The Road Beyond Ruin

by Gemma Liviero

  “Where’s Claud?”

  “She is at Ovid’s house,” his mother answered, in a tone that sounded accusing rather than informative. She had known it, too. That Claudine had become more difficult. She refused to work and disappeared for days at a time. She argued with her mother about small things, about the raising of the children. But mostly she was ungrateful for the new Germany.

  His mother ladled some broth into a bowl for him. He reluctantly sat to eat, but his mind was elsewhere.

  His father couldn’t be there tonight, his mother explained. He was rarely home early, and when he was, he was exhausted. He was a consultant now, an important one, said his mother, though Erich already knew this. Knew that he traveled with the führer and his inner circle. Like sheep that never quite know the direction, his father quipped once, and Erich had not at the time recognized the growing resentment.

  His brothers were chatty. He was not in the mood to hear about their day. He was only thinking about Claudine and containing his anger.

  He didn’t finish his dinner but pushed back his chair to leave. His mother nodded. She understood that sometimes things couldn’t wait. That he must do what he had to. She respected the duty and pressure that fell on him.

  It wasn’t a short walk to Ovid’s house, but he welcomed the time to think. He knocked on the door, and Ovid’s father answered. He held the door only partway open. His expressionless face was less than welcoming. He had never liked Erich.

  “Is my sister here?” Erich asked, dismissing any formalities or politeness.

  “You will have to wait outside.” The older man shut the door, and Erich watched his shadow disappear through the obscuring bubbled-glass panel on the top half of the door.

  It was an insult to someone as highly placed as Erich. He could have easily reported the man for disrespect toward an officer, but the older man was not the target of Erich’s anger.

  Claudine opened the door and stepped outside, wearing a light blouse and skirt. She wrapped her arms around herself protectively, not from the cold but from the confrontation that was about to occur, her expression belligerent. The absence of her coat meant she was not planning to talk for long.

  Despite the animosity between them whenever he first saw her, he would always remember the days in the country, her fearlessness, the times she hated their separation, how she had cried when he would leave for youth camps. It was hard to believe they were once close, but he could not afford to dwell on such times. There was the job he must do.

  “Why are you here?” she asked.

  “I went to the apartment of your university friends. I know what you have been doing.”

  “What is that?”

  “You have been distributing pamphlets siding with anarchy. You have been drawing pictures that belittle our führer. Childish! You and your group . . . It has to stop!”

  “Ovid is not involved.”

  “I know that’s a lie. I would have had your friends arrested and spared you and your boyfriend, and not been here tonight, but you have forced this meeting. Even before I was given the commission to seek out the distributors of such lies, I had seen you both go to meetings at places that had been investigated before.”

  “And what are you going to do about it? Tell on me?” she said with feigned bemusement. He recognized the familiar grin that was once genial, that he had once warmed to, but which now meant opposition.

  “Yes. If it comes to that, I will. First, though, I will tell Father. He must be included to make decisions here.”

  “Go ahead. He knows what I am doing. He doesn’t care. Mother is like you! Brainwashed!”

  He was angry at the mention of their mother, at the lack of respect. The words about their father fell quickly to the back of his thoughts. He dismissed them. His sister always had a vivid imagination, the gift of storytelling, or lying. It was hard to tell the difference sometimes.

  She looked back up the road. It was an area heavily populated with students in accommodations not of wealth. Most houses there were small, with modest furnishings. Claudine liked it better there, she once said. She liked not having furnishings that had been stolen from those put in prisons. She could live with herself better.

  She looked down at the cobblestones, which were shiny and black from a light rain.

  “You have always wanted to control people and what they think. You can’t control everyone, Erich. You can’t control me.”

  “My dear sister, that is where you are wrong. I have the power to control you and stop your friends from illegal practices. If you continue, I will interrogate all the printers, all the teachers and students at your university, until someone reveals the ringleader of this madness and false propaganda.”

  She shifted then. He had her attention. Her face took on the fierceness of a lioness. It was funny to Erich how he could face men, large and hostile when interrogated, but who never rattled him. It had only ever been Claudine whom he was somewhat afraid of. It was perhaps the thought that he couldn’t control her. Despite everything she was given, despite being on the winning side, she was freely making a choice; something that most had accepted was no longer available to them. He had always admired her courage, but he despised her disloyalty.

  He decided to take a softer tone.

  “Claud, I don’t want to report you. You’re my sister.”

  “Then don’t. I will not stop doing this. What Hitler is doing is wrong. What this country has become is unrecognizable.”

  “How would you even know? You were too young to take any political side when Hitler was voted in. Too young to see any change at all.”

  “I see things more clearly than you. I see the truth, my dear brother. I see the people who are now locked up in prison, intelligent human beings, Erich. Locked up because they either were Jewish or had their own opinion. Harassed, shamed, and persecuted for having one that does not suit the Nazi order. You are too wrapped up in your own seniority to see the damage, Brother, the lies.”

  “I see disloyalty by my sister. You have brought a very bad mark on this family if this gets out.”

  “Hitler has made a very bad mark on this country,” she says. “First your wife, now me. How will you ever control these women? Her story is still being told in underground circles. It still brings a smile to our faces.”

  He did not like that she brought this up. It was humiliating that she talked about the incident with others, and he resented being reminded about Monique’s past. Things had gone from bad to worse between Erich and his wife.

  The two women had seen each other rarely when they had lived in Berlin, but on the occasions that they did, they would gravitate to each other. Claudine had admired Monique when she revealed her experience of storming into the Gestapo’s office. Erich had later chastised Monique about mentioning the incident. But his sister had refused to let it go, retelling the story at every opportunity. Even this far away from Berlin, Monique was still a bad influence.

  Claudine crossed her arms. He felt himself weakening. For the first time he felt trapped.

  “Please, Claud! Stop all this, and I won’t say anything.”

  “You can do as you please, but I will not stop.”

  “Then I will have you arrested.”

  “If you can find me.”

  His heart felt suddenly heavy. The wind was spiked with cold needles, but he was sweating underneath his coat. “Come home where we will talk some more.”

  “Don’t you see, Erich? I’m not coming home. I can’t. Not now. Not ever. You should not have followed me here.”

  “It will kill Mama if you don’t come home.”

  “I know you are lying. She hopes I don’t come home. She does whatever it is that this Germany wants from her. We both know that. But you are not a true Nazi, are you, Erich? I wonder what Herr Führer would do if he knew what is hidden there beneath the uniform?”

  The last piece was spoken cruelly.

  “What are you saying?” he said.

  “I kn
ow you, Erich. Everyone thinks you were doing Monique a favor, but I know the real reason you married Monique. There had to be something else in it for you.”

  He was cornered and confused by her words that held more animosity than she had ever used on him before. He went to speak, and then stopped. Ovid had come outside, carrying a suitcase, and Claudine’s attention was diverted as he helped her into a coat he brought also.

  “If you touch a hair on the heads of Ovid’s family once I’m gone, I swear that I will despise you forever.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Goodbye, Erich! Don’t come for me.”

  “You will be sorry, Claudine! If it isn’t me that catches you, someone else will. I won’t be able to stop them.”

  She laughed then, short and brittle.

  “By all means come looking, I challenge you, but it is my wish that you never see me again. I loved you once, looked up to you. But I stopped loving you the moment you put on your Nazi suit.”

  As she walked away into the night, he yelled in her direction, but it sounded foolish even to his ears. He could not afford to lose control. He watched her vanish and felt a moment of bereavement. For the first time he questioned himself. She had made him do that.

  The next day he went to see his father at the Berlin office to tell him about Claudine, to seek his advice. If it had been anyone but Claudine, he would have ordered them searched for and arrested without any further consultation.

  His father seemed neither alarmed nor surprised.

  “So be it. She is gone.”

  “Your daughter is a traitor, Father!” he hissed. “And something has to be done!”

  “And what are you planning then, Erich?” he said, challenging him.

  Erich did not know how to answer. He knew what he had to do, but it was difficult to say it aloud, to talk about his sister this way.

  “I have lost my only daughter, Erich, and she has lost a family. I think that is enough punishment.”

  He was protecting the daughter he loved more than anything, and in that moment something else became clear.

  “It was you who tipped her off so she could warn her friends!”

  “What does it matter now?” he said, defeated. “What good have I done?”

  “I must relieve myself of this case,” said Erich, shocked by the admission. “I must send someone to find her.”

  “And what do you think will happen when they do? You have control of this, Erich, and I trust that you will make the right decision.”

  Erich looked at his father, at the red rims and saggy flesh below his eyes. He was not the same man, he thought. He appeared frail, less important suddenly.

  “I lost her years ago,” said Horst. “I saw it in her face, and it has always made me ashamed. Ashamed that one so young could see things long before me.”

  Erich was lost for words, wondering what he had missed about the pair of them. He decided then he could no longer seek advice from his father.

  There was only one course. He would need to report her. She must go on the wanted list. And it would undoubtedly bring shame to the family, but it would prove that not even blood would stop him from becoming the best he could be. His loyalty would never be in doubt.

  Present-day 1945

  Erich returns to Georg’s house. He does not want to come back if he can help it. There are traces of him here still that he must get rid of. He opens the door below the stairs to see the box of Monique’s letters.

  The letters are enclosed, but there is something different about them. The ribbon that holds them is not tied as tightly as he remembers, the letters not evenly together, as they were. Someone has touched them. It is unlikely to be Rosalind, since she would sooner burn the house down than enter it, or Georg, who is aware of so little.

  He puts the letters in the fireplace and with matches sets them on fire. He should have destroyed them sooner. Monique had hidden them there, and he had found them. He is not sure why he kept them, perhaps to remind him of her treachery, justification that led to what he did.

  Outside the front door, he looks across at Rosalind’s house.

  There is nothing there for him anymore. He and Stefano had made a connection. An unspoken alliance, or so he thought. But they are not the same after all.

  And there is something about the day that feels wrong. Stefano still in Germany, Michal, an orphan randomly plucked off the side of the road and brought here, Rosalind in Stefano’s arms, and Erich here, away from the people that matter. Everything is shifted, and no one is where they should be.

  He looks up the hill and beyond that to a tall clump of trees that blocks the morning sun, and he heads that way, past the small grave of Rosalind’s baby, until he reaches Monique and sees the mound of earth that has been disturbed by the rain, and small piles of earth clumped around the grave. He would not have left it so untidy. He would have cleared every last grain of loose soil. And then he sees it in the trees, a piece of color, of stripes, faded gold and blue, billowing in the breeze, haughtily, taunting him. He walks toward it, to the curtain, and sees the dark stains that litter the cloth as if by the flick of a paintbrush, a work of art on display.

  He turns back to the earth and with his hands digs at the soil, compacted now with water, but he doesn’t care that his pants are covered in soil, that his arms are stained and streaked with black earth, and he digs down and down, and there is nothing, no body, no Monique.

  He senses danger.

  Vehicles sound in the distance, the revving of their motors sounding urgent with the speed at which they are coming. From the ridge, he can see them faintly in the distance. He remembers the time that trucks came to his house; there was urgency then also.

  He is tempted to dig up the tin, but there is no time; he cannot afford to be caught with the documents if his suspicion is correct. He will have to come back for them later. First, he must return to the town, to Genevieve, to his mother, and then he will return to deal with things here.

  CHAPTER 23

  STEFANO

  Stefano can smell a faint odor of smoke mixed with the citrusy scent of Rosalind’s hair. He can feel her slender body beneath the light robe. She had trusted him, and yet it was a trust that he wasn’t expecting and did not want. So many people trusted him, and it is a weight of responsibility he now finds hard to bear. During the war, the responsibility of caring for those he loved had proved too great.

  He climbs out of bed, careful not to disturb her, checks the watch in his bag before spying Erich through the curtain. He is standing at the front of the other house looking toward the woods before turning briefly to look at Rosalind’s, in the direction of her room. Stefano puts up his hand, but Erich does not acknowledge him, instead turning toward the track that will take him back to the town.

  Stefano must stop him. He must bring him back. He wonders now if Erich saw him with Rosalind, if he has got the wrong idea.

  He throws his satchel over his shoulder and opens the door to hurry toward Erich, but Georg appears, blocking the doorway. He is like a cat, prowling in the night but always returning to be fed. It is perhaps by instinct now, and that likely saved him from doing anything final. But he looks crazed, as if he could still do something dangerous. He is shivering, but not from his damp clothes. He is falling from a great height, coming down from drugs.

  Not now, thinks Stefano. He must get Erich.

  “Georg,” he says, “I told you to stay there until I came.”

  But Georg bangs his head on the doorframe, and Rosalind now stands behind Stefano, disturbed from her sleep. They watch Georg fall to the ground in front of them.

  Stefano looks toward the track through the window by the door, but Erich is no longer in view. He helps Rosalind carry Georg to the couch, and Rosalind disappears into her bedroom, to find the drug that will sedate him, that will send his mind to ignorant bliss.

  “I tried to find her, but I couldn’t,” Georg says.

  Stefano doesn’t ask. He alread
y knows.

  There is a part of Georg that is still there, strong and able, the part of the brain that stubbornly won’t let go of life. It is filled with memories, vivid ones that drown out the silent functioning ones, the result of his brain injury combined with the sickness from the drug. It is hard to tell the extent of the damage, what he is really like beneath the chemicals.

  “I’m sorry you can’t find her,” says Stefano, trying to pacify him, but preoccupied with other thoughts. He has lost his only chance with Erich. He has failed.

  There is red and purple bruising on the top of Georg’s cheekbone from the fight the previous evening, and he turns his bright yellow-green eyes, boyish and innocent, on Stefano.

  The gaze falters, and Georg grabs at his head suddenly. He is tortured, Stefano realizes. He cannot unblock whatever it is that stands between his rational mind and the blurred world that has taken over.

  January 1944

  He had convinced his mother to go south with Nina and the baby, but his older sister refused to leave. Teresa felt it disloyal to be anywhere else but with Serafina and Enzo in northern Italy.

  It was the night before his family would leave for their old house in Amalfi, and after they were dispatched, Stefano would go north to help the resistance. His mother knew nothing of his resistance plans. Nina would reveal them only once they were safely stationed in the South. His mother would not leave if she thought he wasn’t following quickly. Since the war started, lying had grown easier.

  He met Teresa at their mother’s house, and when informed of the plan, she had looked at him with disbelief, before trying to talk him out of it. She had argued that his loyalties were wrong, that to unify Italy again they must stay on the winning side. That people were probably watching them. But she did agree, in spite of her dislike for the South—an opinion she had taken from her aunt and uncle—and in view of her sister’s and mother’s safety, and Nina’s closeness to Stefano, that it would be in their interest to leave. Even Teresa did not like that threats to family members of the resistance were a tactic the Nazis were using to lure back any resistance members who had found sanctuary elsewhere. There were instances of family members already killed by the time the underground fighters turned themselves in.