He squeezed his eyes, imagining the long bridges of his life. All the ravines of tough growing-up he’d deliberately crossed because he was born with gold in his veins and raised to be decent, honorable and kind. The span he’d fled across from Chenogne crossed an entirely different kind of chasm. After Mauthausen, he’d turned a flame thrower on the structure and settled down in the scentless, tasteless, emotionless land of his post-war self.

Is this really where you want to be?

He thought about the pontoon bridge the Army Corps of Engineers had built across the Rhine. It defied credulity that a jeep could safely cross those bobbing spans, let alone a tank. And yet the armored leviathans crossed without a hitch, followed by all the other vehicles and the men, into the desolated, destroyed city of Darmstadt.

They will rebuild. All those cities in Europe in rubble and ruin… The people will build them back. It’s happening already.

Desenrascanco, darling. Slap a solution together with whatever’s at hand.

No corps of engineers is coming to do it for you.

He lifted his head and looked back over his shoulder. Seeing not a monastic cell occupied by Army-issue cots, but an abyss. And Astrid on the other side. Looking back at him.

I don’t know anything anymore, she said. You have to tell me or I’ll never know. You look so troubled, darling. Come here and tell me. It doesn’t have to be everything.

Just something.

One thing.

Making an effort not to sigh, Kennet picked up his pencil again. He began to write. Slowly at first. One careful word at a time. Soon, his hand could barely keep up with the things he wanted to say.

Thank you for writing those memories about Nalle. It made him feel alive. Or rather, eternal? They were something I could fold up and carry along.

To survive war, you have to look for those little moments. Wait for the war to stop and catch its breath and then you can see something funny, or wonderful, or pure, before the madness starts again. I wrote a lot about such moments these past months, folding them into the pages of a little notebook.

Truth be told, I don’t know if I’ll ever feel like unfolding and revisiting them. But they’re there.

I remember.

Don’t feel badly about not writing me. You’re writing now. All we have is now, and now backward is won. (That’s just something silly I thought up.)

I’m all right. Mostly. Nalle’s gone and I lost a real good buddy back in April. I saw a lot of friends get killed but this guy was…close. It’s hard. I’m changed and I’ve seen things and done things I never thought I would. The world feels the same when it should feel completely different.

Saudade. The longing for things lost.