He forces himself to alertness, forces the deadweight of his head upward, and he blinks several times. There are soft warbles from the trees but no human sounds. From the light outside, Stefano gauges it is well past midday. He sifts through the last moments, the tea, Rosalind’s vacant expression, and the missing satchel. He is wondering what he didn’t see. He twists his wrists within the bindings, but the attempt to wriggle free causes splinters in the skin on the backs of his hands.
Footsteps sound outside. He is expecting Rosalind when the door opens, but it is Erich. Stefano notices immediately, as Erich walks toward him, that there is a slight crack in his demeanor. He is still rigid, straight backed, but the elbows are tight to his sides as if he were tense, his gaze faltering at the sight of Stefano.
“Why am I tied up?” says Stefano, the dullness in his mind slowly clearing. “I need to get to the train.”
“You and I both know there is no train. The train line south was destroyed by Allied bombs,” says Erich, moving closer. “But I think you knew that. It is why you looked unconvinced when I offered you a lift.”
“I believed you about the train,” says Stefano cautiously. “And why would you offer to take me there when you knew it was destroyed?”
“You don’t need to pretend anymore,” he says.
Stefano can see that his captor is trying to sound controlled, but Erich is unnerved, by the way he paces, the way he keeps sighing and combing back his hair. It is a side of Erich that he hasn’t seen before.
The door of the barn squeaks open, and Rosalind rushes toward them, looking at Stefano like she did on the first day she saw him, suspicious and bitter. Before Erich has time to reach for her arm, she bends to slap Stefano hard across the face.
Erich grabs both her arms behind her and pulls her away.
“You had my husband killed!”
Stefano feels the sting that is left on his skin. But he has felt worse. Any pain is good pain now, he thinks. It is a reminder that he is alive, while others are dead. He can see that she has been crying again, but there is a determination he failed to see, a determination that most German women carry. The resolve that they will not be made to kneel, that they will still fight. The night before, she appeared vulnerable and frail, but she is anything but.
“I did not have your husband shot.”
“Why did you call out that the Nazis were gone?”
“My Russian is poor. As I told you, I was trying to tell them Georg was not a Nazi. That’s all. I was afraid that he would be shot. He did that to himself. He came at them. I tried to stop them.”
“You knew them!” she accuses.
Stefano sighs. He is wondering whether the war will ever stop for him.
“No,” he says, staring directly into her eyes. Though he is aware that Erich is nearby, watching, the scrutiny is worse than Rosalind’s fury.
“I don’t believe him,” she says to Erich. “He shouted at them as if Georg were the wrong one.”
“You were confused, upset,” defends Stefano. “You are looking for things that aren’t there.”
She goes to strike him again, but Erich stops her this time and grips her wrist so tightly that the area of skin appears burned after he releases her.
“Did you find the child?” says Erich.
“He is still missing,” she says.
“Then you have not looked hard enough.”
“He may have left hours ago—”
“Keep looking!” he commands in a tone that sounds much like a threat. “Search by the river!”
“Why do you want the boy?” says Stefano once she has hurried from the room.
“I can see that you have developed some affection for him.”
“And you think you can torture him in front of me to extract some information that you falsely perceive to be the truth.”
Erich ignores this.
“My first thought was that you might have brought him to cover who you really are, but my instinct says differently. His survival is personal to you. It might save your soul,” Erich says with mockery.
“One German orphan is of no consequence to me,” says Stefano. He must remain neutral. Feelings must not be revealed if he is to get out of this.
“That is something you can’t hide no matter how clever you think you are. You do not wish to lose anyone. It is perhaps that you have lost too many already.”
Stefano shrugs indifferently, though there is truth in the words.
“I think that you did not happen upon the houses by chance, that you came here with purpose, perhaps to kill me.”
“The war is finished. I see no fight here. I thought we were friends.”
“It took me a little longer this time, since I’m out of practice,” says Erich. “I am sorry to admit that I believed you about the Nazis being helped out of Italy through the church. It is obvious now what you were trying to do.”
“I didn’t make that up,” says Stefano with a hint of amusement. “Is that what you were thinking? That we could drive to Italy together? That you could escape that way?”
Erich doesn’t reply. His stillness shows that he is rattled by the condescending tone.
“If you let me go, both of us can carry on,” says Stefano.
“You had this sewn into the lining of your bag.”
Erich holds up a gun, and Stefano can no longer feel his penknife against his thigh, which has been taken also.
“So what if I carry one? Wouldn’t you if you were me walking through Germany? There are many out there who would still like to see me killed. You included, it would seem.”
“I never wanted to kill you. Rosalind did, though. She wanted you gone the first night you were here. That’s why she came to collect me. You might as well save me some time and tell me what you were planning with those Russians this morning.”
“There was no plan. What are you guilty of that makes you think this?”
Erich doesn’t respond.
Stefano swallows. His throat is dry. He is nauseated from the drug. He shakes his head. “I don’t know you or care what you might have done. I just want to go home. If there is no train, then release me. Let me go home to my family.”
“You were asking questions at the pharmacy, specifically about a child. Why was that?”
“I don’t know what you are talking about,” says Stefano. “I asked about an orphanage.”
“The description matched yours.”
“I saw other foreigners in town.”
Stefano can tell that Erich is unconvinced.
“Why did the Germans arrest you?”
“It was confusing, chaotic. Since I was Italian, they couldn’t tell which side I was on. Prisoners were sent east, some west.”
“Either way, Italian deserter or traitor to Germany, they would have shot you on the spot.”
“I guess I was one of the lucky ones. Perhaps they were saving bullets.”
“Amusing, but it will do you no favors to continue playing this game.”
“Look, I don’t know why I was sent away on a truck full of Allied prisoners. Why they spared me. Perhaps the soldiers were feeling happy that day, high on the smell of gunfire. As I told you earlier, I was shot by your friendly soldiers as we were marched away from the camp. Then I pretended I was dead. Then I was picked up by the Russians and taken back to the same camp and asked a whole lot of questions again, but they saw the tattoo and eventually let me go. I have been a football to kick around between other nations. The whole of Italy has been.”
“Why Sachsenhausen?” he queries again. “Why were you so special? Why not one of the camps in the territories?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t think to question the German who held a gun to my face,” he says, coldly this time, some of his former hostility creeping through.
Erich stares at him. Stefano is aware of interrogation methods. He is aware of the silences performed to threaten, to weaken, to make him speak, to make him accidentally give something away to fill t
he void. The German asks him more questions: dates, times in Berlin, details of the camp, Italy, the campaigns. He answers everything. He has the responses all stored. He has been prepared for this moment, for the time when he would be questioned. And Rosalind returns, standing back slightly, reporting ashamedly that the boy has gone, and guilty that in some way he was her responsibility.
“You are wrong about me,” says Stefano. “I don’t know you. I don’t even know if Erich is your real name. All I know is you don’t live here. That the two of you hate each other. That Rosalind would kill you if she had the chance, but she owes you for the drugs you feed her husband. That you also lie about going to work. That you live in the city.”
Erich gives nothing away, but Stefano knows that the last part has cut him, that he expected more loyalty from her.
“You have read me wrong,” continues Stefano. “I know some Russian. They wanted to see my papers. I was making polite conversation. I was about to tell them my plans for home when Georg ran from the house.”
“No, no, no!” says Rosalind, returning to stand close by. “There is something not right about him. I told you first that I was uncomfortable he was staying here, and you wouldn’t listen—”
“And then it was you who fed him, who took him to your bed,” Erich says louder, steady, and in full control. She shrinks a bit. Perhaps she has seen this other side of him before and knows what might come.
“I trusted him,” she says, weaker. “It was not like you think—”
“You can trust me still,” Stefano says more forcefully. “All I want is to go home. I wanted to catch that train home. I want to be gone. I can leave now and walk.”
“You must make him tell the truth!” she says to Erich.
“This is what I am doing!” barks Erich, his face reddened with anger.
“Please . . . The war is over,” says Stefano. “Rosalind says you have a daughter. Please just go to your family and let me go to mine.”
Erich turns toward Rosalind’s look of bewilderment.
“I never told him that,” she says. “I never said anything. He knows you. He must have known that from before. He is lying about everything.”
But Erich is calculating; Stefano can tell. He trusts neither of them now.
“You had too much to drink,” says Erich. “Perhaps you don’t remember. You’ve had a lapse in memory before.”
“No! I remember everything!”
“If I am the person you say I am, what is it that I am supposed to be doing?” asks Stefano. “I had plenty of chances to kill you. And if there are so many secrets, what is it about you that I don’t know?”
“Whether you are telling the truth is irrelevant . . . You know things now,” says Erich. “You know I am on the run—”
“Which you just told me!”
Erich reaches for something inside the pocket of his trousers and tosses the contents onto Stefano’s lap. The paper is crumpled, and the image on one side is not visible, but he doesn’t have to see it to know what it is.
“There is more of course,” says Erich, “that you need to explain.”
10 August 1944
Dear Papa,
It has been more than a year. Where to start? Perhaps at the end. I am in Verona, Italy. What began with an abhorrent event has now become my beautiful accident.
Erich was sent here at the beginning of the year to help the Gestapo. It is his role to help keep the order, to seek out those usurpers, after an opposing government staged its unsuccessful coup last year.
It was not an easy transition for me, unfortunately. Almost the moment we were taken to our new apartment over the piazza, I was left alone again in a strange city. It was even lonelier here than when I was in Vienna. At first, people did not view me as a friend. Few officials here have brought their wives. But because I was carrying Erich’s child, he thought it best to be near, perhaps because it would not look so good leaving me in Austria with no one. And I do not think he trusts me in Berlin—I might once again show my disquiet. Perhaps he is right about that.
A child was not something that I had even considered, and the relationship now with Erich is difficult to explain to you. Sometimes it is just too painful to give it any thought, to explain the distance, yet explain in the same sentence how it is that I carried his child. It does not make sense even to me at times. But she is here now, small, not robust, like some, but she is here. She is five months old and lies beside me as I write. She keeps her mind occupied. She is a little thinker, always watching what I am doing and studying me.
I have a book of Italian phrases, which I practice on the shopkeepers. When I first came here, to pass the time I would walk to the piazza in the front of my building and sit on the edge of a fountain there. Sometimes I would take a sketch pad to draw the buildings. But always someone seemed to be looking at me as if I were not welcome, a pariah with a German accent.
One day I ordered some coffee, but a woman refused to serve me. Her husband saw this and yelled at her and sent her away to the back of the kitchen. He gave me my coffee, but there was no kindness in the café owner’s service, only a reluctant tolerance. There are some here who are not loyal to Mussolini still and even less loyal to Hitler. He knows I could have reported him. That is why he served me and covered for his wife. Of course, I didn’t report him.
The Black Brigades and their wives and others loyal to Mussolini are pleasant enough to me, but I don’t want anything to do with them. I know what their husbands are doing to the free people who do not want their country to turn into another Germany. I know that whole families were slaughtered mercilessly when Italy was split. When I do see Erich, he tells me stories, perhaps on purpose, about the punishments for disloyalty, the public hangings to avert reprisals from partisans that hide in cities and the mountains nearby. He has become vile, Papa. I cannot tell you how much. He is so different from the boy I met at the river, but perhaps he was always that way. This has brought out his true nature. And you must also wonder why I carried his child. I have come to the conclusion that the child was meant to be. It is the only way I can justify Vivi’s existence.
The first friend I made here was a woman who had lost most of her family. She does my laundry, and we talk often, and she helps me with my Italian. I make her stay and have tea with me, and I pay her extra, which she is embarrassed taking. She is a small woman, a little older than I am. She said she has suffered at the hands of the Germans. But at least I have her to talk to. We struck up a friendship, and she said she would convince her friends to see me, to invite me into their group.
It took several weeks for an invitation to arrive from them, just before Vivi was born. They didn’t trust me. I think they had me watched and found out that my husband came rarely. They thought that I was spying for Erich. Of course, I didn’t tell them he had asked me to keep an eye on things here, as if I owed him something. But I owe him nothing. He treated me abominably, Papa, and I can’t forget that.
Then finally Teresa came and took me to meet her friends. They were very suspicious and talked about my growing belly. The women in the group started to care for me, and I wonder now if it is the child that has made my life better, my acceptance here greater. Perhaps that was part of Vivi’s purpose.
There are people here who are not as they first seemed. The women and their husbands appeared to support the war. But it is not true at all. They hate the Black Brigades, who puff out their chests, grinning like morons, and carrying their guns as if they are always about to shoot someone just for fun. Some of the women flirt with them, pretend that they are loyal, but they scowl behind their backs.
I thought I was so alone here, but now I know I am not. I have befriended a group of men and women who are responsible for destroying vehicles and supply routes of the German army. They are no small crimes and carry the penalty of death, but some Italians are also punished for much less, for simply refusing to salute a guard. Murder is a given if you do not respect and comply with the new way of g
overnment, the German way.
And I have to tell you something else, Papa. I have been passing on information, learned from conversations with Erich, to the resistance. And on the rare times I am invited to a social function with other members of the Nazi Party, a tiny piece of information slips through. I know where they are looking for partisans and where they are not looking. I have given money for food, medical supplies, weapons, and new identities, contributions that have helped several Jewish families escape to Switzerland and enabled those who wish to remain here to continue the fight. The liberation of Rome by the Allies has given them confidence.
It is dangerous what I do. I have heard what they do to “traitors.” The very fact that I am putting this in writing puts me in danger, but I feel it must be recorded, that you need to understand things should anything happen to me, should you somehow, by a miracle, get to read my letters if I am gone. And I pray that it will be me in person who tells you everything, but if it isn’t, then these letters will tell you about my life.
But there are always challenges still. I am not always trusted because of my marriage to Erich. Teresa said that while most trust me, there are still some who believe that I am a double spy, and that I am passing on information to my husband. Teresa knows the truth, as do most, so I will ignore their doubt and continue doing this.
Erich rarely comes home now. He is busy. There is so much partisan activity. He goes from west to east to meetings and to camps. It is a relief that I do not see him, and then it is a relief when he does visit briefly and I learn something new to pass on to the resistance.
When Vivi was born, he did not want to touch her. But as she grew, he became more interested. Though I don’t like him touching her. I am very possessive of her, and I do not want his ways to rub off on her. I do not know what the future holds, but I do know that when this is over, I will take my daughter away, and Erich will not see her.
The Road Beyond Ruin Page 30
