The Road Beyond Ruin

by Gemma Liviero

  She had shaken the dirt from her hair and wiped the dirt from her mouth. She could not see him in the dark, but she sensed he was upset, and she reached up and put her hands on the sides of his face, and he reached out to touch her, too. And Monique knew then that the connection between them was still there, a bond that was unbreakable, a loyalty that takes years to build. She would have sobbed into his chest if she could, but he was ill and sedated, and she knew there was little time, and fear of Erich still gripped her.

  “Georg,” she said, “I need you to do something, but the others in the house can’t know what you are doing. You mustn’t let them see you. Can you do that?” He stared at her in the dark, and she had no idea if this would work. “I need you to spy through the windows, like when we were young, to see what they are doing, and if the little girl, Vivi, is still there with the others.” And he sat there for a moment as if he hadn’t heard. She said it again, and suddenly he left. She waited, not knowing if he understood under the haze of his illness, and when the door had opened a short time later, her heart had leaped, expecting Erich. But it was Georg.

  “The little girl has left with the man,” he said clearly. And she didn’t know whether to hug him or cry that Vivi was perhaps still alive, but gone also, and to where she did not know. “The other one is still there.”

  She had instructed him to do one last thing, to fill in the hole that he had found her in, and she wasn’t sure if he had understood, but she had left him then, kissed him on the cheek, but she felt he wasn’t looking at her anymore, that he was lost somewhere else in his head. And she promised then that she would never give up on him, that they would be together again.

  She had swum partway up the river. Then it was some British soldiers in a truck that she flagged down on the road to Dresden. She was badly injured and shaking uncontrollably, and they were shocked at her state. They were also surprised when she begged them to take her to a Russian military base just north of the city. A German woman was not safe alone, they said, and there was no mockery in their tone. They gave her a blanket and some water and took her to the destination, hesitant. They did not leave there until they knew she was safe, until she had safely delivered the lines she was told to say in Russian. She was taken to a hospital nearby, where she was later reunited with Stefano in another base with Fedor, north of Berlin, and away from the eyes of the Nazi underground suspected of operating near Dresden. She was to wait there until Stefano completed his mission to find Erich and her daughter. But after a failed attempt to capture Erich, with Georg shot by accident, Monique had rushed down from Berlin with Fedor.

  Arriving in the afternoon, they had learned from the postmaster that the boy he brought with him, Michal, had delivered a second message from Stefano, and something else. From Georg’s bedroom window, Michal had seen Stefano dragged to the barn unconscious, and, not knowing if he was alive or dead, Michal had run to a place inside the wall under the stairs to hide. He had heard footsteps in and out of the house several times, and then, after he heard a car leave, he ran up the track toward the town.

  He was orphaned, the postmaster told Monique, and had come through the town with Stefano several days earlier.

  And Monique had been moved at the sight of him, had taken his hand and told him that there would be no more secret messages, and no more reasons to run.

  OCTOBER 1945

  CHAPTER 33

  MONIQUE

  At the hospital, Monique kisses Georg softly on the cheek. He has tears, and she is so glad that he remembers something. He will love Italy. She knows they both will.

  “When you are a little better, I will have you moved so you can come and live with me. The doctor needs to monitor you for longer.”

  Georg remembers her name. He remembers many things. He remembers her in the river. The process of remembering is slow, many memories lost.

  She holds his hand. “I promise I will come back for you. You will come and live with us. Do you understand?”

  She pulls out a postcard of houses on the Mediterranean and an address. “This is where I will be taking you.”

  He stares at the writing and recognizes some of the words. He is getting better at reading.

  “And what of the owls of Elbe?” he asks.

  “Yes, one day there, too, when Germany is better.”

  He starts to cry again, and she cradles him.

  Seeing him upset is making her cry also. She doesn’t want to show this in front of him. She knows that her tears will distress him further. Monique is hoping the recovery is not too long. They delayed their journey to be with Georg while he recovered from the gunshot wound, and his withdrawal from the drug, the result of which is still making him moody and anxious at times. Even though he will be there for several months yet, he is over the worst of it, the doctor thinks, and is healing slowly but steadily.

  It is an hour before she drags herself away. She hates seeing him alone in the bed, but she will make good on her promise. He is her family; he is part of her.

  CHAPTER 34

  STEFANO

  Stefano is wearing a white shirt and black pants, his dark hair slicked back, the sides cut short, his stubble gone. He no longer resembles the man who lived in the forests and mountains, who nearly starved to death, who fought not just with guns, knives, and fists, but sometimes a silver wire, too, against the enemy. In front of him is his friend Fedor. If not for the war, they agree they would not have made so many friends, and it is something to say, to stop the talk of losses, to see a greater good.

  As Fedor walks away, vowing to see him again, Stefano lights a cigarette and leans against the driver’s side door.

  His sister Teresa has written from Amalfi, and he holds the letter with one hand, cigarette in the other. She is preparing rooms for him at the house where they had lived with their father. When she had first returned, she had discovered other people living there, but they have since relocated. It is a little run-down, but she has been painting walls and planting vegetables. She says that the lemon tree is still there. The meat vendor at the markets is back to selling lamb, though lean, and she is planning a feast for his return. She is looking forward to seeing him, to seeing everyone. He reads the letter again. He can tell that she was crying when she wrote it, as she did when she found him again. Mistakes were made. Appalling crimes committed. And the consequences for these were high. But these events, his history, he must place now in the past, not to forget but to enshrine, so he can focus on the living.

  He had almost given up hope of hearing from Monique, thinking she had changed her mind, and had been planning his return to Italy, when Fedor told him what had happened, delivering the message personally about Monique’s injuries at the hands of her husband and cousin. The Russians had brought her to a hospital in Berlin, and Stefano rushed to her side, alarmed that she was torn and bruised. But she was not distraught about her injuries, just that Erich had taken her daughter. They both had reasons to find him.

  She told everything she knew about Erich to Fedor, who passed it on to his brother-in-law in the Soviet army, also keen to capture Erich Steiner and other SS who had so far evaded them and believing that most had left Germany by then. But they now had some idea where Erich was, and their plan would have to be clever in order to capture him. Stefano would find him and her daughter, he told her. Monique said that Rosalind was the key to unlocking the mystery of his whereabouts. Fedor had tattooed Stefano’s arm, along with several others, during their time in the resistance campaign to prevent the Allies or other partisans from mistaking them for the enemy in the final months of chaos and misjudged loyalties. And Stefano fit the picture of a broken, weakened man returned from a German concentration camp, eager to be home. He had begun his quest, his head full of revenge, for his mother, sister, and friends and for the treatment of Monique. He was not sure, if it came to it, whether he could bring Erich in alive.

  On the morning that Rosalind gave Stefano the drug in his tea, Erich was meant to be there, to b
e captured, after Stefano had sent Michal to the town the previous day to deliver a written message, with just a date and a time and coordinates, to the postmaster, who was a spy for the Russians. And although Stefano wished Erich dead, had dreamed of it, the Allies wanted him alive, wanted information, and wanted him put on trial. A fate that would likely see him hanged.

  He thinks of Michal. Did he use him? Perhaps it was in his mind: something to help his purpose, the boy a guise. But he did not expect to care the way he did. This is something not even war can remove from his heart.

  On the night Stefano spent in Rosalind’s room, he had crept out to dig up the tin that he had seen Erich bury on the hilltop. He had taken it to Michal, woken him up, told him that he must stay at the house for his own safety and watch over the tin until Stefano came to collect him in the morning. To not come out of the house if he heard any gunshots, and in an emergency to deliver the tin and another message.

  Stefano is not excited about the future. It is not the word to use, but there is something now that he can build from: a family pieced together from different puzzles that will form a new one, a new future, a patchwork of their own design.

  March 1945

  Stefano was in the secret cavity at the base of the wall that had been cut out and then replaced with a door. One might have seen the line around the section, the point of difference from the rest of the wall, except that the bed in front concealed it.

  Stefano opened the door slightly to listen better once Erich had retreated from the partitioned area and entered his daughter’s bedroom.

  He climbed out of the enclosure and out from under the bed. He stood at the curtains, his gun ready. This was his opportunity to kill the man who he believed had taken the lives of his mother and friends and most likely Nina, too.

  Monique stood there, staring at the room that Erich had entered, her hands twisting together. She turned then, looked directly at the parted curtains, directly into his eyes. She shook her head.

  So much of him wanted to burst through and put a bullet in Erich’s head, a knife to his throat, but he honored her wishes and vowed that there would come a time. He retreated back under the bed and into the wall. He did it without sound. He had been sitting at the table opposite her. She had been reading aloud the letter she was writing.

  When she got to the part about her feelings, he had reached across the table and held the hand without the pen, but they were suddenly interrupted by sounds from the stairwell, evenly spaced, fine leather shoes making a soft shuffling sound at each upward step. He’d had just enough time to hide.

  When he heard Erich leave, Stefano had emerged immediately. Monique raced straightaway to check on Vivi.

  “I should have killed him,” he said.

  “No. Not here, not with Vivi. He may have told someone he was coming here.”

  “And we could have disappeared before they got here.”

  “Who knows who else he had waiting outside to collect him. Erich always has insurance.”

  She was right. There was too much risk. But there was something else about Erich’s goodbye, as if he were certain he wouldn’t see her again.

  “I’m not feeling good about this,” Stefano said, looking around the apartment and wondering what Erich had seen, sensed. “He sent you a message and then turned up anyway. It is strange. You said he always has insurance. Perhaps this time it was the message to let people think he wouldn’t come here.”

  Stefano could see from Monique’s trembling hands that she was uneasy about his visit also. It was quiet outside. Too quiet. The sight of a Nazi vehicle in a quaint cobbled street sent people indoors.

  Monique went to speak, but Stefano put his finger to his lips. He thought he heard something and stopped to listen. A rustle outside, clothing perhaps, trousers brushing together, faintly audible, followed by a creak of the floor and silence. He sensed there were people there, waiting.

  Stefano pointed to Vivi’s room to send Monique there, but as she walked past the front door, it burst open and two men appeared, the one in front leading with his gun only inches from her. Stefano fired into the first man, hitting the intruder in the shoulder, just before the intruder fired his gun. The injury skewed his aim upward, causing his bullet’s release into the ceiling, and plaster rained on them from above. Monique rushed forward toward the bedroom with Vivi, while the injured man turned his attention fully onto Stefano. The second intruder, also armed, retreated back outside the door while Stefano emptied several bullets into the first.

  Ignoring the pain in his leg, and the first man down, Stefano charged outside and crashed into the second assailant, standing on the landing of the stairs, before he had time to raise his weapon. Stefano threw himself down upon him, attempting to wrestle the gun free. The man head-butted him, the sudden pain not enough to halt Stefano, but the wound in Stefano’s leg was now weeping fresh blood.

  As both fought for the gun, Stefano pushed the barrel of the assassin’s weapon into the man’s neck, crushing his windpipe. The assassin grabbed Stefano’s wrists to pull him away. He was strong, and Stefano could not maintain the hold. The assassin twisted both Stefano’s arms and was able to turn him on his back to lie above him. The barrel of the gun was forced into Stefano’s throat, and he could feel himself weakening.

  A burst of gunfire and the man suddenly slumped forward on top of him, blood spurting onto Stefano from the assassin’s head wound. Monique stood behind, holding the weapon belonging to the first man.

  They had come badly prepared, like so many working for the Nazis’ underground. He was relieved that it wasn’t the SS.

  Taking the assassins’ guns, they hastily packed a bag, which included the letters she had written to her father. The sound of gunshots had drawn others, and the Gestapo was certain to arrive soon.

  Monique picked up Vivi, who was now wide awake and clinging to her mother, and they ran to another house to call Fedor. With the car’s lights off, Fedor drove Monique and Stefano to an abandoned villa in Garda, at the base of the mountains that led into Austria.

  They were guided to a small sitting room at the front of the house. A tiled floor led to large glass doors and a balcony with views of the dark lake and mountains, and the only lights shone from houses across the water. There were two mattresses on the floor, on either side of the room, where others had spent nights on the run, and several woolen blankets, a lamp, and a small gas cooker, along with some provisions. Stefano was able to swap his bloodied shirt and clean the assassin’s blood from his skin.

  It was decided that they would stay there only until early morning, when someone else would guide Monique and her daughter northward, and she and Stefano would part ways.

  “Thank you,” said Stefano to Fedor.

  “Have faith, my brother,” said Fedor. “I had word from my brother-in-law that it is now just a matter of weeks before this is over.” They discussed the plan to take Monique and her daughter into Austria. From there she would have to make her way back in the direction of Germany. It was a loose plan, the fact that Monique would have to go it alone for much of the way. They had already decided that the assassins’ attempt was not Nazi ordered, and it was unlikely they were looking for her, which meant it would be safe to catch the train from Austria to Dresden. However, Allied aerial bombings would be her biggest problem, forcing a slower journey home, when she eventually made it across the Austrian border. Fedor taught her several lines in Russian in case she was faced with Russian soldiers. She was also to mention the name of his brother-in-law, who would help her and guide her to Fedor and Stefano. If she didn’t remember the lines, he could not guarantee her safety. Russian soldiers could be brutal, he told her, and not in the mind-set for tolerance. She repeated the lines until they were perfect.

  Stefano left Monique to prepare Vivi to sleep on one of the mattresses, while he walked with Fedor to his car. Fedor would return at first light with supplies for their journey and for Monique’s.

  “I trust this place
is adequate,” said Fedor, raising his eyebrows in the direction of the villa, a small smile on his face. And Stefano pushed his friend in jest, and thought of Monique, wondering if love was possible and if the night held something that he had had barely time to dream about in recent years.

  “Tomorrow, Brother, I will return with more ammunition and provisions for our journey, and we will continue the fight, to the end,” Fedor said to Stefano.

  “To the end,” said Stefano, and the two men hugged. “We still have much work to do.”

  Stefano watched him climb into the car and disappear up the track. It was a friendship that had been forged in blood and grief and wine, but it would undoubtedly stand the test of time if time permitted.

  Stefano returned inside to boil some water on the cooker to make some coffee, while Monique fed her daughter some of the cheese and milk she had brought with her. While she rocked Vivi to sleep, Stefano opened a tin of food with his knife to share between them.

  Vivi had curled up asleep with several blankets, and Monique had draped her coat over her for extra warmth. The baby had cried at first as they had left the Verona apartment; the gunshots had terrified her, but the exhaustion of the event had finally caught up with her.

  “Where will you go next?” asked Monique, sitting with Stefano on the other mattress. She shivered from the cold, and Stefano took off his coat to drape around her shoulders.

  “Fedor and I will go north to fight with the Russian army and enter Berlin. I will find Erich Steiner, too. I will kill him.”

  “You do not need to kill him. It is too easy. Death is too easy. Break him. Take away his control, the superiority he believes he has. But it is dangerous what you do. He is calculating and likely to be prepared for anything. I don’t want it to be you that dies in the attempt.”

  “I don’t want to die either,” he said, spooning some of the beans and meat into his mouth, before passing the spoon to Monique to do the same.