Erich said it was likely Alain had been sent to a labor camp. This news made me so angry, and I walked into a police station and demanded to know where he had been sent to, and they laughed, Papa. They laughed and flirted with me as if I were a dolt. They said he had most likely been sent away with the Jews. They were cruel the way they spoke, Papa. And I told them so. I said that I would write a letter to the British and broadcast it somehow. Sometimes I don’t like this Germany anymore. I am worried for its future.
These inquiries and my affections for so-called “undesirables,” and my attendance at “questionable” clubs, as they call them, had caught the notice of more senior people after a report was sent from the Gestapo, and some officers came to talk to me. I was then fired from my government position. Rosalind’s warning was right, unfortunately, that I would get everyone into trouble with my inquiries about Alain and my rebellion against ridiculous rules. Yvonne and Max were interrogated about my activities and connections. I think the officers knew that Tante and Onkel were perfectly innocent, but I believe they wanted to scare them into controlling me. And that made my decision about leaving Berlin the right one. I could not do anything to hurt them. I had done enough and felt ashamed that in some way what I did would come back on them. Rosalind, understandably, didn’t speak to me for some time.
Erich vouched for me personally, and although I’m indebted to him, I am fairly certain that if not for Georg and his close friendship with Erich, I might now be in prison. It was Georg, my very good friend also, who orchestrated the marriage, and I flatly refused the idea of it at first. But as you can see, Papa, at the time there was no other choice.
While we were still in Berlin, Erich made me agree that I would not attend clubs, and he believes that if I am actively promoting the führer’s doctrines, attending parades and speeches, and visibly showing my support, all will be forgiven by the party. But he admitted that it would not be forgotten, since my name is in a file somewhere and will always be. He said that I am lucky I am not in prison.
And so it is that to protect myself, and our family in Berlin, I must continue with this charade, the proposition sweetened, however, with the knowledge of Erich’s Austrian posting. He has agreed to help search for you but so far has found no trace, only that you were in prison and then transferred elsewhere. Since I have no control or sway under a Hitler-controlled government, I am not at liberty to search for you myself, I was told.
I’m afraid to write too much about Erich, because I know little about him myself. I can tell you with certainty that he is in charge of a squad who seeks out those against the government and sends them to prison camps in the East. But I can also tell you something else about him, and it is something that was not learned from him, but from wives of other officers. Erich was responsible for finding Jews hidden around the city before and after the mass deportations last autumn, and this I didn’t know until after I married him. Knowing of the friends I lost in Berlin, I now find it difficult to look at him, and I feel great shame putting this in writing to you and wonder what you must think of me. When I did raise this briefly with Erich, he brushed me off and reminded me that he was doing me a favor. And we have not discussed it since.
I pray for you, Papa, every day. I feel sometimes you are close by. You are often in my dreams. Mama is there, too. We are in our sun-filled kitchen, and she is laughing at something you say. You would always make light of everything. Oma said that, too. That she did not think you would go far in life because you acted like such a clown, that you liked to drift and dream. But I also know that it is what Mama loved most about you. You were there, always. You found jobs, any jobs. But your focus was on your family. I know that now. I know from relationships that this is what makes them work. To focus on the people, not the things, around you.
Goodbye for now, Papa. I will go back to my table and sew some little flowers on some linen that I bought at the market to make a curtain. Then I will fry some tomatoes and sardines and eat them at the window that looks over the square and the quaint little clock tower that softly chimes throughout the day. I will watch the people, the lovers, the children, and the families that have not been broken apart. And I will sit and dream, Papa.
Yours always,
Monique
CHAPTER 18
ROSALIND
Rosalind sweeps up the mud that has dried to loose dirt on the stone floor that her grandfather laid. She used to sit on the stones in front of the fireplace where they were warm. She would get so warm she would have to put a towel underneath her bottom. Sometimes she would fall asleep on the hearth after drinking a glass of warm milk. Her father would pick her up and carry her to bed. Georg would be there, too. They would play until dinnertime when they were very small. She remembers those times vaguely, pieces anyway. Georg sitting at the table, a small version of his father, listening to conversations, and Rosalind sitting across watching him, marveling at the gold in his hair. They were the very young years before Monique arrived and changed things, and life at the river became more insecure.
Stefano arrives with the strange little boy to finish the wall. She looks at the boy as if he were some kind of gift that she must respect now. He has brought out something in Georg that she has not seen since he returned. He laughed, a sound that was just like the old Georg, and she glimpsed it in his eyes, the return. But this morning he has once again regressed, and he has taken the marble away to the hut in the forest where he hides most things that he treasures.
He is there somewhere beneath the fog. Though deep down she is still unsure. Still unsure whether it would make a difference to their relationship if he did return to normal, whether he might remember things, and whether then she might lose him forever.
Rosalind takes Michal inside while Stefano finishes the wall. She puts some jam on a crust of bread for him. His clothes are dirty, and he has a strong smell of smoke about him, old smoke, oil smoke, not the sweet tobacco smoke she smells on Stefano. While he is eating, she fills the bath with hot water from an iron pan on the stove and tops it up with buckets of cold water from the pump near the tub.
She leads the boy to the bath, and when he sees that she is about to attempt to bathe him, she has to block the doorway to stop him from fleeing. His lower lip drops forward as if he might cry.
“My mother used to bathe me. Did your mother used to bathe you, too?”
He says nothing, but two wells appear in his eyes at the mention of his mother. His legs are scratched and insect bitten, and his limbs are thin. He is not in a good state. If he were her son, he would be well cared for, and something about this thought eats at her, makes her suddenly bitter.
“You are a stubborn little boy!”
And then she thinks of his mother and wonders what she was like. She probably spoke softly, taught him to whisper.
“You can have more jam if you get in the bath. See,” she says, her tone softer, bending down to the water. “It is warm and lovely, and I will wash your clothes for you just like your mama.”
“Jam?”
“Yes,” she says, and feels slightly more confident. “Come on,” she says, taking off his shirt with holes and his shorts that are so thin the fabric is see-through in places.
She puts him in the bath, and he sits while she washes him with soap and then with some for the hair. He is delicate, with a sweet monkey face. She marvels at the smallness of his hands and feet.
“Isn’t that better?”
Though she isn’t expecting a response.
She wraps him in a towel, and he sits near the outside tub in the sun, to eat bread and jam, while she washes his clothes, then lays them on the drying rack.
Afterward she shows him books, and he repeats some words that she says, in whispers, though his voice is slightly louder now, his confidence growing. Michal is amazed by the pictures and colors, and he traces his fingers along the backs of the animals as if imagining the feel of their fur.
When the clothes are nearly dry, she dresses him and then shows him some photos. He studies them hard. She can see that he is looking for his own family among them.
“Do you have a second name?”
“Yes.”
“What is it?”