The Road Beyond Ruin

by Gemma Liviero

  As a member of the Gestapo, Erich was tasked with tracking and interrogating Jews, and hunting down political anti-Nazi activists hiding in the bowels of Berlin. It had taken him all over Berlin, sometimes to the outskirts. His first assignment was to inspect an apartment where Jews were known to live, to take names and verify records. Here he would interrogate them in a style that was neither warm nor cruel. In the early days, before superiority became embedded, it was difficult for those under questioning to dislike him, yet they knew he was there to glean information, to take a mental inventory of their precious items. He would then have to record these people who would, in most cases, be evicted shortly after.

  The fate of the Jews was yet to be fully revealed even to him at the time of these inquisitions and removals. He had known that many were transported to camps, but the propaganda within his office did not show the real conditions. It was not until he visited a camp in Austria that he learned the full extent. In those first few months of his employment, he had been unaware of the hard labor ahead for those he had helped remove from Berlin, of the families torn apart, and of the mass executions. In time he found out, but even with full knowledge, he grew to accept these conditions quickly, to become desensitized, even repulsed, by the people he sent away.

  Though respectful of orders, some of the SS he was assigned in these early days were crude and untrained in the ways of restraint when it came to controlling a situation. At first he quietly resented them almost as much as the people he interviewed. They didn’t like Erich, but they kept a safe distance because he was one they couldn’t put into any box. He was too tidy, too careful, too methodical. They used too much brashness and, unlike Erich, were unable to hide the revulsion, which made it difficult to extract information during interviews.

  During one of his early interrogations, he was accompanied by an SS officer that Erich considered to have few social capabilities. Erich was able to talk a Jewish man into cooperating, convincing him in a nonthreatening way to assist Erich and advising him that he would have to vacate the apartment for new accommodations on the outskirts of the city. The Jew, the father of the family, with his wife, his mother, and several children sitting nearby, threatened to find a lawyer. Erich patiently told him that there would be no legal representation, that Nazi laws did now allow them such, and that by refusing to talk, they were breaking a law, which meant he would be put in prison and separated from his family for an indefinite period. Perhaps it was the nonhostile tone that Erich used, and the clarity with which he spoke, but the Jewish man calmed down eventually, accepting his fate and agreeing for the sake of his family. But just to prove superiority, the Gestapo member who accompanied him hit the man across the face at the end of the questioning. The Jew then became difficult, and Erich asked that the children be removed from the room. They had begun to whimper, the one thing most likely to distract him.

  Erich continued to question the man who held a hand to his bruised face, pretending coldly that there had been no harm done, and the interview concluded quickly. Once outside Erich turned to his associate and said that if he ever did that again, Erich would make sure that he lost his employment.

  The Jew, later that night, was taken prisoner and was never to see the rest of his family again. At the time Erich thought he had failed to keep control of his staff and the situation, but sometime later he would come to the conclusion that he was only delaying the inevitable. The man and his family were always going to be separated. And as time went on, and the job became monotonous, the sound of crying offensive, the evasive answers annoying, Erich would find that such brute force would be a necessary part of the job, and that people like his associate served a purpose.

  Since the commencement of his commission, Erich had helped remove thousands of Jews and nonconformists from the city, several hundred of whom had been in hiding. He was able to question those who lied about their origins. He was able to spot a fake identity card. He was able to root out hiding spots within walls and glean information from others as to the whereabouts of missing family members.

  When it came time to leave Berlin for Vienna in Austria, he had some reservations. He had grown to like the tasks, to like the power and control, and he had earned the respect of fellow officers, above and below his station. His name was known. He was relieved at least that he would not have to attend Georg and Rosalind’s wedding to celebrate a marriage that was undoubtedly of little substance, like his own. Monique, on the other hand, was excited about leaving for Vienna. She was “going home,” as she called it. But of course, there was no reason for any excitement, as she would soon discover. There were worse things ahead in Vienna.

  Present-day 1945

  Erich can’t help but notice that Rosalind looks different. She has put on a dress that Monique bought in Vienna, and high-heeled black shoes. The dress is too large for her but suits her nonetheless. Her hair is brushed back from her face and held with a pearl pin that he recognizes also. She doesn’t wear any face paint, but she doesn’t need to. Her complexion is fair, lightly tanned, with freckles across her nose that might appeal to some. She is not stunning, but her eyes are large and luminous, and her mannerisms feminine and delicate. But she is not delicate. She saw much in the hospitals and has experienced much since. He has also seen that she can take care of herself.

  She smiles at Stefano. And that is the reason she looks so good, he thinks. It is the smile. Her face is usually stern.

  Stefano has noticed the smile, too, as well as the dress and the shoes. He does not hide the admiration with his staring eyes. He has washed out his shirt and damply combed back his hair, so it is no longer loose and curling around his face.

  There is no sign of Georg, and neither man raises the question.

  The smell of roasting meat entices them to the table where they take their places. Rosalind tells them about the goose she has prepared, the goose with the broken leg, and tells Erich the story of the other goose that was stolen.

  “A little charity and they always come back for more,” says Erich, and Stefano looks at Rosalind, who glances away, who does not want to be reminded of her generosity.

  “I have brought some vodka,” says Erich.

  “Did you find that also under floorboards somewhere?” says Stefano.

  “I have always been resourceful.” He rises to get several glasses from the bench. “May I?” he asks Rosalind, who nods.

  He pours three glasses back at the table.

  “I’d rather not,” says Rosalind. “I—”

  “Just one,” says Stefano, “to celebrate the rebuilding of the wall.”

  She thinks for a moment.

  “Thank you,” she says. “It was usually Monique who liked to drink.”

  Erich avoids turning to his right to see Monique on the wall. The mentioning of her is not something he expected. It is not like Rosalind to talk of her cousin, but he can see that it interests Stefano, and she knows this, too, perhaps using it for conversation.

  “Is there any word from your cousin?” asks Erich.

  “No,” says Rosalind, and she moves to check the oven. “Unfortunately nothing . . . With the goose I have baked some potatoes also and spinach, too. I’m sorry that I have not made more. There is so little to take from the garden yet.”

  Stefano looks keenly between them. He is not interested in hearing about the vegetables. He is examining Monique’s portrait; her disappearance still begs for questions. But his attention diverts to Rosalind approaching the table with the food, and the pretty girl on the wall is once more in the past.

  Michal sits closest to Stefano. Erich asks the child questions, but he is silent, his eyes darting back to the others, to his hands and to the basket that sits at his feet. He shifts several times, impatiently, the smell of the food distracting. And Erich is remembering his little brothers, who sat quietly upright at the table, who were patient, unlike Michal. He stops himself from thinking and takes a sip of the vodka.

  “I owe you a debt,” Ro
salind says to Stefano as she sits once more at the table. “You have done a marvelous job. I never have to worry about rain again.”

  As they pass around the serving plates, their talk turns to progress and the reshaping of the country. Erich has brought with him a German newsletter. The printing firms are starting up again, though the information is carefully worded and distributed so as not to upset the Russians and the Allies. The building work is recovering, and many of the captured Germans are cleaning up the cities, focusing on agriculture. There is much discussed about how they will disperse the labor, where the food will come from in the meantime. The distribution of territories from meetings held in Potsdam confirms that the Russians are expected to stay for some time, and Rosalind’s face falls at the mention of this.

  The food is nice, Erich tells Rosalind. She thanks him, but from the lack of sincerity in her reply, she could do without his company.

  “So, Stefano,” she says, “tomorrow you leave!”

  “Yes,” he says, showing no emotion. Erich can see Rosalind blink back a thought, a small frown between her brows. He can see what is happening here. Lonely little Rosalind has fallen for the Italian.

  “Stefano, does your family know you are coming?” asks Erich.

  “I have written, but I did not give a date.”

  “Tell me about your town,” says Rosalind as if Erich were not with them. It is definitely Stefano, he thinks, who asked him to dinner, not Rosalind. He orchestrated it, and she reluctantly agreed.

  “It is blue and bright most of the time. And yellow and warm.”

  “I like that you describe in colors,” she says candidly, before her eyes meet Erich’s and fall away again.

  “Rosalind,” says Erich, “this is delicious. I don’t know why you haven’t invited me here before. Why you took so long to kill the goose.”

  Rosalind’s cheeks are flushed as she cuts the meat, her pet goose, into small pieces.

  Tonight there is no discussion of war. Stefano is talkative about the village he comes from, about the tourists and the colored glass and silver jewelry that is popular with the tourists, of the buildings that have faced the sea for hundreds of years. He shows the bracelet at his wrist his sister made and sold at markets. He talks and they listen, both of them curious, interested. Rosalind has drunk too much of the vodka, and unsteadily carries out a dessert of baked pears with melted chocolate from the last of Stefano’s rations.

  Stefano leaves some of the pears to give to Michal, who takes them eagerly, eyes not on any adult but on the food that is scraped into his dish.

  “He misses his mother very much,” says Stefano.

  “And do you think the boy will find his family?” asks Rosalind.

  “I’m not sure,” he says, and Michal looks away, perhaps content with the possibility that he might not be sent to somewhere he doesn’t want to go.

  “The boy is attached to you,” says Rosalind. “In the days you have been here, I have seen you grow closer.” And Erich has seen this also, that Stefano’s expression softens when he looks at the boy.

  “I saw the way you worked together,” says Rosalind. “I saw the loyalty in his eyes.”

  Stefano searches hers, shiny and animated, the awkwardness of their first meeting behind them.

  “They are like that,” says Erich, interrupting the moment. “They draw you out, highlight things about yourself you didn’t know.”

  “Are you speaking from experience?” asks Stefano.

  And Rosalind watches Erich closely to see how he will answer.

  “Yes, I helped raise my younger sister and brothers,” he says, answering carefully. And he catches a look from Rosalind, unshrinking, a look that says, You can’t have what I have, not anymore.

  But he doesn’t want what she has. He wants something else.

  And Rosalind tells them she has an idea and disappears into her room. She returns, wheeling a gramophone on a small trolley. She winds it up, places the needle on the record, and jazz—once banned by the Nazis—pours out of the speaker, scratchy but better than the silence that was about to come. And he thinks of Monique then, not fondly, just that she would have loved the sound, and loved an opportunity to dance.

  Erich notices that Stefano has still not drunk his glass and that he is watching everything carefully. Erich is on his second glass, and he is watchful also but caring less, not offended by the music as he should be, and feeling the effects of the vodka. Rosalind smiles at the music, at both of them, and at Michal, who looks curiously at the music box, and Erich likes this new Rosalind, the one who might forget the past.

  Erich feels something he hasn’t felt for years, the feeling of freedom, of life about to start. He watches Stefano change into someone else entirely: Stefano takes Rosalind’s hands and pulls her from the chair to dance, swinging her around forcefully—furiously, almost. She is shy and ungainly, and though she tries to be Monique, to be carefree like she once was, she can’t be. She is Rosalind and always will be. Then suddenly she interrupts the dance to reach up and touch her throat. And both he and Stefano follow Rosalind’s gaze.

  Georg is standing at the bottom of the stairs and appears almost normal, his hands casually in his pockets. Rosalind stops the gramophone’s playing, and the silence that follows is louder.

  Rosalind asks Georg to sit down, but he’s not listening, his focus on Erich, who stands up warily as if an unfamiliar dog has wandered near.

  “Are you feeling all right, Georg?” Erich asks.

  It has been a while since he has faced him. Not since he brought him home from the incident on the battlefield. It has been even longer since Georg has looked him in the eye. The look is primal, and for the first time in a long while, Erich feels fear.

  “Get out!” Georg says to Erich before he himself leaves, through the front door, swinging it back on its hinges to slam against the wall, the force of which causes the clock to fall and smash on the stone. The mood in the room is solemn, and that brief time that they had forgotten the past has vanished with Georg.

  “It is probably time to end the night,” says Rosalind apologetically, not to Erich but to Stefano, in her usual disagreeably abrupt tone, her brightness fading quickly. “I will go and find him. I keep thinking that he will return to . . .” She doesn’t have to say the word. It is pretty obvious he will never return to normal.

  “No,” says Stefano. “Not you. I will go.”

  And Erich wonders why he should care. Tomorrow he’ll be gone, and there will be no one to protect her then.

  Stefano leaves the house, and it is just Erich and Rosalind and the child in the room.

  Michal has hidden under the table, and Rosalind bends down to speak to him.

  “It is safe, Michal. Georg won’t hurt you. He is a gentle giant, and he loves children.”

  Erich watches Rosalind, who has no idea of children and their fears and can’t see that the child is not afraid of Georg but frightened of being in the room with them, especially now that Stefano is away.

  Rosalind gives up on the boy and stands nervously in the kitchen to wait for Stefano. She avoids looking at Erich.

  The last time they were alone, he told her to stay away. He wants to remind her of that, and query her change of heart toward Stefano.

  Erich walks to the front window. Near the entrance to the wood, Stefano is whispering to Georg, who is listening, seemingly intently. And then Georg is saying something that Erich can’t hear.

  He turns to Rosalind. “Do you trust him, the Italian?”

  “Why shouldn’t I?”

  “Have you told him anything?”

  “You should not question me,” she says coldly.

  “Georg should not be left alone with anyone,” says Erich. “He says things, meaningless things. But sometimes he tells the truth also.”

  “I’ve already told Stefano that Georg makes no sense. There is nothing he can learn. I’m curious, though, why you have taken such an interest.”

  Erich dismi
sses the remark and turns back to the window to see that Georg is now gone and Stefano is returning to the house.

  “Thank you for your goose,” Erich says to Rosalind, who ignores the contaminated gratitude.

  “It is a pity the night has ended this way,” says Stefano, meeting him just outside the door. “Poor Georg and his demons.”

  And Stefano watches the other man carefully, waiting for some comment from Erich. There is nothing he cares to add. He will be free of Georg tomorrow also, if he has his way.

  “I will see you in the early morning then,” says Erich, “and drive you as promised.”

  “Erich,” he says, the accentuation of the name fluid and lyrical. Erich has never heard it spoken that way. Stefano puts out his hand, and Erich takes it, the hold firm, unending. “I look forward to it. To my last night in Germany! Thank you for allowing me to stay, for taking me to the train.”

  And then he leans forward, holds Erich’s shoulders, and kisses him on the cheek. Erich has seen Italians be demonstrative with one another, with old friends, but he is unprepared for such intimacy. He feels unsettled, his heart racing as he feels the lips of the Italian graze the other cheek also: the kiss, the words are strangely full of truths and messages he cannot decipher. Does he know? Does he suspect what I want from him? It is Erich who breaks the hold, who turns away to hide any feelings and avoid further intimacy that might weaken him.

  It was on this night that Erich was going to tell Stefano the truth about the trains and suggest they travel together. But he can’t bring himself to speak. Not now. For some reason Erich senses that he is no longer the one in control.

  He walks back toward the town and wonders if his mother noticed the rain clouds from her bay window in the town. He can picture her shutting all the windows years ago in their two-story country villa and ordering Claudine to bring in the washing. The smell of the air, the wind gusts, the brief moments of stillness before the storms that have become more meaningful; small things that remind him of the better times before the war. And perhaps tonight the signs of the approaching storm spell also better things to come.