Louis Shalako: A Stranger In Paris, an Inspector Gilles Maintenon Mystery #9, Pt. 34. Louis Shalako.

That's von, Schleischer.

Louis Shalako

Gilles, Andre and Margot, along with Alphonse and Doctor Poirier, stood around the pull-out drawer containing the corpse. The doctor picked one—

“Andre. Is your gender important to you?”

“I never leave home without it.”

The doctor grinned.

It was all very mystifying, but he’d insisted that they come down, anyone, really, and have a look for themselves. He wasn’t going to tell them otherwise, and he might not even send them a report…the pictures would be lurid indeed, as he had said on the phone. It had been enough, curiosity being what it was.

Piling into the car, they’d headed for the morgue.

The photos also required some interpretation.

The young doctor reached for the white shroud of the cotton sheet, bleached this one too many times, oddly, pulling it up feet-first in some aberration from accepted tropes…

“Ah.”

They stared.

“This individual has not been circumcised.”

Poirier pulled it off the rest of the way.

“Well. There you have it, then.” He cleared his throat, eyes magnified by the thick glasses as he stood regarding his attentive audience. “It is extremely unusual, at least according to the literature, to have such a full and complete development of…well, of both sets of sexual organs.”

He’d never seen one before, although apparently there was a certain small percentage of the human race born with the condition.

“There is even some vestigial development of the mammaries, which tells us something about the glands and the, ah, hormones…you have to understand the hormones and all of that sort of thing.” They stared. “Also, the body is relatively hairless. This includes facial hair, not so much pubic hair or in the armpits. Bearing all of this in mind, it is indeed quite possible, with the aid of wigs and makeup, for this person to have passed as a woman. I mean, let’s face it. A man, clean-shaven, with minimal makeup, dressed as a woman, might very well be able to walk into the ladies room, sit in a cubicle, and urinate or defecate, and no one would ever be the wiser. There are plenty of ugly women in the world. This might be quite handy under certain circumstances, that ability to bend their gender and go almost anywhere at will. And then there is poor old Gilles, looking in the wrong bathroom.”

Then, according to him, as they all stood there open-mouthed, there were the psychological aspects of such a person, engaged in such-and-such an enterprise, or almost any enterprise.

“Statistically, one-point-seven percent or so of all human beings have some sort of intersex trait, and half a percent have a clinically observable, physical, sexual or reproductive variation. I mean that in the sense that it is quite different from classic homosexuality, which as we know nowadays is more of a psychological manifestation.”

He looked up happily.

“I’ve never even seen one, myself, although Doctor Auger said he’s seen two or three. I’ve seen diagrams in a textbook and that’s about it. Quite frankly, I’m taking lots and lots of pictures, and dissecting very carefully. I’m thinking of writing a little monograph on the subject…”

The doctor cleared his throat and went on.

“Daily living might have been very different for such a person. Difficult, even. Knowing from a very young age, that they were somehow, shamefully different. Keeping it a secret, from friends, in school, from the neighbours and the church and the employers, and finally, the political party. To experience the shame of one’s parents and siblings. That look in grandpa’s eyes…when you walked into the room.”

He had a captive audience, that was for sure.

“This person would have wanted to be accepted, above all else—”

"...just trying to stay out of a camp, when you think of it..."

There weren’t too many ways to do that, except to be more ignorant, more cruel, more vicious than the next Nazi.

“They would have wanted to be loved, more than anything, and yet. I would bet, that this person could not love themself…”

All of those youth groups. All of those regimented activities—regimented by the state. To have such a secret, in such an environment, well, it might have warped them pretty badly, as the good doctor put it. More than anything, just trying to please, maybe even just trying to get ahead. Just trying to survive, dignity intact, a lot of the time. Just trying to stay out of a camp, in the final analysis, what with the euthanization of what the Nazis saw as cretins and cripples and deviants. What kind of relationships this person might have had, were anyone’s guess.

“It would be extremely difficult, to have any kind of really close, physical relationship, one that was not abusive or exploitative…”

Someone, with an otherwise pretty good mind, tall, athletic, good-looking. The perfect ubermenschen, if only they hadn’t been so very, very imperfect. Imperfect in the sexual sense.

“That’s right, ladies and gentlemen: poor old Schleischer was a Nazi hermaphrodite.”

He cleared his throat.

“Sorry, ladies and gentlemen…von, Schleischer, that is…”

They broke up in laughs, as he had expected that they would.

He stood there, oblivious to the pink stains on his white apron, and he took a moment to pull off the surgical gloves.

All of this would be in the written report.

End.

About Louis Shalako

Louis Shalako is the founder of Long Cool One Books and the author of novels, novellas and short stories. Louis studied Radio, Television and Journalism Arts at Lambton College of Applied Arts and Technology, later going on to study fine art. He began writing for community newspapers and industrial magazines over thirty years ago. His stories appear in publications including Perihelion Science Fiction, Bewildering Stories, New Myths, Aurora Wolf, Ennea, Wonderwaan, Algernon, Nova Fantasia, and Danse Macabre. He lives in southern Ontario and writes full time. Louis enjoys cycling, swimming and good books.