The Italian looks at the map, expressionless. For some reason, something in the stiff way he bends across the map, not all the way, tells Erich he is not receptive to the information.
Michal, the strange mute child, peers at the map with more interest. When he catches Erich’s eye, he looks away quickly. He wears the same silent, disillusioned guise of those Erich had sent away to the camps, those who didn’t return, and it bothers Erich that the child is this close; that he is even here. If it were he, the child would have been left to fend for himself, like so many others.
“Is it manned by Russians?” Stefano asks.
“Yes, of course,” says Erich. “But they won’t bother you with that mark on your arm. They will be quick to see the back of you.”
“It is not too far to walk. I passed through there.”
“The drive will take the pressure off your leg. I see you have an injury.”
The Italian fixes unresponsively upon a point on the map. The air is tense and silent while he thinks.
“And the camp,” says Stefano, “there are other orphans there?”
“Yes, they will take the boy. They will try to locate his family.”
“That is a generous offer,” says Stefano. Though the words don’t match the look of disdain, as if he would rather put a knife to Erich’s neck than accept a lift from a German.
Stefano explains the offer to the boy: that they could stay a few days, and he will go to a camp where they can return him home.
The boy shakes his head.
“You will be safe there,” says Stefano to the boy.
It is an unintentional lie that adults tell children. Erich’s mother never used such lines and neither does he. The truth is always there, the harsh realities never disguised with pointless words.
Stefano is slow to respond and does not look at Erich, which suggests he is still mistrustful. It will be up to Erich to earn his trust, to dissolve the tension and soften the belligerence that the foreigner wears as armor around him.
“If we decide to stay,” says Stefano, “then I must find some way to repay you.”
And Stefano is then staring at him, this time without suspicion or hostility, but with an expression more pliable. Erich pauses, distracted suddenly by the intensity of the gaze and feelings he cannot yet name. Affection is probably too strong, pity too weak: a connection of some kind between potential allies.
The boy begins to whimper, nervously looking around the room. The child can sense a change in circumstance, a shift in the future. He has seen enough of changes that weren’t for the better, changes that killed his mother.
But before Stefano has time to reassure the boy further, Michal has fled out the front door to run up the path toward the clearing.
CHAPTER 8
ROSALIND
Monique sways, not walks, into the kitchen. She is like a cat, sultry and predaceous, the way she looks from side to side, searching for distraction.
“Did you like the beets I left for you when you got home yesterday? I thought they would be good for frying with salt and butter, and spinach,” says Monique.
“Yes, thank you.”
“They were cheap at the market.”
Monique pours herself some of the weak tea that Rosalind has made and sits across from her. There is a childlike innocence about Monique, with her high arched brows above deep-blue eyes that always wander curiously, full-dimpled cheeks, and small lips that naturally sit parted, in an expression that to Rosalind always holds a question mark. And it is a face that most have been drawn to. Monique can hold someone’s gaze for longer than is necessary, she can bat her thick dark eyelashes without a sense of vanity, and she can steer all the attention toward her.
“Where were you?” asks Rosalind.
“You’re not my mother,” she says, brushing her dark wavy hair back from her face. “You don’t need to ask such questions.”
Rosalind looks down at the hands in her lap. Monique has always been willful.
When she looks up Monique is gone. She was never there. It has been like this a lot lately. For so many years she longed for Monique to disappear, but now she strangely misses her. Misses the way she brings life to a room.
They had been close at times, under the umbrella of uncertain futures. But war does that. It brings people closer even when they are nothing alike.
She would not be alive if it weren’t for Monique, and she wishes that Monique were here to talk to about Berlin, to off-load the baggage that she carries. To tell Monique what she did in those final moments at the hospital in Berlin, and about the bodies after the bombing, parts of them, nothing that could be identified with a whole person: missing limbs, heads and bodies torn apart, burns that blackened people to something unrecognizable.
Rosalind has seen more debris here, too, more broken people. For a long time she was immune to tragedy, to blood. But she is immune no longer, now unable to deal with the sight of another injured soldier from the battlefield.
Rosalind opens up the front door. She has to push it firmly, the wood swollen within the frame from the rain the night before.
1935
Monique took off on the bicycle, and Rosalind ran after her. They were meant to double, but on the final leg of the journey from town, when Rosalind had briefly stepped away from the bike to collect some elderberries that her grandmother boiled for tea, Monique thought it would be funny to leave her older cousin stranded. She took off at great speed toward home.
“Monique! Wait!”
But she was gone, and Rosalind had to walk the rest of the way to their river house. As she neared the house, she saw that the bicycle had been discarded on its side at the edge of the wood, back wheel still spinning. She could hear voices through the trees and followed the sound. Monique was there, sitting with Georg against a tree. She was laughing at something he had just whispered in her ear. She turned to look at Rosalind, and just for a second Rosalind saw a sliver of defiance, as if she were the older one in control.
“Take these to Oma!” said Rosalind angrily, dumping the basket of berries in Monique’s lap.
“I was just having fun with you.” Monique looked at her under large guilty lids.
“You should grow up! Stop being so thoughtless!”
“Why are you so mad?” Georg asked Rosalind.
“She left me!” Though she couldn’t say if this was really the reason or whether it was the fact that the two people she was closest to looked so good together. She felt suddenly as if she had interrupted something special, as if they would be fine without her.
“It was a joke!” said Georg. “You still have legs.”
She felt affronted by this comment. She thought at least he would defend her.
“Sorry, Rosalind,” Monique said, standing up with the basket of berries. “That was mean of me about the bicycle!” But Rosalind had already diverted her anger to Georg, who had not sided with her, who sought Monique’s immaturity for amusement.
Georg playfully slapped the backs of Monique’s legs, and she bounded off through the trees to her Oma. Georg stayed sitting on the ground and put his hands behind his head. His hair had grown too long. His shirt was open, and his stick legs stretched out from wide-legged shorts.
“So!” he said smugly. “This is how you spend your last day here. Angry!”
He knows, she thought at the time. He knows how I feel about him. They were sixteen and seventeen. Her feelings toward him had grown stronger with every passing year.
“Do you want to go swimming?” he asked her, while she battled her thoughts on whether to remain angry.
“Yes,” said Rosalind, brightening slightly at the thought they would spend some more time alone.
“Go tell Monique then! I’ll meet you both on the platform.”
Rosalind felt ambushed by these words and walked out of the wood to collect the bike that Monique had so casually discarded. Georg followed her, wondering what he had said to offend her.
“What’s with the sad face?”