He was taken below the grounds of the church that had been assisting Jews escape. A doctor arrived and spread salve across his body and bound the injured areas with gauze. He eventually fell asleep, and sometime in his dreams he heard Nina and his mother screaming but woke to an empty silence and a loss that no words could quantify. His heart ached for his mother, sister, and friends.
By the third day he expected the SS to come, but they didn’t. He was safe, said the priest, in a secret passage below the building. He wondered what Nina must have gone through to have not given up the church to the authorities. He closed his eyes in an attempt to block out images of faces in the fire, but for several more nights the pain of what had happened worsened. He tried not to think of Nina and his mamma waking in the night to their deaths. They had paid the ultimate price for his defection, and he was now bearing the blame.
Fedor came to see him often, concerned for his friend and with talk of revenge. He believed that, from Stefano’s description of events, their friends were knocked out or shot by the Brigades and SS prior to the fire. It was only Julietta who must have woken to stare into the face of her death, and the image was something he would wake with for most of the coming years.
For three more weeks he stayed like that, was treated for his wounds, and counseled by priests and others loyal to the South. More came, those who supported his cause, and then members of a partisan army offered condolences and something that was much more important: the opportunity to fight alongside them. Fedor and Stefano listened to the stories of the resistance, listened to what they had already done, and how much they had lost also, and the two friends left one night without mercy in their hearts.
Present-day 1945
Stefano wakes to a strange taste in his mouth, a mixture of bile, metal, and tea. He struggles to open his eyes. His head is slightly forward, hair across his face. He goes to reach for his forehead, then realizes he can’t. His arms are tied behind him. He is in the barn, tethered to the center pole.
He forces himself to alertness, forces the deadweight of his head upward, and he blinks several times. There are soft warbles from the trees but no human sounds. From the light outside, Stefano gauges it is well past midday. He sifts through the last moments, the tea, Rosalind’s vacant expression, and the missing satchel. He is wondering what he didn’t see. He twists his wrists within the bindings, but the attempt to wriggle free causes splinters in the skin on the backs of his hands.
Footsteps sound outside. He is expecting Rosalind when the door opens, but it is Erich. Stefano notices immediately, as Erich walks toward him, that there is a slight crack in his demeanor. He is still rigid, straight backed, but the elbows are tight to his sides as if he were tense, his gaze faltering at the sight of Stefano.
“Why am I tied up?” says Stefano, the dullness in his mind slowly clearing. “I need to get to the train.”
“You and I both know there is no train. The train line south was destroyed by Allied bombs,” says Erich, moving closer. “But I think you knew that. It is why you looked unconvinced when I offered you a lift.”
“I believed you about the train,” says Stefano cautiously. “And why would you offer to take me there when you knew it was destroyed?”
“You don’t need to pretend anymore,” he says.
Stefano can see that his captor is trying to sound controlled, but Erich is unnerved, by the way he paces, the way he keeps sighing and combing back his hair. It is a side of Erich that he hasn’t seen before.
The door of the barn squeaks open, and Rosalind rushes toward them, looking at Stefano like she did on the first day she saw him, suspicious and bitter. Before Erich has time to reach for her arm, she bends to slap Stefano hard across the face.
Erich grabs both her arms behind her and pulls her away.
“You had my husband killed!”
Stefano feels the sting that is left on his skin. But he has felt worse. Any pain is good pain now, he thinks. It is a reminder that he is alive, while others are dead. He can see that she has been crying again, but there is a determination he failed to see, a determination that most German women carry. The resolve that they will not be made to kneel, that they will still fight. The night before, she appeared vulnerable and frail, but she is anything but.
“I did not have your husband shot.”
“Why did you call out that the Nazis were gone?”
“My Russian is poor. As I told you, I was trying to tell them Georg was not a Nazi. That’s all. I was afraid that he would be shot. He did that to himself. He came at them. I tried to stop them.”
“You knew them!” she accuses.
Stefano sighs. He is wondering whether the war will ever stop for him.
“No,” he says, staring directly into her eyes. Though he is aware that Erich is nearby, watching, the scrutiny is worse than Rosalind’s fury.
“I don’t believe him,” she says to Erich. “He shouted at them as if Georg were the wrong one.”
“You were confused, upset,” defends Stefano. “You are looking for things that aren’t there.”
She goes to strike him again, but Erich stops her this time and grips her wrist so tightly that the area of skin appears burned after he releases her.
“Did you find the child?” says Erich.
“He is still missing,” she says.
“Then you have not looked hard enough.”
“He may have left hours ago—”
“Keep looking!” he commands in a tone that sounds much like a threat. “Search by the river!”
“Why do you want the boy?” says Stefano once she has hurried from the room.
“I can see that you have developed some affection for him.”
“And you think you can torture him in front of me to extract some information that you falsely perceive to be the truth.”
Erich ignores this.
“My first thought was that you might have brought him to cover who you really are, but my instinct says differently. His survival is personal to you. It might save your soul,” Erich says with mockery.
“One German orphan is of no consequence to me,” says Stefano. He must remain neutral. Feelings must not be revealed if he is to get out of this.
“That is something you can’t hide no matter how clever you think you are. You do not wish to lose anyone. It is perhaps that you have lost too many already.”
Stefano shrugs indifferently, though there is truth in the words.
“I think that you did not happen upon the houses by chance, that you came here with purpose, perhaps to kill me.”
“The war is finished. I see no fight here. I thought we were friends.”
“It took me a little longer this time, since I’m out of practice,” says Erich. “I am sorry to admit that I believed you about the Nazis being helped out of Italy through the church. It is obvious now what you were trying to do.”
“I didn’t make that up,” says Stefano with a hint of amusement. “Is that what you were thinking? That we could drive to Italy together? That you could escape that way?”
Erich doesn’t reply. His stillness shows that he is rattled by the condescending tone.
“If you let me go, both of us can carry on,” says Stefano.
“You had this sewn into the lining of your bag.”
Erich holds up a gun, and Stefano can no longer feel his penknife against his thigh, which has been taken also.
“So what if I carry one? Wouldn’t you if you were me walking through Germany? There are many out there who would still like to see me killed. You included, it would seem.”
“I never wanted to kill you. Rosalind did, though. She wanted you gone the first night you were here. That’s why she came to collect me. You might as well save me some time and tell me what you were planning with those Russians this morning.”
“There was no plan. What are you guilty of that makes you think this?”
Erich doesn’t respond.
Stefano swallows. His throat is dry. He is nauseated from the drug. He shakes his head. “I don’t know you or care what you might have done. I just want to go home. If there is no train, then release me. Let me go home to my family.”
“You were asking questions at the pharmacy, specifically about a child. Why was that?”
“I don’t know what you are talking about,” says Stefano. “I asked about an orphanage.”
“The description matched yours.”