“Nazi bastard!”
Rosalind cringes at the name as if this were personal, as if it has just been said to her.
“Did you know your father?”
He shakes his head and stares at the photos on the wall.
“Who gave you that name?”
He shrugs and looks at her suspiciously. He has sensed a change of tone in the conversation that has turned more serious. He is wary and bright, she thinks. And he has suffered, from the look of him—innocent, an injured bird. She wants him then. Wants him for herself.
“I will make some tea. Michal, can you take the remainder of the grain to the goose? She is in her little house today. You will have to take it all the way to her.”
“She will bite me!”
“It is all right, Michal. Watch out for her beak, but I think she will be more interested in the food you carry than trying to chase you away. She is also very tired and may not bother to snap at anyone today.” Rosalind does not wish to relate the real reason the goose is staying in her enclosure.
When he has gone Rosalind approaches Stefano to relay her concerns.
“I believe that his mother ran away from wherever she was. I believe that the child’s father is German and they were no longer wanted at their home.”
She reveals the name that Michal has been given, and Stefano is thoughtful, watching Michal whispering to the goose. Stefano mentions the foreign word he heard Michal use for his mother earlier.
“It might explain it,” continues Rosalind. “He is not from here. And the accent suggests that German is not his first language. Wherever he came from, I believe he can’t go back.”
And Stefano is again deep in thought.
“It is something I can tell them at the camp,” he says finally, and this in some small way disappoints her, the thought that they will be gone again, and she will be alone, with Georg, and lonely.
1942
In Berlin, people were feeling the effects of war with the rationing of meat and sugar, eggs, and other essential items, which weren’t always available. After Max was laid off when several tramlines were shut, Yvonne had taken to making her own bread using vegetable meal and barley she sourced through a neighbor. Some restaurants were forced to reduce the options on their menus so that portions of beef and lamb were replaced with rice and vegetable stews with fewer pieces of meat, depending on what they could source, and fruit platters were seasoned with saccharin to disguise any bitterness or age. People were going less to the cinema and spending more money on black market coal. Films would begin with Hitler’s speeches, more men were asked to sign up for war service, and women had to leave their children during the week to work in uniform and munitions factories.
The rest of the civilians walked around in a state of petrified wonderment under the red, black, and white flags that flapped like dying fish in the breezes that blew from the battlegrounds from the east. These flags supposedly represented greatness, which was at odds with the lessening prosperous circumstances. But even by this stage, Berliners still held the belief that Germany was more powerful than any other country, and they would win the war with fewer casualties than elsewhere.
Rosalind had noticed a change in Monique. She was not as vibrant. There was a darker Monique lately, subdued, with a decline in confidence and an increase in seriousness. It had started the previous year, after Alain’s disappearance. Then the loss of her job and the interrogations by the SS after her scene at the police station, which Rosalind still hadn’t forgiven her for. And finally there was the news of her engagement to Erich. Rosalind had been shocked at the announcement, since only weeks before that, Monique had vowed to marry no one.
But in the midst of a changing, more somber Berlin, Rosalind’s wish was finally granted, which made her forget about everything else. Georg had asked Rosalind, by letter, to marry him. At the time of his written proposal, he was covered in mud and sweat, tired and hungry, with a view of dead bodies and a dinner of tinned beans. He said he had started taking something to make him alert, though the generals didn’t approve of it anymore, so he had to keep such a practice discreet. And in that moment that brought euphoria and blissful ignorance of the carnage around him on the Eastern Front, he had written the words proposing marriage, and they could not be taken back.
She had read the letter and told her parents the news. They seemed to take it as a given, neither expressing great surprise with their incurious smiles, shoulder shrugging, and nods, and she could not help noticing that there seemed less fuss than when Monique had announced her engagement and married a week later.
Her cousin would not be in Berlin for Rosalind and Georg’s wedding, as Erich had just started his important and secretive posting in Austria. And it was only then that Monique became busy and excited again at the prospect of returning to her place of birth and being closer to finding out about her father. So far, not even Erich had been able to find out any information from telegrams he had sent to various prisons. Monique was certain that once there, they would learn more.
The day after Monique left for Austria to join Erich, who had gone a week earlier to prepare accommodations, Georg arrived back appearing harried and worn. Their meeting was lukewarm, though he seemed talkative about the wedding. He had taken to smoking heavily, something Rosalind didn’t like, and he would wave his cigarette hand around while he described things. His face was redder, seared slightly, which brought out the pale green of his eyes, and his slightly more lived-in look made him appear more masculine and impossibly handsome.
She had not been with a man before, so she didn’t know what to expect on her wedding night. She’d heard some of the other nurses discuss certain activities, and even Monique had dallied, she suspected. Monique could be as mysterious as she could be open, Rosalind had learned. She could keep secrets well, thought Rosalind.
Though they were different, there was a closeness, a feeling, perhaps more an obligation that they had to keep each other informed about their lives. But after Alain disappeared, Monique told her nothing more about herself, and Rosalind did not wish to detail what happened at the hospital. There were too many casualties, incidents, to talk about. Yet in a strange way, they needed each other. Despite an envy there that Rosalind had carried as a teenager, Monique had brought a vibrancy into their otherwise dreary home, and Rosalind wondered now whether Georg would have come back each summer in the early days if Monique hadn’t been there. She owed her something, she sometimes thought.
It was not until their wedding night that Rosalind wished she had made an effort to be closer to Monique, who was worldly, who would have given advice and told her not to worry so much.
After the wedding, a small affair, Georg had taken her to a hotel for the night, and she had been shy and he perhaps even more so. It felt like they were performing a deed that was required rather than desired. The act of lovemaking was cold and painful, and there was no loving embrace afterward. In fact it had been almost brutish, the way he forced himself harder when she had cried, thinking it was a call for more. If that was a part of marriage, then she would need to be stronger, she felt. After this very brief act, he had sat on the side of the bed with his naked back to her and smoked a cigarette. And when he had walked to the window to view the street below, she modestly eased back into her slip.