“This is Maria,” said Monique. “She has not quite finished her medical degree, but she is still a good doctor, I promise you.”
Maria gave him a tablet to take with some clear liquor, which numbed some of the pain after several minutes. They helped him up again and carried him to a cot behind a curtained area. They turned him on his side. The doctor unwrapped the blood-soaked strips of sheets around his leg and examined the wound. The bullet had entered the back of his left leg below the knee and lodged in the muscle, narrowly missing the bone. The examination and the removal of the bullet were more painful than the injury itself, but Stefano had endured worse. He would endure this also.
“I’m sorry we have no anesthetic to dull the pain further,” said Maria, pausing briefly. “But we must do everything to stop an infection.”
Monique reached for his unreceptive hand and squeezed it, while the operation was completed. Once Maria had sealed the wound, she bandaged the leg firmly with fresh wraps from the knee to the shin and instructed him not to walk on it for several days. Fedor said he would be back before the week was over. They were raiding some German storage huts in Milan for medical supplies and clothes. After that, he would come and get him, and they would go north to the Alps and then into Austria to meet up with others, then farther north to join his brother-in-law. He needed him well, said Fedor, to fight the Germans all the way to Berlin. When Fedor and Maria were gone, Stefano lay on his side to face the apartment through the open curtains.
“Are you hungry?” asked Monique.
“A little.”
She gave him some cheese and water. She said there was meat also, but he said not yet. He was still feeling ill.
She sat on a chair beside him. He wished she would go away. She spoke about the resistance, about Germany being crushed from all sides. He had heard that some Germans were disloyal, but he had never met one. She told him about her father. She had been through much also.
“You are very quiet, but I hear you speak German very well.”
He ignored her, concentrating on the patterns on the tiles.
“I have also heard that your heart is full of hate, and it is why you have not been caught. They say that those who think they have lost everything make the best fighters.”
He looked behind her at the photo. She knew where his eyes had strayed.
“Just because you see me in the photo doesn’t mean I am one of them.”
“You are the one who is helping finance our operations?”
“Yes,” she said directly, and her chin rose slightly. He liked that she was truthful, up-front. He liked that about her, but he still had not thawed. She was German, married to a Nazi. Perhaps they had put too much trust in her. And seeing his sister again had reopened old wounds.
“Do you know about a woman with a baby caught in Verona?”
She closed her eyes briefly and nodded.
“I know of the people you speak of. I’m sorry. Is that why you hate?”
“That and for so much more.” He guessed that Teresa had told her things.
“It is hard, yes? To go on. My parents were taken in Austria when I was younger for doing what I am doing now. I didn’t understand it till now, the magnitude of their sacrifice, the way they stood for justice for the sake of the people. My father is rotting somewhere . . . I do not even know if he is alive. My mother is dead. I could have hated, too. Perhaps I was too young to hate. But whatever happens, you have to find ways to go on.”
“Like sleep with a Nazi and lie?”
She pressed her lips together, though she did not lower her gaze. There was some regret with what he said but only a small amount. If she were truly loyal to the resistance, she would have to deal with the distrust as well.
“I don’t sleep with him.”
There was a cry from another room. A baby. He thought of Nina, and his heart lurched slightly.
“I have to go and leave you to your hate,” she said. He liked that she made fun of him, that she didn’t offer sympathy.
He could hear her in the back room, nursing and cooing, and he listened. It was peaceful. There were no sounds of bombs here. It was quiet in the streets in the early morning blackness. The crying faded before she returned.
“There is something you should know. That it was likely my husband who interrogated your sister, but I cannot tell you for certain. One thing he doesn’t say is names. He just said to tell me that all from the area who had been caught had been tortured and executed, that I should reveal their methods in casual conversation to others here. He thought that by spreading such information, it would deter others in the town. But German methods only fuel them. Perhaps he wants that, too. To draw them out.”
“Why do you risk it? Your child,” he asked. The question sounded brash.
She crossed her arms protectively, perhaps offended by the question, but she surprised him with her answer. “What would you have me do? Wait idly for the war to end and pray we’re not killed, or do something worthy while I wait? There is little choice. I want a future for my daughter where she will never know fear, where she is not told what to think, in a country that is no longer governed by criminals. This risk you mention is for her.” She paused and looked at his leg briefly. “You should try to sleep. I will get more painkillers from somewhere.”
“I don’t need them,” he said, but his throat was dry, his voice barely audible. He wanted to feel the pain. It was justified, he thought at the time. He was living, when his mother and possibly his sister and baby nephew weren’t.
Monique had pulled the curtain across, and he was alone, except he could hear her busying in the apartment briefly before he heard the flick of a switch and the room went dark. Tears fell then while he lay in the dark. He had not allowed himself any time since the fire to think, but now he was ill and there was time. He didn’t like it.
When he woke next, it was the afternoon. The pain was still there, but it was bearable. He sat up, the bandages thick around his leg. He attempted to stand on his bad leg to see if it would take his weight. It did, though he felt a burning sensation as he applied pressure.
A washcloth and a towel had been left nearby, along with a bowl of water, and some soap that smelled like lemon. He put his nose against the soap and thought of the lemon trees in his first home in Amalfi. He washed, sitting on the side of the narrow bed, and with some difficulty put on a clean shirt and trousers that had been left there. He wondered how long he would have to stay. If Fedor had turned up then, he would have hobbled away. He was eager to get back out to their war, to not have time to think.
There was a click of the front door being opened and shut, and then the curtains were pulled back. She had a baby on her hip. She had been out and carried a shopping bag.
In the afternoon light streaming through the front windows near the kitchen, he could see her more clearly. Monique’s eyes were much brighter during the day, a myriad of blues, and she was not as tall as he first thought, now that he was upright. Her forearms and calves were muscled. She did not strike Stefano as someone who had ever been idle.
He looked at the door behind her.
“It is all right. My husband is far away at a camp.”
“Who is he?”
“He is Erich Steiner. He is the man who interrogates at Trieste.”
He felt cold at the mention of the name: the person who had been linked with the deaths of his mother and friends.
“I have heard of him,” he said, attempting to stay in control. “He is on our list. The list of people we hope to assassinate.”
She stared at him briefly before responding coldly.
“That is good,” she said of the man she was married to.
He made a sound as if he didn’t believe her.
“You think I am lying,” she said directly, with eyes that were hard to look away from. He didn’t answer.
“When I met him, I did not think that he was so bad. He was loyal, but I don’t think he was aware of his capabilities. He is a monster I believe now. He feels very little.”
“How did you become so lucky?”