“Mamma, I’m so sorry. Please forgive me.”
She looked at Stefano and smiled. She always forgave him. How could she not? Her only son.
He pulled a thin mattress from underneath her single bed and lay on the floor beside her.
“I will stay beside you tonight.”
And she smiled again. She loved him. Her Stefano. He always made things better. She would find it hard without him.
And then his older sister crept into the room and lay in bed with her mother, followed by Nina, who crawled in and lay beside Stefano on the floor, snuggling against him like she had done when they were small.
Stefano dozed. At some point someone switched off the light, and he could hear sniffling. Despite Teresa always being angry with him about something, Stefano knew she was sad he was leaving, and that she loved him. Then Nina began crying, too, and then his mother, the crying like a disease that spread quickly through the room. He knew no one would get any sleep that night so they could be together, all of them, for one more night at least. His thoughts turned morbid then at the thought of war, at the thought of leaving them.
Present-day 1945
“Did you know her well?”
“Who?”
“Monique.”
“Not very.”
“You were neighbors. I imagine you would have spent time together at some point.”
Erich pauses, eyes narrowing slightly, and Stefano wonders if he has gone too far.
“You seem very interested.”
Stefano shrugs. “A girl missing. Someone you knew—”
“Briefly,” Erich says, standing and moving to look from the window over the sink. “I spent much time away. Did Rosalind tell you much else?” He asks this with his back turned.
“Not much. I saw she had damage to the house.”
“Did you see Georg?”
“No.”
Erich doesn’t turn. Stefano can see his profile. His jaw square, his chin slightly forward as if he were gritting his teeth. He turns the tap, which coughs and splutters, and waits for the water to run clear so he can fill his glass.
“I should warn you again,” he says finally, his back still turned, “that Georg is very ill, that he doesn’t know what is going on around him. You should stay away from him. And Rosalind’s nerves are frayed. I wouldn’t believe anything she tells you either. She is unpredictable.”
“How so?”
Erich turns then. He did not expect a question. He is unused to being questioned.
“She says things . . . She acts strange. She sees things, too. Things that aren’t there.”
“Ghosts?”
“Sort of,” he says. “I brought you these.” He puts some cigarettes on the table in front of him along with a packet of matches.
Stefano looks at them offhandedly, but it is an effort not to take one out immediately.
“How did you know I smoke?”
“Some things are more obvious than you think . . . but I must get some sleep, and you look tired. It has been a long day, and there are long days to come. Good night, Stefano.”
Stefano suspects it was his questioning about Monique that called an early end to the conversation.
Erich has already reached the bedroom at the far end of the house by the time Stefano commences to climb the stairs wearily. Sitting on the edge of the bed, he rewraps his hand with the clean bandage from Rosalind and replays Erich’s earlier words, still curious that Monique’s disappearance does not appear to be felt by either of the Germans.
The squeaking of the back door, followed by the faint crunching sounds of footsteps on gravel, interrupts his undressing. He crosses the hallway to the room where Michal is sleeping soundlessly, closest to the noises. Murmurings in the yard below draw him toward the window.
Erich is standing near the back of Rosalind’s house, talking with her in terse, hushed tones, the clarity of their words lost through the glass of the closed window. Rosalind faces the house and the window where Stefano is standing. Her face is tilted upward slightly, to speak with Erich, who is a head taller. Stefano does not think he can be seen, but he takes a step back from the window just in case.
Rosalind shakes her head and speaks rapidly before Erich interrupts her. The argument lasts less than a minute before Rosalind rushes away back to her house.
Erich stands tall in the dark. His fair hair catches the silvery light that turns the strands to white. He turns his head sideways to survey the wood up the hill beside him and the rise that peaks thirty yards from the back of the house then falls back down to the main road that can’t be seen.
Erich turns his head farther, looking back over his shoulder, not quite in the direction of his house but close, and Stefano has the feeling that he knows he is being watched. Stefano draws carefully back from the window and returns to his room.
He leans back against the cold steel bars of the headboard and lights a cigarette. It rests between his lips while he unfolds Monique’s letter from inside his shirt and switches on the torch to read it quickly. When he is finished, he returns the letter to his shirt.
He thinks of Erich then, of the coldness in his eyes, which conflicts with the warmth of his generosity, and of Rosalind and the many hidden truths that lie here, that he wishes to learn.
At some point in the night, when he has tossed and turned himself to sleep, Michal enters and climbs into the bed beside him. It is cramped, and Stefano’s sleep is broken oftentimes by the movement of the child, and thoughts of Monique: words on a page, a voice without sound.
17 April 1937
Dear Papa,
I have decided that since I can’t see you, I will write to you and tell you about my life. And if we learn where you are, I can send all the letters to you, so you can read about our missing years.
I think about you all the time. I worry that Mama died without you, that she was alone. I have had nightmares about it, but Rosalind tells me that I need to calm down, not think so much.
Last year, when Uncle Max first told me that Mama died, I cried for weeks. I felt like it was my fault. What if I had stayed with you, Papa? What if I had told the police who sent me away that I wanted to stay with you and Mama? But I did what they wanted, and I won’t do that again. If I find you, I will never let anyone separate us again.
I miss you more and more, and the more time we are apart, the more time I have to think of you and wish you were here, making me laugh at the funny things you say. And I miss Mama so much, too, but I believe she is always watching us, Papa, and that makes me feel that things will be all right.
Uncle Max and Aunt Yvonne are not like you and Mama. They are nice enough, though Yvonne is hard to talk to. She is much colder, and I don’t think she likes me here all that much, though she is sour at everyone, even Rosalind. And Max says very little, perhaps because he is afraid to. But he told me that you used to fight with Oma. That Oma did not want you to take Mama away to live a gypsy’s life. (She called you a gypsy, which I found rather romantic anyway.) I don’t think Oma liked me at first, either, because of you, because she blames you for Mama’s death. But I told Oma last summer that you were the best father a girl could have, that you helped everyone, and you showed me how to be brave. And I think she believed me then, because I saw her eyes start to water.
And, of course, there is Rosalind here, always telling me what to do. Always fussing about the way I dress and speak, perhaps because Yvonne doesn’t. She can’t be bothered with either of us. And Rosalind is odd at times. Sometimes I think I know her, and other times it is as if I don’t know her at all.