He stands up suddenly and lifts her from the armchair so they are no longer visible from the street. He helps her lie down on a sofa. She looks stiff and uncomfortable, and her mouth moves as if she wants to say something.
He takes a cushion and places it over her face and applies pressure. Perhaps unnecessary force since she is light, but it must be done swiftly and humanely. She makes a sound, beneath the thick fabric and padding, and one hand reaches out to grab weakly at the air, at something she can’t see. He presses the cushion down harder and holds it there. There is little resistance until her body becomes limp, and her arm drops suddenly to the floor beside the sofa. He leaves the cushion over her face. He doesn’t want to see her again.
He packs a small case, then shuts the door behind him.
There are things he has to know.
CHAPTER 26
STEFANO
Rosalind has stopped crying now, and she is pensive, watching silently from the window, perhaps willing Georg to appear. The soldiers, Stefano has told her, will likely come back to report on Georg’s condition.
“Where’s Michal?” She turns, her mind suddenly back in the room and her fingers grazing the bruises around her throat.
“He is next door.”
“It is probably best,” she says, and he wonders why it is best, since there is no Georg here who might harm him.
“I just took him some food,” he says. “Fortunately, he did not witness the shooting.” Though the boy has likely seen worse.
Rosalind disappears to her bedroom, then returns moments later to retrieve the kettle with boiling water from the stove. She has replaced her bloody housecoat with the dress he first saw her in.
“I’m making some tea,” she says, and he finds it odd that she now appears serene. Her face, though, is still damp and reddened from her previous outburst.
Stefano feels the sweat building under his armpits. He wipes his forehead with the back of his sleeve. It is still early in the morning, and already it is too hot. He exits the back door again to survey the area; he wonders about Erich’s whereabouts and whether he’ll appear.
“I think I will go to town,” he says, coming back to the table. “See if I can learn something more.” He does not like the waiting. He looks around. He is sure he left his satchel near the sofa. There is no sign of it now.
“Erich should be returning soon. You cannot miss your train . . . I would rather you stay for the moment. Until my nerves settle.”
She turns back from the sink and places the tea in front of him, then sits down opposite.
“Thank you,” he says, sitting down, though he is still thinking about the location of the bag while he sips at the hot tea. “You are feeling better?”
“Yes,” she says too quickly, “but I am wondering what you said in Russian when Georg first came out of the house.”
Stefano pauses, trying to remember the words he used.
“You told them the Nazis were gone.”
“I shouted something, anything to stop them from shooting.”
“It was strange. That’s all. The tone. The urgency. As if those soldiers needed to be elsewhere.”
“I’m not sure I understand you.”
“I heard those words you used many times these last months when I saw soldiers in the street in the town grab someone to interrogate them. It is something we learned to say after the war ended. Though your tone was strange. As if you were frustrated, disappointed. Or a warning to the Soviets perhaps.”
He looks at her, absorbs the gentle accusation of collusion, and searches for an answer that will suit her. She is digging. She is deeper than he thought.
“It is what I said,” he says finally. “I was hoping that my warning would stop him, but Georg did not want to stop. I was just trying to save him, make sure he was not mistaken for a Nazi on the run.”
She stares at her cup; there are other things on her mind. He thinks he must explain further and begins to talk; he reminds her how he learned some Russian, and that he loved languages, liked to read, to study words, but she bursts into his explanation to interrupt his attempts.
“It doesn’t matter now. Georg is gone. Perhaps Erich is, too.”
He takes several mouthfuls of tea, wondering if there is a message beneath the words.
“And soon you will be gone, too, and I will be left here alone.”
“I’m sorry,” says Stefano, draining the last of the fluid that was thick and black and strong, with too many leaves. Bitter also, like her, he is thinking. Her mood has changed from last night, and he wonders if she is ashamed that she revealed so much and whether she wishes she hadn’t. “It should never have happened.”
“What was supposed to happen?” she asks.
He looks at her then.
“Just that they should not have shot him. He was unarmed,” he says, and looks suddenly wary. “Do you think I had something to do with Georg being shot?”
“I don’t know. I lived through a war. I lived through all sorts of disappointment, heard and saw many horrors. I just thought that when the Russians came, you were expecting something to happen, that you ran out to greet them rather than try to send them away.”
He opens his mouth to speak in his defense, but there is a sudden pain in his stomach, and he grabs at it. His head feels fuzzy. He tries to stand but finds that the floor beneath him is shifting.
He can just see her through the haze. She sits across from him. She has not touched her tea. Her large pale eyes that emerge from the mist are in sharp contrast with the circles of black that surround them. His hand releases the cup, which smashes to the floor, and Stefano falls to the side of the chair.
January 1944
Stefano watched his mother play with her grandson, and the sight lightened his heart and just briefly blocked out the events they were faced with. Nina wanted Nicolo baptized in a church as soon as they reached the South, and Toni had agreed.
They spoke only briefly of the mission that had gone badly. There was no blame, but Toni vowed there would be no more failures. After the women and Nicolo were safely on their way the next day, they would draft up plans.
In the early hours of the following morning, a truck would take Julietta, Nina, and Nicolo to a church that had been assisting refugees. From there they would be moved southward with the help of the Vatican. They’d had word of others who had been safely transferred to the Allied-occupied territory.
“Finally,” said Toni, “the church has come in handy.”
“Don’t blaspheme,” said Nina. “You will come around eventually.” Stefano was glad that his mother had left the room and hoped she didn’t hear the way Toni talked. Better that she thought well of him now that he was part of their family.
Stefano went to the room where his mother would sleep and spoke to her briefly. She was restless with the excitement of returning home.
“I am sorry for the delay,” said Stefano. He did not like that the mission had postponed his family’s travels.
“I trust that you are doing everything you think is right,” said Julietta to her son. “But you must promise me that you will come to us soon.”
“I promise, Mamma, before God, that I will come when I have done what I need to here.”
“And what is that exactly?”
He was tired, bits of soil from digging still under his nails from the work two nights earlier. He did not want to explain.
“Mamma, get some sleep, and I will tell you all about it when I see you in Campania!”
His mother at least believed him in part. Nina entered the room, and he hugged them both a little longer than usual, since he had no idea how long they were to be parted, and then Stefano went to speak with the others.
In recent times, Toni and Nina had become more active. Nina would carry messages in the baby’s pram and deliver them in cafés. They were fortunately never implicated as members of the southern traitors, but Stefano and others in his group had heard of many executed, and whole villages nearly destroyed in recent weeks. The more death, the more fearless both Toni and Nina had become.