She felt a kick in her growing belly, disguised by her loosely tied apron. More than ever she knew that she must take care of herself now, and the baby, until she and Georg were reunited. She had not had any contact with her parents since Christmas, a gradual estrangement on both sides as her parents grew more distant, despairing of times ahead and watching their friends and neighbors leave the city. Long before that, to avoid the travel, Rosalind had moved into shared nurses’ accommodations nearer the hospital, and she’d not been home since the deluge of battle-wounded soldiers and civilian casualties from Allied bombings began. Her parents were unaware she was carrying Georg’s baby, and she felt the sudden need to tell them her secret. She had written Georg the news but was unsure whether her letters had got through to him. She’d not heard back from him in months.
Rosalind took another morphine tube and emptied it into one of the patients, until he was completely at peace, and she suddenly knew why she was in the job now. It had been leading to this day. She was doing what was expected of her: destroying those who were no longer useful to the Reich.
And then she moved on to the next one, a soldier with a bandage to his stomach and his face burned beyond recognition. He begged for help, his eyes unusually bright beneath the black and swollen flesh, and she placed the tip of the needle into a piece of undamaged flesh in his neck, and he looked grateful even before she squeezed the tube. She did this twice more for him until the moaning stopped, and then there were no more calls for help. Her job completed, she was then free to go. Unaware of what had just occurred, a senior nurse walked into the room and directed Rosalind to start wheeling out the men on their trolleys. As though in a trance, she walked past the woman, ignoring her supervisor’s continued calls, and Rosalind lifted her apron over her head and discarded it at the front of the hospital. The woman’s voice was drowned out by a piercing whistling from behind her, and the crashing of bricks and plaster followed. The ground shook and groaned. Rosalind lost her balance briefly, then walked from the hospital grounds, the sounds of sirens suddenly silent, replaced by shrieks and the distant rattling roar of tanks. She would make it by luck alone, she thought as earsplitting gunfire filled the sky, returned with gold-and-green fire elsewhere.
Rosalind caught a transport vehicle for part of the way and covered the rest on foot. People were fleeing central Berlin, but Rosalind, determined now, strode toward it, toward her home. Mortar bombs dropped close by, and the blasts sent debris in her direction, the earth rumbling and causing her to stumble and reach protectively for the front of her stomach. People screamed nearby and someone white and red was carried in the arms of another. “Are you a nurse?” someone shrieked at her, and then louder as if she were deaf, but she kept walking. Closer to home, she could see familiar streets ahead while the landscape looked strange, missing the height, with buildings shrunken and shattered, and great gaps appearing. She could see into the parklands behind. Small fires were burning, and people pulled at arms poking through from the rubble as she walked to where her house once stood.
“Where are they?” she asked a person standing by, in a deadpan voice.
The voice replied, much like her own, telling her there were no survivors. “All gone,” said the woman as Rosalind stumbled across the remains of her house, her parents dead and crushed within the red bricks piled recklessly on top of one another. The only thing that resembled something from her past was a window frame, the one from her bedroom. She was too weary to feel anything and strangely disconnected with the house remains, as if she had left nothing of herself there to damage. And there was no time to grieve for her parents, for the past, for anyone. She and the child, and Georg, who must find her somehow, were all that mattered then.
Someone shouted to her that the Russians had entered the city, and she followed a group of strangers urgently through the streets. Several people disappeared inside buildings until only she and one other remained. Rosalind ran fast despite the pregnancy. It wasn’t her life that was at stake here but Georg’s child, who she must protect at all costs. A girl, a few years younger, pretty, with hair braided on top of her head, clung suddenly to her arm, seemed to think that Rosalind would lead her from danger. There was no time for introductions as they weaved through devastation. People bloodied and covered with white dust and the crumbled and fiery remains of buildings were a familiar sight at every turn.
The stranger followed Rosalind southwest of the city, where she had entered earlier, and where others were fleeing to, but the shouts in Russian from all directions hindered any escape. The pair ran into an apartment building, first to the basement where it was overcrowded with people avoiding the shelling, and then up several flights of stairs, checking doors until they found one that was unlocked and empty. From the window, they watched the city dissolve under a blanket of dove-gray smoke, and hoped the building would still be standing by morning. There were no more strident voices on the radio to promise a better Germany, just the sounds of artillery fire, which lasted throughout the night.
As light approached morning, shellfire, which by then had been relentless for days, came to a dead end, and the eerie stillness that remained for several hours became even more unnerving. Sporadic sniper shots, short exchanges of gunfire, and terse Russian voices finally broke the silence. Then in the hours after that, amid the dust and smoke and smells of Berlin burning, there were the cries of the wounded, an occasional single gunshot, and more Russian shouts. Trucks and tanks groaned through the streets, avoiding the rubble of bricks that littered the streets but not always avoiding the unclaimed dead Germans who had fallen there.
The girl eventually stopped sobbing of her own accord, Rosalind being too tired to try and console her. She had her own life to think of. She had done her part for Germany, and she had now resigned. The quiet weeping of the girl did not evoke feelings of pity, but rather it grated on her already threadbare nerves. Rosalind had lost one of her shoes in the scramble of the building blasts and the sudden scattering of terrified Germans, and she had kicked off the other one. From sharp broken fragments, her feet were torn and bleeding, her uniform streaked with old blood and ash.
The girl, whose name Rosalind couldn’t remember, began sobbing once more while she reported the scenes on the street below: old men and young boys pulled from their homes and shot by Russian soldiers. Rosalind listened, imagined the horror on their faces, and at one point could hear the pleading.
Seized finally by sleep, she dreamed of her parents stepping out of the rubble, then woke abruptly to several rounds of bullets tapping at their building and the crashing of doors below them as they were kicked open.
“We have to get out of here!” said Rosalind, feverishly alert again, the girl woken also and dazed, the night returned. “We must make it to the west of the city.” The door of the apartment was smashed in before they had a chance to move. Firing bullets into the air as they entered, two soldiers shone torchlights into their faces. Behind their lights they were faceless, and only their helmets and their voices told her that the Russian reign had begun.
Women screamed from another floor, and a child began shrieking, the noises spiraling upward through the stairwell.
Adjusting to the light, Rosalind could see the men better now, aware of the fury and brutality of their gazes. The older one walked around them, kicking at chairs and smashing in cupboards, and mindlessly knocking over a dresser containing china and glass in what seemed an aimless search.
“Are you Nazis?” the older soldier shouted at Rosalind in German.
She was thinking of her parents. They had likely died quickly at least. And she would die slowly.
“Nazis are gone!” said the young girl desperately, in place of Rosalind, whose voice had frozen.
The soldier repeated this in Russian to his younger comrade. “Natsistov net.”
The younger one then lifted the young girl up from the floor and pushed her toward the back of the unit.
“No, no!” she shouted. “Please .
. .”
The young girl was then dragged forcibly out of sight. Rosalind saw this peripherally, her eyes barely leaving those of the soldier who had addressed her. The young girl’s begging turned to screams in a room behind her.
Rosalind could feel the baby kicking again, as if he were part of the fight. As if he were eager to help her.
The soldier looked at the bump in front of her, exposed now without the apron. He had wide and slightly crooked lips, but the yellow eyes, under the meager light in the center of the room, were what she remembered most.
There were only muffled protests then from the room behind them, and a kind of whine that dogs make when they’re left alone.
“Ubiraysya!” he said.
At first she wasn’t sure if she understood, but he pointed the rifle toward the door.
“Get out!”
She wondered if it was a trick and he would shoot her in the back. There was little choice. She stood up and walked from the room, counting the seconds as she did this.
She walked steadily down the darkened stairs and did not turn her head once to look through open doorways. She stayed close to buildings in the dark, tripping on broken things, and headed to the southern part of the city. She saw that there were others escaping the city, too, while Russians were otherwise occupied with revenge.
Rosalind was going home to the river. There was nowhere else now. Berlin would shortly fall, and the past lives she helped save had counted for nothing.
Present-day 1945
Stefano holds her on the sofa. She is sobbing, and Georg’s blood is on her hands. Events from the previous evening are blurred. She remembers Stefano carrying her inside, remembers clearly her own ghoulish appearance in the bathroom mirror, but before that, at the river, there are only patches: images of Georg’s hateful expression, the cold water, and painful, crushing hands around her neck.
“You must stay here,” Stefano says in his odd accent, the words soft and lazier now, less German.
“I will go tomorrow and see if he is all right,” he says. “They will put him in the hospital, but just give it time for things to die down.”
“What do you mean?”
“The Russians reacted; they thought they were being attacked. But they have promised me they will look after him.”
“You speak Russian,” she says, suddenly remembering.
“Enough to make it this far,” he says, and she wonders what he means by that. Something about the words he used sounded familiar. When Georg ran out of the door, Stefano shouted something else apart from “Stop.” She wants to ask him about it, but her thoughts are still frantic. She is thinking of Georg in the back of the truck, wondering if someone is stopping the bleeding, or if they have killed him, because it is easier. She should be there with him. She knows what to do. She stands to move away, but he pulls her back down to the sofa and puts his arm around her again.
“Georg will say things he shouldn’t. He will tell them he killed Russians, and that he wants to kill again. They will put him in prison.”
“He will be safe,” Stefano says, as if certain. She wants to ask him why he is so sure, and why he is going into the town and not talking about leaving on the train.
She lies sideways on the sofa, and Stefano gets her some water. Monique hangs crooked on the wall. The portrait has been removed in a rush, then replaced. Stefano comes back beside her and is rubbing her back; he is good at taking care of people, but she does not want him touching her. Not anymore. She is being punished, she thinks, for turning her attentions from Georg, for thinking only of herself. And she can see the truth now. That Stefano is not who he says he is.
CHAPTER 25
ERICH
Erich wonders if his instincts are failing him. He misjudged Stefano. The sight of him with Rosalind, someone Erich has grown to detest, makes Erich feel deceived. Perhaps it was merely something a man has to do, something Erich himself has done. But the disturbed grave, he feels, is more than just a coincidence. If Monique was found, then Erich might also be found.
He walks to the pharmacist. It is too early yet to be open. He rings a buzzer at the door. Elias comes to the door in an undershirt and trousers, white chest hair showing, surly, until he sees who it is; then his shoulders seem to widen, and he becomes attentive.
“Come in,” says Elias, then locks the door behind Erich. He is more wary and formal with Erich than he is with his other customers.
He reaches behind the counter, takes out a package, and passes it to Erich. The package is smaller than usual. Elias can see that Erich notices this.
“Things are getting harder to come by,” he says. “Is your daughter improving?”
“She will survive.”
“And the other one, the soldier?” He is referring to Georg.
Erich pauses. “I will need more of the other, too.”
“I’m not sure I can supply that for much longer,” Elias says, and this time he doesn’t look at Erich. Elias’s manner is different from usual. He keeps moving his hands around the counter nervously, looking for places to land them on.
“We no longer have access to the original manufacturer, and the stolen supplies are all dried up,” he continues. “Our underground chemists have had to improvise as you know, and these drugs are not as reliable as they were . . . Everything is getting harder to source.”
Erich says nothing. Yesterday this would have bothered him slightly. Today it is unacceptable. And Elias, who has read the silence, recognizes this also.
“You must give me a week,” he says.
Erich nods, takes the medicine for Vivi, and motions to leave.
“I should tell you that my wife said a stranger came in several days ago when I was collecting supplies,” says Elias suddenly. “She only just told me because she didn’t think it was important. The stranger asked her if there were any new faces in town. She said only his, and he thought that amusing.”
“Can I speak to her?”
“She isn’t here,” he says, looking briefly to the side of him. He is lying.
“Was he Russian?”
“He spoke German well, but she said there was an accent.”
“What did he look like?”
“Tall. Dark hair. She had not seen him before. He looked like a farmer, a laborer, and he wore a silver bracelet. She told him that he shouldn’t wear it. Criminals will cut off his hand before they ask him to hand it over.”
Erich says nothing. He waits for more because he can tell there is still something to come, and Elias is reluctant to speak, perhaps because he is afraid of Erich. Elias has heard things from others about the work he used to do.
“He also asked about a child. He said he had lost a small child with light-colored hair. He also asked if there are places for orphans. When he left, my wife said there was a little boy waiting for him outside.”
Erich feels the blood pumping hard through his body and coldness at the back of his neck, the same feeling he had when he returned to his home in the country for the last time. He is convinced more than ever now that the vehicles he saw earlier were coming for him.
“He sounds harmless,” says Elias, unconvincingly, his voice brittle and his expression blank and insincere. “I think his questions were harmless. I don’t think there was anything in it, but I thought I should mention it to you.”
“What else was he doing here?”
“He asked if we had any painkillers. She told him we did not. And then he left.”
Erich looks to the doorway behind him. He knows what he must do.
“I need something else from you.”
Elias looks over Erich’s shoulder to the street, wishes him gone.
He has turned, thinks Erich. He has become weak, afraid to fight, like so many others now.
“What is it?” Elias asks.
“A liquid opiate. Something stronger than before.”
1943–1944
Erich had located most of the remaining Jews hiding across Austria in
the first few months of his commission. His work since had been to interrogate prisoners at camps, gleaning information about the location of other undesirables, and those who resisted the government. Though the travel was tiring, the position itself had become soft. He still held a small hope that he would be sent to war, to command one of the tanks his father had helped design. But he was convinced that his father had somehow thwarted his plans. That he had kept him away from the front lines.
“You are not a soldier, Erich,” said his father more recently, when Erich had put forward the suggestion. “You are merely an enforcer, who must do whatever he is told to do. You no longer have control over your own thoughts. But I can tell you it is not what I wanted for you.”
Monique made continual reminders to him to search for her father. Reminders of her continued quest to find him. Erich had not told her the truth. There were some things she didn’t need to know.
Upon various inquiries, Erich eventually received a list of detainees from a prison outside Vienna. It was a better prison than most, and he was taken directly to the holding cell. The place smelled of disinfectant, but it didn’t mask the smell of defecation. Some of the prisoners had taken to shitting on the floor in protest. They had been punished, their faces pummeled, their noses rubbed in their own excrement. As yet, Erich had not personally enacted such punishments at the larger camps he frequented. And at the end of a day of interrogations, his uniform never looked worn, the labor of the tasks assigned to someone else. But this visit was different. He was not here to interrogate, but merely to observe in a prison not manned by Hitler’s men.
The man he had come to see had been ill for some time, Erich was advised, as he was led to a cell that held a single prisoner. The air was warm, which only heightened the stench of bodily fluids along with the staleness of flesh and clothes that had not seen air and sun for many months. Many prisoners had been there for a long time, and Erich had to wonder why they weren’t just sent to the labor camps. This was something he would investigate further once more pressing tasks were done.
The Road Beyond Ruin Page 27