The Road Beyond Ruin

by Gemma Liviero

She was committed to the principles that the German Red Cross demanded of her: dedication to hygiene, to treatment, and to the preservation of race, and devotion to the führer. Unlike Monique, who, though given work in an office of the Reich Ministry, showed little commitment to anyone or anything.

  Thanks to a referral from Erich, Monique now held a position in the education ministry, typing reports and requisitions, and general correspondence that did not include any sensitive material. Rosalind thought this was for the best, given that Monique had previously held concerns about the government. She was not as vocal as she had been in the past on political matters, on imprisonments because of race and her disapproval of war, but her silent rebuttal of the new system came from her willing association with others who did not fit with the German design, an association that her employer had yet to learn about.

  Once Rosalind had completed her initial training, she was transferred to a large hospital southwest of Berlin, where the führer himself was said to have once been treated, and she witnessed her first emergency amputation as casualties—those more likely to survive—came in from the field hospitals in greater numbers. The hospital was palatial, with its arched windows and grand staircases. But as the Second World War funneled more patients through its stately doorway, the aesthetics of the building became inconsequential. Under bright-white lights, the overwhelming smells of ether, iodine, chlorine, sulfur, blood, and bedpans disintegrated the building’s charm.

  Despite the large convergence of the broken, she was not affected by her emotions. Rosalind could treat a person without thinking that she was saving someone’s son or brother or father. And she could see from those nurses she worked alongside, from their lack of mental discipline, from their attachments to patients, that her way was the only way. She did not allow herself to imagine Georg on a battlefield somewhere. She could never allow herself to believe anything other than he was bulletproof.

  Monique and Rosalind hadn’t gone back to the river house last summer because of their work, but they had caught up with Georg in Berlin, before he was sent away shortly after the war began. Georg wrote to both of them often. He spoke of how he missed them. Ironically, the collectiveness of this word drew only feelings of exclusion.

  When the girls received word that Georg was coming to the city on leave, they made plans to meet at a wine bar. Georg had not yet seen active duty. He had been to Poland to help prepare the area for greater Germany, keeping the civilians in order after the invasion, and witnessing things he did not wish to discuss. Georg was under strict instruction not to talk about the military. They were preparing for something huge was all he said.

  Both Georg and Erich wore their uniforms, Georg in field gray and Erich in the attire of Hitler’s Schutzstaffel, of which he had just been made a member. Rosalind noticed that many glanced their way, and their eyes did not linger too long on Erich. He was tall, imposing and fearful in black. And his fair hair, combed back severely, called attention to the well-defined and forceful angles of his jawbone and nose.

  Erich ordered drinks while Georg lit a cigarette, at home in the smoky, crowded bar. Smoke was part of his life now, especially on the battlefield. He said he had taken up smoking for fun. Though his use of the words “for fun” did not sound as such, the sentence spitting out a more sober but subtle undertone.

  Monique arrived late, taller in heels now, and smartly dressed. She wore a navy-blue jacket and skirt and a matching navy hat. Her normally wild hair was tamely twisted and pinned behind her ears. Her cheeks were rouged, and her lips were a brilliant sheen of red, emulating photos of film stars. Beside her, Rosalind felt insignificant and pallid. Rushing straight from work by train and bus, she wore her plain, striped nurse’s uniform, though she had brushed out her shoulder-length fair hair. She was right not to adorn herself. Hitler liked purity, women of natural beauty, and discouraged the use of makeup.

  “You finally like skirts now, yes?” said Georg to Monique. “You are all grown up. I did not recognize you at first. What is that paint on your lips?”

  Monique threw herself into Georg’s arms, laughing. “Stop teasing me!”

  “I can’t help it. If you are going to paint your face, how will I recognize you?”

  “Stop it! I have a very important job, you know.”

  Monique told silly stories, talked of friends from clubs she attended, her special friends, she called them, and Rosalind noticed that Erich listened intently to this, though he did not question her or make a comment. It made Rosalind feel better, Monique talking about such trifles; it showed that Rosalind and her job were more important.

  Rosalind excused herself to go to the powder room, and when she came back, she found only Erich there reading through some notes from a small black pad he carried in his jacket.

  “And where are the others?” she asked.

  “Talking outside,” said Erich carelessly, glancing up at her, then back down at the notes in front of him. He shaded the book with his hand, keeping whatever was written there hidden.

  “Why?”

  Erich looked up, and this time his eyes rested, studying her. He was reading her, she thought. He took a brief sigh as if his summation were complete.

  “I think they are having a cigarette and a private talk. You can go and find them if you wish,” said Erich, and Rosalind thought either he had read her panic or he wanted to be alone to write. She concluded it was both.

  There was no immediate sign of them at the front of the building, and she searched until she found the pair standing close together in a laneway to the side. Monique seemed very animated. The noisy chatter that spilled out from the windows of the bar masked what they were saying, but there was clearly an argument. “You have to tell her!” was all she thought she heard, though she couldn’t be certain.

  It was Monique who was facing her, who saw her approach first. She nodded toward her to alert Georg, who turned to look, frowning at the interruption.

  “Rosalind,” said Monique. “You must keep Georg company! Erich is taking me to a function with some senior officers.”

  She raised herself on tiptoe to kiss Georg on the cheek before she walked past them. He appeared agitated, brushing the hair back roughly from his forehead, and unable to rest his gaze with his thoughts elsewhere.

  “Is everything okay?” asked Rosalind. “What were you talking about?”

  He relaxed to some degree, focusing then on her.

  “Nothing really. Just about the war . . . I have to leave in a few days . . .”

  It told her nothing, but that was Georg. If she pushed him, he would simply change the subject or walk away.

  “Why don’t we go to dinner?” he asked, brightening slightly and holding both her hands.

  “That would be nice,” she said.

  The following night Rosalind borrowed her father’s car and drove Georg to his barracks. He was sweet then, and he held her longer. And this time he kissed her fervently on the lips. Hers was the last face he would see before he left for battle. She knew they were meant for each other. Monique was a pleasant diversion when they were young, but he needed someone stable, someone who could love him back.

  The following year Monique was fired from her job. Several weeks after that, she announced her plans to marry Erich.

  Present-day 1945

  Rosalind is thinking of the water gushing in the other night. She is thinking that she can’t afford to get someone to fix it. She would never ask Erich, because he would pay someone to do the work, and then she would feel she owed him something more. He says she owes him too much already.

  She agrees to Stefano’s offer. It is the look of him that causes her to weaken. A sense that he is too battered for any more fight. She recognized it in others whom she treated: scarred and smaller than they were before the war. She believes she can trust him. He saved a child. It is unlikely he will want to hurt her.

  She mutters something about meaning to fix it, but the comment is lame and fades at the end with in
sincerity. She is not capable. She knows it. Though she is capable of helping load some bricks. She knows the place he is talking about. Houses that were crushed by air fire and bombs.

  She directs Stefano to the barn to collect a wheelbarrow. While he is gone she checks on Georg, who is sleeping. From her bag, she takes a syringe and performs the task of injecting medicine to keep him asleep for several hours. She does not want him to wake and come looking for her. Sometimes he does not take to strangers. She does not want to frighten Stefano away, not now that he is doing this task for her. Georg must bear this for both of them.

  The squeaking wheel of the barrow alongside the house alerts her to action. She ties up her hair, then an apron, and leaves to accompany the handsome stranger who has somehow landed at her door.

  They cross the road to several damaged houses with walls turned to rubble, glass that has disintegrated, and blackened things that lie strewn and barely recognizable: a stove; a birdcage; broken china, the patterns singed; and other objects, covered in black grime and soot. Michal looks at the items, then turns to Stefano.

  “Go on,” says Stefano. “Find something. There might be treasures there.”

  And Rosalind shudders, imagining children stepping over the remnants of her house in Berlin, of the faces of her parents in the rubble. She remembers watching men and women, volunteers, pulling out bodies from these ruins. Not long after the war ended, there were many who went from house to house, pulling the injured from wreckages along the road and depositing the bodies in a warehouse in the town.

  The boy steps cautiously through the remains, stopping to examine or salvage an object. He is odd. The children she has seen run and squeal. This child is like an adult, careful and quiet, like her, she thinks.

  She sorts through the rubble for good bricks with her small white hands, long fingers, with nails bitten to the quick, that look more used to delicate stitching. Rosalind places the last of her bricks in the barrow, and Stefano’s arm brushes hers. She draws away too quickly, startled by their connection, and cautiously gauges his expression that betrays no feeling, eyes that are focused elsewhere, unaware perhaps of anything but the task.

  When the barrow is full, Stefano raises it to leave and calls out to Michal to follow. Rosalind walks behind for the return journey, examining the broadness of Stefano’s shoulders, the muscles that ripple beneath his sleeves, and wondering at the distance that has closed between them in just a day. She wonders also at the warmth of him that she still feels against her arm.

  “What have you found, Michal?” asks Stefano as he looks in the basket beside him. “You must be pirate, yes? To find such treasure,” he continues in his strange accent, and Rosalind feels the touch of a laugh in the back of her throat, a genuine one, one that comes up from the heart. There is a small spring in the boy’s step, his face more animated. On the way back to the house he keeps checking that the items are still inside the basket. He is excited by his finds: a handle from what once was a walking cane, a brass doorknob, a pipe that is almost intact, and a single red porcelain marble.

  They cross a paddock that stretches to the main road. Passing in front of them, a convoy of trucks on its way to Berlin. Several of the American occupants wave to them from inside one of the vehicles. Stefano responds. Rosalind pretends she doesn’t see them.

  “What happened?” she asks as his limp becomes more obvious across the damp and uneven ground. Though she wishes immediately that she didn’t ask. She is afraid of something. The truth, a reminder of what people did, something that might break a fledgling truce. Might remind him again of hate.

  “Just before the Russians came, your Germans announced that we were leaving the camp. They knew they had lost the war; I saw it in their faces, but the arrogance was still there. They still hung on to that. They had to have one last victory, and they still had weapons. Even without weapons they could have killed us, most of us too weak to fight. They marched us from the camp. The Germans got more desperate, agitated. Insane is probably the best word. I watched others walking off the road toward some trees. I was skeptical at first, and then I followed. Then they began shooting us in the back, and hundreds fell around me. I took a bullet below the knee, and this, strange as it sounds, saved my life.

  “The Germans took off across a paddock to hide from the Russian army about to arrive. When they had gone I dragged myself farther into a wood and lay there, sleeping for some time until I heard trucks. Russian trucks.”

  He strains from the effort of pushing the barrow, the ground still softened from rain.

  “Do you want to stop and rest?”

  “No,” he said.

  “What happened then?”

  “When I was in the camp, I would dream about trees that bordered the camp, a symbol of freedom. We thought that if we made it to those trees, we were free. It was a false hope. The Russians found me and put me back in the same prison again. Ironisch, I think you say.”

  “Yes,” she says. “It is certainly ironic.”

  He is strong, hair unruly, and there is stubble on his chin. He has had no woman to care for him, she thinks. Georg is lucky that way. He has someone.

  They cross the road, and Stefano begins the task of heaving the barrow up the slope. On the ridge, the ground levels briefly, and he weaves swiftly through the sparse and narrow wood.

  At the edge of the descent to the backyard of Rosalind’s house, Stefano puts down the barrow and wipes the back of his forehead. She watches him look down at the roofs of their two houses and toward the river beyond the trees before noting piles of rubbish nearby, and something else, too.

  “What’s that?”

  “Rubbish from the cleanup after the bombings.”

  “There!” He points to the white cross close by, above a mound of earth surrounded by stones. “It looks like a tiny grave.”

  “I don’t know,” she says, turning briefly in the direction of the small bundle that Monique once buried. “Since the end of the war, many have walked the road below.”

  Rosalind is not a suspicious person, but this patch of wood feels colder, even with the too-warm air that blows from the south.

  She continues forward to the house, eager to put distance between her and the grave, and Stefano picks up the barrow again to follow.

  When they reach the bottom, Stefano empties the barrow at the edge of the house.

  “I can check your injury later if you wish,” says Rosalind. “To make sure you haven’t damaged it doing this heavy work for me.”

  He nods unconvincingly.

  “And the burn on your hand?” She is a nurse now, and it feels good to ask these questions. This was the type of injury she attended to before the bodies flooded in, in pieces.

  Stefano looks toward the river, the question arousing a memory. She had seen the mark on his hand when the bandage had come loose, and she could tell immediately that it was a burn. She has also seen him cover it with his other hand sometimes to conceal it. At the table he kept it mostly hidden away on his lap. Whatever is beneath his shirt must be badly battered, she thinks. She can help him, repay him for the wall.

  “I took a blast from an explosion in Africa. We were beaten by the Allies. I lost a friend there. I got up and then collapsed. Waking a short time later, I realized I was in the middle of a battlefield.”

  “You have had much thrown at you.”

  “Especially explosives,” he says in what she perceives as jest, though without the backing of a smile. Instead he stares intently at her. The look of him wild, and too much to take in.

  She turns modestly from his gaze to consider his family and the changes they might see. She imagines a man who was once much stronger, before being cut down for reasons that don’t make sense anymore. She believed her leaders, the speeches. Believed Germany would win. Georg didn’t, and neither did Monique.

  “We grew up together here,” she says about Georg. She longs to tell someone about the life she had here. For some reason, she longs to tell Stefano
. “Georg and I. And Monique. We used to swim in the river and run through the wood like wild children. I used to pray all autumn, winter, and spring for summer to come sooner.”

  He stands, waiting for more, but she bites her lip. She has said too much. The relationship has changed. Friendship is creeping in.

  “We will need some more bricks,” he says to cover her awkwardness, and the three return to the ruins with the now-empty barrow.

  CHAPTER 15

  STEFANO

  Michal sits on the ground outside, examining the items in his basket, occasionally looking at Stefano, who is breaking apart Rosalind’s wall with a hammer. The existing hastily repaired exterior crumbles and falls to the ground in pieces and dust. A fire burns in an earth pit near the river to cook some of the crushed limestone bricks Stefano collected from the ruins. Stefano also repairs some wooden roof shingles and cleans the bricks that will be used to rebuild the wall. When the limestone is eventually cooked and the mortar is completed with water and sand he has collected near the river, he commences the bricklaying gently and carefully, as if it were fine art, something Stefano had watched his father do.

  It is late in the afternoon when he has repaired part of the area that stretches from the floor to the roof. The damage could have been far worse, the kitchen inside ruined, someone killed. Michal has been handing Stefano the bricks and is a patient and willing assistant. They work silently together, and Stefano hides the fact that he is enjoying the partnership, enjoying the little child who, in a brief amount of time, has become attached to him. He appreciates the instincts of the boy, who has most likely had to use them during the war to survive.

  “Do you like this work?” he asks, smoothing and scraping away the excess mortar.

  “Yes,” the boy says.

  “Do you want to be a builder?”

  “No, a soldier.”

  Stefano stops a moment.

  “Why a soldier?”

  The little boy shrugs, and Stefano returns to working.

  The sun beats down on Stefano’s back, and he wishes he could remove his shirt that hides the scar. Throughout the day Stefano has occasionally glimpsed Rosalind through the cavity into the kitchen, where she is busy cooking and where the smell of browning dough is making him hungry.