“How long are you staying next door?” she asks.
“A few nights.”
“Why here?”
He shrugs. “I thought the track would lead to the river, to wash. And then I saw the house. It looked abandoned.”
She looks at him briefly to check his sincerity.
“Is Erich there still?” she asks quickly.
“He has to work. He says he will be back later. He is taking me to the train on Friday.”
She bites her top lip.
“You should leave before he gets back. There is nothing for you here.”
She closes the door.
CHAPTER 10
ERICH
Erich has thought much about the Italian by the time he reaches town, and he wonders about providence, something he never truly believed in till now, and the timing of Stefano’s arrival. The Italian could be the catalyst that will move time forward for Erich. With the help of Stefano’s cardinal, escaping Europe seems a very real possibility, and the idea excites him.
But there is the question of mistrust and resentment that Erich recognizes, that Stefano can’t fully disguise. Erich does not take this point lightly and knows he must change this if he is to gain help. Erich has changed others before, steered their fates and expectations, but this may not be as easy. He does not have the power of Germany’s backing. Stefano’s trust must be earned with small things, gifts and hospitality.
Today there is a small market operating in the center of the square. The locals are returning to normal business. Most of the stalls look bare and dismal, and remind him of the ghettos he visited, with Germany now turned on its head. There are tables with books, photo frames, cutlery, and farm tools that widows will have no use for. Not just that their men are not there to work, but the fields are destroyed or reclaimed or without crops to harvest. Most of the market offerings are simply for trade—food, salt, spices, paper, soap, as well as basic items, are better than currency. There are handmade linens and prints and other nonessential goods that are unlikely to sell as before when tourists from other parts of affluent Germany used to visit these towns and find such items quaint. The lack of quality in the stalls is not the only difference between before and now. Several army trucks pass through the town regularly, as the Russian unit assigned to the area has based itself in a church on the outskirts of Dresden. One truck is parked in the street.
The sight of the truck makes Erich cautious rather than nervous. He has seen people taken from the street. He has heard accounts of bullying. He has seen it up close. But it is part of war, he justifies. The Germans were no better.
He disappears into the post office to pretend to examine the photos of missing persons on the wall. Some in groups with faces of the missing circled in red; some that a professional photographer has taken; and others grainy or battered from rough confinement in a wallet. Several faces he recognizes.
He hears the roar of an engine and then the sound of it fading. He looks from the window, then steps back out to the street to proceed briskly toward his next destination. Just ahead are an old man with a walking stick and a teenage girl who wears a headscarf. By the state of their worn and soiled clothing, they are beggars, carrying their possessions—possibly their only ones—wrapped up in a sheet. A young local girl walking behind them pulls the beggar’s scarf from her head to reveal her shorn hair, and scabs where she has badly scratched her head. The assailant throws the scarf on the ground, spits on it, before hurrying past them. She does not want foreigners here, the ones she was taught to hate, the ones who were placed out of sight in the camps.
The girl is indifferent to the treatment and picks up her scarf. She is used to it. They are Jews, from the reaction by the locals, who have continued to reject them here, still immersed in the fear of association. But Jews aren’t Erich’s concern. Not anymore.
At a grocery store the owner knows him, and they have a conversation about the Russians as usual. He loathes the conversation, but it is something he has to put up with to fit in, to continue here. They have run out of fresh loaves, but they have several small rolls from yesterday. He agrees to these, plus a portion of pork, cheese, and some vegetables that are close to turning. The price of meat is usually much higher than the quality, and he wonders how much of the good stock she keeps for herself.
“Anything else?” says Erich.
The owner retrieves a package of Russian cigarettes from the front pocket of her apron and places them on the counter. “I have these if you are interested.”
Erich wonders what she has traded to acquire these.
“I am.”
“You have coupons for all this?” she asks, knowing from his previous purchases that he doesn’t.
“I have something better as you know.” He opens his hands to show some gold and silver rings.
She inspects all the items, then takes two of the gold rings.
“Only one,” he says.
“For all this?” she says with an incredulous edge.
She is aware that he is hiding from the Russians, but while he has something to trade, she is unlikely to give him up, and she still has Hitler’s Germany running through her veins.
She pulls out a bottle of vodka from beneath the counter.
“Two and I will throw in this,” says the woman.
She is a businesswoman, and a good one it seems, but she is also a survivor like him.
Back in the street the trams rattle through the town. He was here a long time ago, but it is a vague memory now. It isn’t home. To Erich, home is Berlin. It is time with his father, brothers, and mother. Home is also duty.
He stops at the pharmacy. The man behind the counter is serving someone else, but when he sees Erich, he is in a hurry to finish the purchase and the conversation. When the customer is gone, he pulls out a package tied with string from beneath the counter.
“Thank you, Elias,” says Erich.
“You are welcome. There will always be those who support you. I was very fond of your father.”
A woman enters and walks to the counter.
Erich nods to the pharmacist and the other customer. As loyal as the pharmacist is, Erich is uncomfortable that people know him here. He wishes that he didn’t have to rely so much on others. He is grateful for the help, but eventually he will have to get rid of any trace of himself.
1937
Erich’s father came home one weekend from secret business in Berlin. Erich watched him drive the long laneway to the house. He had been away for weeks. His mother had worked hard to take care of everything needed around the house while looking after their small children. She never complained. She never sought any kind of reward. Erich was shortly to begin his studies in mechanical engineering in Dresden, to follow in his father’s footsteps.
His father looked very smart as he stepped out of the car in a black suit and cap that had a silver skull. Erich’s mother looked very proud, though she joked about the skull. She had been very happy with her husband, and there was little wrong he could do. He was being paid to develop something for Hitler. Erich wasn’t allowed to know at that time. It was a secret, and even his mother confided later that Horst had told her very little.
Erich’s father announced that they were moving to Berlin. He had taken lease of a town house so he could see his family more with the promise that Erich could begin his studies there instead. His father said that they would not sell the house and land, that they would come back sometimes for holidays so that the children could run around the wide spaces, and swim and fish in the lake nearby.
Erich’s sister, Claudine, several years in age below him, wasn’t happy. She wanted to stay at the house. She stamped her feet. Her wild spirit took her to neighboring fields, and Erich had to search far for her.
He found his sister beneath a tree on a hill. With a stone she was carving angrily into the bark. She wasn’t just carving her name; she was carving all their names.
“Make sure you spell mine right this time.”
She glared at him, but the signal lacked the dislike that she would show for her younger brothers and mother. She had always tried to keep up with Erich but failed simply because she could not sit as still as he did, would not focus her energy on one thing.
Erika, she wrote on the tree spitefully.
“Ouch,” he said playfully.
She had carried anger after the first day her papa left. She loved him, perhaps more than she loved her mother. Nene showed very few expectations of her willful daughter, other than the hopes she would marry well and produce children, something Claudine would growl about whenever their father would make a joke of it. Though unlike Nene, Horst didn’t mean this. He did not mind what his daughter did, that she liked to paint and draw and dream. He did not seem bothered that she would disagree with him on most issues. For some odd reason that Erich could not fathom, her willfulness and independent views seemed to impress him, and he would quietly listen to her angry outbursts about the way her mother undercooked the beef, the bed linen that smelled strongly of bleach, the poor condition of the roads for bike riding, about the way her little brother pronounced words poorly; in fact Claudine had an opinion on everything. Sometimes Erich would laugh about it; sometimes he would sit and listen with fascination, though not at her comments, but at the way his father would patiently listen and nod and wish her well in any endeavors.
Under the tree Erich talked to his sister about coming back, about holidaying again at the villa, about the benefits of Berlin. He had been there a couple of times on short journeys with his father, and he told her that she would love the color and movement and music. That she could study at one of the art schools there one day. She would find so much more to do. At this she calmed, almost hopeful, returning with Erich and questioning her father on everything he saw there, the restaurants, the art exhibitions, what the women wore. Were there handsome soldiers in uniform?
Later that evening, his parents had disappeared into the sitting room off the kitchen, and he could hear their murmurings. The children had been put in their rooms, the baby with their mother.
Horst’s jacket had been removed and hung over the back of the chair. Erich examined the lining, the stitching, the emblems, and the smooth feel of the fabric. While he was distracted by the jacket, Claudine had put an ear to the sitting room door and was shortly reprimanded by Erich and sent away. Though Erich was not without such wiles or curiosity.
The next day when his papa was sleeping late and his mother was busy in the laundry at the rear of the house, he pulled out some papers from Horst’s bag. There were architectural drawings of tanks and typewritten reports on their effectiveness, charts of their movement, their ammunition, their speed, their turning circles. He always knew that his father was clever, but on that day Erich realized that Horst was part of something significant and progressive. Erich envisaged his country as the one to lead the world, and a future that was better for everyone. It was on that day also that he was first sold on Hitler’s Germany.
Present-day 1945
He arrives at a small brick-terraced home between others like it. He turns the key and lets himself in. She sits there motionless at the window with her back to him. In the early days one would rarely see her still.
“Mother,” he says quietly as he walks around to stand in front of her. She has a puckered scar that dips in and out of the lines on her forehead. Dribble sits on her chin. Blue eyes, staring into the street, hold no recognition. She has no sense of time or place, and she carries no memories. She is hollow.
At the sight of her, hands reach inside of him and tug at his resolve, but before they can take hold, he pushes them way. She taught him how to remain impenetrable, to rise above any emotion and only act from conscious, rational thought.
“I’ve brought you food,” he says, but she doesn’t look at the packages in his hands. She continues to watch from the window, fixed on nothing. Movement in the street doesn’t divert or fill her empty thoughts. She chews the inside of her cheek, then stops, her eyes drooping slightly. She will soon be asleep.
His mother is unable to feed herself and suffers epileptic seizures that have been occurring more frequently. She cannot do any basic functions, but sometimes her eyes roam side to side, as if she were trying to hear. She is fifty and a young woman yet, with scarcely any gray in the hair that frames her face.
Erich tries not to remember her as before. It is about now and forward, not the past. In the kitchen he leaves some medicine from the package for Marceline.
“Vati!” calls a small child hurtling toward him on unsteady legs. He picks up the girl and holds her to him.
“Let me see you today,” he says, pulling her away from him to examine her better. One light curl falls across her eyes, and he pushes it back behind her ear.
Marceline walks in. She is efficient, picking up items the little girl has dropped on the way. She had come highly recommended from his German contacts in the town. She was used to servicing German officials, dressing their children.
Now for Erich, she looks after two, his mother less capable than the second. He is not what one might describe as grateful for the help, since Marceline is doing a service and being paid well, but he respects the position she has. He has always understood the effectiveness of delegated and rigid roles. Understanding them made him indispensable to the Reich.
He looks back at the little girl, Genevieve. She wears her mother’s smile, her pale skin. She still asks for her, but the crying is lessening.
“You look very nice today,” he says, and remembers his sister, Claudine, remembers her dresses always covered in mud. The tug again, harder this time, and the push, the rejection of the memory, more violent.
“Vati,” she says, and shows him a picture book that Marceline has bought from the marketplace stalls. Genevieve coughs several times, her small chest rising sharply, though she is unaware of her illness, her interest in the book distracting her.
He was good at taking care of his younger sister and brothers, but a child of his own has been harder, less mechanical. He knew straightaway that he couldn’t take care of her like her mother, that he could not bear the emotional load.
Genevieve is pointing to one of the animals in the book quizzically, and he answers her thoughtfully. His father taught him that, to answer seriously and factually. Children are simply incomplete adults, he would say. It is important to help complete them, not treat them like imbeciles.
He looks at the time. He is already thinking about the Italian, about returning to the river house. It is his gift to watch people, understand and learn their motivations and desires. And he is especially interested in those who might benefit him.
He spends the remainder of the day between the two women, the old and the new, both with different needs. He talks to his mother about the economy, about the town. Though he makes things up. He talks as if Hitler won the war. She doesn’t know any different.
“I am leaving after supper, but I won’t be back until tomorrow,” he says to Marceline. “Please cut me some of the pork and a large piece of the potato pie from yesterday, and more of anything else that you can spare today. I will purchase more items tomorrow. Hopefully there will be more grain.
“Genevieve, you need to be good for Marceline and take care of Oma while I am away. Can you do that?”
She nods. She is accepting of instruction, though she does not understand the world yet, does not even know what she is agreeing to. She will be like him, he thinks, accepting orders from her superiors, without question.
CHAPTER 11
ROSALIND
Georg sits very still on the edge of the bed while she sponges him with warm soapy water. Rosalind is gentle, and she can tell from the way he closes his eyes that it soothes him. Sometimes she passes him the cloth to wash himself, but most times she prefers the task, to feel close. A dusting of fine ginger stubble along his jawline tells her it is time to shave, though she is hesitant. Last time he attempted to fight her for th
e razor, thinking that she was trying to harm him. Since then she has kept the object out of sight in case he has any more strange ideas.
The geese are creating a ruckus outside, and she leaves Georg to investigate, taking with her a small cup of feed. The birds appear agitated, squawking and rushing at her as she enters the pen. Her attempt to distract and pacify them by scattering the feed on the ground is unsuccessful. She turns to the wood to see if perhaps there are dogs or foxes waiting nearby and is unsettled by the emergence of two people from the trees instead, who stop to view her from the edge of the pen: an older man with trousers held up by rope and a younger girl wearing a dress, soldier’s boots that are oversized, and a man’s jacket, too hot for the weather.
“What do you want?” says Rosalind.
She has seen beggars before and turned them away.
The man is staring at one of the geese, and the girl stares at Rosalind.
“I have nothing I can spare,” says Rosalind.
She imagines the girl is around fourteen or fifteen, with hair that is very short like a boy’s. Without the dress it would be difficult to tell her gender, and her expression is haunted, fearful. The older man has a hardened face, so darkly stained and lined it is a challenge to tell his age, his hair white and gray, his shoulders sagging. The size of him says he is harmless, but the face is what she fears. The narrow eyes look sharper than others she has seen.
“You must go.”
“Goose!” he says.
“No!” she says.
But the man turns to look at the house as if he might head there, and the girl watches them both. Rosalind can sense that he is wondering whether she is alone, and she feels exposed and suddenly vulnerable to this stranger who might do her harm.
The girl says something in her foreign language, then unlatches the gate and pushes it back to let the man step through and past Rosalind, who is too afraid to move. The girl glances at Rosalind in some way apologetically.
Sensing danger, one of the geese waddles toward her enclosure at the rear as the man moves after her. He fails at first in his attempt to grab at her, then chases her awkwardly on infirm legs. He finally throws himself on top of the bird, which squawks loudly.
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