She walked quickly throughout the day, and it was dark by the time she reached the familiar track. She passed the clearing near the river where Georg had played with her and Monique, then past Georg’s house. She nearly ran the last few yards and then the smell, the dreadful smell. She called out to her grandmother as she entered the door, but there was no response. She has left, she thought at first. Part of the corner of the house was missing and haphazardly patched, leaving small gaps in the brickwork. Flies buzzed around a plate of rotting food. She found a jar of pears, tore frenziedly at the lid, then ate the whole lot and drank the juice. A piece of moldy bread sat in the pantry, and she succumbed to that as well.
But the damage to the house wasn’t the worst of it. Upstairs in the attic she found her grandmother. She guessed she had died weeks ago, her face red and green and black, the look of her, a shrunken plum, and worsening in the heat, the sun’s rays eating her away.
She had the task of carrying the stiffened carcass down the stairs, the effort so great it made the baby kick and tumble and gave her pains in her back for several hours. She was not strong enough to dig a hole. She had found some kerosene, used it sparingly, then burned the body. Only when the fire had died down did she make a shallow grave and bury the remains.
Trucks flowed steadily on the roads behind her house. Her days were filled with fear, and then Erich arrived with Georg, but it wasn’t Georg. There was a patch of hair missing from the topside of his head and an indent in his skull. The bullet, Erich said, had pierced part of the brain. Field doctors had treated the bullet wound, but there was nothing they could do for his mental state. As the Russian army neared, Erich stole a car and brought him here.
They were not wearing uniforms. Erich looked disheveled, casual. She had never seen him like that. He had left Georg with her, almost as if he couldn’t wait to get rid of him, and left the drugs as well. She knew the effect of these, knew the danger and told Erich they would not be used. He left some food but not much. He had hidden the car behind the house. People had been walking in front of the car to get him to stop and help them, or try and steal it, and Russian military were stopping everyone. He would come back for it later.
From there, he left on foot through the mountains to his home northeast of Dresden. She would see him again two weeks later with his mother, who also had a head wound. Rosalind did not expect her to live but treated her as best she knew. Erich did not say what had happened to the rest of his family, and Rosalind didn’t ask. Their relationship was like that: few questions, fewer niceties.
Over several days she realized that not only had Georg lost part of his mind from a bullet, but he was also addicted to drugs. Drugs that Erich had continued to pacify him with, to keep him quiet and stable, or drugs to fuel him to make him function, to eat. And then after several more days passed and she had found Georg wandering the woodlands, screaming and scratching his skin, she had given him the drugs for the sake of the baby.
She had stood in line for the British food trucks in the town and would return with vegetables, bread, and sometimes tinned meat or milk. It would do, but it was never enough. Hunger was the new state of normal. There was talk in the town that the Russians would be stationed there soon to take over responsibility of the area. At that point no one seemed to be in control.
One day when she was out front putting on shoes to go to the town to wait for more food, she saw a familiar face walking the track toward her, and Rosalind wasn’t sure whether to be unhappy or grateful. And the baby kicked her, as if rejoicing, and didn’t move again.
Present-day 1945
In the distance she can hear the hum of a truck. It is a sound that she is constantly alerted by, in the silence by the river. She tries to stand up, but her legs give way. She wonders how she walked up the stairs and then remembers, vaguely, that Erich was there. Something he said or did. What? She can’t remember. She drags herself by her arms along the floor toward the stairs, finding her legs no longer work, and she pulls herself up to lean against the banister. There are smells trapped in her nostrils, of something burning, of chemicals.
Her limbs are weak, and her movement is stiff as she makes her way down the stairs and past the kitchen, stopping when she reaches something sharp and broken, a cup she remembers vaguely that someone dropped earlier, and she finds her legs are now steady enough to carry her to the front door. She is out in the sunshine. She puts up her hand in front of her face because the light hurts her eyes. The gold of her wedding ring is dazzling, blinding almost. Did she sleep a whole day? She doesn’t remember. It was this morning that Erich came. It is now the afternoon, she thinks, with the sun low, though she is not certain. She walks to the barn first to find it empty, apart from some ropes left on the ground in the center of the room. Rosalind was here recently—she is certain of it—before the attic. She leaves the barn to walk in the direction of the river, but the hidden track draws her toward it, pulling her with its invisible ties of the past. The truck with Russians is louder, as if it were right behind her now, and she runs, afraid they will crash into the trees and into her, as if there were dozens. She’s not sure. Nothing is clear.
And then the noises are gone. They were never here, she thinks, but she doesn’t look around. She does not want to know the truth. She doesn’t notice the spindly branches that scratch at her legs. She could make this trip blindfolded, she thinks. It was a game they played, she remembers now. They blindfolded one another, she, Georg, and Monique, and they wandered around the wood, calling out and bumping into one another, and falling over laughing. Back in time when they were innocent of disloyalty and deception, and before she realized it was love she felt, which had clouded her judgment.
She reaches the small hut and pulls open the door, which squeals as it swings back on one hinge. There is a faint outline of an owl drawn in chalk on the wall inside, only noticeable to her, because she saw who drew it many years ago, whose small hand took to every task with enthusiasm.
Standing up suddenly, she hits her head on a beam. She hears the sound it makes, but she strangely doesn’t feel it. She pinches her arm, which she can’t feel either. The skin bounces back in defiance, and she watches it curiously before a wave of nausea washes over her, and she clutches her stomach, where the sickness has pooled. And then come the images, the flashes of Stefano, of Erich, of the medicine bag. It is the drugs, she tells herself. She was given drugs, but she can’t seem to hang on to the thought. It is disappearing into the void, deep into her head.
She sits down, her bottom on the cold earth, and she can see the sky and the river from the window. She tries hard to remember what she did here and turns her head to see something familiar. It is part of the quilt patchwork that Monique began for Rosalind’s baby, scuffed and streaked with dirt from the ground, the cloth pilled and old looking. It is only half finished. She traces the patterns with her finger. One half is heavy with stitching and the other half blank. Georg would come here and hug the cloth like a child.
Georg. Where is he? He has been taken, perhaps by Stefano. Stefano. The Italian should be buried alive, she suggested to Erich, enraged by the killing of Georg. The blankness on one side of the patchwork calls to her. The patchwork asks, no, begs her to complete it. Like the child she almost had. The child that was not completed either.
She fingers the stitching again, the owls made of tiny loops. From someone so eager to leave behind dreariness, who balked at the idea of domestic duties, the stitching is fine and even. War changed Monique. Made her harder and softer at the same time. And Rosalind wants to forget her, has tried. This memory of Monique should have been scrunched up and thrown in the dark corners where she couldn’t be found. She is thinking of the photo that the Italian held of Monique and her daughter. Where was that? Vivi looked out from the photo, her eyes daring the camera, just like her mother, the face tiny, but the same.