“Rosalind—”
“Get away!” said Rosalind, who no longer wanted to see her, who turned then and ran.
“He is wrong for you,” Monique called after her.
Upstairs there was no sign of Georg. But she knew he was unlikely to return now that they had been caught. The single thing that had hung over her head for years, the fear, had finally happened. Why now? Why had he tortured her all these years?
She packed her bag upstairs, throwing everything into it hastily, except the lavender chemise she had worn for Georg, tossed to a corner of the room. Monique had disappeared to find Georg no doubt. The light in the bedroom next door was then switched on. It was sometime after two in the morning, as she walked past Erich’s house, barefoot, uncaring of her appearance at that moment, that she saw a familiar figure on the front bench.
Erich knows, she thought at the time. It was why they weren’t talking. And more importantly, he didn’t seem to care.
“Goodbye, Rosalind,” Erich said.
She ignored him and walked briskly to the station, hatred pumping through her veins, and she waited on the platform till morning to catch the first train back to Berlin.
Only when on the train did she allow herself to cry, telling herself that she would leave Georg, but she knew she never could. He would have to leave her first.
A week later his letter arrived. He told her that he couldn’t wait for the war to be over so they could be together. And in the silent messages between the lines, he had somehow made it clear that she was the one he loved. She was comforted momentarily that Monique was just a distraction. Monique had always made herself one, but time would see an end to it.
Rosalind would love Georg still, and she would fight harder. And she forgave him, pushing the truth and the memories deep down, drowning them until they could not be revived. But also deep down was the feeling that sooner or later Monique would pay for the betrayal.
Present-day 1945
Stefano waits for her in the living room. She hadn’t noticed before, but his clothes are still wet, his shirt smeared with dirt, and the bottoms of his trousers muddied.
“I have some spare clothes. Let me get them for you.”
She retrieves several items from a laundry hamper under the stairs.
“These belong to Georg,” she says as she steps near him to unbutton his shirt.
“No, I’m fine,” he says, gently pushing back her hands, but she nudges his hands officiously out of the way and continues the unbuttoning. He puts up his arms, suggesting some kind of surrender.
“Tell me, Stefano, did you love someone in the war?”
“There was no time for love.”
She peels off his shirt. How many patients did she do this for? So many. Too many. Bloodied torsos. She puts the images away and focuses on the body in front of her.
“It would be best for Georg if I just put him out of his misery. If I just put him to sleep,” she says. “It is the kindest way perhaps.”
“It is kinder if he gets better care,” he says, but she isn’t listening. She is thinking about what she wants to do. She wants Stefano to take her far away from the life she has here. Away from Erich and Georg and memories and years of belief and false hope.
Stefano’s burn scars, skin pink and puckered, extend up the side of his body to his shoulder and down his arm. She is used to damage. And then her eyes stop on the numbers on his other arm, and she feels she owes him something for his suffering.
“It must have been terrible,” she says, laying her hands flat on his bare chest, and thinking of Georg, and remembering that Erich gave her a drug to end her husband’s life quickly if it came to it. Humane also, Erich had added, and she fights off the image of Georg. She wants to be free of both of them. She wants new experiences, better ones that will block out those that came before. She no longer has control over what she is about to do, and she leans forward, kisses the scarring on Stefano’s shoulder, smells the salt on his skin, and wonders if this is what Monique did with men, if she took control.
She looks up at Stefano, who is looking down, his features indistinct in the dim light, then stands on tiptoe and moves her lips close to his. He is very still, waiting for her, she thinks. And his lips, she feels them, close enough to kiss, her hands still against his chest. He moves slightly, a response, willing, she thinks, and her lips are over his now, and beneath her hands his body burns hot.
He turns his head slightly and gently holds her wrist.
“I’m sorry . . . ,” he says, and sighs.
“Pretend there is no tomorrow,” she whispers hesitantly.
“I can’t,” he says. “Tomorrow is always the day I’m waiting for, what I dream about.”
The words are like a knife in her chest. The rejection, the feeling of being unloved. Does it ever go away?
“You aren’t ready for this,” he says quietly. “You have been through a lot. You must think of your husband. Tomorrow I am gone.”
And there is no future, she thinks. There is no tomorrow. There is no Stefano, no Michal. She has chosen her own destiny. And she is crying and weeping and apologizing. He tells her it doesn’t matter, that he will stay with her tonight, and she collapses against him, and he lifts her and carries her into the bedroom and places her gently on the mattress. He slides in beside her, arms around her protectively, like a friend, like a parent, she thinks, though she has had no such experience before.
In the night she tells him about the baby they lost, that she had become pregnant on one of Georg’s visits. That after a certain particular event by the river, which she can’t speak of, the pair became closer. She doesn’t give details, and he doesn’t interrupt to ask.
And she tells him about Berlin in the final days, of the Russians and the rapes and the rage. She had walked home pregnant, hungry, sleep deprived. People didn’t notice, or care. People were escaping Berlin, escaping the Russians who were thundering into Germany in their tanks like a herd of wild beasts, and as she traveled home, the rest of the Allies came in from the west, majestic, as if they had not seen a war. No one stopped to help her. Her own people, desperate now, like animals, she said. Humanity had left, and she feels numb at the memory, but not surprised. There was little goodwill. It was about saving herself and escaping. She was no better than they were, she admits to Stefano, selfishly uncaring of others at that point.
Her weeping eventually stops, and she is thinking that Stefano is a good man, a man with integrity, and kind. He has sisters, he tells her. He used to comfort them also.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “It has been so hard living with Georg. All the secrets.”
“What secrets?” he asks, but she is too sleepy to talk now.
Sometime in the night she is aware that he leaves briefly, most likely to check on the boy, and then another time to get up and shine a light on his watch in his bag, before climbing back into bed, but it doesn’t matter what he does.
In sleep she can blissfully forget her wrongs. And for the first time in so long, she sleeps deeply.
CHAPTER 22
ERICH
Shadows stretch across the street, and rooftops catch fire in the early morning light that patterns the town in grays and gold. Erich stands at the window to gaze upon the peace. The baker’s horse and cart clatter over the cobblestones and head toward the Russian-filled hotel on the outskirts of town to deliver the freshly baked rolls of rye.