Rosa

“Yes,” she pressed. “I’m sure.”

“Fine,” he conceded. He adjusted his pillow. “So there we are, two, three in the morning, soused to the gills, and Victor-Knig-starts in on how much he loves life, how much he understands it now that he’s flying over battlefields and seeing bodies and waste and on and on. Until he says that he won’t be coming back. That he knows he won’t be coming back, because he’s been given this extraordinary gift to appreciate it all. And Mueller and I just sit there, and listen, and wait until he’s finished, and tell him he’s an idiot.” Hoffner lost himself for a moment. “Of course, he wasn’t,” he said quietly. Refocusing, he turned to her. “So I say I’m not going to ruin the few days we have together talking about that sort of nonsense. And he says, ‘If you’re so sure it’s nonsense, then make it worth my while.’” Even now Hoffner could hear the arrogance in Knig’s voice. “So I did. If he came home, he came home, nothing else. If he didn’t, then I promised to be faithful to my wife. That was it. The agreement. The pact.” Hoffner remembered the letter he had received, the typewritten t’s that had jumped too high on the line, the word “death” with a little hitch just before the end. He was gazing up at the ceiling again and said, “He was shot down two months later. Mueller and I got very drunk.”

Lina lay quiet. She waited until he turned to her before saying, “I thought it was something else. I wouldn’t have asked. I’m sorry.”

He tried a smile. “No reason to be.”

“Do you regret not keeping it?”

“Not keeping what?”

“Your promise.”

“Ah.” Hoffner nodded slowly to himself. “My promise.” He lay with the word a moment longer. “But I did,” he said. It was now Lina’s turn to look confused. “At least up until a few weeks ago.”

Lina brought herself up on an elbow and gazed down at him. He had never seen this look before. There was a caring and a concern that was almost too much to take in. At once, he regretted having told her. She said, “You never told me that.”

He kept it light. “Not exactly something you bring up, is it?”

“That’s over three years.”

“Yes.”

“And that was it? You’d spent long enough keeping your word?”

He knew what she wanted him to say-that it had been because of her that he had betrayed Knig-but that would have been no more true than the other. He said vaguely, “I don’t think it works that way.”

“Works what way?”

“The way that makes it more than it is.” He meant it not to be unkind but to protect, even though he knew it was too late. He could see now how this would all fall apart; it would only be a matter of time. They had been safe as long as questions of intent had remained hidden; his story made that impossible: too much meaning, and they would crumble under the weight; too little, and she would feel a different kind of betrayal. For her, the breaking of the pact had hinged on a choice-imagined or not-which even now Hoffner had to admit might not have been so disengaged, or so consciously made, after all.

For several moments she hovered above him, searching for something more. When it was clear that there was nothing more, she lay back. “You were close with him,” she said. “With Knig.”

“Yes.”

“And he knew your wife.” Again, she was stating, not asking.

Hoffner felt the pull of his cigarettes from across the room. “I suppose. Does it matter?”

“He wanted to help her.”

Whether days or weeks from now, he thought, he would always look to this moment as their last. “Do you know where I put my cigarettes?” he said.

“Why did he want to help her?”

Lina was digging with no care for the consequences, and that left him no room to hide. “He didn’t,” he said. He struggled to get himself upright, then brought his legs over the side and sat with his back to her. “He thought he was helping me, which showed how little he understood.” Hoffner got up and moved across to the pile of clothes. “Did I put them in my jacket?”

He was fumbling through his pants when she said, “And what didn’t he understand?”

The sting, of course, was in her feigned indifference, but it was hardly fair feeling the least irritation when it had been his own stupidity that had put them here. The past was kept in strongboxes for a reason; he had removed the lid and had been forced to peer in for himself. How could he blame her for making him rummage through to the bottom?

He located the pack and lit one up. “Victor saw things differently at the end,” he said. “That’s all. I never floated over battlefields and so never gained the same appreciation.”

Lina spoke with an honesty that went beyond her years: “That seems unkind.”

“Yes, it does, doesn’t it?” He suddenly recalled the name. “Terranova. Palazzo Terranova. Victor found it all very meaningful.” She looked confused. “New ground,” he explained. “‘Terranova’ means ‘new ground.’”

“You resent him for it.”

She had never challenged him like this: endings, he imagined-even at their inception-granted a kind of invincibility. “For what?” he said.

“For seeing things in a way you couldn’t.”

Hoffner shook his head. “He was creating his own version of nobility, the great sacrifice, and he wanted me to do the same thing.”

“So being faithful to your wife was a sacrifice?”

It sounded so hollow, coming from her. At least Victor had done what he had in the name of something vital, a life rediscovered, a gift repaid. But it was a vicious circle: that kind of redemption was only for those who could embrace vitality. Hoffner had survived on an imitation kind, his own fueled by infidelity, which only made his choice to make good on the promise an even greater hypocrisy. He had let himself be fooled-just once-into seeing it for more than it was: some meaningless argument with Martha when he had revealed his self-denial and had staked his claim to nobility, but she had been no more unforgiving than Lina. “What sacrifice?” Martha had said with justified bitterness: his sudden rage, her body sent crashing to the floor. Hoffner now realized that it was the shame of that moment that he had grown tired of; and it was that fatigue, and nothing more, that had led him to Lina.

He took a pull on his cigarette and said, “It’s difficult to sacrifice something you never had.”

She had watched the sadness in his face, but she showed him no pity. “And you think getting into bed with me makes any difference?”

He looked over at her and he knew: I won’t even be a memory to her one day. “No,” he said. “It doesn’t.”

There was something comforting in the truth, even for her. He lay back down and she placed her arm across his chest. Later they made love and they fell asleep and Hoffner dreamed of Rosa.

SHATTERED GLASS

A group of children was playing in the short grass as mothers and nannies looked on from the safety of benches. Hoffner and Lina had settled themselves farther off, under a grove of trees where an enterprising vendor with a coffee cart had set up a few tables and chairs alongside the gravel path. Not yet ten o’clock, and they had already made a full morning of it at the shops and markets, which had been up and running since seven. The Gardens were a welcome relief.

“How did you know about this spot?” Lina asked as she poured another healthy dose of cream into her cup. Hoffner had never seen a whiter cup of coffee. From her expression, it was still too bitter.

“Pretty, isn’t it?” he said. He had made the telephone call this morning and had been told where to find it. “The concierge,” Hoffner lied. He checked his watch and took a last sip of coffee before getting up. “I need to find the toilet,” he said. “Have a sweet or something while I’m gone.” He placed a few coins on the table and headed out through the trees.

Three minutes later he came across his old friend Peter Barens, sitting on a secluded bench. Hoffner drew up