Thoughts of joining the military voluntarily, which had been in his mind prior to his cousin’s leaving, had since dissipated once he found a desire to read books, learn, and breathe foreign words that he would practice on the tourists. But with Beppe’s return, and once again craving his company, Stefano found that his enthusiasm to join the military was reinvigorated.
The second day back after a good sleep, Beppe took him out to a bar, even though Stefano, tall for his age, was too young to drink.
Beppe said he was keen to get out of the house; his parents were fighting with him constantly. Enzo wanted to move to the North. He did not like living among “peasants,” as he called them. Stefano’s father was once one of those peasants, but Stefano did not like to say this to his uncle or cousin. Stefano knew that Enzo’s insensitive opinions were not shared by his son. The North was where the money was and where the wealthy continued to prosper. Enzo wanted to sell their house by the sea and head to Florence. There he would buy a business and make real money, he said. When the war was over, Beppe would take over the business, and Serafina expected several grandchildren. The future was clear for them.
Beppe fought with his father about the relevance of war. Over a couple of glasses of wine, Beppe was able to express these thoughts to his intelligent young cousin, whose father had rejected, and mother still rejected, the idea of war and had not openly supported any cause by Mussolini.
“I don’t think this war is right, Stefano. I don’t see any point to it. For a start half the country we are conquering is desert. And there is little of value there. I can’t think why Il Duce is so desperate to retain it that he would risk lives for it. I don’t see what Mussolini sees. I can’t see where it will end. I can’t see us winning. This resurgence by the local people will be the first of many.”
“But, Beppe, you were so keen to leave to fight.”
“I have seen some things, Stefano, that I never thought I would. I don’t know if it is good what we are doing. I don’t think it is good at all. If you could avoid it, I would suggest that you never join. I do not want you to see the things I have.”
“Like what, Cousin?”
“Things, war, comrades dying. Our leaders do not seem to know what they are doing. I feel that many more of our own men will be slaughtered there, and their deaths will count for nothing.”
“I am going to sign up one day.”
“You are not!”
“I have no choice.”
“You have every choice. You have a family to look after. Without you, what will your mother and sisters do?”
Stefano was confused. “But you wanted me to join.”
“Not now that I’ve seen. Not now that my eyes are open.”
Despite what Beppe said, though now with some reservation, Stefano still felt it was his duty to fight. He wanted to do something worthy one day. He felt that he owed his country and those who had already committed to serve.
“What about your studies? You are too smart, Stefano. Not like me whose future was not in books. Do not waste your brain.”
“I can put study on hold. I will take books with me to read.”
“And what if you lose your head? What will you study with then?”
A wave of sadness struck Beppe as he looked at his fresh-faced young cousin who had idolized him. What have I done? I am responsible for this. I have encouraged him. He hoped there would be no war to fight by the time his cousin came of age. Little did he know that there was a greater war to come.
“You need your studies, and people will need you one day.”
Stefano thought it particularly odd that Beppe, who had once teased him about his future career and love of languages, was now encouraging it.
“I will ask to be with you. I want to be at your side, Cousin.”
Beppe nodded with resignation. His young cousin was smart, but he was also stubborn, a family trait. The more any one of them was told not to do something, the more likely they would. He finished his third glass of wine quickly.
He is drinking too fast, thought Stefano. He was always drinking, but it had once been a joyous thing. It was different then.
Several weeks later, Beppe was called away to another campaign, and a year after Stefano was partway through his studies, he would join his battle-hardened cousin in a new fight in Hitler’s war against the Allies.
Stefano loved his studies, but his learning could wait. The future seemed vast.
Present-day 1945
Stefano wakes slowly to noises downstairs: the soft scraping of bristles on oak, pots clanging, and doors clicking shut. The twittering of birds raises the prospect of morning.
He feels groggy, his sleep deeper than most, perhaps due to the whiskey, the travel, the ache in his leg. His back is sticky with sweat, and outside the sun has already spent several hours mopping up from the night before. The boy sits at the edge of the bed, his legs too short to touch the floor.
Stefano’s shoulders sag. What to do with a child?
“Are you hungry?” he asks the boy.
He nods.
“Is your voice gone again?”
The boy nods again, afraid to make sound in a room filled with light.
Stefano stands, stretches, then moves to the window. A sparkle of silver on the water in the distance and the smells here, tangy and cleaner than the places he has come from. A distant whistle of something mechanical, a factory, a truck, but barely audible, and the sound of a tree being felled somewhere behind him. And closer, the high-pitched, uneven squeals of a water pump lever.
He does not need to call the boy, who is already on his heels before he has reached the top stair. Downstairs the noises have ceased, and there is no sign of the German. His pack and the whiskey bottle sit on the table, where the rifle is now leaning. Stefano peers through the kitchen window with its view of the neighboring house, then opens the rifle to check that it is still unloaded.
The picture that was hanging in strips on the wall is missing. The plates and teapot are clean and put away, and there is a pleasant aroma of coffee, and the scent of something floral through the open window, which takes him briefly to another time, to a small apartment, to the smell of perfume on skin.
He walks to the room at the rear of the house just outside the back door and pisses in the bowl that is stained and browned, though some effort has been made to clean it this morning. He sends the boy in after him, then walks toward the front door to survey the track and the area around it.
Erich’s house is square in shape, off-white in color, with a red roof and brown-painted window trims that are peeling in places. Both houses are pretty, but perhaps more from the location. The house on the adjacent property is bigger, long and narrow, with a high-pitched roof. There is a pen for animals off to the far side of it that he did not see before. The noises from the geese make the house seem more amiable.
When he turns to walk back inside, Erich appears suddenly, startling him.
“Good morning!” says Erich. The clothes he was wearing the night before exhibit no crumpled signs of sleep.
Stefano can see the boy behind Erich, unsure what to do, a barrier now between them.
“His name is Michal,” says Stefano, and Erich turns to greet the child.
“Nice to meet you, Michal.” Erich puts out his hand. The boy’s arms remain by his sides.
Erich turns back to Stefano, unfazed by the lack of response. The German is probably used to it.
“I have made some coffee, but first, come! I would like to show you something.”
Stefano tells Michal to wait and follows Erich to the rear of the house. Michal obeys this time, his child’s sense making him uncertain of Erich.
Stefano is curious but cautious. The pyre of burned items has partly been cleared, and Erich stops behind the shed at the base of the incline. More woodland behind both houses gently rises upward to a narrow hilltop and down the other side to the main road.
The two men face a large pile of branches and
rugs spread across the ground, used as a disguise to hide the small car sitting in the middle of the debris. The lid of its engine is wide open, like a hungry bird, and several tools lie on the ground at the rear of the car.
“This is yours?”
“Yes. I’ve kept it hidden. Petrol and cars are very much in demand. It is good, yes? I just have to source some petrol, and then it will take me wherever I wish to go. But don’t get any ideas about taking it. The Russians will tear it from under you.”
Stefano peers inside the passenger-side window as Erich climbs into the driver’s seat. The car looks new, the leather seats unmarked.
“Does it work?”
Erich rests his hands on the wheel, sliding them gently over the molded wood. He turns the key, and the car growls to life. While he continues to pump the accelerator, he examines the gauges on the dashboard. Stefano takes a step back. From the satisfaction across his face, it is more than a piece of machinery to Erich. The car represents something he can lovingly control.
Erich turns off the engine.
“Do you drive?” he asks Stefano, stepping from the vehicle.
Stefano is remembering a time with Beppe in North Africa, where he had been taught to drive: a borrowed car, red earth spraying in the rearview mirror.
“Not much.”
He helps Erich cover the car with its disguise of rugs and debris, and they return to the house. Once inside, Stefano notices the broken china and pictures that Erich has swept into a corner of the storeroom.
“How long since you were here?”
“A week, just over. I’ve been traveling to search for work.”
“And did you find it?”
“Yes,” says Erich.
The house hasn’t been lived in for a long time. That much appears clear to Stefano, along with the speculation that the German is most likely lying about everything.
CHAPTER 7
ERICH
Erich has been in control for most of his life, except in two instances, but those events he can bury beneath others. He has watched life as if he has sat above it, carefully and meticulously planning his next move. He looks across at Stefano, a man so different from him. Quiet, thoughtful, Stefano carries many scars, but perhaps no more than Erich. Surviving is all about the mind, his mother used to say. If you have power of that, you will carry on.
“I drove before and during the war,” says Erich. “My father had a nice car.”
“What did your father do?” It is the first time the Italian has sounded genuinely interested. It is perhaps the fact that his father had money that piques his attention. Anyone with money in Germany used to suggest importance.
“He was a businessman. He sold machinery, parts. He helped supply factories. He had an excuse not to fight.”
It is a small piece of a very large truth.
“He sounds important.”
“No,” says Erich, his answer assuring there are no more questions. “What part of Italy do you come from?”
Stefano pauses. Erich can see that he is measuring his answer. Dark eyes, dark face and skin, he is as mysterious as Erich chooses to be vague. Though there are other clues to people that Erich can search for in the reticence: the eye movements, the hand gestures, the talking without the use of words.
“The South originally, Campania. But then when the war started, we moved to stay with cousins in the North. My father was dead. My uncle made us go.”
Erich sees there are parts missing in the story, parts that don’t concern him. The Italian’s response sounds truthful. But Erich also knows that it is far easier to tell the truth, but just not give all the truth.
“Then you made the right move,” says Erich.
“Did I?” He turns to look directly at Erich now.
“You fought alongside Germany, did you not?”
Stefano is silent from across the kitchen table, the boy now by his side.
“We had a good army,” says Erich. “In the end it was simply numbers that killed us.” And machinery also, though he doesn’t like to think that someone else’s machinery caused the end to Germany’s power.
“Not good enough,” says Stefano.
Erich smiles at first to cover the sting of these words, yet the stranger’s sharp edges and wit have aroused more interest.
“In my experience, Italians have had very little allegiance to anyone. They don’t know who they support.”
Erich is testing Stefano, to see how far he can push him. He can easily bring the conversation back to an even level.
“It is hard when the person in charge has no allegiance to his people.”
“Mussolini. A madman, yes? Better without him, yes?” And Erich smiles again, disarming him.
“Un pazzo we called him, yes! But not the only madman.”
Erich says nothing. His feelings toward his former führer are mixed. One cannot suddenly dismiss a loyalty that has been bred, then fed and nurtured until it has become part of one’s blood.
“What does it matter, North, South? No matter,” says Erich. “There are no sides anymore.”
There is a release of tension between them. Minor, but something. Erich can’t explain why, but he feels relief, though he knows, or senses, that at no time did he feel threatened by Stefano. He always had the gift of knowing who might harm him. He was trained to sense it, to assess an enemy, but the gift is not only from training. It is his belief that he was born with an instinct.
“Will it be safe for you there? It is still dangerous from what I’ve heard. There are still people left to hang, people who did not support the Allies.”
“I know that some resistance members are still calling for blood, but the fascists are gaining support again,” says Stefano, “and I know a cardinal who will get me safely down south, if I run into any trouble. He has secretly passed Germans through also, some to Africa and across to South America. I will seek his help if I need it.”
“Where did you hear about this cardinal?”
“When I was in the hospital, I spoke to some Germans who were there at the end. Some who were caught spoke of those who weren’t. They said the Italian partisans, and others who fought the North, will not touch the churches. It is what he believes. It is what I believe, too.”
Stefano has answered without blinking, without the look of someone who has forced a response. This information excites Erich, and while his face remains placid, a heady mixture of thoughts and feelings swirls and rises from deep within him. The stranger’s arrival is an omen perhaps, though he has never believed in such. Plans are what he needs, and people to advance these. The Italian could be the plan he has been looking for and a gift that has landed here by means he can’t explain.
“I would like to help you,” continues Erich, “especially as a thank-you for supporting the North.”
“I’ve done nothing you can thank me for,” says Stefano, some bitterness in his tone.
“I can drive you to Dresden, to the train, and the boy to the camp. It will save you some time and help your leg.” Erich has noticed the limp.
“But the Russians . . . Aren’t you afraid they will steal your car?”
“I know the roads they don’t travel and the times they do. I can get you there and back without them ever knowing.”
Stefano pauses, examines his hands. “Why would you do that for me?”
“Why would I not do that?” Erich shrugs, unperturbed by the question. “It is better to move on. It will accomplish more. Look at it as a fellow soldier helping another.”
Stefano is studying him, warily, attempting to search for truth in his words, and the reasons behind them.
“I offer a house, a car, and friendship, with no catch. You have nothing to fear from me. I can also give you food. The boy is very thin. I can get you good food.”
Stefano scratches the back of his head with the hand that has the bandage. He looks at the boy, and Erich can tell that the boy is now a problem for him, now a consideration. He does not have the
freedom of a single man while he carries the weight of a dead woman’s child.
1933
The midday heat weighed heavily on Erich’s back, but he liked the feeling of sun through his thick shirt. He lined the rabbit up and pulled the rifle’s trigger, but the bullet missed, and the creature disappeared into the thick grasses. He cursed. He could only curse if his mother wasn’t within earshot. He was thirteen and heard other boys say such words. He was hoping to take a rabbit home for dinner. Killing the rabbit would also make his father proud. Erich liked the responsibility of taking care of things around the home, in his father’s absence.
Horst Steiner, his father, was working more and more away from home. Sometimes when Erich woke in the mornings, his father would be gone, and he would not see him for days, sometimes weeks. His father was meeting important people in Berlin, his mother had told him. He was working in support of the National Socialists in their military department, as a consultant on the designs being proposed for war machines.
Erich’s father, an engineer, had established an equipment-repair business for farms and factories, while designing modifications to existing farming machinery and motor vehicles in his spare time. Horst had seen his parents lose their farming business during the economic decline of the first war and their financial struggles following, and he believed that he would prosper under Hitler, who promised to bring the country back from the gloom.
That day, Erich was disappointed that he didn’t come back with any rabbits. His mother was large in the belly. He had another sibling on the way. The new baby would make his third sibling, all younger. He was in charge of the others, said his mother. He did a good job, she said. Though he could not control one of them. His sister, the second, the only daughter, was more troubled. She would wander around the property aimlessly in the rain and return with clothes covered in grass and mud, and injure herself often, and one time she cut her hair off with sewing scissors. Despite all this, Erich liked her best because she was different from him, and because she wasn’t afraid of living. She was brave and wanted to be a soldier, though even if she could join, he did not think she would be good at it. She was not a good listener, not like him. She did not like taking orders at all.
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