The Road Beyond Ruin

by Gemma Liviero

  They are together in this, both here without their mothers. And Stefano instinctively puts his hand on the boy’s head before he has had time to think about the action. He feels the soft fine hair, and strangely, thinks Stefano, he needs the boy as much as Michal needs him. The child is perhaps keeping him level, less bitter, more tolerant.

  “You are missing your mamma, yes?”

  The child’s face is burrowed into the front of his shirt.

  “She is probably watching you now. She is probably very proud that you can fly a plane.”

  The child’s sobbing turns into sniffs.

  “Michal, I believe we found each other for a reason. Can I trust you with a secret?”

  The little boy sits up and looks up at him, wipes his eyes with the backs of his hands to get a clearer view of Stefano. He nods. He is used to keeping secrets.

  “I need you to be my soldier. A special soldier with a secret task. Can you do that?”

  He nods again. “With a gun?” he asks.

  “No gun, but with information that is sometimes far more powerful.”

  23 March 1942

  Dear Papa,

  This is a difficult letter for me to write. Forgive me. It has been so long since I found the strength. I feel that I am doing a great wrong by saying anything, by putting pen to paper, yet if I don’t, I become like everyone else here. Afraid, paranoid puppets while days turn into nights and nights turn into nightmares.

  I promised myself long ago that I would be like you and be strong, but I do not think I carry your fortitude or valor.

  As a result of the decision I felt forced to make, I am in Vienna with my husband, Erich.

  Things were not right in Berlin when I left there. I was relieved at least when the train left the station and I watched Berlin’s buildings disappear from view. Yvonne and Max were there to say goodbye. I would not describe them as loving, but they have been somewhat kind to me, and I feel pity for Yvonne, whose legs ache with disease. Rosalind was there, too, stoically telling me I had made the right decision, but even as she said these words, I could tell there was a lack of sincerity. But who am I to judge, since I deceive them all about this marriage.

  Before I was married, I must admit to you, Papa, that I was not taking war quite as seriously as most. Not that I didn’t care about our soldiers being killed; quite the contrary. I cried dreadfully and carried bad news in my heart for days, especially for those I knew, but I suppose in my mind to cope with everything was to fight against Berlin’s new laws and voice my support to anyone about those more vulnerable. I was losing friends because of ridiculous laws that told them they were no longer allowed to call themselves German. But I cannot change my feelings.

  Emmanuelle, who was forced to wear a yellow-star patch on her arm, and her family were sent away, and our little friendship group fell apart. There were no safe places for them. She and her family were forced to leave most of their belongings in their apartment and took only a few bags, and they were lucky to have those. They were told that new towns had been created for them, but it doesn’t make sense that they have to live elsewhere. Emmanuelle asked me to keep an eye on Alain. She had not seen him in the week prior, and she was sad that they could not say goodbye. Since the African show was canceled, many of the acrobats and performers like Alain have struggled to find work. He was, however, lucky to secure factory work for almost a year after that, and after his application to join the Wehrmacht was denied.

  Erich said it was likely Alain had been sent to a labor camp. This news made me so angry, and I walked into a police station and demanded to know where he had been sent to, and they laughed, Papa. They laughed and flirted with me as if I were a dolt. They said he had most likely been sent away with the Jews. They were cruel the way they spoke, Papa. And I told them so. I said that I would write a letter to the British and broadcast it somehow. Sometimes I don’t like this Germany anymore. I am worried for its future.

  These inquiries and my affections for so-called “undesirables,” and my attendance at “questionable” clubs, as they call them, had caught the notice of more senior people after a report was sent from the Gestapo, and some officers came to talk to me. I was then fired from my government position. Rosalind’s warning was right, unfortunately, that I would get everyone into trouble with my inquiries about Alain and my rebellion against ridiculous rules. Yvonne and Max were interrogated about my activities and connections. I think the officers knew that Tante and Onkel were perfectly innocent, but I believe they wanted to scare them into controlling me. And that made my decision about leaving Berlin the right one. I could not do anything to hurt them. I had done enough and felt ashamed that in some way what I did would come back on them. Rosalind, understandably, didn’t speak to me for some time.

  Erich vouched for me personally, and although I’m indebted to him, I am fairly certain that if not for Georg and his close friendship with Erich, I might now be in prison. It was Georg, my very good friend also, who orchestrated the marriage, and I flatly refused the idea of it at first. But as you can see, Papa, at the time there was no other choice.

  While we were still in Berlin, Erich made me agree that I would not attend clubs, and he believes that if I am actively promoting the führer’s doctrines, attending parades and speeches, and visibly showing my support, all will be forgiven by the party. But he admitted that it would not be forgotten, since my name is in a file somewhere and will always be. He said that I am lucky I am not in prison.

  And so it is that to protect myself, and our family in Berlin, I must continue with this charade, the proposition sweetened, however, with the knowledge of Erich’s Austrian posting. He has agreed to help search for you but so far has found no trace, only that you were in prison and then transferred elsewhere. Since I have no control or sway under a Hitler-controlled government, I am not at liberty to search for you myself, I was told.

  I’m afraid to write too much about Erich, because I know little about him myself. I can tell you with certainty that he is in charge of a squad who seeks out those against the government and sends them to prison camps in the East. But I can also tell you something else about him, and it is something that was not learned from him, but from wives of other officers. Erich was responsible for finding Jews hidden around the city before and after the mass deportations last autumn, and this I didn’t know until after I married him. Knowing of the friends I lost in Berlin, I now find it difficult to look at him, and I feel great shame putting this in writing to you and wonder what you must think of me. When I did raise this briefly with Erich, he brushed me off and reminded me that he was doing me a favor. And we have not discussed it since.

  I pray for you, Papa, every day. I feel sometimes you are close by. You are often in my dreams. Mama is there, too. We are in our sun-filled kitchen, and she is laughing at something you say. You would always make light of everything. Oma said that, too. That she did not think you would go far in life because you acted like such a clown, that you liked to drift and dream. But I also know that it is what Mama loved most about you. You were there, always. You found jobs, any jobs. But your focus was on your family. I know that now. I know from relationships that this is what makes them work. To focus on the people, not the things, around you.

  Goodbye for now, Papa. I will go back to my table and sew some little flowers on some linen that I bought at the market to make a curtain. Then I will fry some tomatoes and sardines and eat them at the window that looks over the square and the quaint little clock tower that softly chimes throughout the day. I will watch the people, the lovers, the children, and the families that have not been broken apart. And I will sit and dream, Papa.

  Yours always,

  Monique

  CHAPTER 18

  ROSALIND

  Rosalind sweeps up the mud that has dried to loose dirt on the stone floor that her grandfather laid. She used to sit on the stones in front of the fireplace where they were warm. She would get so warm she would have to put a towel und
erneath her bottom. Sometimes she would fall asleep on the hearth after drinking a glass of warm milk. Her father would pick her up and carry her to bed. Georg would be there, too. They would play until dinnertime when they were very small. She remembers those times vaguely, pieces anyway. Georg sitting at the table, a small version of his father, listening to conversations, and Rosalind sitting across watching him, marveling at the gold in his hair. They were the very young years before Monique arrived and changed things, and life at the river became more insecure.

  Stefano arrives with the strange little boy to finish the wall. She looks at the boy as if he were some kind of gift that she must respect now. He has brought out something in Georg that she has not seen since he returned. He laughed, a sound that was just like the old Georg, and she glimpsed it in his eyes, the return. But this morning he has once again regressed, and he has taken the marble away to the hut in the forest where he hides most things that he treasures.

  He is there somewhere beneath the fog. Though deep down she is still unsure. Still unsure whether it would make a difference to their relationship if he did return to normal, whether he might remember things, and whether then she might lose him forever.

  Rosalind takes Michal inside while Stefano finishes the wall. She puts some jam on a crust of bread for him. His clothes are dirty, and he has a strong smell of smoke about him, old smoke, oil smoke, not the sweet tobacco smoke she smells on Stefano. While he is eating, she fills the bath with hot water from an iron pan on the stove and tops it up with buckets of cold water from the pump near the tub.

  She leads the boy to the bath, and when he sees that she is about to attempt to bathe him, she has to block the doorway to stop him from fleeing. His lower lip drops forward as if he might cry.

  “My mother used to bathe me. Did your mother used to bathe you, too?”

  He says nothing, but two wells appear in his eyes at the mention of his mother. His legs are scratched and insect bitten, and his limbs are thin. He is not in a good state. If he were her son, he would be well cared for, and something about this thought eats at her, makes her suddenly bitter.

  “You are a stubborn little boy!”

  And then she thinks of his mother and wonders what she was like. She probably spoke softly, taught him to whisper.

  “You can have more jam if you get in the bath. See,” she says, her tone softer, bending down to the water. “It is warm and lovely, and I will wash your clothes for you just like your mama.”

  “Jam?”

  “Yes,” she says, and feels slightly more confident. “Come on,” she says, taking off his shirt with holes and his shorts that are so thin the fabric is see-through in places.

  She puts him in the bath, and he sits while she washes him with soap and then with some for the hair. He is delicate, with a sweet monkey face. She marvels at the smallness of his hands and feet.

  “Isn’t that better?”

  Though she isn’t expecting a response.

  She wraps him in a towel, and he sits near the outside tub in the sun, to eat bread and jam, while she washes his clothes, then lays them on the drying rack.

  Afterward she shows him books, and he repeats some words that she says, in whispers, though his voice is slightly louder now, his confidence growing. Michal is amazed by the pictures and colors, and he traces his fingers along the backs of the animals as if imagining the feel of their fur.

  When the clothes are nearly dry, she dresses him and then shows him some photos. He studies them hard. She can see that he is looking for his own family among them.

  “Do you have a second name?”

  “Yes.”

  “What is it?”

  “Nazi bastard!”

  Rosalind cringes at the name as if this were personal, as if it has just been said to her.

  “Did you know your father?”

  He shakes his head and stares at the photos on the wall.

  “Who gave you that name?”

  He shrugs and looks at her suspiciously. He has sensed a change of tone in the conversation that has turned more serious. He is wary and bright, she thinks. And he has suffered, from the look of him—innocent, an injured bird. She wants him then. Wants him for herself.

  “I will make some tea. Michal, can you take the remainder of the grain to the goose? She is in her little house today. You will have to take it all the way to her.”

  “She will bite me!”

  “It is all right, Michal. Watch out for her beak, but I think she will be more interested in the food you carry than trying to chase you away. She is also very tired and may not bother to snap at anyone today.” Rosalind does not wish to relate the real reason the goose is staying in her enclosure.

  When he has gone Rosalind approaches Stefano to relay her concerns.

  “I believe that his mother ran away from wherever she was. I believe that the child’s father is German and they were no longer wanted at their home.”

  She reveals the name that Michal has been given, and Stefano is thoughtful, watching Michal whispering to the goose. Stefano mentions the foreign word he heard Michal use for his mother earlier.

  “It might explain it,” continues Rosalind. “He is not from here. And the accent suggests that German is not his first language. Wherever he came from, I believe he can’t go back.”

  And Stefano is again deep in thought.

  “It is something I can tell them at the camp,” he says finally, and this in some small way disappoints her, the thought that they will be gone again, and she will be alone, with Georg, and lonely.

  1942

  In Berlin, people were feeling the effects of war with the rationing of meat and sugar, eggs, and other essential items, which weren’t always available. After Max was laid off when several tramlines were shut, Yvonne had taken to making her own bread using vegetable meal and barley she sourced through a neighbor. Some restaurants were forced to reduce the options on their menus so that portions of beef and lamb were replaced with rice and vegetable stews with fewer pieces of meat, depending on what they could source, and fruit platters were seasoned with saccharin to disguise any bitterness or age. People were going less to the cinema and spending more money on black market coal. Films would begin with Hitler’s speeches, more men were asked to sign up for war service, and women had to leave their children during the week to work in uniform and munitions factories.

  The rest of the civilians walked around in a state of petrified wonderment under the red, black, and white flags that flapped like dying fish in the breezes that blew from the battlegrounds from the east. These flags supposedly represented greatness, which was at odds with the lessening prosperous circumstances. But even by this stage, Berliners still held the belief that Germany was more powerful than any other country, and they would win the war with fewer casualties than elsewhere.

  Rosalind had noticed a change in Monique. She was not as vibrant. There was a darker Monique lately, subdued, with a decline in confidence and an increase in seriousness. It had started the previous year, after Alain’s disappearance. Then the loss of her job and the interrogations by the SS after her scene at the police station, which Rosalind still hadn’t forgiven her for. And finally there was the news of her engagement to Erich. Rosalind had been shocked at the announcement, since only weeks before that, Monique had vowed to marry no one.

  But in the midst of a changing, more somber Berlin, Rosalind’s wish was finally granted, which made her forget about everything else. Georg had asked Rosalind, by letter, to marry him. At the time of his written proposal, he was covered in mud and sweat, tired and hungry, with a view of dead bodies and a dinner of tinned beans. He said he had started taking something to make him alert, though the generals didn’t approve of it anymore, so he had to keep such a practice discreet. And in that moment that brought euphoria and blissful ignorance of the carnage around him on the Eastern Front, he had written the words proposing marriage, and they could not be taken back.

  She had read the lett
er and told her parents the news. They seemed to take it as a given, neither expressing great surprise with their incurious smiles, shoulder shrugging, and nods, and she could not help noticing that there seemed less fuss than when Monique had announced her engagement and married a week later.

  Her cousin would not be in Berlin for Rosalind and Georg’s wedding, as Erich had just started his important and secretive posting in Austria. And it was only then that Monique became busy and excited again at the prospect of returning to her place of birth and being closer to finding out about her father. So far, not even Erich had been able to find out any information from telegrams he had sent to various prisons. Monique was certain that once there, they would learn more.

  The day after Monique left for Austria to join Erich, who had gone a week earlier to prepare accommodations, Georg arrived back appearing harried and worn. Their meeting was lukewarm, though he seemed talkative about the wedding. He had taken to smoking heavily, something Rosalind didn’t like, and he would wave his cigarette hand around while he described things. His face was redder, seared slightly, which brought out the pale green of his eyes, and his slightly more lived-in look made him appear more masculine and impossibly handsome.

  She had not been with a man before, so she didn’t know what to expect on her wedding night. She’d heard some of the other nurses discuss certain activities, and even Monique had dallied, she suspected. Monique could be as mysterious as she could be open, Rosalind had learned. She could keep secrets well, thought Rosalind.

  Though they were different, there was a closeness, a feeling, perhaps more an obligation that they had to keep each other informed about their lives. But after Alain disappeared, Monique told her nothing more about herself, and Rosalind did not wish to detail what happened at the hospital. There were too many casualties, incidents, to talk about. Yet in a strange way, they needed each other. Despite an envy there that Rosalind had carried as a teenager, Monique had brought a vibrancy into their otherwise dreary home, and Rosalind wondered now whether Georg would have come back each summer in the early days if Monique hadn’t been there. She owed her something, she sometimes thought.