“I have brought some vodka,” says Erich.
“Did you find that also under floorboards somewhere?” says Stefano.
“I have always been resourceful.” He rises to get several glasses from the bench. “May I?” he asks Rosalind, who nods.
He pours three glasses back at the table.
“I’d rather not,” says Rosalind. “I—”
“Just one,” says Stefano, “to celebrate the rebuilding of the wall.”
She thinks for a moment.
“Thank you,” she says. “It was usually Monique who liked to drink.”
Erich avoids turning to his right to see Monique on the wall. The mentioning of her is not something he expected. It is not like Rosalind to talk of her cousin, but he can see that it interests Stefano, and she knows this, too, perhaps using it for conversation.
“Is there any word from your cousin?” asks Erich.
“No,” says Rosalind, and she moves to check the oven. “Unfortunately nothing . . . With the goose I have baked some potatoes also and spinach, too. I’m sorry that I have not made more. There is so little to take from the garden yet.”
Stefano looks keenly between them. He is not interested in hearing about the vegetables. He is examining Monique’s portrait; her disappearance still begs for questions. But his attention diverts to Rosalind approaching the table with the food, and the pretty girl on the wall is once more in the past.
Michal sits closest to Stefano. Erich asks the child questions, but he is silent, his eyes darting back to the others, to his hands and to the basket that sits at his feet. He shifts several times, impatiently, the smell of the food distracting. And Erich is remembering his little brothers, who sat quietly upright at the table, who were patient, unlike Michal. He stops himself from thinking and takes a sip of the vodka.
“I owe you a debt,” Rosalind says to Stefano as she sits once more at the table. “You have done a marvelous job. I never have to worry about rain again.”
As they pass around the serving plates, their talk turns to progress and the reshaping of the country. Erich has brought with him a German newsletter. The printing firms are starting up again, though the information is carefully worded and distributed so as not to upset the Russians and the Allies. The building work is recovering, and many of the captured Germans are cleaning up the cities, focusing on agriculture. There is much discussed about how they will disperse the labor, where the food will come from in the meantime. The distribution of territories from meetings held in Potsdam confirms that the Russians are expected to stay for some time, and Rosalind’s face falls at the mention of this.
The food is nice, Erich tells Rosalind. She thanks him, but from the lack of sincerity in her reply, she could do without his company.
“So, Stefano,” she says, “tomorrow you leave!”
“Yes,” he says, showing no emotion. Erich can see Rosalind blink back a thought, a small frown between her brows. He can see what is happening here. Lonely little Rosalind has fallen for the Italian.
“Stefano, does your family know you are coming?” asks Erich.
“I have written, but I did not give a date.”
“Tell me about your town,” says Rosalind as if Erich were not with them. It is definitely Stefano, he thinks, who asked him to dinner, not Rosalind. He orchestrated it, and she reluctantly agreed.
“It is blue and bright most of the time. And yellow and warm.”
“I like that you describe in colors,” she says candidly, before her eyes meet Erich’s and fall away again.
“Rosalind,” says Erich, “this is delicious. I don’t know why you haven’t invited me here before. Why you took so long to kill the goose.”
Rosalind’s cheeks are flushed as she cuts the meat, her pet goose, into small pieces.
Tonight there is no discussion of war. Stefano is talkative about the village he comes from, about the tourists and the colored glass and silver jewelry that is popular with the tourists, of the buildings that have faced the sea for hundreds of years. He shows the bracelet at his wrist his sister made and sold at markets. He talks and they listen, both of them curious, interested. Rosalind has drunk too much of the vodka, and unsteadily carries out a dessert of baked pears with melted chocolate from the last of Stefano’s rations.
Stefano leaves some of the pears to give to Michal, who takes them eagerly, eyes not on any adult but on the food that is scraped into his dish.
“He misses his mother very much,” says Stefano.
“And do you think the boy will find his family?” asks Rosalind.
“I’m not sure,” he says, and Michal looks away, perhaps content with the possibility that he might not be sent to somewhere he doesn’t want to go.
“The boy is attached to you,” says Rosalind. “In the days you have been here, I have seen you grow closer.” And Erich has seen this also, that Stefano’s expression softens when he looks at the boy.
“I saw the way you worked together,” says Rosalind. “I saw the loyalty in his eyes.”
Stefano searches hers, shiny and animated, the awkwardness of their first meeting behind them.
“They are like that,” says Erich, interrupting the moment. “They draw you out, highlight things about yourself you didn’t know.”
“Are you speaking from experience?” asks Stefano.
And Rosalind watches Erich closely to see how he will answer.
“Yes, I helped raise my younger sister and brothers,” he says, answering carefully. And he catches a look from Rosalind, unshrinking, a look that says, You can’t have what I have, not anymore.
But he doesn’t want what she has. He wants something else.
And Rosalind tells them she has an idea and disappears into her room. She returns, wheeling a gramophone on a small trolley. She winds it up, places the needle on the record, and jazz—once banned by the Nazis—pours out of the speaker, scratchy but better than the silence that was about to come. And he thinks of Monique then, not fondly, just that she would have loved the sound, and loved an opportunity to dance.
Erich notices that Stefano has still not drunk his glass and that he is watching everything carefully. Erich is on his second glass, and he is watchful also but caring less, not offended by the music as he should be, and feeling the effects of the vodka. Rosalind smiles at the music, at both of them, and at Michal, who looks curiously at the music box, and Erich likes this new Rosalind, the one who might forget the past.
Erich feels something he hasn’t felt for years, the feeling of freedom, of life about to start. He watches Stefano change into someone else entirely: Stefano takes Rosalind’s hands and pulls her from the chair to dance, swinging her around forcefully—furiously, almost. She is shy and ungainly, and though she tries to be Monique, to be carefree like she once was, she can’t be. She is Rosalind and always will be. Then suddenly she interrupts the dance to reach up and touch her throat. And both he and Stefano follow Rosalind’s gaze.
Georg is standing at the bottom of the stairs and appears almost normal, his hands casually in his pockets. Rosalind stops the gramophone’s playing, and the silence that follows is louder.
Rosalind asks Georg to sit down, but he’s not listening, his focus on Erich, who stands up warily as if an unfamiliar dog has wandered near.
“Are you feeling all right, Georg?” Erich asks.
It has been a while since he has faced him. Not since he brought him home from the incident on the battlefield. It has been even longer since Georg has looked him in the eye. The look is primal, and for the first time in a long while, Erich feels fear.