He likes to look at things as he speaks, as if the answers to her questions are in the objects around him. He runs his fingers across the floral embroidery on the tablecloth and examines the cracks in the saucer on the painted tea set. He is looking for clues to the people here, and perhaps appreciating these small things that have been unimportant for so long.
She stops herself from asking about loyalties, anything that might highlight the divide between their races and give him reason to falter.
He looks at her for too long sometimes, and she has to look away. She has treated men like him many times before, men who did not fit in with war, who did not go looking for a fight.
“Where are you?” Georg calls from upstairs. Rosalind looks toward the sound, then back at Stefano.
“I’ll be back in a minute.” She picks up a bowl that has cold stew ready, some bread, and a cup of water.
Georg sits on the bed expectantly. She does not want him to come down yet. Does not want him to see the visitor. Does not want him to react.
He feeds himself, but oftentimes he finishes only half of it as if he has run out of motivation. He is slowly starving himself to death. He is only hungry for drugs now. The situation is worsening.
“I will come and get the bowl when you’re finished,” she whispers in his ear. “No need to come down.”
“Who’s here?” he asks, suddenly lucid.
“A friend,” she says.
He looks at his dinner and commences eating, and she suddenly wonders if it was a mistake to leave the visitor alone. Whether he will use the opportunity to steal, though there is so little now of value. She leaves Georg and finds Stefano exactly where she left him, hair too long, curling around the backs of his ears, at the base of his skull.
“I’m sorry about your husband. Erich told me that he was badly injured. Was that from battle?”
He has carved up the air with the question, disturbing the ghost of Georg that haunts her constantly: Georg as he was before the war. She longs to talk about him, to release the past, yet at the same time remain loyal.
“Yes. It was a shock when he returned that way.”
“And the rest of his family?”
“Georg has no one else. An only child. His mother died just after he was born, and his father died just before he started military college.”
“Is that Georg there?”
Stefano is talking about a photo of the three of them when they were younger.
“Yes.”
“You have known him a long time then.”
“We met as children.”
“He would holiday here with you in the summers?”
“Yes,” she says.
“And who is the girl?”
“My cousin, Monique,” she says, and she is aware of Monique’s portrait behind her, looking down on her.
“Did your cousin come here in the summers also?”
“Yes,” she says, and feels her body tense, knowing the question that will likely come.
“Where is she now?”
Michal puts his elbows on the table to rest his head in his hands. He is looking sleepy or bored. She could never understand children.
“We were separated during the war, and she is missing.” She turns to busy herself with cleaning the cups they have used for tea.
“Oh, I see. I’m sorry.”
And she is grateful that he says nothing more, because to offer any other words is futile.
He stands to look at the photo as if he has seen something, found another clue. Now that he is staring at her cousin, she wonders if it was a bad idea to invite him in. Monique distracts him, distracts everyone.
She explains why she is hesitant to help those passing through, looking for charity. Two months earlier an elderly man and his wife came by. They were German Jews expelled from Poland and looking for a place to live. Their shoes were worn and their hair cut short, and dirt was sealed beneath fresh skin on their hands. She did not feel sorry for them, but she thought that giving them food and sending them on their way would get rid of them quickly. They thanked her for the bread and blessed her even. In the morning when she woke, she found the word “Nazi” written across the door. She had scrubbed it off and later painted over the ghostly writing that she can still see in a certain light.
Stefano says nothing to this. He has now moved to the corner of the house to examine the damage to the bricks, from where water leaked in the previous night. Several different-colored bricks have been roughly patched in the opening.
“I believe the damage was from heavy air fire,” says Rosalind. “I was in Berlin at the time. Fortunately, only a patch of wall and a small part of the roof were damaged, though now in heavy rain, water gets through the gaps at the base and under the floor. And the water pipes must have been damaged, too. Only brown water trickles through the taps above the kitchen sink.”
“Was anyone here when it happened?” He turns back to the photo briefly before sitting down again.
“My grandmother.” Rosalind does not think it necessary to say that when she returned, she had discovered her grandmother dead from sickness in her bed; she had died alone, with no one to look after her in her final days. She has grown tired of talking now that the conversation is about things she doesn’t want to remember. The boy is watching her, sizing her up, as if he can see straight into her heart. She doesn’t like him here. A child does not belong here, not with her.
Stefano looks at the photo of her grandmother also on the wall, but his eyes fall back on the portrait. She recognizes the look. Everyone looks at Monique that way. With interest and longing. Now Stefano.
“What did you mean when you said I should leave?” he asks.
“What?”
“Earlier. You said I should leave before Erich returns.”
She is trying to remember exactly what she said.
“It was nothing, only that the house is not fit for habitation.”
Questions. More questions. One after the other.
How long has Erich lived here? Have you known Erich since you were small? Has he always been your neighbor?
“Years . . . Yes . . . Yes.” Answers that give away little else but lies.
She must dispense with him quickly now before there are more. Though, some part of her, the part that craves a normal life, likes him just the same.
“He can probably fix your broken building then,” says Stefano, changing direction.
She stares at him briefly. It is not a question, but it is begging for comment.
“Erich is very busy these past weeks with work.”
“He told me he only just found work.”
Something smashes on the floor above them, and this time Stefano does not look past her up the stairs but turns to something on the wall. She is worried Georg will come down, and she heads for the stairs.
“Thank you for food,” he says. “I’m sorry to disturb your afternoon.” He is perceptive and courteous. She is grateful. Though he can’t stay here. Any minute Georg will start shouting.
He smiles quickly and nods as if he knows that, too, pushing the chair in with a screech that sets Rosalind’s teeth on edge. Most loud noises do that now. Michal jumps up to stand close to Stefano.
“I won’t forget your kindness,” says Stefano.
She looks away from his eyes that are too dark and too intense. She is unused to such attention and appreciation, which she can tell is sincere. Appreciation was there, sometimes, from her patients, but it was less personal. In the chaos of hospital casualties, it was blunt or scarce, and death often followed, and there were no thanks for death. And then there was Georg, who perhaps never appreciated her at all.
When Georg left for war the first time, she had been left feeling cold. Then by the time the war was over, the cold had turned to ice. She has grown used to the feeling, but some of that thaws here, as Rosalind warms toward the stranger and his differences. His accent, the occasional omission of verbs and small words that are insignificant anyway in the larger scheme of things, she thinks, are things she looks forward to hearing again.