She smiled then, unforced.
“I chose this path. Who knows, maybe this path was to lead to you. Maybe the path was to have my beautiful little girl.”
It was direct what she had said, and he was taken aback by her mention of him as part of her destiny. He was beginning to like her. She was not like anyone he had ever met. She was thick skinned, undeterred, and self-assured.
The baby in pink grabbed at the edge of her mother’s navy-blue cardigan to chew on it.
“I must warm her some milk if you will excuse me. And then I will fix you something to eat, and then we will talk.”
She returned a little later, the baby put to sleep in another room. She had taken off her cardigan and wore a plain cream blouse and gray skirt, but the cut and fabric looked expensive, he thought. She had put her hair up in the meantime to commence work. She looked the part of a well-connected Nazi wife.
She made him a sandwich with salami and cheese. The bread was dry, but it was the best meal he’d had in days. She also made him coffee with sugar.
He was sitting at the table by this stage, his leg stretched out at the side. She told him he was staying there till the end of the week. No German wives visited her, she said, since very few came with their husbands. And no civilians who did not know of her other activities would dare to call on her unannounced. She told him that the war was looking very grim for Germany. That the Italian Socialists knew it, too, that they had become more desperate, reckless. And those for the South had to be more vigilant. She had heard of unrest. She said that if Germany failed, like she hoped, she might be in danger and have to get out of Italy. The resistance would do what they could, but the pack mentality of people ready to fight anyone with German links might override common sense. He felt for her then. She had suddenly become more believable. She had put herself in much danger. She was perhaps braver than he was, even with his exploits of sabotage: she worked for the resistance, then had to face her Nazi husband. And the fact her husband was an interrogator would mean she was always on her guard.
“I believe it was most probably my husband who interrogated your sister and many of your friends in the resistance. For that I cannot compensate, I’m afraid. But be assured that every wrong he has done I have attempted to match. I have plied him for information, and he has given it freely more recently. I use the money he earns from the Socialist Party to support his enemy. He thinks that it is me that spies for him, keeping an eye out. He is an intelligent man, but I have learned that he cannot read a woman as well as he thinks. It is probably his downfall. It may even be his undoing,” she said, lost somewhere in the future.
“Where will you go after here then? Where is it safe for a German spy?”
“Germany will be the safest place. I am Austrian German. I would not risk staying here. My blood alone is enough to condemn me for some. It will matter not what I have done. There are those that look the other way when I walk down the street, only seeing the fa?ade. Because I have a fake name in the resistance, because I am a secret, many will not know me. They will only see what they want to . . . will only hear my German accent. And my friends may be somewhere else when it comes to it. In any case even if they do plead for me, I think I am safest there back home with my cousin to raise my child.”
He was at once concerned for her, at the danger, at the fact she might have to travel to Germany alone.
There was a knock at the door, and she seemed unafraid. She pulled the curtain across, and he heard her call out through the door and a voice respond. She returned a few seconds later.
“It is your sister.”
“I do not want to see her.”
“You know I went to her this morning. I wanted to learn more about you. She had already told me about the night of the fire, but she told me everything then. How bravely you fought as a soldier, and how you then fought for this cause against the regime. You should know that after the fire she left her aunt and uncle and moved into her own apartment, but she still kept in contact with them because her uncle is a member of the Black Brigades. She joined the resistance herself. She fed information to the resistance also. She has not forgiven herself for the losses of her family. She had no idea that her casual words would lead to such trouble. How her aunt and uncle pressured her for information. And she had no idea that they would then repeat it to the Nazis.”
“I can’t see her yet.” His heart was still aching. He could not look on Teresa’s face, which would remind him so much of his mother.
Monique nodded. She understood that he was not ready.
“I will tell her,” she said, and closed the curtain.
While Monique was cooking dinner, the cries of the baby interrupted her. By the time she came back from checking on her daughter, the vegetables were burned. She served them anyway with pieces of sausage.
She looked up at him then, an apologetic smile, and he felt a sense of protectiveness, something he thought he would never feel again. And he knew then that it was possible not only to forgive, but to love again as well.
Present-day 1945
“Monique said to find her on the way home,” says Stefano, the pain in his head finally easing to some degree. “She knew I was traveling north to join the German army. I did what she asked. She wasn’t there at the river. I was going home regardless. End of story.”
“No, it is just the beginning. Where did you meet her?”
“We met in a market in Verona. She was buying vegetables. I was walking through the city on the way to the base military camp nearby. She said she was an awful cook. We met at a café a couple of times. She said that her husband was dead. She gave me this address at the river, and I wondered, since I was going home that way, whether there was something more.”
“They would have destroyed the photo in the camp. You weren’t allowed any possessions.”
“The guards weren’t so thorough at the end. They threw all our possessions in a room before they had time to sort or destroy them. Some of us were able to retrieve them later.”
“Did you sleep with her?”
“No. It wasn’t like that.”
“You don’t have to lie. I know she was spying. I can only guess what else she did to retrieve information. I have read her letters. Was she giving information to you?”
“Why would she do that? What would I have done with it?”
“I don’t believe you.”
“I was on your side, my Italy. She was not, obviously. She was just as much my enemy as yours. I can see that now.”
Erich is saying nothing. Perhaps he cannot trust himself; his tone will betray him. He is humiliated, thinks Stefano. This is likely to bring things to a head. It is what he wants, too, Stefano believes, something that will change the conversation drastically, give him reason to act.
“As I told you, I left when I realized the Axis powers were losing. I did not want to be slaughtered. Resistance members were retaliating against every fascist they could find. I thought it was safer to go north. Germans still believed, some of them anyway, that there was a chance of winning and that they should continue as if they were. But your soldiers fighting in the North had some issues about trust and didn’t want to hear about my allegiances. They imprisoned me for my loyalty, shot me on the march, and the Russians put me back in prison. It was a circus.”
“And the Russians let you go,” Erich says without cynicism.
“The Russians are only interested in Nazis. I told them my family lived in the South, that I was forced to fight or die. They understood that. They had much the same directive from Stalin.”
Erich waits for more.