The Road Beyond Ruin

by Gemma Liviero

  “I can’t see her yet.” His heart was still aching. He could not look on Teresa’s face, which would remind him so much of his mother.

  Monique nodded. She understood that he was not ready.

  “I will tell her,” she said, and closed the curtain.

  While Monique was cooking dinner, the cries of the baby interrupted her. By the time she came back from checking on her daughter, the vegetables were burned. She served them anyway with pieces of sausage.

  She looked up at him then, an apologetic smile, and he felt a sense of protectiveness, something he thought he would never feel again. And he knew then that it was possible not only to forgive, but to love again as well.

  Present-day 1945

  “Monique said to find her on the way home,” says Stefano, the pain in his head finally easing to some degree. “She knew I was traveling north to join the German army. I did what she asked. She wasn’t there at the river. I was going home regardless. End of story.”

  “No, it is just the beginning. Where did you meet her?”

  “We met in a market in Verona. She was buying vegetables. I was walking through the city on the way to the base military camp nearby. She said she was an awful cook. We met at a café a couple of times. She said that her husband was dead. She gave me this address at the river, and I wondered, since I was going home that way, whether there was something more.”

  “They would have destroyed the photo in the camp. You weren’t allowed any possessions.”

  “The guards weren’t so thorough at the end. They threw all our possessions in a room before they had time to sort or destroy them. Some of us were able to retrieve them later.”

  “Did you sleep with her?”

  “No. It wasn’t like that.”

  “You don’t have to lie. I know she was spying. I can only guess what else she did to retrieve information. I have read her letters. Was she giving information to you?”

  “Why would she do that? What would I have done with it?”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “I was on your side, my Italy. She was not, obviously. She was just as much my enemy as yours. I can see that now.”

  Erich is saying nothing. Perhaps he cannot trust himself; his tone will betray him. He is humiliated, thinks Stefano. This is likely to bring things to a head. It is what he wants, too, Stefano believes, something that will change the conversation drastically, give him reason to act.

  “As I told you, I left when I realized the Axis powers were losing. I did not want to be slaughtered. Resistance members were retaliating against every fascist they could find. I thought it was safer to go north. Germans still believed, some of them anyway, that there was a chance of winning and that they should continue as if they were. But your soldiers fighting in the North had some issues about trust and didn’t want to hear about my allegiances. They imprisoned me for my loyalty, shot me on the march, and the Russians put me back in prison. It was a circus.”

  “And the Russians let you go,” Erich says without cynicism.

  “The Russians are only interested in Nazis. I told them my family lived in the South, that I was forced to fight or die. They understood that. They had much the same directive from Stalin.”

  Erich waits for more.

  “Then I went to the address. That is the end. You know the rest. I care nothing about her. I thought she would make interesting company, but she was, how do you say, superficiale . . . shallow, and there are plenty more out there. From the look of things, it was not meant to be.”

  Stefano can tell that his facial expressions and body language are being studied. He must appear open, naive even, but still guarded. It is obvious that Erich is used to playing mental games, and Stefano must rise to the challenge, remain strong.

  “It is a nice bedtime story, but it is only that. I am used to liars, Stefano. I am used to people who believe they are cleverer than I am. But I believe your intention was to catch me. You were drawing me out, weren’t you, into a trap that you never got to set up. Those Russians came too early, didn’t they?”

  “You may not always be right. Everyone makes bad judgments. You are making one of them now. You obviously made one about your wife—”

  Stefano does not see it coming, the punch to the side of his jaw, and the blade slips from his fingers.

  20 March 1945

  Dearest Papa,

  I only have the briefest time to write to you. With most of Italy now liberated by the Allies, it is only a matter of time before they reach here. But it is becoming even more dangerous for me. Although I have been on their side, helping fight against the Italian regime and the Nazis, I am told that it will not necessarily make me safe. I have a German child, and my husband has been responsible for the capture, interrogation, and ultimate execution of many. I will have to leave here soon.

  Italian soldiers in the street are still saying that Germany and Italy are winning and that Mussolini will reclaim the South. They continue to lie to the people, but I believe my sources.

  My husband sent me a telegram to say he was heading back to Berlin for reasons he didn’t say. It is like that with him always. We have separate lives. He stays near the camp; he stays close to his crimes and comes here sometimes to see Genevieve. A handful of times I have had to attend events with him, to show that he is human perhaps, even though I do not think he is. He is smart, calculating. But he feels nothing for me; that much I can tell. I only hope that if it comes to it, he feels something for Vivi.

  I have helped many through our operations. I have passed information. One man, Cosimo, has been here hiding. I have to say, Papa, that I have never felt anything like I feel for him. He has been here a week now. We have spent so many hours talking. I admire his bravery, his support for the Allies. It is hard to explain love, but the pain in my chest that we will soon be parted, me to Germany and—

  CHAPTER 30

  ERICH

  Stefano sits on the floor, perspiration on his forehead, his lip bleeding. He was not expecting it. That was always the best part of the job for Erich. The surprise, when they did not see a punishment coming, which rids the prisoner of any self-importance.

  There has been only a handful of times where he used such a method on a prisoner. Mostly, he has been a spectator. He left it to others, though later it gave him some satisfaction, some way of releasing a frustration, an anger that grew larger over the war years.

  The last months on the run have at least given him cause to think of the future, to know that all is not lost. That others are there hiding still with the words from Goebbels’s final dedication to the führer ringing in their ears. “We feel him in us, around us.”

  “Why have you brought me here to this,” says Stefano, “if you are so certain I want to kill you? Why didn’t you just kill me when I was tied up in the barn?”

  There is something Erich is going to say, then he changes his mind. He cannot say for sure. First it was to be far away from the Russians in case they returned to the river houses. But now that he reflects, it is Stefano also, he concedes. There is still something about Stefano that attracts him that he cannot admit openly, that he has been fighting to admit, even to himself.

  But this should have been over with. He should have killed him on the first night he found him. He should have known better, trusted those first brief seconds when Erich had seen something fierce and hateful in his eyes before Stefano had time to hide it. Stefano was never on the side of Germany. They are still at war. He can see that now.

  “I needed to know what you are doing, who you are working for. How much you know of people in hiding. It is my job to study people, to know.”

  “It was your job.”

  “You are wrong, Stefano. There are still many of us out there loyal to the führer’s cause, though circumstances have stalled the inevitable. Germany will be strong again one day, and I plan to help make it that way in time.”

  “You should forget that fantasy, go back to your family. Or I c
ould still help you leave Germany through my contact in Italy. I know that is what you were hoping for. We can put this event behind us.”

  “Please spare me your tricks. I know what you are doing, filling me with false hope about your contact that doesn’t exist.”

  Stefano is undeterred.

  “There is no enemy to fight, Erich, no greatness in Germany. We are all equal now, and there is no more war on the horizon. Only the people who matter should be on your mind like they are on mine.”

  And somehow these words reach Erich, and he looks at the marks on the wall near the kitchen. He remembers the day the marks were made. There are names written there, in children’s writing, and a measurement beside each one. Stefano follows his gaze. He sees things quickly, watches for them, like Erich.

  “Was this your house?” asks Stefano, and Erich is thinking then, remembering.

  “Yes,” Erich says, unreserved, wishing suddenly to give Stefano something before he is killed. To make him understand, view the world through his eyes.

  “This is where I grew up. This is where I watched my mother work hard every day and my father design his machines. This was once a place of wonder, now . . .”

  The sounds of the trucks rush through his mind. He had entered the wood, and he knew he could run fast enough to reach the other side before they had left their vehicles. But he stopped because it felt cowardly to leave his mother alone with his younger siblings. I should be there, he thought. He stopped to watch from behind the trees and wait for the trucks to leave. They would find nothing there, no papers linking him or his father. His mother was safe, he thought, and he would return to her.

  And then he had heard the sound of a pistol being fired, the noise from somewhere in the house. He waited in the forest. He heard their loud Russian voices, their boots on the stairs that led to the children’s bedrooms. And then there was laughter and the Russians calling to one another. They left quickly then and climbed back into their trucks. Erich did not wait for them to reach the road but ran through the back door.

  “It was here where I realized that I was on my own to fight. That I would have to survive and start again, but also to keep the hopes of my mother alive—”

  “Not your father?”

  He turns to Stefano. He is thinking he might hit him again because he has reminded him that his father was not like him. They were two very different people, and his father knew this, perhaps had known it all along.

  “My father hated politics and hated being drawn to one side, I realize now. He did not see the world through Germany’s eyes. That was his downfall.”

  Stefano looks away.

  “You don’t believe me.”

  “I find your conclusion confusing,” says Stefano. “It sounds like he knew what was coming before you did.”

  Claudine flashes in his memory.

  “My father had a brilliant mind, but he was emotionally weak. He hanged himself the day that Claudine, my sister, was executed for distributing anti-Nazi leaflets, for turning against us.”

  “You must concede that Hitler led your family and the rest of Germany over a cliff.”

  “Hindsight tells us where we went wrong. It is the case here,” Erich says dryly, refusing to concede anything. “We can learn from it.”

  “And the rest of your family? Did they fail you, too?”

  The words burn because Stefano is getting close to the truth. He looks again at the writing on the wall by his brothers and Claudine, then imagines them dead. Nothing but pencil marks to show they existed.

  “The Russians were looking for me. I was on the Allied list of those wanted for war crimes. And Russian soldiers came to my house just after my mother had told me to run, to disappear. But I didn’t. I stayed nearby. I never planned to leave them. And my mother, thinking that I had gone and not willing to be interrogated or worse by Russian hands, shot my young brothers in the head, then shot herself. The Russians found their bodies first. I heard laughter, and they fired off guns, which sounded celebratory. When I came out from hiding in the wood and returned to the house, I found my mother at the top of the stairs. She was the only one alive.”

  He feels light-headed and sits down. The room feels unbearably close to the dying sun, and the heat through the glass window burns. He hasn’t eaten anything or drunk recently. He is suddenly thirsty.

  “I’m sorry,” says Stefano softly, and Erich feels again a touch of regret at the thought that he will shortly kill the man who, until today, he’d begun to feel an affection for.

  “I have lost family, too,” Stefano says. “I’m not a spy, Erich.”

  He doesn’t like the way he says his name, the intimacy with which he uses it, the way it clouds his judgment.

  “Why does Rosalind hate you so?” asks Stefano.

  He had taken his mother in his arms to Rosalind. He could not take her to the town, not himself. Rosalind had treated her as best she could. He owed her for that.

  “She dislikes everyone.”

  “She hated you because you were in love with her husband,” says Stefano, the softness in his voice gone.

  Erich stands up to move closer, his fist clenched. “Who said that?”

  “She told me.”

  “Monique?”

  “Rosalind.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Last night she told me.”

  Erich is remembering Georg. Damaged now. Not the man he was before, tall, beautiful, arresting. A magnet for women, he remembers, when they first met, and jealous of those who looked at him.

  His fist lands in Stefano’s face, but Stefano’s arm is suddenly thrust forward, and in the moment of confusion, Erich does not see the thin strip of steel that suddenly wraps around his neck. He feels a pinch of his skin and then something sharp cutting into his throat, tighter and twisting, forcing him backward and down to the floor. He reaches both hands for the weapon he can’t see at his neck, struggling to get his fingers beneath it to free himself. His feet slip from under him, and he is in Stefano’s lap, and he reaches up behind himself, one hand to grab Stefano’s wrist, the other to claw at his face. The wire is tightened again, and he can no longer breathe.

  There are sounds that he realizes are coming from him, strange gargling noises. He kicks out suddenly with his legs and scratches at only air now, grabbing on to life.

  And then looking up behind him, he sees Stefano’s face, the burning sensation of his gaze. As the room begins to fade around him, Erich sees that the bracelet of finely woven silver is missing from Stefano’s wrist.

  March 1945

  He ordered the execution of the last of the partisans who had been kept in the cells. They had already been tortured over several weeks, and the SS had gleaned nothing. The prisoners had not broken.

  He was only ever there for the questioning. When they no longer answered his questions, he sat for light torture methods—breaking of fingers, threats of hanging, and water. The other methods came later, when he was no longer in the room. He left it to others to break the prisoners. It could take hours, days. He did not wish to witness the last moments of their lives.

  But there were more important issues to deal with. Personal ones. It was pointless sitting there waiting for an uprising. He could smell it in the air; he could smell the fear from his own men, the nervous excitement of the prisoners in previous days.

  Like a tidal wave, the Russians had washed over former German strongholds, had crossed the border of Germany, and were breaking apart the country to get to Berlin. He could see the end, they all could, but any Germans or Italians who admitted this, who took the time to speculate, were shot. He could see the fearful silence in the faces of the civilians also.

  He looked across the yard at some labor prisoners pushing a trolley full of coal to warm the officers. The faces of these prisoners looked so shrunken, flesh starved of sustenance, until they were no longer distinguishable from one another. When they had been lined up for inspection, a job that was harder than
it looked, they no longer resembled people, he thought.

  He stared at the piece of paper in front of him. It was a single piece of information taken by one of his enforcers during an interrogation elsewhere, information that had come to hand from the interrogations of women, relatives of the active resistance. He had been given an address of a safe house, at his own address in Verona.

  He was thinking of everything Monique had said to him, all the times she had lied, pretended that she was content, all the while betraying him. She was not bound by blood or love, but she had a duty like all German women, and this betrayal had the potential to humiliate him in the worst possible way. The war might soon be lost, but he wanted to leave at least without dishonor, without being stripped of his rank for failing to see the enemy that had been in front of him all this time.

  He knew the German propaganda—that Germany would still win the war—was false. He did not believe in hope. Italy was about to crumble, and he would not wait around to see it.

  He called in his lieutenant, who viewed him cautiously.

  He knows, thought Erich. The descriptions of Noelle, her cover name, and the child; everything matched. And he felt a fool. He was renowned for getting under the skin of others, for finding out things without torture. He put people at ease, but at the same time they were scared of the control, of his calm, of the paradox of his cold stare and amiable tone. Yet there he sat, a subject of humiliation.

  She had wronged him, and there would be consequences.

  On his desk was a list of offensives and military placements, which included Georg’s unit. Erich would find his old friend one last time near the front lines.