“Does your leg hurt now?”
“A little. Sometimes there is pain. Yesterday it reminded me the injury was still there. Otherwise I can walk on it. Just not for very long. Your doctors were good. I was treated at a prison hospital, where German doctors were forced to treat foreign casualties, before I was transferred elsewhere. I fared better than most. It just depended on the soldier who caught you, whether you would be captured and transferred, or shot on the spot.”
Stefano looks out of place in the house. Like a piece of furniture too big for the room. He has a warm voice, a smile that never eventuates, that stops itself halfway, and two lines above his eyebrows that don’t ever go away. His accent is strange, the words too elongated and musical, or broken, though the fact he speaks German at all is strangely endearing. He has to repeat some to make her understand.
He likes to look at things as he speaks, as if the answers to her questions are in the objects around him. He runs his fingers across the floral embroidery on the tablecloth and examines the cracks in the saucer on the painted tea set. He is looking for clues to the people here, and perhaps appreciating these small things that have been unimportant for so long.
She stops herself from asking about loyalties, anything that might highlight the divide between their races and give him reason to falter.
He looks at her for too long sometimes, and she has to look away. She has treated men like him many times before, men who did not fit in with war, who did not go looking for a fight.
“Where are you?” Georg calls from upstairs. Rosalind looks toward the sound, then back at Stefano.
“I’ll be back in a minute.” She picks up a bowl that has cold stew ready, some bread, and a cup of water.
Georg sits on the bed expectantly. She does not want him to come down yet. Does not want him to see the visitor. Does not want him to react.
He feeds himself, but oftentimes he finishes only half of it as if he has run out of motivation. He is slowly starving himself to death. He is only hungry for drugs now. The situation is worsening.
“I will come and get the bowl when you’re finished,” she whispers in his ear. “No need to come down.”
“Who’s here?” he asks, suddenly lucid.
“A friend,” she says.
He looks at his dinner and commences eating, and she suddenly wonders if it was a mistake to leave the visitor alone. Whether he will use the opportunity to steal, though there is so little now of value. She leaves Georg and finds Stefano exactly where she left him, hair too long, curling around the backs of his ears, at the base of his skull.
“I’m sorry about your husband. Erich told me that he was badly injured. Was that from battle?”
He has carved up the air with the question, disturbing the ghost of Georg that haunts her constantly: Georg as he was before the war. She longs to talk about him, to release the past, yet at the same time remain loyal.
“Yes. It was a shock when he returned that way.”
“And the rest of his family?”
“Georg has no one else. An only child. His mother died just after he was born, and his father died just before he started military college.”
“Is that Georg there?”
Stefano is talking about a photo of the three of them when they were younger.
“Yes.”
“You have known him a long time then.”
“We met as children.”
“He would holiday here with you in the summers?”
“Yes,” she says.
“And who is the girl?”
“My cousin, Monique,” she says, and she is aware of Monique’s portrait behind her, looking down on her.
“Did your cousin come here in the summers also?”
“Yes,” she says, and feels her body tense, knowing the question that will likely come.
“Where is she now?”
Michal puts his elbows on the table to rest his head in his hands. He is looking sleepy or bored. She could never understand children.
“We were separated during the war, and she is missing.” She turns to busy herself with cleaning the cups they have used for tea.
“Oh, I see. I’m sorry.”
And she is grateful that he says nothing more, because to offer any other words is futile.
He stands to look at the photo as if he has seen something, found another clue. Now that he is staring at her cousin, she wonders if it was a bad idea to invite him in. Monique distracts him, distracts everyone.
She explains why she is hesitant to help those passing through, looking for charity. Two months earlier an elderly man and his wife came by. They were German Jews expelled from Poland and looking for a place to live. Their shoes were worn and their hair cut short, and dirt was sealed beneath fresh skin on their hands. She did not feel sorry for them, but she thought that giving them food and sending them on their way would get rid of them quickly. They thanked her for the bread and blessed her even. In the morning when she woke, she found the word “Nazi” written across the door. She had scrubbed it off and later painted over the ghostly writing that she can still see in a certain light.
Stefano says nothing to this. He has now moved to the corner of the house to examine the damage to the bricks, from where water leaked in the previous night. Several different-colored bricks have been roughly patched in the opening.
“I believe the damage was from heavy air fire,” says Rosalind. “I was in Berlin at the time. Fortunately, only a patch of wall and a small part of the roof were damaged, though now in heavy rain, water gets through the gaps at the base and under the floor. And the water pipes must have been damaged, too. Only brown water trickles through the taps above the kitchen sink.”
“Was anyone here when it happened?” He turns back to the photo briefly before sitting down again.
“My grandmother.” Rosalind does not think it necessary to say that when she returned, she had discovered her grandmother dead from sickness in her bed; she had died alone, with no one to look after her in her final days. She has grown tired of talking now that the conversation is about things she doesn’t want to remember. The boy is watching her, sizing her up, as if he can see straight into her heart. She doesn’t like him here. A child does not belong here, not with her.
Stefano looks at the photo of her grandmother also on the wall, but his eyes fall back on the portrait. She recognizes the look. Everyone looks at Monique that way. With interest and longing. Now Stefano.
“What did you mean when you said I should leave?” he asks.
“What?”
“Earlier. You said I should leave before Erich returns.”
She is trying to remember exactly what she said.
“It was nothing, only that the house is not fit for habitation.”
Questions. More questions. One after the other.
How long has Erich lived here? Have you known Erich since you were small? Has he always been your neighbor?
“Years . . . Yes . . . Yes.” Answers that give away little else but lies.
She must dispense with him quickly now before there are more. Though, some part of her, the part that craves a normal life, likes him just the same.
“He can probably fix your broken building then,” says Stefano, changing direction.
She stares at him briefly. It is not a question, but it is begging for comment.
“Erich is very busy these past weeks with work.”
“He told me he only just found work.”
Something smashes on the floor above them, and this time Stefano does not look past her up the stairs but turns to something on the wall. She is worried Georg will come down, and she heads for the stairs.
“Thank you for food,” he says. “I’m sorry to disturb your afternoon.” He is perceptive and courteous. She is grateful. Though he can’t stay here. Any minute Georg will start shouting.
He smiles quickly and nods as if he knows that, too, pushing the chair in with a screech that sets Rosalind’s teeth o
n edge. Most loud noises do that now. Michal jumps up to stand close to Stefano.
“I won’t forget your kindness,” says Stefano.
She looks away from his eyes that are too dark and too intense. She is unused to such attention and appreciation, which she can tell is sincere. Appreciation was there, sometimes, from her patients, but it was less personal. In the chaos of hospital casualties, it was blunt or scarce, and death often followed, and there were no thanks for death. And then there was Georg, who perhaps never appreciated her at all.
When Georg left for war the first time, she had been left feeling cold. Then by the time the war was over, the cold had turned to ice. She has grown used to the feeling, but some of that thaws here, as Rosalind warms toward the stranger and his differences. His accent, the occasional omission of verbs and small words that are insignificant anyway in the larger scheme of things, she thinks, are things she looks forward to hearing again.
Stefano leaves, and she returns to Georg to inspect the damage. His plate is in pieces. She is running out of plates and cups. She regrets that she did not sit with him during his meal. It was selfish of her, or was it? Did she invite Stefano in because she wanted to thank him, help him, or just find out something about him? She doesn’t know herself anymore, doesn’t trust her own perspective.
Georg has several holes on the back of his wrist where he has stabbed himself with the fork. She would like to blame the intruder for beguiling her into opening her door. But it was she. It was the loneliness, the loss.
She hurries downstairs to her bedroom below to retrieve something from a bag. When she comes back up, Georg is gripping the bed, veins extended at his throat, teeth together so tightly they might snap.
“Georg, stop!” she says quietly in his ear. “I’m here.” She pushes him back onto the bed and with her arm across his chest weighs him down. This technique seems to freeze him. Rarely does he put up any resistance. With her free hand she injects his arm. In the early days she would give him tablets, but in the state of mania he would sometimes spit them out. The replacement at least is quicker to administer.
His groans turn to moans, and his body relaxes. His head flops sideways on the pillow but with eyes now open, and he looks at her. She feels nothing, she realizes, and can’t remember the last time she felt that way. It has been creeping up on her, a slight resentment now, perhaps a restoration of her sanity, of awareness.
She touches his cheek with the back of her hand. His tongue relaxes, and retracts into his mouth, like a snail retreating in its shell. His hair has fallen back from his face. When he is in this state, he almost looks the same as he did. But he is no longer muscular and sunburned. He is gaunt, his skin pasty and flaking. She is remembering how strong he was. How big he was, his long strides across an empty room. Georg. Now small.
CHAPTER 12
STEFANO
Stefano reflects on the conversation with Rosalind, on the evasive way she met questions about Monique, as if the subject were painful, as if there were secrets that she was not willing to share. She is confusing to him, and during the course of their brief conversation, she delivered a contradictory mixture of traits: the edgy countenance of a trapped animal and blunt indifference. Like two different people, he thinks.
She is someone who is lost, who no longer looks to the future, but exists, perhaps because of Georg.
Rosalind was a nurse, though any details were carefully guarded. They talked about the town, about food, about safe topics, touching on families only, both steering much away from themselves where they could. But there is something there, lying deep, perhaps waiting to emerge, about her past that she is not proud of, that should not be spoken out loud.
He leads the boy to the top floor of Erich’s house again, the boy’s tiny bowing legs dragging tiredly up the stairs, and ushers him into the bedroom at the end of the house with the bed that has linen. But Michal stands tentatively beside the bed, looking at it, perhaps with longing but fearful also of more change, a different bed, a German that comes here, that reminds him of a past, of things to fear.
“You can sleep here,” says Stefano. “It is safe.”
Michal climbs under the sheet and sinks into the softness of the mattress that engulfs his small frame. Stefano tucks the sheet in as his mother did, then sits beside him.
“I will be here in the morning. I promise.”
Michal rolls over to face the wall and closes his eyes. It is a gesture that says he believes him. At least he can sleep with food in his stomach. Stefano meant it when he said to Rosalind he was thankful, but it was more for the boy. He has survived on less. He could do it again if need be.
Inside, the light creeps inward toward the middle of the room, and the walls are fading. There is no lamp that Stefano can see.
He is eager to seek out the letters beneath the stairs. The girl on the wall has written them, and he is compelled to read what she has to say. He is remembering the closeness of the portrait, the largeness of her small features, as if she were in the room, staring back at him, willing him to read her letters, to learn more. She fascinates him even more by her absence.
He opens the secret wall and takes out the box. He slides out the top letter carefully from under the ribbon. Only one in case Erich returns suddenly again. There might be a reason they are hidden, an idea that further fuels his curiosity.
He tucks the letter inside his shirt, returns the shoebox, then examines the empty floor around him. He is trying to picture the damage from before, the destruction, which has now been cleared away. Rosalind said nothing about squatters, only reversed the lie of Erich’s employment. One of them is lying, he thinks. Whoever, perhaps, has more to lose.
It is silent next door, though there are lights within. Georg should be in a hospital. But then it is something else that drives Rosalind. Love or duty? And why are the letters kept here at a neighbor’s house and not with Rosalind?
He climbs up the stairs wearily, as if he has come home from a long day of work, wincing inwardly each time he raises his bad leg. From the window he looks to the glinting of the river as it falls to a shade of night and the birds whistle their goodbyes to the rays of orange light.
You should be home.
That was the last line of the last letter he received from his sister.
Not yet, he had written back. Soon.
Most people displaced have been racing to return home after the war, but there are so many things he has had to sort out in his head, much of which is guilt. Not everyone he loved survived this war.
A creaking sound alerts him in between the chirps and whistles. He returns the letter he had just pulled from inside his shirt.
“So, there you are!”
Stefano turns toward the voice. In the space of a moment, Erich has materialized in the doorway of the bedroom. A band of pinkish-orange light slices across the German’s face so that parts are in shade. Stefano can see an eye and part of his mouth, painted in light. He has learned to be a ghost, thinks Stefano. He can enter houses, climb up creaking stairs without being heard. Stefano has fought a different war to know that it is more an art than an accident that he is able to slip in unnoticed.
“I’m glad you decided to stay. I wasn’t sure if I’d find you here.”
“The choice was easy,” says Stefano. “How was your first day of work?”
Erich considers the question carefully.
“The day went as well as any other,” he says. “Work is work and best left there. Perhaps you would join me for a drink downstairs before bed, yes?”
Although Stefano was looking forward to rest, to reading, he follows Erich to the kitchen. It is something Stefano must do, in exchange for hospitality.
“I met someone today who will sell me some petrol for the car,” says Erich as he opens a linen carry bag and retrieves a small glass flask with milk, and several items carefully wrapped with paper and tied with string: several rolls, a piece of cheese, a quarter of a pie, and slices of pork. The prepa
ration, Stefano notes, looks too meticulous, too caring, to have been done by a grocer.
“Have you eaten anything?” Erich asks.
“A little.”
“Would you like something now?”
“No, thank you.”
“There should be enough for two days.”
Erich puts the food away in a small pantry cupboard behind the kitchen.
Stefano looks down, concerned about the generosity, conflicted also because he is sitting across from a German, who only a few months ago, before the situation changed, might have put a bullet in him.
Erich sits down, pours two small shots of whiskey.
“Why are you doing this?”
“Doing what?” he says.
“This,” says Stefano, eyes toward the glasses. “All of it.”
“You seem to have a problem with moving on,” says Erich, placing his hands in his lap and leaning back in his chair to examine the other man.
It is strange and awkward. Stefano wonders about this relationship, if he can name it anything. Erich seems to have accepted this connection as something not extraordinary, and he seems to be attempting to leave little space for Stefano to hate him. The German is disarming, yet Stefano feels it is too soon to form any sort of alliance, to remind him that he worked for the regime that broke apart Italy and his family and nearly destroyed him. That Stefano must hate him and that he must not forget why.
“No, it is just unusual. Germans aren’t known for their sharing capabilities. They wanted Germany and most of Europe all to themselves, I seem to remember.”
“The past is done with,” Erich says, downs the drink, and holds the empty glass forward to Stefano, as if in some kind of challenge. “Wouldn’t you say?”
Stefano swallows some whiskey. The liquid is warm in the back of his throat, and the warmth spreads farther down his limbs.
“Rosalind said you have known each other a long time.”
“You saw Rosalind?” Erich says, his eyes locking onto Stefano’s.
Stefano explains the attempted stealing of the goose.
“It is not wise to give to beggars, not now.”
The Road Beyond Ruin Page 11