The hospital bed is hot and uncomfortable. Georg touches the scar on his head and does not remember much from before. His memories that span the length of his life are still few, though the earlier ones feature most. He can remember his name being called over and over, playfully by the river. He reaches for these memories that he knows were special.
Stefano has been to visit him with his friend who spoke Russian on his behalf to the doctors who are looking after him. He did not learn till later that Stefano had known Monique, and when he spoke of her, of the girl that he remembered, more memories had come through. Monique, who shared his thoughts, was like a sister, maybe closer. Their relationship was always difficult to explain: something more than friendship, better than blood.
There is a German-speaking doctor who comes and checks on him, who says there are treatments. Georg is still ill from his injuries and the drug toxins in his body, he is told. But the brain injury, from the gunshot, may never be fully cured. He can’t remember his father or an image of his mother. Many memories are possibly lost forever. He will need to make new ones. Only some of them filter through now.
There are soldiers in the beds next to him, mostly Russian, recuperating before being sent home. They talk among themselves, and he is glad they don’t talk to him.
Beside him two soldiers play a game on a small board near their beds. One is missing his left arm, the other most of an ear, the remaining piece of flesh resembling a dried fig.
He stares at the postcard of the sea.
Sitting at the edge of his bed is the girl who is in most of his dreams. The girl from the river.
“Where did you go?” he asks, remembering that last time in the hut, her hair was covered in soil and she was injured, and then she was swimming in the dark in the river, disappearing, taking the good feelings that she had brought away with her.
And she tells him about how she swam as far as she could until she felt it safe, and she met soldiers who drove her the rest of the way. She describes things, small things in greater detail, and there are things about her that he could watch all day—the lifting of her hands to her eyebrows when she thinks, the color of her, the pinkness of her cheeks when she is animated.
He remembers all those things, those small things that seem so familiar. He remembers her bursting through the surface of the water to greet him, rubbing the water from her eyes with her fingertips, and smiling, her face close to his as though they were twins, joined.
“And the boy? There was a boy. With a stone I think, brightly colored.”
“Yes, the boy is Michal,” she says. “You remembered! He was quite the soldier, took a message to the postmaster for Stefano, clever, brave. He understood the importance of the mission for someone so young. He told the postmaster, ‘The parcel has gone awry,’ and the postmaster then brought Michal and the message to Fedor and me, after we had just arrived at the Dresden barracks from Berlin. We had gone straight to see you at the hospital, but you were sleeping, and then to the river houses, which were empty.” She stops then to look at him. There is something she doesn’t want to say, and he suspects what it is.
“The girl, Rosa . . . ,” he says, though he is afraid, afraid that she is near.
“She is gone, Georg.”
And he feels loss and relief, though he cannot yet find the thoughts or memories to justify these, and somehow the way Monique says these words, at the finality, does not beg further questioning.
She bends to wrap her arms around him, and he likes her there, and she tells him that she will be back, she promises, and he knows she will keep her promises because she is Moni from the river. His little owl. And she stands and turns quickly. He watches her go, and then he turns to see the soldiers still playing their game.
The one without the arm looks at Georg and points to the game.
Georg shakes his head and looks away. He closes his eyes, and he is thinking about Monique and what she just told him. A memory surfaces, pushes through the fog that still fills in much of his mind. He remembers her and another man coming to the hospital after he was shot. He wishes she were still there so he could tell her this, tell her he wasn’t sleeping, that he saw her there, in a red dress and a beret. But she is gone, and he is hoping that he keeps the memory for later so he can tell her then when he is at the place on the postcard.
He lies down and falls asleep and dreams of a time in the army, of soldiers on fire and people flying in all directions to escape the bullets. He wakes up in a sweat. He prefers to be awake to stare at the postcard, to dream of times ahead.
July 1945
Georg was at the river hut. He was crying. He couldn’t remember why he was upset. He felt sick. He grabbed his stomach. Many times he had felt this way until Rosa, the girl, injected him with medicine. His head was throbbing, so much that it jumbled his thoughts.
There were voices. He could hear Rosa. He knew her name now, but back then she was just the girl from the house, the one who gave him medicine that made him feel better.
He crept along the path. He knew the paths well, all the hidden ones that no one else walked through, in the thick trees by the river.
“She is still alive!” said Rosa.
And then they talked.
Rosa stood there. She was wearing almost nothing, blood down her legs. She was crying, and then she turned and ran.
And there was the man, Erich, whom he hated, who carried a bundle to the hill. He watched this through the trees. He thought about running at him, yelling, to frighten him away. Sometimes bright-white lights that confused him filled his head, made him forget what he was about to do. He had walked back to the hut when he heard the voice of the other girl, Moni.
And he climbed up the hill through the brush where there was no pathway, and he saw the girl, Moni, sleeping, and Erich rolled her in a curtain like she was an object and placed her in the hole. He threw earth over the top of her, and Georg knew this was wrong, that people did not sleep in the earth.
When Erich left, he scrambled toward the earth and dug and dug until he found her, plucked her from the ground, like a flower. And she was gasping and shaking.
“Georg!” she said.
And he suddenly remembered things about her, things he’d forgotten, of times years before.
And he knew what he had to do. He carried her to the hut where it was safe for them.
And he sat and watched her. Her face was only partially in light from the stars through the window. He hit his head to try to remember other things, to make the jumbling in his head stop.
She reached for his face. Her hands were gentle. Then she described what she wanted him to do.
“Can you do that?”
Yes, he could, but he couldn’t make the words with his mouth.
And he did what she said. He went back toward the house to see the man leaving with the child. Then he looked through the window to see Rosa, who was crying and grabbing at her arms. He returned to tell Moni what he saw.
She hugged him, and it was strange and wonderful, and he didn’t want her to let him go. He felt so good then for a short time.
And then Moni left to sink in the water, and she was gone. And he filled in the hole like she told him and then stayed in the river hut through the night until the other girl came to collect him in the morning.
CHAPTER 36
MONIQUE