Monique, twelve years old, a small face lost in a large mass of dark curls, fists in and out of her eyes, emitting sounds like those of a lonely puppy. Yvonne stood beside Monique, holding her hand and staring at Rosalind under rows of lines and invisible brows, agitated, angry, or disappointed. Rosalind couldn’t be sure exactly which. Her mother was difficult to understand and never good at conflict, or anything that took her away from herself. And that day, it was up to Rosalind to rescue her mother. “Children” were a territory Yvonne preferred not to understand, once confiding to her daughter that she had never planned on any at all.
Rosalind’s father, Max, she believed was somewhat happier at his daughter’s arrival. Rosalind was a good girl, he said often, when she showed him her schoolwork, and these words would come to be highly prized by Rosalind when he came home from a shift on the trams. There was nothing of great substance in the relationship with her father, just more an understanding that she was part of the same enduring grind, attached, the three of them, by the ties of birth.
Why her mother had seemed so bitter at times, Rosalind never really considered, until Monique brought it up when they were some years older. She concluded that there were those who were born with a frown and those born with a smile. And a little after that, Rosalind would realize that she was born with a frown also, that one’s nature was difficult to alter.
“Do you want to see my room?” Rosalind asked her younger cousin, whom she’d not met before that day. She was surprised that Monique could still hear her through the whimpering that had risen to more of a howl. In Rosalind’s bedroom at the back of the house, Monique sat on the spare bed.
“I’m sorry about your parents,” said Rosalind. “They will come back, and you can go home again soon, I am certain.” Monique’s crying lessened, the volume lowering. “Sometimes people only go to prison for a short time.”
But it would prove to be untrue. The incarceration of her parents in Austria, where Monique was from, was permanent. The new government had been imprisoning those who openly opposed the regime, and Gustav and Ada, Monique’s father and mother, were two of them. To add to their crime of dissidence, they were caught helping funnel other objectors out of the country.
Monique at first was seen as an infiltrator, another mouth to feed, and someone who brought with her an undesirable amount of noise. But the silent grudge that Rosalind’s parents held toward their niece slowly disintegrated over time, and they would come to appreciate Monique’s bright personality and lust for life, and her ability to remain herself, untouchable, despite the chaos that Berlin was entering. She would prove a welcome distraction from the gray.
Two years separated the cousins, and Rosalind, who at first liked the idea of looking after Monique, of taking control of her, of shaping someone of her own, quickly realized that her younger cousin needed little nurture.
Her parents’ acceptance of the new situation and Monique’s strength and independence seemed, to Rosalind, to highlight the differences between the two girls, an observation that led her to feel, sometimes, less than. But it was not until the first riverside summer together, with Georg, that Rosalind’s resentment of Monique really began to take hold.
Present-day 1945
Two geese rush toward the grain that Rosalind scatters to the ground. It is a treat that she gives them every so often, in place of the grass she collects from the empty paddocks across the road. Her intention was to breed geese, like her grandmother did, to expand the goose farm. Her grandmother had many geese once and wasted no part of the birds, the flesh and the fat for consuming, and feathers for stuffing linen.
Only these two were here when she arrived after Berlin was taken. The others were likely stolen, the gate to their pen broken, palings taken also. The pair, with their wings clipped, had somehow managed to stay hidden in the woods, and she had repaired the fence and restored their home. More recently she welcomed the connection she had with these two interesting white females. As if their survival had not been a coincidence. As if they had been spared to await her return.
At the back of the enclosure is a small shelter for the geese, and inside here she discovers a miracle. The geese did not lay any eggs over the spring, but inside are two, side by side, as if they conspired, as if they thought of her. She picks up the eggs, kisses each of them, amazed at the size.
“Thank you,” she says to the geese as she passes, placing their offerings in the bucket that she used to carry the grain. She has not eaten any eggs for weeks. When there are chicken eggs at the market, they are overpriced to compensate for the Russian military that expects them for free. With these precious deliveries, Rosalind is imagining making an omelet for Georg with the remainder of the bacon and the peas she has stored and used sparingly.
The sudden crunching of gravel alerts her to visitors, and a motor vehicle makes its way toward her, stopping in front of the house and several yards from the pen. The roofless vehicle idles as two Russian soldiers discuss something between themselves, one of them watching her carefully. She waits, her heart beating fiercely against the walls of her chest. There is no point walking to the door of the house, nor does she trust her legs to walk close to the car. This is the third time soldiers have come here since she returned from Berlin. The first was to search for German soldiers, the second time to inspect the property and the vegetables she grows behind the house.
She bites down hard so that they do not see her lips tremble, and she steps forward. One of them, the passenger, alights from the vehicle. The driver stays in, engine idling, revving occasionally. It is a good sign at least. They do not intend to stay long.
The soldier stops just short of the pen and waves her forward. Rosalind opens the gate and moves close enough to see that his fingernails are clean. He is young and handsome, possibly even younger than her, with dark hair and lashes, and light-brown eyes. His uniform is a light-tan color, with baggy trousers tucked into boots. He wears a small cap that has a small red badge.
“Geese,” he says slowly, in German, pointing behind her to the pen.
“I only have two.”
“We take.”
“But they are laying eggs.”
He looks at her briefly, then turns to the other soldier in the car. He says something in Russian. The other one barks back.
“When finish, you give,” says the young interpreter.
She nods, thinking it is now the end of the conversation, but the driver barks more Russian to the younger soldier.
“Who else here?” the younger one repeats in German.
The question confuses her briefly because she knows that both telling the truth and lying have consequences.
“We must have number,” he says more firmly.
“My husband and I. There are two.”
He calls back to the driver.
Rosalind’s breathing is shallow and fast, and her throat feels tight and dry. She nurses the bucket that holds the two eggs. She is already calculating the time it will take her to get to the front door if she needs to. Though she wonders what good it will do.
He nods again and notices the eggs in the bucket.
“Please have!”
Rosalind looks in the bucket and back at him, her blue eyes smaller with the weight of her frown. He sees this or seems to. His tone is suddenly softer and no longer a command.
“Just . . .” He holds up one finger. His brown eyes are crinkling slightly, his hand well away from his gun. She reaches inside the bucket and hands the soldier an egg. He nods and turns back toward the car.
She breathes out deeply, remembering another question posed to her in Berlin. She remembers the tone that was not soft at all. She remembers the sounds of another girl begging, and wanting to cover her ears. The Russian soldiers were not thinking when they came through the first time. Primal revenge drove their will as they stepped roughly over bodies of male children, bearing arms, kicking them to check if they were dead. She shivers slightly as the soldier climbs back into the v
ehicle with his oversized boots.
The click of the front door alerts her to Georg. He doesn’t move but stares at the men in the vehicle. Her husband is fully dressed in a shirt and trousers. He looks alert, undamaged, she thinks in the instant before she understands the danger here. His green eyes look greener, angrier in sunlight. He holds a rifle, not aimed at them directly, but raised partway upward from his leg.
The Russians stand up quickly from within the car, rifles braced and aiming.
“Wait! Stop! He is ill,” she says, tapping her own head. “He does not know who you are.”
“Tell him to put gun down!” says the soldier.
“It doesn’t matter. There are no bullets . . .”
The driver is shouting over her. He is not listening or doesn’t appear to understand her, and the younger one has again stepped out of the vehicle.
“I will get it from him. Please wait!” she says, putting up her hand toward the soldiers.
She drops the bucket that has the other egg and walks to the front door. Georg does not look at her, his eyes fixed on the men.
“Where is she?” Georg calls to them.
“Ignore him, please,” she says, frantically taking the gun from his hand and pulling back the bolt to show them there are no bullets.
The Russian outside the vehicle lowers his gun and brusquely waves her forward.
“Is he . . . from battle?” he asks while he reaches for the weapon from Rosalind.
“No,” she lies, understanding the missing word as “injured.” “He was not a soldier. I have already explained to others who have been here. He was attacked by thieves. I can get his card if you wish.”
The spokesman explains this to the driver who smiles scornfully.
“Kar-bang,” says the other Russian, holding two fingers in the shape of a gun toward his head. He laughs at his own joke, colder and desensitized by damage, but the younger remains serious, not yet over the fear of being shot.
“Good day,” says the young soldier before jumping over the car door and onto the passenger seat, taking Georg’s rifle with him. The older driver says something in Russian as he revs the engine to turn the car around.
“Inside!” says Rosalind to Georg. “There is nothing to see.”
He turns and heads back inside, and she watches and waits for the car to disappear.
As she bends to retrieve the dropped bucket, she sees the remaining egg is now broken, and pieces of shell float in a pool of yellow on the ground.
CHAPTER 4
STEFANO
In the late afternoon Stefano enters a track between the thick band of conifers that line the roadside. The trail opens up to a clearing at the edge of the river, and to the right it bends sharply before continuing briefly to finish near two houses nestled in woodland. Stefano considers the houses for a moment before he leaves the track to cross the clearing toward the water.
He peels the sleeping child off his back and lays him down, then steps down the embankment to perch at the edge of the water. He splashes water on his face and hair, and the boy, sleepy but awake, steps down to mimic him. Behind them, from this position, and through this sparse section of wood beside the river, he can glimpse the houses at the end of the path.
The house closer to them looks more neglected, possibly abandoned. Only weeds and the dying remains of a plant fill the small garden bed by the door. A pane of glass is broken on a set of windows on the top floor.
He waits and watches. The boy sits beside him patiently, watching Stefano’s movements and waiting for his next cue. He has a small narrow face, dark hair and hazel eyes, and thin limbs, and the skin on his nose is burned and blistering. His legs are infested with insect bites that have scabbed from scratching, and his knees are cut and bruised.
At dusk, a short while later, a light appears inside the farthest house at the end of the track, followed by puffs of smoke above a chimney. Stefano watches for lights to appear at the other house also.
Drab clouds smother the sunset behind the willow trees that hang dispiritedly above the river on the other side. Grayness looms, and Stefano estimates the time he has left before nightfall and the rain that will shortly follow.
He waits a few minutes more to make certain the second house is empty before turning to the boy who sits silently on the embankment, studying the darkening water below him.
He is not yet old enough to contemplate his future, now in the hands of Stefano. It is a responsibility that suddenly dawns on Stefano, making him ponder the decisions that led him to this fate, decisions that were forced upon him, and those he made himself, the consequences of which he now must bear. That there should be another twist seems suddenly unreasonable.
There was a moment earlier, as he put the child down to study markings on a map, the child distracted by people in the town, when he wondered whether to leave him, to disappear quickly from his view. It is unsettling in a way to have the responsibility; yet, just as unsettling, perhaps more so, is the thought that he still might be capable of abandoning him.
“You must remain silent and stay here,” he says quietly. “Can you do that?”
When the child doesn’t answer, he wonders whether German is the boy’s first language, though the child does stay by the embankment as Stefano crosses the track.
At the rear of the silent house, where he is least visible from the other house’s occupants, there is a small space of yard that holds a water pump and a partially fenced pen where animals were once kept. Behind the pen is a badly damaged shed, and beyond that, for both the houses, is a pine-covered ridge that separates them from the road to the remains of Dresden. On the wall beside the back door leans an ax. Stefano examines it, smells it. There is no scent of freshly cut wood along its blade.
Near the shed, a pyre contains the remnants of burned and barely recognizable household items. In the dimming light, sticking out of the soil and debris, like a bent human arm, is a metal hatstand. Clothing, pillows, and linen are strewn and singed, along with bent and twisted pieces of metal resembling coat rails, pails, and picture frames. A blanket lies nearby, blackened and stiff, damaged more from the other elements than the fire. He moves closer to see scorched metal cups that were once trophies of some kind. He picks up one, its wooden base mostly burned away, searches unsuccessfully for a name before placing it back on top of the pile.
Inside the shed, part of a wall has been blown away. Pieces of wood lie strewn across the floor. The damaged wall looks interfered with as if, after harm by shells or air fire, someone, seemingly enraged, has continued to pull it to pieces, panel by panel. Looking closer, Stefano sees that some of the broken wood is not from the walls but from pieces of furniture that might once have been a crib and a nightstand.
1935
Stefano climbed up the rock wall and followed the steep road back to his aunt Serafina’s house, built into the side of the cliff. After his father died, his mother, then struggling financially, brought him and his sisters to his aunt’s house. In the days before they left, he had begged and argued that Agatha come, too. There were new rules now, his mother told him. Rules made by his aunt and uncle and ones that did not include pets.
His new home had a terrace, like their old house several miles away, but jammed between lots of others and without a patch of grass for Agatha, had she come. Above them were other houses with terraces. Washing dotted the coastline and caught the warm breezes. Tourists chugged past in boats to gaze upon the coastline and the yellow, red, and ivory buildings that jutted out from the rock.
A short set of stairs led from the terrace down to the cliffs above the water. On fine days the shimmering water was blinding, and he lived for these days when the sun was high and the water dazzled. There were no low rocks to climb down to the sea, not like at his old house. It was a high dive from the cliffs into the water. His cousin had taught him to dive, and they swam together most afternoons.
His cousin, Beppe, just turned eighteen, five years older than Stefano, was t
all, lean, and muscled, with skin roasted a dark golden brown from the sun. The girls on the terraces above would sit outside to watch him and his friends dive in their tight-fitting swimming trunks. Beppe knew they were watching, and he basked in their admiration.
Stefano was also growing tall for his age and bronzed, though still lean and yet to grow muscled like his cousin. He had an old face, his aunt would always tease: Like you know things that you wished you didn’t. Like all us adults. Perhaps it is from all the books you study.
After his swim one day, Stefano entered the front room, its slate tiles warmed from the afternoon sun. His mother drew the curtains and told him to sit down.
Serafina stood in the kitchen to supervise whatever was about to be told. Stefano’s mother, Julietta, had looked up to her older sister, and trusted her with most family decisions. Julietta then told him that Italy had invaded Abyssinia.
“Why?” said Stefano.
“Because Il Duce wants to make our country stronger,” said Serafina, taking over. “We need to strengthen Italy’s power. We have lost so much over time.”
“Will we win?”
“Of course,” said Serafina. “With a great leader in charge, everything is possible.”
Stefano was skeptical. He had heard people say otherwise. He liked to sit near the shops in the center of the town and listen to the old men speak in the cafés. They had talked about Il Duce, Mussolini, but not in a good way. He had heard that not all men liked their leader. But he didn’t dare say that. He had learned very quickly not to give his thoughts away, especially to Serafina, who was fiery, and Uncle Enzo, who was always so serious, so passionate when there was talk of politics and war. Stefano did not remember his father being anything like that. He remembered that his father hated war.
“Mamma, I want to fight,” said Beppe.
Beppe’s father agreed. Enzo sat there with his one good leg, the other lost in the great world war. Even then Stefano was curious why they were keen for their only child to go to war when Enzo had nearly lost his life.
The Road Beyond Ruin Page 3
