Stefano leaves, and she returns to Georg to inspect the damage. His plate is in pieces. She is running out of plates and cups. She regrets that she did not sit with him during his meal. It was selfish of her, or was it? Did she invite Stefano in because she wanted to thank him, help him, or just find out something about him? She doesn’t know herself anymore, doesn’t trust her own perspective.
Georg has several holes on the back of his wrist where he has stabbed himself with the fork. She would like to blame the intruder for beguiling her into opening her door. But it was she. It was the loneliness, the loss.
She hurries downstairs to her bedroom below to retrieve something from a bag. When she comes back up, Georg is gripping the bed, veins extended at his throat, teeth together so tightly they might snap.
“Georg, stop!” she says quietly in his ear. “I’m here.” She pushes him back onto the bed and with her arm across his chest weighs him down. This technique seems to freeze him. Rarely does he put up any resistance. With her free hand she injects his arm. In the early days she would give him tablets, but in the state of mania he would sometimes spit them out. The replacement at least is quicker to administer.
His groans turn to moans, and his body relaxes. His head flops sideways on the pillow but with eyes now open, and he looks at her. She feels nothing, she realizes, and can’t remember the last time she felt that way. It has been creeping up on her, a slight resentment now, perhaps a restoration of her sanity, of awareness.
She touches his cheek with the back of her hand. His tongue relaxes, and retracts into his mouth, like a snail retreating in its shell. His hair has fallen back from his face. When he is in this state, he almost looks the same as he did. But he is no longer muscular and sunburned. He is gaunt, his skin pasty and flaking. She is remembering how strong he was. How big he was, his long strides across an empty room. Georg. Now small.
CHAPTER 12
STEFANO
Stefano reflects on the conversation with Rosalind, on the evasive way she met questions about Monique, as if the subject were painful, as if there were secrets that she was not willing to share. She is confusing to him, and during the course of their brief conversation, she delivered a contradictory mixture of traits: the edgy countenance of a trapped animal and blunt indifference. Like two different people, he thinks.
She is someone who is lost, who no longer looks to the future, but exists, perhaps because of Georg.
Rosalind was a nurse, though any details were carefully guarded. They talked about the town, about food, about safe topics, touching on families only, both steering much away from themselves where they could. But there is something there, lying deep, perhaps waiting to emerge, about her past that she is not proud of, that should not be spoken out loud.
He leads the boy to the top floor of Erich’s house again, the boy’s tiny bowing legs dragging tiredly up the stairs, and ushers him into the bedroom at the end of the house with the bed that has linen. But Michal stands tentatively beside the bed, looking at it, perhaps with longing but fearful also of more change, a different bed, a German that comes here, that reminds him of a past, of things to fear.
“You can sleep here,” says Stefano. “It is safe.”
Michal climbs under the sheet and sinks into the softness of the mattress that engulfs his small frame. Stefano tucks the sheet in as his mother did, then sits beside him.
“I will be here in the morning. I promise.”
Michal rolls over to face the wall and closes his eyes. It is a gesture that says he believes him. At least he can sleep with food in his stomach. Stefano meant it when he said to Rosalind he was thankful, but it was more for the boy. He has survived on less. He could do it again if need be.
Inside, the light creeps inward toward the middle of the room, and the walls are fading. There is no lamp that Stefano can see.
He is eager to seek out the letters beneath the stairs. The girl on the wall has written them, and he is compelled to read what she has to say. He is remembering the closeness of the portrait, the largeness of her small features, as if she were in the room, staring back at him, willing him to read her letters, to learn more. She fascinates him even more by her absence.
He opens the secret wall and takes out the box. He slides out the top letter carefully from under the ribbon. Only one in case Erich returns suddenly again. There might be a reason they are hidden, an idea that further fuels his curiosity.
He tucks the letter inside his shirt, returns the shoebox, then examines the empty floor around him. He is trying to picture the damage from before, the destruction, which has now been cleared away. Rosalind said nothing about squatters, only reversed the lie of Erich’s employment. One of them is lying, he thinks. Whoever, perhaps, has more to lose.
It is silent next door, though there are lights within. Georg should be in a hospital. But then it is something else that drives Rosalind. Love or duty? And why are the letters kept here at a neighbor’s house and not with Rosalind?
He climbs up the stairs wearily, as if he has come home from a long day of work, wincing inwardly each time he raises his bad leg. From the window he looks to the glinting of the river as it falls to a shade of night and the birds whistle their goodbyes to the rays of orange light.
You should be home.
That was the last line of the last letter he received from his sister.
Not yet, he had written back. Soon.
Most people displaced have been racing to return home after the war, but there are so many things he has had to sort out in his head, much of which is guilt. Not everyone he loved survived this war.
A creaking sound alerts him in between the chirps and whistles. He returns the letter he had just pulled from inside his shirt.
“So, there you are!”
Stefano turns toward the voice. In the space of a moment, Erich has materialized in the doorway of the bedroom. A band of pinkish-orange light slices across the German’s face so that parts are in shade. Stefano can see an eye and part of his mouth, painted in light. He has learned to be a ghost, thinks Stefano. He can enter houses, climb up creaking stairs without being heard. Stefano has fought a different war to know that it is more an art than an accident that he is able to slip in unnoticed.
“I’m glad you decided to stay. I wasn’t sure if I’d find you here.”
“The choice was easy,” says Stefano. “How was your first day of work?”
Erich considers the question carefully.
“The day went as well as any other,” he says. “Work is work and best left there. Perhaps you would join me for a drink downstairs before bed, yes?”
Although Stefano was looking forward to rest, to reading, he follows Erich to the kitchen. It is something Stefano must do, in exchange for hospitality.
“I met someone today who will sell me some petrol for the car,” says Erich as he opens a linen carry bag and retrieves a small glass flask with milk, and several items carefully wrapped with paper and tied with string: several rolls, a piece of cheese, a quarter of a pie, and slices of pork. The preparation, Stefano notes, looks too meticulous, too caring, to have been done by a grocer.
“Have you eaten anything?” Erich asks.
“A little.”
“Would you like something now?”
“No, thank you.”
“There should be enough for two days.”
Erich puts the food away in a small pantry cupboard behind the kitchen.
Stefano looks down, concerned about the generosity, conflicted also because he is sitting across from a German, who only a few months ago, before the situation changed, might have put a bullet in him.
Erich sits down, pours two small shots of whiskey.
“Why are you doing this?”
“Doing what?” he says.
“This,” says Stefano, eyes toward the glasses. “All of it.”