Monique ducked under the water and came up next to Georg very close, separating him from Rosalind.
“I love you,” she whispered. Rosalind thought that she had just heard things, but later when she was thinking about it, helping her grandmother in the kitchen, chopping the vegetables, she knew she was right. And she was trying to picture Georg’s face, trying to remember what his reaction was.
“Wondrous” was the word. As if his wishes had just come true.
Present-day 1945
Rosalind stops washing her plate at the sink to listen. She waits for half a minute, hands resting in hot water that has come from the kettle, her eyes fixed to the blackness outside the window. The sounds of the barn doors banging are barely audible against the rain that pounds the pails, loudly now, and smacks the barren earth outside.
She returns to washing, her ears trained on every sound outside. There was a short and eerie period of silence when the bombs and air assaults stopped and the steady flow of tanks and trucks with armed soldiers eased. Noises in those final weeks of war had meant danger, destruction, and death. Now they are intermittent and mostly from vehicles sent to repair cities, the occasional aircraft and military patrol, the calls of wildlife, and the chugging of motorboats. And these sounds mean everything to Rosalind. They give her clues to the changes that are happening in the world outside her tiny sphere, and they remind her that there are still things to fear.
She finishes drying the dishes and sees there is rainwater leaking into the kitchen from the corner of the house. Water seeps between the cracks of the badly patched brickwork that her grandmother reconstructed herself when the house was damaged by air fire.
She checks the time from the cuckoo clock on the wall that stopped chiming sometime during the war years, now with just one tiny clicking sound as the doors swing back to release the bird that hovers expectantly in the air for several seconds, then retreats.
From a cupboard she retrieves bed linen and mats and begins to mop up the water that continues to trickle. If the rain doesn’t stop, the kitchen will become a pond, since it sinks lower there on one side of the house. It would not be the first time it has flooded. When she arrived last year, the floor was stained with water, and the stench that met her was putrid. Though the festering damp was not the only cause, as she would later learn.
Rosalind had scrubbed and cleaned and used clay from the riverbank to plug up the holes, but in heavy rain, water always found a way through.
She opens the front door to view the barn doors that swing freely to batter the walls outside, and rain falls sideways at her through the space. Rosalind climbs into a woolen coat and pulls the hood firmly over her head. She steps into rubber boots that are near the door, collects the lantern from the wall, closes the door behind her, and briskly sets out in the direction of the barn. Once she slips on fresh mud but manages to catch herself before rushing inside the shelter of the barn.
Puddles of water lead to the center of the structure. Rosalind holds the lamp above her. The light reveals an eerie emptiness, except for a barrow, a workbench that is absent of tools, and the earthy smell of decomposing hay, once used to feed the geese in winter. Something catches her eye, and she walks closer to examine the floor, avoiding the narrow vertical streams of water that enter through the many bullet holes in the ceiling. Nutshells lie in a small pile near the middle of the space.
In recent weeks, she has become more aware of changes in the environment, of the effects of weather, of the habits of birds: changes that do not inspire suspicion. But the nutshells give her reason to be suspicious this time. Someone has been here. She walks back to the doors and views the dark wooded area beside the river with some dread, fearing what it might hold this night and wondering who has left the shells.
Yellow light that creeps outward from the house’s front window exposes a small piece of the track. Rosalind imagines Monique there, appearing out of the darkness, in her pink floral dress, her hair flying wildly around her head, coming home from the town. It was a sight that she had come to depend on once, for company, or news at least.
It is madness, she thinks, or loneliness, these imaginings of Monique. Or perhaps they are wishes. She bolts the doors and makes a swift return to the house, her head bent forward to brace for rain. When she is halfway there, something else catches her eye: a flash of light at a window from the house next to hers. She freezes, rain falling on her face as she waits for something more, something that doesn’t come, before continuing back home.
Once inside the house, Rosalind’s heart beats fast. She shakes the coat briefly and hangs it back on the hook. Someone is there, someone who perhaps knows about her past. She tries to picture what she saw: the light from a torch. Did she imagine it? She has become more paranoid in recent times. She has heard voices that aren’t there, seen things that vanish before her eyes. She has spent too much time alone in her head. Spent too much time alone with Georg.
She must be rational, she tells herself. It is likely to be beggars, nothing more sinister, though they can be dangerous, too. She can’t take any chances. She removes the nutshells from the coat pocket and tips them into the sink. Erich has told her to be vigilant, to be mindful of strangers.
Georg thumps the floor from above, demanding her attention, perhaps alerted to the commotion downstairs, perhaps hungry, perhaps needing more drugs. Most likely the latter.
She reaches again for her coat on the wall.
The thumping continues.
She pulls on her coat again and looks up the stairs toward the source of the noise, her hand on the door handle. Georg will have to wait.
CHAPTER 6
STEFANO
A sharp clap startles him from sleep, and Stefano rises on his elbows to see a beam of light charge through the window. A battery of rain sounds across the river, heading toward the house. Stefano crouches, scans the blackened corners, and listens for ghosts, his fingers instinctively reaching for the plaited wire bracelet on his good wrist. When he is certain there are no intruders, he steps toward the window where the air blows wet against his face. The child is still sleeping, too exhausted and travel weary to stir, and yet Stefano is amazed that the sound has not woken him. He leans near to check that the child is still breathing, relieved at the even rise and fall of the boy’s small chest.
The roof creaks above him, protesting from the weight of water. And somewhere within the house he senses a change. He is not alone. It wasn’t the thunder that woke him, but the door blowing shut—the door he had closed earlier.
It has been rare in recent years that he has not been aware of every movement around him in the night, senses heightened since his first Italian campaign in the deserts of North Africa. But his body desperately craves rest, something lately he finds difficult to fight against, despite the rawness of his nerves that may never disappear. He reaches out toward the dark space that holds his bag, and his hand finds an empty patch of floor. Someone has entered the room and seen them both sleeping. Someone now has his things.
Stefano steps cautiously and swiftly out to the landing to see a faint glow from the floor below, which grows stronger closer to the bottom of the steps and near the open doorway of the kitchen to his right. He stands back a foot from the entrance. The living area to his left is dark and empty, no signs of movement. He moves slowly to peer into the kitchen, but the tip of a rifle, just inches from his face, prevents this, the weapon pushed farther toward him, forcing him to take a step backward. The bearer of the rifle is tall like Stefano, though fair. He appears ominously larger from the doorway, blocking out most of the light now behind him.
Instinctively, Stefano puts his hands in the air. The fair man remains very still, the rifle unmoving, raised toward Stefano.
“What are you doing here?” asks the man in German, louder above the rain.
“Trying to sleep,” replies Stefano in the defeated language. There were many things he could have said, but this seemed the most reasonable.
; Behind the man with the rifle, in the dim yellow light of a lantern, Stefano can see his bag unopened on the table. He assumes the man has not yet had time to examine its contents.
“Give me a proper answer.”
“I am on my way home.”
“Where’s home?”
“Italy.”
“You are a long way from there.”
“I came from a hospital in the North,” answers Stefano.
“Why did you choose this house?” he asks. “Out of all the houses to sleep in.”
“It was pure chance. I did not want to sleep near the main road, and the path led me here. I was going to sleep in the shed behind, but it looked too broken with rain about to fall.”
“Roll up your sleeves.”
Stefano does so slowly. It always comes down to this. What you are, not who you are, and the numbers on your arm.
“Which prison?” asks the German.
“Sachsenhausen.”
“Were you a deserter?”
“No. I was a soldier in the Italian army. I left Italy to join the German army in the North when I realized that the rest of Italy would shortly fall into Allied hands.”
“Why were you put in prison?”
“They made a mistake.”
“You sound like a deserter to me.”
The German continues to stand very still. The rifle does not waver.
“The war is over,” says Stefano calmly, holding back breaths. “And you would have seen that I have a child with me.”
In the moment of silence, Stefano wonders if this is where it will end for him, and he does not imagine his own death but that of others, of those he has let down. Of the fruitless, senseless way that death might roam.
The fair man lowers the gun, and Stefano breathes out silently, with his brain still wired with fear and memories stretching beyond the ransacked house.
“It doesn’t matter now, yes?” says the man lightly. “It doesn’t matter what we were before the war ended.”
“I want my bag.”
“Of course,” the man says, and steps aside to allow Stefano room to pass.
He does not move straightaway but watches the eyes and movements of the other man. Stefano is used to tricks. He trusted someone once—someone close to him—and others ended up dead.
The fair man rests the rifle against the wall. “There are no bullets in it anyway. But I cannot be too careful. People still want to harm me.”
Stefano walks past him to the table to examine his bag. He unzips it, looks briefly inside, then zips it up again.
“Is the child yours?” the man asks.
“I found the boy on the side of the road, his mother dead.”
“And why would you take him if you are going to Italy?”
“I was trying to find him a home.”
The fair man is thoughtful, silent for a moment, perhaps attempting to find sense in such a task, which Stefano himself has yet to find. Stefano wonders briefly if he would have been woken, perhaps killed, if not for the child asleep nearby.
“My name is Erich. I was a German soldier,” the other man says, “captured by the Russians and then released.”
“Released?” says Stefano.
“I agree it sounds unbelievable. I was captured before the end of the war. I helped them with information. For that I was rewarded. It does not mean I was let off lightly. I had to pay for my sins.” He does not elaborate, nor does Stefano query. They are strangers yet. “An Italian soldier?”
“Yes.”
“Do you have a name?”
“Stefano,” he says, viewing Erich carefully as the German moves away to begin clearing pieces of wood that lie strewn across the kitchen floor. He is slightly taller than Stefano, narrower across the chest. Fair hair that is almost white, his skin darkly tanned from months in the sun. It is difficult to see the eyes, in the dim light. He suspects they are much lighter than they appear.
“Do you live here?” Stefano asks.
“Yes. Sometimes.”
And then as if Erich has remembered where he is, he explains the house. “It is bad, yes? Beggars, passersby, probably foreign, come here to spend a night. It is disappointing what they do to the place while they are here, while I am elsewhere.”
Stefano remembers the violence against the mattress, the picture. It seemed personal to him.
“We should leave,” says Stefano suddenly.
“In this weather? I won’t try and kill you in your sleep. If I wanted you dead, you would be by now.”
Stefano is wondering what he missed when he came in. Was he here all the time? Was he watching?
Erich stamps the floor in places until he hears a hollow sound. With a fork that he has taken from a drawer, he pokes at a board of wood on the floor until it shifts from its position. He lifts away several planks, reaches his arm deeply into the hole to retrieve a metal pail, then tilts it to show Stefano the contents. Inside is a bottle with amber liquid and a small brown paper bag.
Erich smells the small package and passes it to Stefano who does the same.
“It is coffee. Pure,” says Erich.
“Did you put it there?”
Erich does not look at Stefano while he opens the bottle.
“No. I just know how people think. And they are not much different from one another. They find the same places to hide things.”
Erich puts his nose to the neck of the bottle, and Stefano wonders why squatters would bother to hide these things.
“Whiskey. Good whiskey,” he says, this time directly to Stefano, rather than to the spaces around him. From his smile, he is clearly pleased with the find. He sits on the floor and leans back against the table leg.
“What kind of soldier were you?” asks Stefano.
“A soldier on the front line . . . After we destroyed our enemies, we were often sent into homes to check for people hiding. It was either the floor or the ceiling. If we didn’t find people, it was usually items. The spaces where they hid things were usually in rooms where they stood, as if by standing on top of their precious items they could protect them. They were wrong.”
Stefano wants to ask what happened to the people who were hiding, but he already knows the answer.
“We were the ones to be sacrificed if we were ambushed, blown up,” says Erich. “I was part of a group that was expendable. It wasn’t my choice.”
Erich takes a swig and passes the bottle to Stefano, who sits down also, somewhat reluctantly, with his back against the wall. He is close enough to stretch and reach for the bottle, but he keeps what he thinks is a safe distance between them.
Stefano takes a mouthful. It burns slightly and at the same time instantly dulls some of his worst fears of the man who has handed it to him.
“I wasn’t allowed to drink in the war. My parents thought it weak, my superiors, too. There are many good things to the end of the war, yes?”
It is a redundant question, thinks Stefano. It does not require a response.
“Do you have family waiting?” asks Erich.
“Yes. And you? Do you have others here?”
“I am all that’s left,” Erich says, in a tone that places little significance to such an outcome. “Tell me, Stefano. Did you really fight for Germany?”
“I fought on your side, but then toward the end, your comrades imprisoned me anyway.”
Erich smiles. It is disconcerting to Stefano that the German appears so unaffected. Smiles by Germans were often followed by something cruel.
“We are all on the same side now, are we not?” says Erich. “The side of disarray.”
Erich takes another mouthful, eyes carefully on Stefano, who does not care to respond.
“I heard what they did to people in prisons. Is that where you hurt your hand? Did they torture you?”
“It was from an explosion.”
Erich looks briefly at Stefano’s hand and then his face, studying him and interpreting the truth.
“I am going to sleep,�
� says Erich, sighing and standing up, perhaps now bored with the mostly unresponsive intruder. “You are welcome to sleep here. I believe I can trust you. We will save this.”
He puts the lid on the bottle.
Stefano remains seated. He is reflecting on the use of the word “we,” as if it were the first of more to come.
“You should go back to bed,” says Erich. He walks slowly from the kitchen, leaving behind the rifle leaning against the wall. “You can trust me also,” he calls out from the other end of the house. “There are no bullets in the rifle. Feel free to check.”
Stefano hears the protest of bedsprings, the rustle of cloth on cloth, and then the stillness. He rises and peers around the stairs toward the end of the house where he can just make out the other man’s shape through the open doorway of his bedroom, then returns to check the rifle. Erich was telling the truth, but he could have bullets elsewhere. Stefano is still wary.
He treads carefully upstairs, nerves still jumbled at the thought of the German lying below, unsure of tricks and the effects of the alcohol that hums inside his head and swirls warmly through his chest. It has been days since Stefano has had a full night’s sleep.
Inside the bedroom upstairs, the boy is still sleeping. Since there is no key in the lock, he shuts the door and slides the rug to lie in front of it, blocking it, alert to the creaks in the house, now that the rain has eased, and one ear trained on the stairs.
But the events of the day prove too much, and several hours before dawn, after his eyes have closed involuntarily, he sinks deeply into sleep.
1936
When Stefano’s cousin came back from a victory in Abyssinia, after Italy successfully suppressed those who were opposing Italian rule, Beppe was altered slightly. Not a great deal, just a little less interested in events at home, as if they were no longer significant. Stefano had started showing an interest in a future academic career, with plans to study languages and literature. On weekends he helped his sister Nina make jewelry, bracelets, earrings, and rings with small colored stones threaded with fine silver or copper wire, twisting the metal into loops and plaiting them into shapes. The bright shiny objects would attract the eyes of the tourists.
The Road Beyond Ruin Page 5