Michal sits on the ground outside, examining the items in his basket, occasionally looking at Stefano, who is breaking apart Rosalind’s wall with a hammer. The existing hastily repaired exterior crumbles and falls to the ground in pieces and dust. A fire burns in an earth pit near the river to cook some of the crushed limestone bricks Stefano collected from the ruins. Stefano also repairs some wooden roof shingles and cleans the bricks that will be used to rebuild the wall. When the limestone is eventually cooked and the mortar is completed with water and sand he has collected near the river, he commences the bricklaying gently and carefully, as if it were fine art, something Stefano had watched his father do.
It is late in the afternoon when he has repaired part of the area that stretches from the floor to the roof. The damage could have been far worse, the kitchen inside ruined, someone killed. Michal has been handing Stefano the bricks and is a patient and willing assistant. They work silently together, and Stefano hides the fact that he is enjoying the partnership, enjoying the little child who, in a brief amount of time, has become attached to him. He appreciates the instincts of the boy, who has most likely had to use them during the war to survive.
“Do you like this work?” he asks, smoothing and scraping away the excess mortar.
“Yes,” the boy says.
“Do you want to be a builder?”
“No, a soldier.”
Stefano stops a moment.
“Why a soldier?”
The little boy shrugs, and Stefano returns to working.
The sun beats down on Stefano’s back, and he wishes he could remove his shirt that hides the scar. Throughout the day Stefano has occasionally glimpsed Rosalind through the cavity into the kitchen, where she is busy cooking and where the smell of browning dough is making him hungry.
With Michal’s work complete, the little boy takes the stick that has been used to stir the mortar and draws pictures in the dirt, but the pastime is brief. The distracting smell of food draws him inside the house.
Stefano uses the opportunity to gain some time alone and slips through the woods to the river. Sitting at the edge of the embankment, he lights a cigarette—a habit he took from Fedor—and watches the sun sinking lower behind the trees downriver. When he is finished smoking, he unwinds his loosened bandage and strips off his clothes. He sinks into the water, feels the icy tentacles spread across him to remove the grime and dust, and imagines the girl on the wall, Rosalind, and Georg playing here in the river.
He swims a short way out, floats on his back, then heads again to the side. As he steps up the embankment, Rosalind greets him, holding a tray of small rolls and water.
She looks at his body briefly. She has seen the scarring and looks away modestly to put the tray on the ground. There is no point to covering the hand again with the bandage. He could be accused of vanity, but it is more the explanation that he cannot bear, the lies to cover what really happened. He pulls on his trousers.
“Thank you,” he says, sitting once again on the riverbank. She sits down and places the tray between them.
“The boy is sleeping on the couch after I filled his stomach. I thought I would let him rest and bring yours here.”
“These are good,” he says, his mouth full of bread with jam, though the rolls are flat and hard.
“I don’t normally bake, but then I don’t normally have visitors who work for me for nothing,” she says. “I discovered that Oma had kept one jar of elderberry jam hidden inside an old kerosene tin on the top of the shelf. I’m not even sure whether she remembered it was there. Maybe she did. Maybe she left it for me to find. I will never know now.”
She looks away briefly as he eases into his shirt.
“How is your leg?”
“It aches a little, but it is still holding me up.”
She turns back as he finishes buttoning his shirt. He is glad she doesn’t mention the scars on his body. Instead she talks briefly of the river, of the current, and of someone she knew who nearly drowned there. Of the year her Opa died and her Oma was left to live alone.
This release of her guard gives him pause to study her longer. She is thin, her clothes oversized, revealing nothing of the body within. She might be unnoticeable in the street, with her dull-blond hair and pale-blue, sometimes-colorless eyes. But she is prettiest in this moment, thinks Stefano, with her expression more open and less suspicious, and her eyes wider with curiosity. He stares back at her, and it is he who drops his eyes this time, her sudden interest in him making him more conspicuous than he wants to be.
When they have eaten all the crumbs from their plates, Stefano stands to stretch out his aching leg.
“I think you should stop work for today,” she says. “And I should check your leg before you go.”
She looks upon his face longer than she has before, studying him. He is suddenly a patient, someone who needs attention.
“Do you always wear your nurse’s cap?”
“Yes, it was hard to leave it behind.”
“You should be there still.”
“I can’t go back,” she says, looking in several directions before her eyes return to his leg. “Forget the wall for now. Come back to the house, and I will check your injury . . . see if there is something more I can do to stop the ache.”
He nods. There are perhaps two hours left of daylight, time enough to finish, but he is looking forward to rest. He follows her back to the house to find that Michal has just woken, dazed and recovering from his dreams.
“I can see you now,” says Stefano, about his washed face.
“It was a challenge to wash his hands and face, but the promise of jam finally made him compliant. But he refused to have a bath. Would not move when I suggested it,” she says. “I had to compromise. I am used to washing soldiers who were sometimes difficult. Now I realize they made it easy for me in comparison. The child is quite stubborn!”
She is unused to children, and the lack of affection in her tone reflects this.
“He does not like strangers touching him,” says Stefano. “I think he has been let down too many times.”
Rosalind is quiet then, watching the boy wistfully, perhaps seeing part of herself in him as well.
“Anyway, I am better with injured soldiers,” she says to recover.
Rosalind instructs Stefano to sit down and roll up his left trouser leg. She disappears to the other end of the house, near the room where he believes she sleeps, then returns with a bag that contains medicines and crouches down in front of him. There is no shyness or awkwardness now. She is not afraid of injury. To her, he is just another patient: someone else to heal. A duty. But he doesn’t mind the attention.
“Turn a little to your right and stretch out your leg,” she commands in a different voice, sterner, than she has used before. He imagines she was direct as a nurse, less frail than she appears.
He does so obediently, and she places her small cold hands around his skin, a slight pressure only, while her thumbs probe the hardened tissue to feel the damage underneath. He winces inwardly, the area still sensitive, and she releases the pressure as if she hears everything that is inside him as well.
The bullet entered through the back of his leg beneath the knee and lodged in the muscle.
“The bullet was removed quickly, yes?” she asks.
“Yes,” he says.
“It could have been worse,” she says, frowning in concentration. “They could have blown off your kneecap. You have a leg to walk on, not like others.”
He nods more somberly. “I suppose I should be grateful then.” He means it to some degree, but there have been times when he wasn’t grateful, for anything, not even his own life.
She concentrates on massaging and soothing the area. He is no longer a person. She is connected only with the affliction now.
“You have nurse’s hands.”
She shakes her head, perhaps shaking away the distraction.
“You don’t want to continue in that work in a new city perhaps? Away from Berlin?”
“I think perhaps I am destined for something else.”
“I think you underestimate yourself. I just don’t think people have thanked you enough. It perhaps won’t be as bad now, without an enemy to blow up your hospital walls.”
She pretends she isn’t listening, but the redness on her cheeks tells him otherwise. She takes a bandage out of her bag, applies it with gentle pressure, and pins it together.
“Do you need painkillers?”
“No,” he says, glancing at the collection of various medicines she keeps in her bag.