“Goodbye, Rosalind,” Erich said.
She ignored him and walked briskly to the station, hatred pumping through her veins, and she waited on the platform till morning to catch the first train back to Berlin.
Only when on the train did she allow herself to cry, telling herself that she would leave Georg, but she knew she never could. He would have to leave her first.
A week later his letter arrived. He told her that he couldn’t wait for the war to be over so they could be together. And in the silent messages between the lines, he had somehow made it clear that she was the one he loved. She was comforted momentarily that Monique was just a distraction. Monique had always made herself one, but time would see an end to it.
Rosalind would love Georg still, and she would fight harder. And she forgave him, pushing the truth and the memories deep down, drowning them until they could not be revived. But also deep down was the feeling that sooner or later Monique would pay for the betrayal.
Present-day 1945
Stefano waits for her in the living room. She hadn’t noticed before, but his clothes are still wet, his shirt smeared with dirt, and the bottoms of his trousers muddied.
“I have some spare clothes. Let me get them for you.”
She retrieves several items from a laundry hamper under the stairs.
“These belong to Georg,” she says as she steps near him to unbutton his shirt.
“No, I’m fine,” he says, gently pushing back her hands, but she nudges his hands officiously out of the way and continues the unbuttoning. He puts up his arms, suggesting some kind of surrender.
“Tell me, Stefano, did you love someone in the war?”
“There was no time for love.”
She peels off his shirt. How many patients did she do this for? So many. Too many. Bloodied torsos. She puts the images away and focuses on the body in front of her.
“It would be best for Georg if I just put him out of his misery. If I just put him to sleep,” she says. “It is the kindest way perhaps.”
“It is kinder if he gets better care,” he says, but she isn’t listening. She is thinking about what she wants to do. She wants Stefano to take her far away from the life she has here. Away from Erich and Georg and memories and years of belief and false hope.
Stefano’s burn scars, skin pink and puckered, extend up the side of his body to his shoulder and down his arm. She is used to damage. And then her eyes stop on the numbers on his other arm, and she feels she owes him something for his suffering.
“It must have been terrible,” she says, laying her hands flat on his bare chest, and thinking of Georg, and remembering that Erich gave her a drug to end her husband’s life quickly if it came to it. Humane also, Erich had added, and she fights off the image of Georg. She wants to be free of both of them. She wants new experiences, better ones that will block out those that came before. She no longer has control over what she is about to do, and she leans forward, kisses the scarring on Stefano’s shoulder, smells the salt on his skin, and wonders if this is what Monique did with men, if she took control.
She looks up at Stefano, who is looking down, his features indistinct in the dim light, then stands on tiptoe and moves her lips close to his. He is very still, waiting for her, she thinks. And his lips, she feels them, close enough to kiss, her hands still against his chest. He moves slightly, a response, willing, she thinks, and her lips are over his now, and beneath her hands his body burns hot.
He turns his head slightly and gently holds her wrist.
“I’m sorry . . . ,” he says, and sighs.
“Pretend there is no tomorrow,” she whispers hesitantly.
“I can’t,” he says. “Tomorrow is always the day I’m waiting for, what I dream about.”
The words are like a knife in her chest. The rejection, the feeling of being unloved. Does it ever go away?
“You aren’t ready for this,” he says quietly. “You have been through a lot. You must think of your husband. Tomorrow I am gone.”
And there is no future, she thinks. There is no tomorrow. There is no Stefano, no Michal. She has chosen her own destiny. And she is crying and weeping and apologizing. He tells her it doesn’t matter, that he will stay with her tonight, and she collapses against him, and he lifts her and carries her into the bedroom and places her gently on the mattress. He slides in beside her, arms around her protectively, like a friend, like a parent, she thinks, though she has had no such experience before.
In the night she tells him about the baby they lost, that she had become pregnant on one of Georg’s visits. That after a certain particular event by the river, which she can’t speak of, the pair became closer. She doesn’t give details, and he doesn’t interrupt to ask.
And she tells him about Berlin in the final days, of the Russians and the rapes and the rage. She had walked home pregnant, hungry, sleep deprived. People didn’t notice, or care. People were escaping Berlin, escaping the Russians who were thundering into Germany in their tanks like a herd of wild beasts, and as she traveled home, the rest of the Allies came in from the west, majestic, as if they had not seen a war. No one stopped to help her. Her own people, desperate now, like animals, she said. Humanity had left, and she feels numb at the memory, but not surprised. There was little goodwill. It was about saving herself and escaping. She was no better than they were, she admits to Stefano, selfishly uncaring of others at that point.
Her weeping eventually stops, and she is thinking that Stefano is a good man, a man with integrity, and kind. He has sisters, he tells her. He used to comfort them also.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “It has been so hard living with Georg. All the secrets.”
“What secrets?” he asks, but she is too sleepy to talk now.
Sometime in the night she is aware that he leaves briefly, most likely to check on the boy, and then another time to get up and shine a light on his watch in his bag, before climbing back into bed, but it doesn’t matter what he does.
In sleep she can blissfully forget her wrongs. And for the first time in so long, she sleeps deeply.
CHAPTER 22
ERICH
Shadows stretch across the street, and rooftops catch fire in the early morning light that patterns the town in grays and gold. Erich stands at the window to gaze upon the peace. The baker’s horse and cart clatter over the cobblestones and head toward the Russian-filled hotel on the outskirts of town to deliver the freshly baked rolls of rye.
Erich is thinking over the events of the previous evening. To my last night in Germany, those were the words Stefano said. Prophetic words, almost a challenge. It could be Erich’s last night in Germany, too. It is possible.
He steps quietly into the child’s bedroom. He thinks of her as “the” child rather than “his” child because he had so little time with her in the first year. At first, in some ways, she was a disappointment, a burden—sickly, awkward, crying for her mother. But by growing rapidly into a quiet acceptance of her new situation, she has also grown on him. She has intelligent, inquisitive eyes. She watches his hands as he speaks, and she looks at body language to form her own opinions. She listens to sounds and repeats them. He must steer her strengths toward superiority, instill in her qualities that would make his mother proud, and keep her loyal to her country.
Hair the color of ripened hay fans across the pillow, and Genevieve’s chest rises and falls in loud, shallow breaths. The medicine has been slow to work, said Marceline the previous evening. She needs a doctor, she also said. That is not possible, unfortunately. She will have to weather the worst of it and prove that she is a survivor like him. His mother lost two babies to fever without shedding a tear. It was nature’s way of eliminating the weaker ones, his mother had told him.
In spirit, Genevieve is like him, distant, watchful, but in looks, she is so like Monique that sometimes when she turns to listen, he sees the older version, the raising of one side of her pretty mouth in a sort of contempt.
He touches h
er forearm and feels its warmth. She moves it away slightly. Even in sleep she is cautious. He doesn’t like that she is hidden here, with her future uncertain, transferred from place to place. He must find stability, a home for her like he had when growing up. She has no idea yet what it is like to live freely in the sunshine. She has always lived in the shadows. He wants the golden arms of light from outside to reach across her, too.
Marceline is already up. She has boiled an egg and serves it with some leavened bread cut thinly, toasted and smeared with lard. He eats it at the kitchen table while she pours him a cup of coffee.
“Are you feeling all right?” she asks. “You aren’t coming down with something also?”
“I am fine,” he answers. “A restless sleep.”
She is good to him, but he knows her concern is paid for. Marceline was raised by French parents, but she and her family are more German than French in many ways. They were on the secret German payroll, regularly sending the Nazi headquarters in northern France lists of people who were of special interest, those whose interests weren’t aligned with their government.
He leaves and enters the street. Today he will travel with Stefano, but first he must retrieve the tin buried on the hill behind the river house; documents kept there in case his location is ever betrayed. Inside are several sets of false identities, like the French ones he carries for himself and Genevieve, and a list of safe houses for Nazis on the run. But most precious of all, enclosed are copies of his father’s designs that have hardly seen the light of day, and that, time permitting, might have changed the state of play in battles to come. They might be something he can bargain with should there be a need.
Erich thinks about the intruder as he enters the track near the river. Stefano appears comfortable with the man he is, neither fearful nor gallant. He is politely inquisitive but not intrusive, as if he has quickly gleaned the information he needs. Most curiously, he bears no grudges. The Italians Erich dealt with were civil but at the same time looked as though they would cut his throat at the first opportunity. Understandably. Stefano has a haunted look like most from the camps, but he carries himself taller than most prisoners Erich has seen since. He likes him, perhaps more than he should.
The photo of Monique drew Stefano more than Rosalind’s feeble attempt at attention, though Stefano tried to hide the interest. Erich is not surprised. Monique looks beautiful in the photo. People are drawn to her. They always have been. Except for Erich.
He is comforted in knowing that there are still some Italians loyal to the German alliance. And Stefano, he is convinced, is the pathway to a normal future. He and Genevieve could travel by car to southern Italy, then across the Mediterranean Sea to places where they could roam free. Germans have become prisoners in their own towns. It has entered his mind over several days, but not until this morning has he thought so hard about it, nor has the resolve for his new future been so firm.
Marceline, of course, speaks French fluently, and his French might also pass with the Italians. They must wear German only on their hearts if the three of them are to survive such a journey. And return one day for the new Germany when it emerges, when its power is restored.
Erich opens the front door of Georg’s father’s house. The kitchen is quiet, the kettle cold. On the top floor, he can see Michal, sunk in dreams, his arms and legs stretched out across the bed, but Stefano is missing. He may have changed his mind, decided that he will walk after all; then Erich thinks about the leg injury and the child. Why wait for all this time only to walk now?
He has a sinking feeling, an odd jolt to the heart, at the other thought that enters quickly after: that Stefano spent the night with Rosalind. Rosalind, who told him on the first night that she wanted Stefano gone, to not allow strangers into their world. Rosalind, who claimed that Stefano was still the enemy, would have watched his execution if she’d had the choice. She was fiercely loyal to the party, like Erich, but lacked vision, was easily misguided, and only changed her opinion of Stefano once he’d shown himself better as something interesting, someone who might change the course of her life also. He had perhaps altered both their perceptions of others, of strangers, of people who did not fit with Germany’s ideas.
His eyes wander over Georg’s bleak and neglected house. He wishes to be free of the misery these walls hold, with the imprint of Monique and Georg, and of times that need to be forgotten.
He walks back outside and squints at the shine off the river that has infiltrated the spaces between the narrow tree trunks. The feelings here are hollow and cold, the sounds of wildlife obtrusive, the houses unfortified. He likes solid buildings, close together, that blend into one another. It is too open here and too primitive.
The house next door is still. He stops to search for the sounds that crack open the stillness, and the smells: the squeak of the water pump, the smoke from the coal burning through the flue in Rosalind’s kitchen, doors opening and closing. He is used to patterns; he has studied them. He has always been good at reading people, at learning their habits in the shortest time possible.
But today the pattern here is broken.
He does not wish to see Rosalind if he can help it, nor see the hostility that hangs in every expression. She has expected everything, food, medicines, even his protection, without showing gratitude. He could be free of her completely today. He walks to the side of her house with a feeling, not so much a sense of danger but an impending change in the wind that might ultimately lead to something he cannot control.
He stands back slightly from Rosalind’s ground-floor window and peers through the sheer curtains to view the shapes within. Stefano lies on Rosalind’s bed, one arm draped across her.
Erich steps back and out of view. What he has seen alters things. Was his instinct wrong? Is Stefano not the man he thought he was? A traitor, someone dangerous perhaps? But these are the thoughts of people grasping for things to blame. What he feels most is jealousy, something that he did not expect to feel.
November 1942
He was called back to Berlin. His mother was pleased to see him. His father greeted him with a handshake as if they were associates, unrelated. He couldn’t help but notice a change, the aging. He knew that his father’s work was less about design and more about efficiency with what they had. His father would not enjoy that, patching things, working under the Reich minister of armaments. And at that point, manpower and modifications superseded the need for creativity and foresight.
Horst asked Erich about Monique, who had stayed behind in Austria. He wanted to know more about Erich’s wife than his son. Was she fitting in? Did she miss her family? Did she have employment to keep her busy? She is the type of girl who needs to keep busy; give her a job, maybe children, he said, more softly, less formally than when he was addressing his son. Horst, always busy, left their meeting quickly.
Erich made his way to an office for briefings by the senior ministry. They needed his help. They knew he had connections as well as a sixth sense. They knew he was an expert at extracting the truth, often without the need for force, because, as they had found, torture did not always work.
There were people underground undermining authority and distorting views. They had tried to find them—a group that had grown in size, but they had been unable to catch any of the ringleaders. He was sent to an address in the city. He was looking forward to this work, to working back in Berlin. He missed it, he realized, places where interrogations were civil, where he did not have to witness the painful extortions at the camp, did not have to face blood.
Erich banged on the door on the top landing. When there was no answer, he ordered the two officers accompanying him to break down the door. And when they did, they found no one there, only traces: a coffee cup that still had the remains of lipstick, an overfilled ashtray, papers and newsletters scattered across the floor. They searched cupboards, pulled out drawers, pulled apart cushions. They did not find address books, but they found piles of leaflets among the papers with anti-Na
zi drawings and slogans, and inciting unrest, accusing the government of operating illegally. The leaflets were telling people to reject Nazism. There were also clippings from Western newspapers about the war, articles smuggled in by resistance members, about the campaigns, about Allied successes.
Only a couple of years earlier, Erich had started this work, and he had grown to crave it, like an addiction, the hunt. In Austria there was not enough of this. They captured people, and he questioned, but it was not really a hunt. He was a born leader and interrogator, which had earned him the title of “the pinscher,” the rat-catching dog. He was clearheaded, capable, and calm under pressure. He was already someone of importance.
“They’ve gone,” said one of the officers. “There are no clothes in the drawers.”
He knew why they had moved location. They were tipped off, and he also knew who was behind the drawings. He had seen similar caricatures before and said that he was ashamed, but she had just laughed and said she could draw what she wanted, then brushed him away like an insect.
Erich would sort out the problem himself. He would see to it.
He did not take the official car. This one was personal. People seemed to sit up straighter and avoid eye contact with Erich when he stepped on a bus to travel home, while many found it hard to look away. He was recognized at public functions, standing near the front of the delegations. He was a celebrity of sorts.
From the bus, he watched the people on the streets, aware that the personal circumstances of some had declined with the rationing of foods, and the threat of Allied air raids hovered. But still the people of Berlin remained stoic and dedicated to the Reich. Small children in nice coats skipped along the pavement and waved at the Gestapo. He was proud of this city and of his country, and of the work he did to protect their futures. He would not let Claudine seek to destroy all that he’d achieved.
He entered his parents’ house, greeted by his brothers with enthusiasm, both of them eager to follow their oldest sibling into service. The second brother was then thirteen, the youngest, nearly nine.
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