His mother wasn’t as disappointed about the rabbit because she’d just received a telegram that sat open on the table.
“Is that from Vati?” Erich asked.
“Yes, he has sent some good news. Adolf Hitler has won. His party will now run Germany unchallenged.”
“Why is that good, Mutti?”
“Because he will help the people who are struggling to put food on their tables. He will put a stop to foreigners living here and taking our jobs. And he will protect us from those who seek to feud with Germany.”
The information his mother provided was interesting, but it was not important to Erich at the time. His mission had been to shoot rabbits.
“When is Vati coming home?”
“Soon. Can you bring in some wood?”
When he woke the next morning, his father was just arriving, horn blazing as he came up the long drive. He had a new car then. Shining, black. He was earning money from the party.
Horst walked in and hugged his wife and patted Erich on the head. Erich loved the way he touched his head. Horst then picked up Erich’s brother and sister. He always brought things back from Berlin. He gave Claudine a little painted bear figurine.
That day, Erich stayed in the fields until he killed two rabbits and brought them home. After that he rarely missed with his rifle.
Present-day 1945
Erich has asked Stefano for his map, which he reluctantly withdraws from his bag and spreads out on the table. The German points to the location of the train station marked on the map and advises the time it will take to drive there.
“I can take you,” he says. “Save you the walk. The tracks were destroyed, but they have repaired the worst of it to send people out of Germany. It leaves every few days. The next time is Friday.”
The Italian looks at the map, expressionless. For some reason, something in the stiff way he bends across the map, not all the way, tells Erich he is not receptive to the information.
Michal, the strange mute child, peers at the map with more interest. When he catches Erich’s eye, he looks away quickly. He wears the same silent, disillusioned guise of those Erich had sent away to the camps, those who didn’t return, and it bothers Erich that the child is this close; that he is even here. If it were he, the child would have been left to fend for himself, like so many others.
“Is it manned by Russians?” Stefano asks.
“Yes, of course,” says Erich. “But they won’t bother you with that mark on your arm. They will be quick to see the back of you.”
“It is not too far to walk. I passed through there.”
“The drive will take the pressure off your leg. I see you have an injury.”
The Italian fixes unresponsively upon a point on the map. The air is tense and silent while he thinks.
“And the camp,” says Stefano, “there are other orphans there?”
“Yes, they will take the boy. They will try to locate his family.”
“That is a generous offer,” says Stefano. Though the words don’t match the look of disdain, as if he would rather put a knife to Erich’s neck than accept a lift from a German.
Stefano explains the offer to the boy: that they could stay a few days, and he will go to a camp where they can return him home.
The boy shakes his head.
“You will be safe there,” says Stefano to the boy.
It is an unintentional lie that adults tell children. Erich’s mother never used such lines and neither does he. The truth is always there, the harsh realities never disguised with pointless words.
Stefano is slow to respond and does not look at Erich, which suggests he is still mistrustful. It will be up to Erich to earn his trust, to dissolve the tension and soften the belligerence that the foreigner wears as armor around him.
“If we decide to stay,” says Stefano, “then I must find some way to repay you.”
And Stefano is then staring at him, this time without suspicion or hostility, but with an expression more pliable. Erich pauses, distracted suddenly by the intensity of the gaze and feelings he cannot yet name. Affection is probably too strong, pity too weak: a connection of some kind between potential allies.
The boy begins to whimper, nervously looking around the room. The child can sense a change in circumstance, a shift in the future. He has seen enough of changes that weren’t for the better, changes that killed his mother.
But before Stefano has time to reassure the boy further, Michal has fled out the front door to run up the path toward the clearing.
CHAPTER 8
ROSALIND
Monique sways, not walks, into the kitchen. She is like a cat, sultry and predaceous, the way she looks from side to side, searching for distraction.
“Did you like the beets I left for you when you got home yesterday? I thought they would be good for frying with salt and butter, and spinach,” says Monique.
“Yes, thank you.”
“They were cheap at the market.”
Monique pours herself some of the weak tea that Rosalind has made and sits across from her. There is a childlike innocence about Monique, with her high arched brows above deep-blue eyes that always wander curiously, full-dimpled cheeks, and small lips that naturally sit parted, in an expression that to Rosalind always holds a question mark. And it is a face that most have been drawn to. Monique can hold someone’s gaze for longer than is necessary, she can bat her thick dark eyelashes without a sense of vanity, and she can steer all the attention toward her.
“Where were you?” asks Rosalind.
“You’re not my mother,” she says, brushing her dark wavy hair back from her face. “You don’t need to ask such questions.”
Rosalind looks down at the hands in her lap. Monique has always been willful.
When she looks up Monique is gone. She was never there. It has been like this a lot lately. For so many years she longed for Monique to disappear, but now she strangely misses her. Misses the way she brings life to a room.
They had been close at times, under the umbrella of uncertain futures. But war does that. It brings people closer even when they are nothing alike.
She would not be alive if it weren’t for Monique, and she wishes that Monique were here to talk to about Berlin, to off-load the baggage that she carries. To tell Monique what she did in those final moments at the hospital in Berlin, and about the bodies after the bombing, parts of them, nothing that could be identified with a whole person: missing limbs, heads and bodies torn apart, burns that blackened people to something unrecognizable.
Rosalind has seen more debris here, too, more broken people. For a long time she was immune to tragedy, to blood. But she is immune no longer, now unable to deal with the sight of another injured soldier from the battlefield.
Rosalind opens up the front door. She has to push it firmly, the wood swollen within the frame from the rain the night before.
1935
Monique took off on the bicycle, and Rosalind ran after her. They were meant to double, but on the final leg of the journey from town, when Rosalind had briefly stepped away from the bike to collect some elderberries that her grandmother boiled for tea, Monique thought it would be funny to leave her older cousin stranded. She took off at great speed toward home.
“Monique! Wait!”
But she was gone, and Rosalind had to walk the rest of the way to their river house. As she neared the house, she saw that the bicycle had been discarded on its side at the edge of the wood, back wheel still spinning. She could hear voices through the trees and followed the sound. Monique was there, sitting with Georg against a tree. She was laughing at something he had just whispered in her ear. She turned to look at Rosalind, and just for a second Rosalind saw a sliver of defiance, as if she were the older one in control.
“Take these to Oma!” said Rosalind angrily, dumping the basket of berries in Monique’s lap.
“I was just having fun with you.” Monique looked at her under large guilty lids.
“You should grow up! Stop being so thoughtless!”
“Why are you so mad?” Georg asked Rosalind.
“She left me!” Though she couldn’t say if this was really the reason or whether it was the fact that the two people she was closest to looked so good together. She felt suddenly as if she had interrupted something special, as if they would be fine without her.
“It was a joke!” said Georg. “You still have legs.”
She felt affronted by this comment. She thought at least he would defend her.
“Sorry, Rosalind,” Monique said, standing up with the basket of berries. “That was mean of me about the bicycle!” But Rosalind had already diverted her anger to Georg, who had not sided with her, who sought Monique’s immaturity for amusement.
Georg playfully slapped the backs of Monique’s legs, and she bounded off through the trees to her Oma. Georg stayed sitting on the ground and put his hands behind his head. His hair had grown too long. His shirt was open, and his stick legs stretched out from wide-legged shorts.
“So!” he said smugly. “This is how you spend your last day here. Angry!”
He knows, she thought at the time. He knows how I feel about him. They were sixteen and seventeen. Her feelings toward him had grown stronger with every passing year.
“Do you want to go swimming?” he asked her, while she battled her thoughts on whether to remain angry.
“Yes,” said Rosalind, brightening slightly at the thought they would spend some more time alone.
“Go tell Monique then! I’ll meet you both on the platform.”
Rosalind felt ambushed by these words and walked out of the wood to collect the bike that Monique had so casually discarded. Georg followed her, wondering what he had said to offend her.
“What’s with the sad face?”
“I’m not sad,” she said, but something had changed since Monique had arrived to interrupt their summers. He was less inclusive toward her, less giving of information.
Georg grabbed her suddenly around the waist, forcing her to drop the bike. He swung her around until she was dizzy, until she was smiling again. He could do that. Change you and turn the mood. Rinse out the bad and make things good again. He kissed her goodbye. Not a long and lingering kiss but a soft and gentle one at the edge of her mouth, his arm still wrapped tightly around her.
He released her moments later and ran home. She stood there smiling a little, watching him, her ponytail frayed from the activity. She picked up the bike again to wheel it toward the house.
Monique was his match, and they shared an enthusiasm that often excluded Rosalind. Her cousin could keep up with Georg, and Georg liked that, but Monique was too immature to be anything but his young accomplice, Rosalind decided. And Monique would never appreciate him like she did.
Present-day 1945
Several yards into the shallow wood, Rosalind turns right toward a thick clump of trees to enter a hidden path that the three of them used years ago. The entrance is dark and narrow and can easily be missed, and a dense canopy of trees conserves the smell of decaying leaves. People could die in here, she thinks, in the thick growth, and no one would know.
Fifteen yards westward along the track, the pathway veers toward a private area of the river, to a small wooden platform extending from the embankment. They would lie here often, in the sun, side by side. Just near the ramp, and nestled into the trees, is a small hut with a gabled roof, not high enough to stand in. It was their secret place once, where they would sit and dream and plan. In a small space, between the hut and the platform, and no larger than a bedroom, is a flat area of mud where several stumps of wood are placed in a circle.
On one of the stumps, Georg sits staring at the barren ground where a fire pit used to be, his elbows resting on his knees. Rosalind sits on the stump closest and watches him. The late-morning sun hits the top of Georg’s hair, turning it gold, and his green eyes glisten. He is still beautiful, she thinks. When he finally notices her, there is a lack of recognition not only with her but also with the world at large. Something is wrong today. He appears doleful and teary.
“What is the matter, Georg?”
She reaches to take his hand, but he draws back out of reach to wrap his arms tightly around himself.
“I have to go back,” he says, frowning as he attempts to organize his thoughts. He has gone from looking very young to very old in the space of time it takes to frown. “The men . . . They can’t do it without me. The Russians are creeping in from all sides. We’ll be finished.”
“Georg, the war is over. You are safe now. The men are safe now.” Though she is doubtful this is true. Most of the men are likely dead.
“She is probably with them,” he says.
Rosalind swallows and briefly closes her eyes. She must be strong.
“Do you remember, Georg, when we were small? We would creep out early in the morning to watch the sun rise. Do you remember?”
He doesn’t respond, though he is calmer now. She reaches again for his hands and pulls them toward her.
“Georg, do you remember the fire?” she says. “Do you remember singeing your hair with sticks of fire to make us squeal and squirm? . . . You do remember, don’t you?”
He clenches his hands slightly, and his eyes rest on her hands; she is hopeful just for a second, before he looks up at the trees. She has lost him again. It is the moments of connection that she waits for.
She bends down to kiss him as she leaves, though he will not feel it, does not even know she exists. She is shaking slightly. It could have been worse. Sometimes it takes much longer to settle him from his memories.
As she returns to the wood, she sees someone running in from the clearing on the far side and heading toward the river’s edge. She steps carefully out from the trees onto the embankment to see who it is.
A small boy crouches over the river, searching for something in the water. He has clothes that are stained and torn in places, and a face that hasn’t been washed in days, perhaps much longer. His hair is dark and sticks out from his head in badly growing clusters as if at some point previously it was roughly hacked with scissors.
Hooked over one arm is a woven basket, and he searches across the river to the other side before he starts to whimper and places the backs of his fists against his eyes.
She is moved slightly at the sound of his cries, like she would be for a wounded animal. She steps toward him and bends to touch his shoulder.
“Michal!” says a forceful voice behind her, and Rosalind turns her head suddenly to face the gaze of the stranger’s frightening black eyes. The boy in the meantime has jumped up and away so that he is out of her reach.
Rosalind looks from the dark man to the boy and back again, momentarily stunned by the intrusion.
“I’m sorry,” says the stranger, who has seen the effect on her. “I didn’t mean to startle you. He led us on a chase.”
“The boy is yours?” she asks.
“Yes.”
“It was you in the house last night?”
“Yes,” he says. “Did you see us?”
“I saw something.”
“I hope we didn’t frighten you.”
She doesn’t respond. Erich said he would get rid of them, and she is confused that they are still here, these beggars.
Erich appears from the woods to stand just behind the stranger, as if they are on the same side. Her eyes pin on Erich, who matches her own rigid expression, before they move back to the stranger.
CHAPTER 9
STEFANO
The woman is staring with eyes that bore deeply into his core before they dart suddenly back to the boy. He feels as if he knows her. She is the face of so many. She has thin limbs and a sprinkling of freckles on her exposed forearms and face. Her hair, hanging in a limp ponytail, is a dull blond, her eyes a pale, crystalline blue. None of her features he considers particularly striking, yet together they blend into something pleasing to the eye. It is perhaps the feline, graceful way she
wears these traits that makes this so.
She looks once more at the boy before stepping away with a wary backward glance. Stefano watches her leave in a dress that is oversized, her smallness accentuated by the apron ties around her tiny waist.
In the brief moment that they were connected, Stefano could sense the hostility, and perhaps fear as well, as she gripped hard at the edge of her apron during their encounter. Though it is difficult to know for sure if she was frightened. Women in this country are good at hiding things. Not like his sisters and his mother, who would show anger with their eyes and fists, and joy with their wide smiles and open arms.
She came from the direction of the thick riverbank trees that appear uncharted, and he is curious at what is beyond there.
“She is Rosalind,” says Erich once she has quickly disappeared from view, “from the house next door.”
“She looked troubled.”
“She is not as fragile as she appears. She can take care of herself. Best to avoid them.”
Stefano is slightly intrigued by the missing information but turns his attention back to the boy, who is poised to run again.
“Michal, come back to the house!” says Stefano.
Michal looks down at the basket, though he is not really looking; he is avoiding the questioning that he knows is about to ensue. Stefano can see that his legs are trembling.
“Are you looking for something?”
Stefano turns toward the murky brown river so unlike his shining gem in Campania. Willow trees continue to watch them from the other side, pointing their shaggy, twisted fingers at a small boat with a noisy motor that whisks the water into tan-and-white foam. He waits for it to pass before stepping closer to the boy. Insects buzz at the clumps of grasses growing at the base of the embankment, and the smell of rotting leaves dampens the crisp air.
“What is it? Why did you run?”
“Something has frightened him,” Erich says.
“Perhaps it was the mention of the camp,” says Stefano. “I will try and help you, Michal. Perhaps find other family somewhere.” Though he is not sure how, if he can. “It will be all right. We will go back to the house and talk about it.”
The Road Beyond Ruin Page 7
