Was he all right, she asked, and he had turned and smiled. Of course, he said. The response seemed genuine, she thought, she hoped. She loved him so much. She had for so long, and now they were married, and this was marriage, and she had burst into tears. He had stubbed his cigarette out and rushed to her side. “What’s wrong? Why the tears?”
“I don’t know why,” she said, and it was truthful because she didn’t understand the feelings of loving and not knowing whether she was being loved back. She could not put that into words to Georg, not at that moment anyway.
“It’s a shock the first time,” he said, “but it’s going to be fine.”
She had leaned her head against his bare chest, and he held her and kissed the top of her head. And she had felt his heartbeat and felt comforted, and warm, though the words rang through her ears long after the wedding night. The first time? Who was Georg’s first time? She had to wonder.
After they had two more nights together in her bedroom at her parents’ house, he announced suddenly that he was leaving, his unit about to embark for another battle on foreign lands.
“I heard from Monique by letter,” he said as she watched him dress in his dashing gray uniform. He was trying to sound casual, but in the attempt the words had come out forced, unnatural. “She said Erich will be taking some leave at the end of the summer, and they are both keen to catch up with us then at the river houses. Erich said he will use his influence and make sure I have the same week of leave.”
“Might you be in the middle of battle?”
“Perhaps.”
He had kissed her on the cheek, told her he loved her, and rushed from the room.
Several days later, she found his small brown leather folder, which he carried everywhere, wedged between the bed and the dresser. In his haste he had forgotten it. She looked inside to see if there was anything important and found the papers for his next commission. She also discovered the date of departure for his commission was two days after he had rushed off to leave her. Two days, she thought, he should have spent with her.
Present-day 1945
She stops to view the wall Stefano has created, her skirt nearly touching Stefano’s arm. She looks at his hands, wonders at the strength of him, after what he has been through. The corner is a patchwork of bricks in varying shades of brownish reds and whites. But it has been done evenly and with precision.
“If you do not choose to have an academic life with your languages, then I’m sure the damage this war has done could give you countless hours of work.” Her words to her ears do not sound sincere, but she was never good at compliments. She means it, though. The work is excellent.
She sees Georg out of the corner of her eye, watching them from the doorway. He looks large, like a predator sizing up its prey. He has the look of defeat most of the time but not today. Minutes later he returns inside.
He is not Georg, not the one she spent time with as a child. And the memories of their marriage are stained with deceit. All this is coming to her. All this in a moment. She wonders whether Stefano has been sent here; if he is the catalyst that will change the course of her future. Wonders if there is a future, if she deserves one, and whether Georg should be part of it. She remembers Erich’s advice about sending him to a hospital. She has begun to question her own decisions. Perhaps it is time to take some of his advice.
“I was wondering if you would like to share another meal with me this evening,” she says suddenly to Stefano.
He looks at her and doesn’t answer straightaway as if he were thinking or calculating. She cannot tell whether he is pleased with the invitation or whether he thinks she is mad the way she lives. Once she may not have cared what anyone thought of her and Georg, but she does now. She is developing feelings for someone other than her husband, a thought that several weeks ago would never have entered her head.
“And Erich?” he says finally, looking up toward the woods on the hill.
She blinks several times at the mention of his name. She saw Erich earlier behind the house, clearing the debris from the damaged shed. They have been bound by the past, but those bindings could unravel at any moment. If Stefano knew her, knew her past, she would lose him, and somehow the thought of losing him frightens her. She does not want him to leave here. She does not want him in Erich’s clutches. For some reason that frightens her even more.
“I can’t . . . ,” she says.
“Why not?”
“It is difficult to explain.”
“Is it Georg?”
And she looks at him then, wondering what he sees, what he knows.
“Erich said he was dangerous,” Stefano says.
“He is not so dangerous. It is only Erich who thinks that way.” She does not trust herself to explain further.
“Then why not? If there is something from the past, maybe the two of you can bring it to an end tonight.”
He wears a small thin smile, though it is more a cynical one; smiles he has yet to master. And she thinks that they still need each other, she and Erich. That they made a pact, that they must learn to live with the past, move on, perhaps together in a distant way. But not just that. It is better to watch an enemy, see where he is, than to not see him at all, to speculate.
“Yes. Erich also,” she says, her chest tightening with apprehension.
“That is good,” he says. “Then this lovers’ tiff can be put to rest, finally.”
She starts to protest but thinks it will look worse if she objects to the comment. She leaves Stefano to wash her hands in the tub at the back of the house.
“Georg, I have a special request tonight,” she says on entering the house to find Georg at the table. She is wondering if the others will set him off. She is becoming more afraid of him, fearful of what he carries in his head. “We are having dinner guests, and I would like you to be on your best behavior. Can you do that?” She is also thinking it would be better he stays sleeping with a sedative, perhaps the dose increased for tonight, though she must be careful. Stock is running low and Erich is giving her less. She can’t think what life would be like without the drugs.
Georg turns to look at her. His eyes clear, stubble appearing, a small dribble from the corner of his mouth, and then something hits her. This is not her Georg. Not the one she fell in love with.
He can’t see her. He never could. Even before the injury. She thinks of Stefano. Of his dark eyes that see her, really see.
She walks to her room and opens her wardrobe. There are dresses there that belonged to someone else. She takes out one and holds it against her in front of the bedroom mirror: a navy dress with pale-yellow flowers embroidered onto the lapels.
Odd that after all this time she would think about how she will look. It is Stefano of course. Her heart beats strangely at the thought of him, at the warmth of his skin. She wanted him gone two days ago; now she wants him here. She is rash, altered, even a touch mad, she thinks.
She carries a sack and a hammer to the goose hut. There is little food. One day soon, she expects, Erich will be gone, and she will go back to queuing for rations. The thought of it terrifies her, of leaving Georg for hours, without the medicine that will eventually run out, to queue for a few vegetables and sausages that are barely enough for one, and to avoid the Russians again in the streets.
The bird will die eventually. Better it be by her hand than by the hand of a thief.
The goose has hardly moved at all, and she squawks submissively today, a quiet pleading, and graceful, with her long neck and beseeching eyes that turn from side to side to view Rosalind. It is unlikely she will heal. When Rosalind was small she saw a goose with a similar ailment and asked her grandmother if they could take it to the doctor.
No, dearest Rosalind, said Oma. God has already made his plan for this one. She had believed her grandmother at the time, though now she can see things for herself: death has nothing to do with God or heaven; death is decided by the living.