Same assignment as before, except add the following:

1. It must be a different story.
2. Use the past and active tenses whenever possible and appropriate.
3. Make the reader believe that you are a woman
and use the first person POV.


Harry

This was the second time I had come here. The second time the priest had offered prayers over Harry’s coffin in the middle of the Zentralfriedhof. This was Harry’s second funeral. It’s a miserable thing to have to bury your lover after only a short period together, but it’s unspeakably hard to do it a second time.

Harry’s first funeral had been a trick. He was a fugitive, and he had tried to put the authorities off his scent by feigning his own death. He hadn’t told me what he was doing; I suppose he thought that a genuinely grieving lover would add an element of pathos that would ensure his deceit would work. I don’t know if he would have let me know later. I suppose not.

Harry was a fixer. He could do anything, and, so I discovered, would do anything. I thought he was just a petty criminal who dabbled in the Black Market, selling boots, stockings, cigarettes, and watches to people who wanted them and had the money to pay. He was also a sweet, suave man with a look that could make you melt. He was rakish, always able to make me laugh and feel special. His easy American attitude made you think he had been your friend for life. He understood how people thought, and, more importantly, he understood himself. He was no angel, far from it. But he knew that and accepted it. But now I knew Harry was a serious racketeer and a murderer. He had once said that you had to endure the Borgias to have Michelangelo and the Renaissance as well. Without those extremes, there could only be mediocrity. That doesn’t justify anything, though.

He wasn’t an evil man. At least, not to me. Others thought he was, though, including Holly Martins, the man who wrote cowboy stories and the man who shot Harry dead; his one-time best friend. I can’t justify what Harry did, stealing and selling medicines. All I know is that, people were dying all over Austria without vital drugs. Even doctors had resorted to theft from military stores in order to give them to civilians – and the soldiers turned a blind eye to it. Harry, however, had diluted the penicillin he had stolen with other stuff, and made it lethal. I had to sit and listen to the police as they told me in graphic detail what the consequences were: men with gangrened legs, women in childbirth. And there were children too, they said. They used some of this diluted penicillin against meningitis. The lucky children died. The unlucky ones went off their heads. You can see them now in the mental ward. That was the racket Harry ran, but I didn’t know that at the time. I knew a different Harry, and it is that one I gave myself to. That is the man I was loyal to and would never betray. I don't know if I was really in love with him, or if I still am. How can you know a thing like that afterwards? I don't know anything more except I want to be dead too.

The thing about Harry was, he had money, and for a girl in Vienna after the War, if you found a man like that, you would do anything to keep him. Anything at all. There were so few young men left, and it was up to the women to start rebuilding the city. There was next to no food, accommodation was hard to find, and there was no new clothing to be had: nothing. Life was hard. It was harder still for me. I was in Vienna illegally. I am Czech. If I had been discovered by the authorities, I would have been handed over to the Russians. Luckily for me, Harry fixed my papers for me. He gave me a new name: Anna Schmidt. He heard the Russians were repatriating people like me. He knew the right person straight away for forging stamps. He also managed to get me an acting job in the Josefstadt Theatre. Harry had so many contacts. I was naturally grateful to him, and would willingly have paid any price to keep him.

I gave him my whole self, body and soul together. I wish he could have done the same for me. I cannot complain, though. For Harry, I was willing to give up control of my life, and by doing so I thought I would find some sort of fulfilment.

I never really trusted him, but I depended upon him completely. Without trust, you will get hurt, and I have been. Mentally, emotionally and physically. Harry was not the kind of person who would respect your submission. I gave myself completely to him, and he just accepted it, without thanks, without even acknowledging it. Once I found myself completely in his thrall, I had to work out for myself why I wanted to subject myself to this treatment. I discovered that I have to be able to dedicate myself to one person’s wishes in order to fulfil my own needs. To be totally submissive.

As a lover, Harry was a good man. He made me do things I had never done before. At first I felt ashamed, humiliated and dirty. But I let him have his way out of gratitude and fear of losing him. In time I realised I needed to be treated that way. When he hurt me, I was glad to endure it for his pleasure. And as time passed, I began to want it more and more. Harry was not interested in exploring my feelings, just in sating his own needs, but, when alone, I would think about them and slowly work them out. Gradually I realised I had become Harry’s property and that my role in life was to belong to him. Knowing that made things easier to understand, and giving Harry control over me gave me deep pleasure.

I could have hoped for someone who would listen to me more when I felt uncomfortable about something, but that was not to be. I knew that once I accepted this role as a submissive, I had to be whatever Harry wanted me to be for his pleasure, and that mine would come from serving him. Meanwhile, Harry protected me and took care of my needs, not as a quid pro quo, but simply because he wanted to. At least, he did until he had to fake his disappearance by “dying”. I found his power over me to be overwhelming.

They told me that Harry had been killed in a street accident - he was run over outside his own apartment in Stiftgaße by a passing vehicle as he stepped from the pavement. I didn’t get a chance to see his body. Then, later, they told me he wasn’t dead after all. I could barely take it in. That British Army officer – Major Calloway – he told me he was still alive. Apparently Holly Martins had seen him, but Harry gave him the slip. Now Calloway wanted me to help find Harry. He implied that while I was helping him, he would keep me out of the hands of the Russians, who now knew about me. How could I help? I knew less than he did!

Calloway turned Holly Martins, though. That weak, aimless man! Head filled with pious notions about honesty, but he couldn’t even be honest with the man he called his best friend. He had the nerve to tell me he had fallen in love with me! Anyway, Holly agreed to lure Harry into a trap if Calloway would arrange for me to be taken safely out of Vienna. As soon as I realised he had struck a deal I told him that if he wanted to sell his services, I wasn’t willing to be the price. He went ahead and trapped him anyway. And it was Holly, of all people, who shot him. Maybe it was to save Harry from the hangman – to give him some dignity in death, but I don’t think so. And I don’t care. I despise the man.

(With acknowledgements to Graham Greene's, The Third Man.)