“I have a war to fight. I have a wife to get back to, a baby on the way. And you have a family, too. There is nothing to discuss.”
Erich was surprised at the coldness, though it was little wonder. After that last summer together, Erich had left without a word. He wanted to forget. He could not have that hanging over his head, not with the future he had laid out for himself. Georg wore the signs of battle weariness but not only in the eyes. He was wired but wary, perhaps even a little paranoid. It would be pointless talking to him, and then Erich also had to wonder. Would he say something? Was he dangerous? With a few words he could undo everything that Erich had ever accomplished.
Georg was drugged up, fueled for battle, with something that had been used widely, stopped, and was now passed around the soldiers as their last line of defense. Generals turned a blind eye, especially when soldiers showed little fear of dying.
Georg sat upright and jumped up off the camp bed. “I have to go. You should probably go interrogate someone else. Maybe a little Jewish girl, or an old man who is handing out a funny cartoon.”
He walked away, carrying his helmet under his arm.
The insult was felt. Georg was the better man, he was saying.
Anger exploded inside of him, and Erich took off the rifle that was flung over his shoulder. He lifted it and aimed it at Georg’s head as Georg walked toward the group of soldiers ahead, marching to the front line.
Shots rang out from elsewhere, close, and the soldiers ducked and slammed their helmets on. No one could see Erich in the tent with his gun aimed at Georg. No one would hear the shot; it would be lost among the other sounds. He kept his finger there, on the trigger, his hand trembling. He could end it right now. One bullet and Erich would kill the one piece of the past that he’d found no rational place for in his head. The gun followed Georg’s unusually disordered movements as he rushed forward, broke in a different direction, then stopped. Erich had not killed anyone in cold blood before. He had ordered executions but never actually pulled a trigger on a man, woman, or child.
Georg turned to look back at the tent as if he had sensed him watching. Erich wanted to hate him, and yet he couldn’t. There was something so defiant about Georg, something unbreakable and decisive, more qualities that he needed, that he might need again, that he hadn’t been able to get from any other relationship.
Erich relaxed the trigger. He felt himself weaken. He couldn’t kill the only person who had ever truly understood him. And there was no need to kill the past. The past would die naturally in war, would disappear among the consequences, like everything else.
There were more gunshots, louder now. The fight was too close.
Someone yelled that they needed everyone out on the field, and his father’s tanks roared over tracked and trampled earth. He put the gun down to watch the machines, to remember the images on paper, the excitement on his father’s face when he received his first tank commission. Only yards from Erich, in the space between him and Georg, a grenade exploded, shaking the ground and spitting fire and earth into the air. The German army was being driven back. From his pack he raised the binoculars to see whether Georg was all right. Many were running through the smoke, and it was difficult to see. And then he was there in his vision, and Georg, perhaps aware that Erich was still watching him, turned at that point, again in his direction.
Then another bomb, followed by the sounds of gunfire, and Erich saw blood burst out from the side of Georg’s head before he fell.
Present-day 1945
He is slapped hard across the cheek, but he is not roused fully from the fog inside his brain until water is thrown across his face. Erich opens his eyes a fraction and spies the green diamond-patterned linoleum on the floor of his mother’s bedroom. His chest jerks suddenly as a kick lands hard between the shoulder blades. He coughs and then gags, and pain extends down his back and through his legs. He is on his side on the ground, and his wrists are bound tightly behind him.
Stefano pulls him roughly upright and slams him back against the wall. He can picture where he is even before he opens his eyes. Erich’s head hangs forlornly to one side as he assesses the pain, deals with the discomfort. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see drops of blood on the floor and part of the split rope that once held Stefano.
He raises his head slowly, unwilling to see the person who has finally beaten him. Stefano is sitting in front of him, cross-legged, dangerously tranquil. He has tricked him. It was the first thing the SS thought of, to take off the shirts and trousers of prisoners, and everything else that wasn’t anatomically connected, to search the body thoroughly, so they had nowhere to hide weapons or riches. He feels anger mostly against himself, for this failure of procedures, and wonders in the same instant whether, deep down, he was hoping that Stefano was his equal, hoping still for time in Italy, or elsewhere, a reprieve until he returned.
“I suppose you want to know what happened to Monique,” he says between small coughs. His voice is hoarse, his neck sore.
But Stefano says nothing. His dark look makes him appear like a madman, and Erich looks away briefly, to gather his thoughts. He can feel the tightness of the ropes on his wrists and feet. Stefano’s gun is on the table, far from reach. For the first time in his life, there is no plan. He is the prisoner now.
“I can tell you that she’s not coming back,” he says more firmly. “Whatever you had hoped to find with her, she’s not here.” He thinks of the grave interfered with, perhaps by Stefano, and waits a moment for a reaction that doesn’t come. “But I am more than certain she wasn’t your only reason. You came for both of us.”
“Tell me what happened to Nina Della Bosca, the wife of Antonio Venturi,” says Stefano, who stands up suddenly. Erich’s heart beats rapidly from the sudden movement. He casts a glance to search for the silver wire, fearing that it will be used again. “They were in a house you had burned down in Verona. The woman and her baby were taken by the Germans.”
Erich remembers them.
“Is that why you have come to find me? To avenge?”
Stefano doesn’t answer. He stands, moves to the window, in profile with his hands together, as if in prayer, staring at the shadows of late evening that Erich’s parents once enjoyed.
“You were never on Germany’s side,” says Erich. “Admit that you fought for the resistance.”
“I don’t have to admit anything to you,” he says, still looking out the window. “But I will tell you this: I was never in any concentration camp. I was never caught. I lied about that and most things, except Monique. I knew her. She told me all about you.”
The conversation is too casual. It is unsettling. It is what he was like himself. They are alike, and this thought that once drew him disappoints him now and fills him with apprehension. He knows it will not end well. He underestimated an opponent. He has lost, caused by an emotional reaction at the mention of Georg. He knows everything, he thinks. Monique. The traitor.
“If you promise to kill me quickly, I will tell you everything you need to know.”
Stefano lowers his eyes but doesn’t respond.
“I can tell that you are a man of honor,” says Erich, encouraged by the silence. “I also believe that without the baggage of war that we were forced to carry, we would have been friends.”
Stefano turns and paces thoughtfully before he sighs and looks at him directly. “I will be merciful, but only if you give me everything I want.”