream into his vast chest. His hands pinched her bare buttocks as he lifted them and shoved himself into her.

Panting and grunting, he puffed his foul breath straight into Batya’s nose and mouth. She screamed, and he silenced her mouth with his paw while he pounded, the pain tearing her with each thrust.

He left her coughing for air, sobbing. She curled into a ball, filled with hatred and self-loathing. Her head felt unanchored when she turned it, as if her brain had to be nudged to move along with her skull.

She was still wailing when a sailor entered her room. Batya’s wine-laden limbs barely obeyed her as she scrambled to the corner of the cot. The sailor lifted her legs and spread them apart. His hand was like a steel vise as he held her down and unbuttoned the trousers of his cotton uniform with the other.

She screamed, then sank her teeth into his shoulder. He punched her jaw. She gathered what little force remained in her and bit again, and he laughed. She wrenched an arm free to scratch at his face, but he was already inside her, enjoying her struggles. Like a cat playing with a mouse, sometimes he let go of her arms, laughing as she flailed and hit him, then seizing them back in one swoop.

When he finally rose, she slumped over the side of the bed and retched. Only bile came up, burning her throat.

The door hadn’t closed behind the sailor when Grabovsky reentered. He slapped her again. “Stop the racket,” he demanded, and slapped her other cheek.

She was in a drunken stupor when two more men, well-dressed gentlemen she recognized from the dining hall, joined her, one watching the other as each had his way with her body.