We have earned this. After months on the line, the Reich grants us leave, and I could not have imagined a city like this. New Orleans is unlike any in Europe or America — it is not a fortress, not a factory, not an office of the Reich. It is a place of pleasure, dressed in velvet and steam.
Bourbon Street glows with brass filaments strung across balconies, humming faintly in the night. The air smells of tobacco, sugar, and perfume. Automaton sentries patrol slowly, their pistons hissing, but even they seem more like doormen than guards. The banners of the Reich hang heavy from the balconies, yet the women below laugh and beckon as though victory itself were theirs to sell.
I spent the night in one of the cabarets. It was hotter than any barracks I’d ever known. Brass lamps glowed red behind gauze curtains, casting the whole room in a haze of fire and shadow. Steam coiled from vents hidden in the floor, carrying the smell of sweat, perfume, and tobacco.
The stage was a narrow strip of polished brass where semi naked women in feathers, stockings and platform heels danced, their bodies gleaming with sweat under the lamps. They moved with grace and hunger, hips grinding to the rhythm of drums, arms outstretched as though pulling us all into their orbit. Officers cheered, threw Reich-issued notes onto the stage, and the women bent low to gather them up, laughing, hair tumbling over bare shoulders.
Beyond the stage, velvet curtains opened into alcoves where the air was thicker still — smoke and perfume trapped in folds of crimson fabric. Through the shifting gaps I glimpsed shadows in motion: uniforms and silk entwined, bodies pressed close on low couches upholstered in gold and burgundy. A man’s laughter erupted, brash and unrestrained, spilling into the music before being muffled again by a woman’s mouth on his. Another alcove revealed a flash of pale thigh, the gleam of medals against bare shoulders, the sudden gasp of a courtesan delivered with theatrical precision.
The curtains swayed shut, then parted again as if the whole room breathed in rhythm with the acts behind them. It was no secret, no shame. Officers spoke openly of what waited behind those folds, some boasting, others grinning with anticipation. The cabaret thrived on it — every alcove another transaction, every sigh another payment collected.
Desire was the coin of this city, and here it passed hand to hand as freely as whiskey or Reich notes. In New Orleans nothing was hidden, because nothing needed to be. The occupation had not silenced the city — it had taught it how to sell itself, body and soul, and to make the conqueror believe he was the one in control.
The girl beside me — dark hair, red lips, stockings torn in a way that seemed deliberate — leaned close, whispering in my ear in French I barely understood. Her perfume drowned out the smell of smoke, her thigh warm against mine. I laughed, not at the words, but at the way she made me forget the cold mud of the front. Around us, the room throbbed like a single living thing: the scrape of chairs, the clatter of glasses, the music’s wild pulse, the moans muffled behind curtains.
Then the jazz rose up. Trumpets shrieked, drums rattled like gunfire, and the piano rolled with reckless abandon. The officers roared with approval, some mocking the chaos of it, others caught up in its fever. I felt it in my chest, in my blood — raw, untamed, the opposite of every march we had drilled to. The music made the whole room sway, a tide of flesh, laughter, and shadows.
I drank, I laughed, I let the girl curl against me. The room blurred into smoke and sound, a carnival of indulgence. For one night, New Orleans became the opposite of the Reich — wild, chaotic, alive.
When I stumbled back onto Bourbon Street, the automaton sentries still hissed their steam, the banners still hung, and the Reich still reigned. But the music echoed in me, mocking and triumphant, as if the city itself had laughed at our victory.
