“That should help for today, but I think it would be wise to finish the work tomorrow,” she says. “I am certain now that there will be no rain today. The air is too cool, too dry. The geese are quiet.”
“They can tell you.”
“Not always, but they are mostly right.”
“Moni is in the river,” says Georg. He has walked into the room and stares at Rosalind. It is difficult to know if he has noticed Stefano at all. But he has noticed Michal, and he stares at the boy, who looks uncomfortable and gets up to stand near Stefano at the table.
Rosalind sighs and snaps the bag shut.
“Georg, go to your seat outside.” He stops for a second as if waiting for more, then walks out the front door.
“There is no need to send him away on my account.”
“It is not on your account,” she says curtly. “It is for him. He likes to stare into the woods at the sun at this time of day. He likes to watch it before it sets.”
Any softness that he had seen earlier seems to have vanished.
“Does he not know that Monique never returned?”
“My husband knows very little, but he remembers my cousin fondly. They had a good time together. They were close, like brother and sister. It seems these are the only memories he has now. He talks of the river often. That’s where his memories seem to be.”
Stefano knows the emptiness of loss. First his father and then, like a torrent, came more.
1942
He had woken from a blast, his head numb, his ears ringing. Through the smoke and dust, people were scrambling to reach a ridge of sand for protection. He climbed over the bodies and found one of the men alive. He bandaged the soldier’s open spleen and listened to him cry for his mother, beg for a bullet, change his mind and ask to be saved. Stefano had no more morphine shots. He ran for the medic who was too busy pressing a towel against a neck wound and blocking against a fountain of blood. By the time he returned, after the enemy had paused the shelling, the soldier was dead. He made the sign of the cross, then stepped over other bodies, looked at faces, tried to recognize and remember their names to report back at base. After this, he returned to a savaged and shrunken base camp. The regiment was pulling out. The campaign was over.
It was disgustingly hot, the sun large. Flies buzzed around bloodied bodies carried from the battleground. The stench of scorched metal and flesh pervaded the air and made it difficult to breathe. Tan-colored dust clung to his skin and bedded down in the wrinkled furrows of worn-out men. Stefano had been injured slightly, a gash to his upper body and leg, his shirt torn open, the edges reddened from his blood, which looked worse than the wound the uniform still managed to conceal.
He had written only yesterday to Teresa, telling her that bullets seemed to steer away from him. He should never have put it in words, he thought. He had asked for it. He said not to tell his mother or Nina. They would not cope with this kind of news. It was better they only received letters about the men, and their personal stories and descriptions about the colorful bazaars, with ceramic bowls painted in rich blues and reds and yellows, that he visited on arrival at Tunisia, and the scent of jasmine that carried through the streets. Teresa coped with news. She and her brother weren’t close, not in the sense that they shared their emotions, but she understood the nature of things better than most. She could accept his injury and the war as if they were expected and did not think too hard about the future. If her brother lived, she was grateful. If her brother died, it was not unexpected. She loved him, cared for him, from when he was small, but she had a core that was harder than steel. And in some way he loved her for it.
At camp, he expected Beppe to greet him like he always did, but no one had seen him. The cousins had been separated early by a mortar shell that had split the group into two, and on either side of a wall of fire and smoke, men ran for cover in opposite directions. The fierce battle began. Then after hours of warfare, the expressions of the soldiers, vacant and bloodless, told the story.
“Where is he?” he asked his friend.
The man shook his head. Stefano turned to go, back to the scene of battle, but someone grabbed his arm.
“There is nothing there. There is nothing left of him. You won’t find any trace.”
Stefano didn’t know whether he had heard correctly. He studied the dusty field strewn with burned things, a graveyard of tanks and bodies, some that did not resemble soldiers. Where he had just come from, the reality that he had survived, was sinking in. He stood in the middle, mind numb, a lone silhouette. It was not until later that the gravity of the moment had sunk in, of what they had all endured, and he had grieved properly. But all he could feel was rage toward his own country, toward the leaders who led innocent soldiers to their deaths.
While he’d been gone, Stefano had learned in a letter from Teresa that Nina had eloped with Toni. When Stefano read the letter aloud, somewhat offended that his sister had not warned him of her plans, Beppe had laughed. But now Stefano would give anything to hear Beppe’s laugh again. His cousin had the ability to put everything into perspective. “It is the best news you will get this year!” Beppe had said. “Worry about the big issues, and let someone else waste their time on the small ones.”
The battles in the northern deserts of Africa had been hopeless from the start. Beppe had said that all along.
The remaining men made their way back to Tunisia with heavy losses. He did not speak to anyone on the way to the town where the soldier groups were assembled. After several days in a field hospital and several more months in the northern deserts, he was sent home.
He was not eager to go straight home, his heart still heavy with loss. Instead he disembarked at Florence to walk the cobbled streets where he had spent many nights with his cousin, sneaking out after dark and exploring the city—a journey into manhood, as Beppe had described it, and Julietta had been none the wiser. Stefano stopped at a bar, ordered pasta and several wines, and then wandered near the Ponte Vecchio to watch the river shimmer and to reminisce about the time that Beppe had jumped in on a dare.
His cousin had taken Stefano under his wing. Overly protective, he had even taken a punch for him outside a bar. He had been there always to watch out for him. He had assumed the role of father, carer, though Teresa had told Stefano plenty of times that Beppe was irresponsible. He was, but he also wasn’t. He took the role of looking after his young cousin seriously. He was sensitive and emotional, and had cried harder than anyone when his uncle, Stefano’s father, had died.
The next day, after sleeping beside the river, Stefano hitched a ride to Verona. Stefano, battle scarred and tired, found nobody at home. His mother and Teresa had gone to pray at church like they had been doing every day since they learned of Beppe’s fate.
Even though his mother was overjoyed to find Stefano there when she returned, and over coming days spoiled him, there seemed no relief that he was home. It was tense. The air clouded with unsaid words about the death of his cousin. It was miserable, even more so than in the days after his father died, because of the circumstances, because there was no body to grieve over. Serafina had now convinced herself that her son was still alive, that until they returned the body, she would continue to believe that. His mother had been with Serafina when she learned of her son’s death. Julietta told Stefano that Serafina took the loss so badly that she threatened to throw herself off the balcony of their two-story villa.
Teresa had banned Toni from their house because he and Nina had gone against Julietta’s wishes and married outside the church, and Nina had not visited recently. This news only added to the oppressive atmosphere that Stefano had come home to. Teresa, feisty and determined to remain single, was unlikely to find a husband. Julietta complained about that in spite of everything.
“What does it matter?” said Stefano.