“The Germans are desperate,” she said. “They will stop at nothing.”
He smiled. “You don’t have to worry about me.” And it was then she saw the blood on his trousers.
“Oh, your wound! Let me help you.”
He lifted up his trouser leg, and she bound his leg again with torn strips of clothing. He watched her do this, her hands working carefully and gently, her face furrowed in concentration. The coat around her shoulders did not completely cover the satin dress beneath. She had admitted feelings for him, he remembered, in her letter. The last letter she would write to her father.
Vivi began to cry again, and she went to her on the other side of the room. Half an hour later the child was quiet and sleeping.
“I think it was a nightmare,” said Monique.
They shared more of the hot coffee from the same cup and discussed Fedor’s plan for the following day.
“I hope to never see Erich again!” she said.
“If I have my way, you won’t.”
Stefano was still angry at the mention of him, at the fact that Stefano had come so close to killing him. His heart was racing with anger, fear, and something else. He had developed strong feelings for Monique in the week they had spent together. He had never met anyone like her; he was unnerved by her suffering and dazzled by her resilience. She had saved lives with the information and finances she had provided to the resistance.
Something else he remembered feeling at the sound of Erich’s voice, amid the hatred and thoughts of killing, was the feeling of envy that someone had staked a claim on her, someone who had never deserved her.
She had seen him thinking deeply and reached out to hold his hand.
“You are cold without your coat,” she said.
Her eyes were dark in the dim light, her hair pulled back with a piece of string, her face glowing yellow. She held his gaze, daring him almost and knowing what was in his thoughts. They sat on the mattress opposite each other. He put down the cup and moved nearer to her so that their faces were close. He felt frightened and excited, but the feeling that overrode all others was the desire to hold her, to never let her go, to protect her and her daughter.
He leaned forward and kissed her softly, and she returned the kiss, cautiously. He placed his hands on her shoulders and slid back the coat from her shoulders to feel her skin, to rub his hands on her back. She drew closer, putting her arms around his neck shyly, and he reached over to turn off the lamp. Behind her he unzipped the satin dress and pulled her downward so they would lie together.
Slowly and shyly shedding their clothes beneath the blankets, they still had hours before they would separate, before someone would come to take them elsewhere. He would not rush this moment, which might be the last time he was with her. He tasted the buttery sweetness of her, explored the secret creases of her body with his hands, and kissed the silken expanses of her skin, and they held each other and loved more than he had thought possible.
Naked, they wrapped themselves in blankets and sat on the balcony, warmed by each other and forgetting for a moment they were still at war. They stayed there talking about themselves, about their pasts; shared their real names; and speculated about a life they might continue together one day. Until it grew too cold and he carried her inside to lay her back on the mattress and enfold her cooling body with the warmth of his own once again.
At some point she left to check on Vivi, and he could marvel at the shape of her against the light from the night sky through the window, the curves, as she stood to go. And she returned to become entwined, each afraid of release, until the early morning light spread across the inner walls of the room.
They dressed and waited for the car to come. The driver would take her as far as he could, and she would have to walk with Vivi into Austria. Stefano feared for her safety and could not bear the thought that he might lose her, too. Though they professed a desire to be together, the pair did not make any promises, unsure whether they would survive the war and whether their destinies would intertwine.
It would be three months after the war was finished when Fedor would come to him in the Russian barracks outside of Berlin, where Stefano had chosen to remain and work, unknowing of Monique’s whereabouts, but still with a glimmer of hope that a message would come. And when it did, it would be the beginning of his final quest to end his own war once and for all.
CHAPTER 35
GEORG
The hospital bed is hot and uncomfortable. Georg touches the scar on his head and does not remember much from before. His memories that span the length of his life are still few, though the earlier ones feature most. He can remember his name being called over and over, playfully by the river. He reaches for these memories that he knows were special.
Stefano has been to visit him with his friend who spoke Russian on his behalf to the doctors who are looking after him. He did not learn till later that Stefano had known Monique, and when he spoke of her, of the girl that he remembered, more memories had come through. Monique, who shared his thoughts, was like a sister, maybe closer. Their relationship was always difficult to explain: something more than friendship, better than blood.
There is a German-speaking doctor who comes and checks on him, who says there are treatments. Georg is still ill from his injuries and the drug toxins in his body, he is told. But the brain injury, from the gunshot, may never be fully cured. He can’t remember his father or an image of his mother. Many memories are possibly lost forever. He will need to make new ones. Only some of them filter through now.
There are soldiers in the beds next to him, mostly Russian, recuperating before being sent home. They talk among themselves, and he is glad they don’t talk to him.
Beside him two soldiers play a game on a small board near their beds. One is missing his left arm, the other most of an ear, the remaining piece of flesh resembling a dried fig.
He stares at the postcard of the sea.
Sitting at the edge of his bed is the girl who is in most of his dreams. The girl from the river.
“Where did you go?” he asks, remembering that last time in the hut, her hair was covered in soil and she was injured, and then she was swimming in the dark in the river, disappearing, taking the good feelings that she had brought away with her.
And she tells him about how she swam as far as she could until she felt it safe, and she met soldiers who drove her the rest of the way. She describes things, small things in greater detail, and there are things about her that he could watch all day—the lifting of her hands to her eyebrows when she thinks, the color of her, the pinkness of her cheeks when she is animated.
He remembers all those things, those small things that seem so familiar. He remembers her bursting through the surface of the water to greet him, rubbing the water from her eyes with her fingertips, and smiling, her face close to his as though they were twins, joined.
“And the boy? There was a boy. With a stone I think, brightly colored.”
“Yes, the boy is Michal,” she says. “You remembered! He was quite the soldier, took a message to the postmaster for Stefano, clever, brave. He understood the importance of the mission for someone so young. He told the postmaster, ‘The parcel has gone awry,’ and the postmaster then brought Michal and the message to Fedor and me, after we had just arrived at the Dresden barracks from Berlin. We had gone straight to see you at the hospital, but you were sleeping, and then to the river houses, which were empty.” She stops then to look at him. There is something she doesn’t want to say, and he suspects what it is.
“The girl, Rosa . . . ,” he says, though he is afraid, afraid that she is near.
“She is gone, Georg.”
And he feels loss and relief, though he cannot yet find the thoughts or memories to justify these, and somehow the way Monique says these words, at the finality, does not beg further questioning.
She bends to wrap her arms around him, and he likes her there, and she tells him that she will be back, she promises, and h
e knows she will keep her promises because she is Moni from the river. His little owl. And she stands and turns quickly. He watches her go, and then he turns to see the soldiers still playing their game.
The one without the arm looks at Georg and points to the game.
Georg shakes his head and looks away. He closes his eyes, and he is thinking about Monique and what she just told him. A memory surfaces, pushes through the fog that still fills in much of his mind. He remembers her and another man coming to the hospital after he was shot. He wishes she were still there so he could tell her this, tell her he wasn’t sleeping, that he saw her there, in a red dress and a beret. But she is gone, and he is hoping that he keeps the memory for later so he can tell her then when he is at the place on the postcard.
He lies down and falls asleep and dreams of a time in the army, of soldiers on fire and people flying in all directions to escape the bullets. He wakes up in a sweat. He prefers to be awake to stare at the postcard, to dream of times ahead.
July 1945
Georg was at the river hut. He was crying. He couldn’t remember why he was upset. He felt sick. He grabbed his stomach. Many times he had felt this way until Rosa, the girl, injected him with medicine. His head was throbbing, so much that it jumbled his thoughts.
There were voices. He could hear Rosa. He knew her name now, but back then she was just the girl from the house, the one who gave him medicine that made him feel better.
He crept along the path. He knew the paths well, all the hidden ones that no one else walked through, in the thick trees by the river.
“She is still alive!” said Rosa.
And then they talked.
Rosa stood there. She was wearing almost nothing, blood down her legs. She was crying, and then she turned and ran.
And there was the man, Erich, whom he hated, who carried a bundle to the hill. He watched this through the trees. He thought about running at him, yelling, to frighten him away. Sometimes bright-white lights that confused him filled his head, made him forget what he was about to do. He had walked back to the hut when he heard the voice of the other girl, Moni.
And he climbed up the hill through the brush where there was no pathway, and he saw the girl, Moni, sleeping, and Erich rolled her in a curtain like she was an object and placed her in the hole. He threw earth over the top of her, and Georg knew this was wrong, that people did not sleep in the earth.
When Erich left, he scrambled toward the earth and dug and dug until he found her, plucked her from the ground, like a flower. And she was gasping and shaking.
“Georg!” she said.
And he suddenly remembered things about her, things he’d forgotten, of times years before.
And he knew what he had to do. He carried her to the hut where it was safe for them.
And he sat and watched her. Her face was only partially in light from the stars through the window. He hit his head to try to remember other things, to make the jumbling in his head stop.
She reached for his face. Her hands were gentle. Then she described what she wanted him to do.
“Can you do that?”
Yes, he could, but he couldn’t make the words with his mouth.
And he did what she said. He went back toward the house to see the man leaving with the child. Then he looked through the window to see Rosa, who was crying and grabbing at her arms. He returned to tell Moni what he saw.
She hugged him, and it was strange and wonderful, and he didn’t want her to let him go. He felt so good then for a short time.
And then Moni left to sink in the water, and she was gone. And he filled in the hole like she told him and then stayed in the river hut through the night until the other girl came to collect him in the morning.
CHAPTER 36
MONIQUE
Monique leaves the room and stands outside, tears falling. She hates seeing him like this. Georg, so capable, so beautiful, so strong yet so tortured these past years. She wipes her face. She is not known to crumble. She does not want to show this side. When the last of the tears are dried, she walks outside.
She can see Stefano across the road, leaning, arms crossed, against the car, a piece of paper gripped in one hand and flapping in the breeze. He still doesn’t smile, not widely like her, but she can tell that he is happy, the expression lighter at the sight of her. She loves him, though she hasn’t yet told him, not since the letter. She doesn’t need to. There has been no announcement, no discussion about their love, only where they will live and where they will raise her Vivi. It is simply that they will be together.
He walks around to the passenger door and opens it for her. It is a car, he told her, that he “borrowed” from Erich. She kisses him on the cheek as she climbs inside, and he touches her back.
They drive past a town that is just charred remains and fields of earth interrupted, waiting for a fresh chance of life that will come.
“What’s that?” says Michal from the back seat. He has been talking more, and he is pointing at some children playing in the rubble. Monique has sent a photo of him to the Red Cross in the hope that they can find something, along with an address where they can reach her if they do. Though she is not hopeful. From the small amount they have taken from Michal, and the stories she has heard of others cast out of villages and towns, it is unlikely he has any family alive, and unlikely that they will claim him. Those children with German fathers are not welcome in their mothers’ countries, and she hates the thought of what it would be like to grow up being hated. She and Stefano decided that they will take him, where he will not feel different, where he will feel only acceptance and love.
“Just some children,” says Monique, “having fun.”
“Broken,” says Vivi, repeating a word she has heard, sitting next to Michal, who clutches his basket on his lap.
“Yes,” Monique says. “The houses are broken.”
It is a simple observation but one that is too layered yet for Vivi to understand.
Vivi’s hair appears almost golden at the tips with the sun through the window behind her, and she looks curiously at the world outside, to a place of wonder, and a future that is vast.
Monique smiles at her, at the innocence, and then turns farther to smile at the person who is holding her daughter’s hand.
Gustav Moulet sits there, the third person in the back. She looks at him. He is a stranger for now. Not so talkative. There is too much that he holds on to that he may never say, but he is looking at Vivi, and the crinkling of his eyes and the gentle hand that holds his granddaughter say enough for now.
EPILOGUE
Owen sits beside the old woman, another one who was recently carried out from the back of an army vehicle, rounded up like a vagrant. She watches him carefully, her mind still sharp, her thoughts hidden behind raw, sagging lids full of rheum, and skin flaking with age and the subhuman conditions she has been forced to endure.
It is difficult to know what to do with these who have no family left. By the time they set up nursing care facilities to cope with the volume, the infection that riddles her body will likely have claimed her.
Outside the window, a patch of dirt that was more recently a playground is patterned with dark heads, colored skirts, and thin, browned limbs. The doctor watches the children making the most of a new day and a clear sky and chasing one another noisily. Children had been found in the woods, some from camps across Europe, and some simply living on the streets, while the Red Cross sought permanent accommodations for them. Some would undoubtedly be sent to Jewish and other orphanages; others, if they were lucky, to homes, and luckier still if living relatives were found.
“What is a young man like you doing in this place?” the old woman says in jest. “You must have drawn the lucky prize.”
“I am lucky,” says Owen in her language. “I came in when the war was nearly over. I volunteered. My brother, however, was not so lucky. A Lancaster pilot killed in ’forty-three.”
The old woman considers him for seve
ral seconds before nodding, quietly acknowledging their differences and their sameness.
“I’m happy now to go to God,” she says. “I’m tired.”
“You mustn’t talk like this. We will take good care of you and then place you in a proper facility. You might finally see people you know.”
She looks around her at the beds filled with the old and terminally ill.
“You are young,” she says. “Optimism works best on the young.”
She sounds cold, but Owen knows that patients and others like her here shroud their hearts in rigid practicality: the words a defense against emotions they are too exhausted now to feel. He saw the destruction, a country in pieces, when he first arrived, and was shocked by it, but nothing could compare with the full knowledge of what many of his patients had been through.
He had worked first in a makeshift tent hospital, treating mostly Jewish prisoners, the handful that survived. In his first letter home, he could not put into words the sheer scale of hopelessness that he was met with: people who had lost everything except their human shells. Then after that he was sent to an English POW hospital treating German patients that were nothing like the indestructible force he had heard about abroad. Then finally he was sent to a displacement camp near Hamburg; his time here coming close to an end, his parents wanting him home in England by Christmas.
One of the nurses approaches the bedside. She says there is someone he should meet out front, someone who wishes to volunteer for work here.
Owen smiles warmly at his patient and squeezes her hand in both his own before standing to leave. Her grip tightens briefly before her release, as if she were attempting to catch as much of him as she can.
“I’ll come back and check on you later,” says Owen. And he means it. Each of the people he cares for means something to him.
He leaves the ward and walks the long hallway toward the front of the house. This house that had once been occupied by soldiers is now part of a camp for the lost. Outside there are fields of tents surrounded by more temporary barbed wire: fences erected no longer to keep people in, but rather to keep people out. The medical hut is a target for looters.
The Road Beyond Ruin Page 39
