Erich is thinking over the events of the previous evening. To my last night in Germany, those were the words Stefano said. Prophetic words, almost a challenge. It could be Erich’s last night in Germany, too. It is possible.
He steps quietly into the child’s bedroom. He thinks of her as “the” child rather than “his” child because he had so little time with her in the first year. At first, in some ways, she was a disappointment, a burden—sickly, awkward, crying for her mother. But by growing rapidly into a quiet acceptance of her new situation, she has also grown on him. She has intelligent, inquisitive eyes. She watches his hands as he speaks, and she looks at body language to form her own opinions. She listens to sounds and repeats them. He must steer her strengths toward superiority, instill in her qualities that would make his mother proud, and keep her loyal to her country.
Hair the color of ripened hay fans across the pillow, and Genevieve’s chest rises and falls in loud, shallow breaths. The medicine has been slow to work, said Marceline the previous evening. She needs a doctor, she also said. That is not possible, unfortunately. She will have to weather the worst of it and prove that she is a survivor like him. His mother lost two babies to fever without shedding a tear. It was nature’s way of eliminating the weaker ones, his mother had told him.
In spirit, Genevieve is like him, distant, watchful, but in looks, she is so like Monique that sometimes when she turns to listen, he sees the older version, the raising of one side of her pretty mouth in a sort of contempt.
He touches her forearm and feels its warmth. She moves it away slightly. Even in sleep she is cautious. He doesn’t like that she is hidden here, with her future uncertain, transferred from place to place. He must find stability, a home for her like he had when growing up. She has no idea yet what it is like to live freely in the sunshine. She has always lived in the shadows. He wants the golden arms of light from outside to reach across her, too.
Marceline is already up. She has boiled an egg and serves it with some leavened bread cut thinly, toasted and smeared with lard. He eats it at the kitchen table while she pours him a cup of coffee.
“Are you feeling all right?” she asks. “You aren’t coming down with something also?”
“I am fine,” he answers. “A restless sleep.”
She is good to him, but he knows her concern is paid for. Marceline was raised by French parents, but she and her family are more German than French in many ways. They were on the secret German payroll, regularly sending the Nazi headquarters in northern France lists of people who were of special interest, those whose interests weren’t aligned with their government.
He leaves and enters the street. Today he will travel with Stefano, but first he must retrieve the tin buried on the hill behind the river house; documents kept there in case his location is ever betrayed. Inside are several sets of false identities, like the French ones he carries for himself and Genevieve, and a list of safe houses for Nazis on the run. But most precious of all, enclosed are copies of his father’s designs that have hardly seen the light of day, and that, time permitting, might have changed the state of play in battles to come. They might be something he can bargain with should there be a need.
Erich thinks about the intruder as he enters the track near the river. Stefano appears comfortable with the man he is, neither fearful nor gallant. He is politely inquisitive but not intrusive, as if he has quickly gleaned the information he needs. Most curiously, he bears no grudges. The Italians Erich dealt with were civil but at the same time looked as though they would cut his throat at the first opportunity. Understandably. Stefano has a haunted look like most from the camps, but he carries himself taller than most prisoners Erich has seen since. He likes him, perhaps more than he should.
The photo of Monique drew Stefano more than Rosalind’s feeble attempt at attention, though Stefano tried to hide the interest. Erich is not surprised. Monique looks beautiful in the photo. People are drawn to her. They always have been. Except for Erich.
He is comforted in knowing that there are still some Italians loyal to the German alliance. And Stefano, he is convinced, is the pathway to a normal future. He and Genevieve could travel by car to southern Italy, then across the Mediterranean Sea to places where they could roam free. Germans have become prisoners in their own towns. It has entered his mind over several days, but not until this morning has he thought so hard about it, nor has the resolve for his new future been so firm.
Marceline, of course, speaks French fluently, and his French might also pass with the Italians. They must wear German only on their hearts if the three of them are to survive such a journey. And return one day for the new Germany when it emerges, when its power is restored.
Erich opens the front door of Georg’s father’s house. The kitchen is quiet, the kettle cold. On the top floor, he can see Michal, sunk in dreams, his arms and legs stretched out across the bed, but Stefano is missing. He may have changed his mind, decided that he will walk after all; then Erich thinks about the leg injury and the child. Why wait for all this time only to walk now?
He has a sinking feeling, an odd jolt to the heart, at the other thought that enters quickly after: that Stefano spent the night with Rosalind. Rosalind, who told him on the first night that she wanted Stefano gone, to not allow strangers into their world. Rosalind, who claimed that Stefano was still the enemy, would have watched his execution if she’d had the choice. She was fiercely loyal to the party, like Erich, but lacked vision, was easily misguided, and only changed her opinion of Stefano once he’d shown himself better as something interesting, someone who might change the course of her life also. He had perhaps altered both their perceptions of others, of strangers, of people who did not fit with Germany’s ideas.
His eyes wander over Georg’s bleak and neglected house. He wishes to be free of the misery these walls hold, with the imprint of Monique and Georg, and of times that need to be forgotten.
He walks back outside and squints at the shine off the river that has infiltrated the spaces between the narrow tree trunks. The feelings here are hollow and cold, the sounds of wildlife obtrusive, the houses unfortified. He likes solid buildings, close together, that blend into one another. It is too open here and too primitive.
The house next door is still. He stops to search for the sounds that crack open the stillness, and the smells: the squeak of the water pump, the smoke from the coal burning through the flue in Rosalind’s kitchen, doors opening and closing. He is used to patterns; he has studied them. He has always been good at reading people, at learning their habits in the shortest time possible.
But today the pattern here is broken.
He does not wish to see Rosalind if he can help it, nor see the hostility that hangs in every expression. She has expected everything, food, medicines, even his protection, without showing gratitude. He could be free of her completely today. He walks to the side of her house with a feeling, not so much a sense of danger but an impending change in the wind that might ultimately lead to something he cannot control.
He stands back slightly from Rosalind’s ground-floor window and peers through the sheer curtains to view the shapes within. Stefano lies on Rosalind’s bed, one arm draped across her.
Erich steps back and out of view. What he has seen alters things. Was his instinct wrong? Is Stefano not the man he thought he was? A traitor, someone dangerous perhaps? But these are the thoughts of people grasping for things to blame. What he feels most is jealousy, something that he did not expect to feel.