July–August 1945
Monique woke up in the dark, wrapped in fabric, her head in much pain. She fought the curtain that covered her face and sat up to feel the sticky wound on her head. She pulled a piece of glass out from the side of her hair. Blood had streamed down both arms, and she remembered Rosalind’s face, a stranger, controlled by madness and fury.
She could hear voices, crying, shouts by Rosalind.
“Where is she?” said Erich.
She lay back down, pulling the curtain over her face again. The latch was lifted from the barn door. She didn’t hear him walk near, but she sensed him there.
The curtain above her was bloodied. He did not pull back the cover, not straightaway. He never liked the sight of blood, the sight of wounds. For someone who appeared so in control, he was too cowardly to kill innocent people himself, ordering others to execute instead.
He slid the bloodied curtain back to see her face, and she feigned unconsciousness, with a piece of glass gripped tightly and concealed in her fist. He put his hand inside the curtain and fumbled for her wrist and with cool hands held tightly.
“Is she alive?” said Rosalind hysterically. “Please God—”
“Silence!” said Erich loudly, and Monique’s heart missed a beat. And Rosalind whimpered.
“She’s dead,” said Erich in the cold tone he had used on her in recent times.
“I don’t think she is. I think she has just lost consciousness. I saw her chest moving before. Let me see. Let me check her! She needs the wounds bound.” And her pitch was high, and she was still close to the madness that Monique had witnessed in the bedroom. But it wasn’t Rosalind she was fearful of anymore. Erich knew she was alive, and he was planning to dispose of a live body.
She felt his arms burrow underneath her, lifting her from the ground to walk from the barn.
“Get me the shovel!” And then he shouted it again, because Rosalind had perhaps not moved the first time.
And he had it in his hand, the metal blade digging into her shoulders, crushing her as he walked.
“Where are you going?” said Rosalind.
Erich didn’t respond, not at first, not until she said it again, her pitch higher still.
He kept walking, and Monique forced her body to loosen, her head to fall to the side, but inside, her heart pounded, her mind raced. She heard Rosalind behind them, protesting weakly, sobbing, asking if she could see her, asking if she could examine the wounds back at the house, and then Erich stopped suddenly, a moment of silence; then the walking recommenced, and Rosalind’s pleading faded into the background along with the notion of wriggling free of the curtain and hopes for escape.
Her face was covered, but she still kept her eyes shut, arms pinned to her sides between Erich’s arms, her body jolting with each of his steps.
At first she thought he was taking her to the river, but he turned and stumbled, his knees bumping into her as he inclined. And then his movements became more steady, long strides deeper into the darkness while branches raked her legs, until finally he laid her down on the hard earth. She imagined the trees somewhere on the ridge above the road. And the sounds of digging were harsh as metal hit the soft earth, and she knew then of his intended crime. She could smell, beneath the metallic smell of her own blood, the dankness of a freshly dug grave.
Her head pounded from where Rosalind hit her, and from when she fell, and the cuts on her arms were stinging. She was depleted of strength, and her shoes were missing from her feet.
She pulled the curtain partway down from her face, and in the dark she could see him near, several yards away. She watched his profile, his face fixed on the task. The sight of him suddenly brought out the reality of the situation, and she was trembling now, her arms and hands. Shock was taking over.
Scrambling free of the curtain, she crawled, then ran, the sliver of glass in her hand forgotten and falling somewhere in the confusion, and she stumbled across the hilltop toward the faint and distant house lights between the trees. The sound she made was feeble and strained, an attempt to scream, to alert Rosalind and Georg that she was alive. Alive! She must stay alive for Vivi.
She felt him grip the back of her leg, drag her backward, and she called out, “No!” and wondered if it was loud enough before Erich’s hand covered her mouth, suppressing the sounds that were little more than groans. He lifted her partially off the ground, one arm pinning her arms to her body and the other over her face, and she was too weak to do anything but squirm beneath the grip.
“I can’t let you live. You were always so blind to control, to order. You lost the war for us, people like you: my wife, who betrayed me, who betrayed Germany, who turned Georg against me. You told him what happened, what I did to you.”
And the hand was so tight over her mouth that she could not shake her head, could not deny or defend. Could not tell him that she never told Georg what he did to her, that he had worked it out for himself that Erich was a monster, a man hired for the lowest of work, hired to entrap and order the executions of innocent people. And she could not remind him that she was never his in the first place, his grip so fierce that she could barely breathe, could not say any of it, and all fight left her, and for the second time she lost consciousness.
She woke to weight above her and felt vibrations through the ground, a thud each time the soil fell on top of her.
She screamed and pushed upward, but she was wrapped tightly in a curtain under the dirt, and her screams were trapped in the back of her throat, and she would die here. The wriggling had forced the curtain down slightly, and cold earth was on her face and near her mouth, and she clamped her mouth shut. She felt the last breath within her fighting to leave her body, and the digging slowed, and there was no air, and she still held the breath, held the last precious breath, not giving up, though she knew she would have to. She remembered the time that she nearly drowned years earlier, when she had held her breath until Rosalind came, and she hoped she would come again. Monique would forgive her for what she had done, and she could fix this.
The thudding stopped, replaced by a silence and the realization that she would never be found here, that even her grave would never be seen. She felt dizzy from holding her breath, and she thought of Vivi and hoped that she would be loved.
Then the earth moved, footsteps above her, and then scraping sounds like an animal burrowing. Vibrations frenzied then. But she was fading, the fight leaving her body, her mind turning to elsewhere, to the river shimmering under a bright sun. She had run out of time, and she closed her eyes, released the final breath. And suddenly the curtain was pulled away from her, and she was gulping back air greedily. She was lifted and placed at the edge of her grave, and she vomited back in the hole, spat out earth. Georg sat on his haunches, watching her come back to life, and she opened her mouth and sucked in more air when she tried to speak. Georg had picked her up and carried her through thick trees and bushes until he was near the river. He carried her into the little hut, gently leaned her against the wall, and sat watching her, shocked at his discovery.