Echoes

by Danielle Steel

  She made her way to where they had told her the gardens would be. There were about a hundred people reporting for work when she got there, mostly girls and some young boys, and a few older women. The night air was freezing, and the ground icy. It was hard to imagine what they would do there, as the guards handed them shovels. They were supposed to be planting potatoes. Thousands of them. It was backbreaking work. They worked eight hours straight until noon, their hands frozen and blistered as they pawed at the ground with the shovels, and the guards walked among them poking them with their guns. They let them stop for half an hour for some bread and soup. And as always, the soup was thin and the bread stale, but the portions were a little more plentiful. After that, they went back to work for another seven hours. As they left the gardens that night, they were searched. Stealing from the gardens was punishable by either beatings or death, depending on the guard's mood and how resistant they were. They searched Amadea's clothes, patted her down, and had her open her mouth. And as the guard searching her patted her, he grabbed her breast, and Amadea said nothing. She looked straight ahead. She said nothing about it to Rosa when she got back. She was sure she had endured worse.

  The following week Rosa was moved to another barracks. A guard had seen them talking and laughing on several occasions, and reported them. He said they were troublemakers and needed to be separated. Amadea didn't see her after that for months, and when Amadea saw her again, Rosa had no teeth. She had been caught stealing a piece of bread, and a guard had broken all of them, and her nose. The life seemed to have gone out of her by then. She died of what someone said was pneumonia that spring.

  Amadea worked hard in the garden, doing what she could, but it was hard to get results given what they had to work with. Even she couldn't make miracles with the frozen ground and broken implements, but she planted row after row of potatoes every day for her fellow inmates. And in the spring, she planted carrots and turnips. She longed to plant tomatoes and lettuce and other vegetables as she had in the convent, but they were too delicate for what they needed. Some days all she got to eat was a single turnip, and more than once she was longing to steal a potato, and turned her mind to prayer instead. But on the whole, her stay there had been uneventful, and the guards left her alone. She was always respectful of them and kept to herself, did her work, and was helpful to the other inmates. She had started visiting some of the sick and the elderly at night, and when it rained too hard to work in the garden, she went to help with the children, which always buoyed her spirits, although many of them were sick. Most of them were so sweet and so brave, and it made her feel useful working with them. But there were tragedies even there. A whole trainload of them was shipped off to Chelmno in February. Their mothers stood by the trucks that took them to the train, and those who clung to them for too long or tried to fight the guards had been shot. There were horror stories every day.

  By the time Amadea turned twenty-five in April, the weather was better, and she was moved to a new barracks closer to the gardens. They were working longer hours in the lengthening daylight, and sometimes she didn't get back to her barracks till nine o'clock at night. Despite the meager rations and continuing dysentery, Amadea was rail thin, but strong from her work in the gardens. And remarkably, like a few of the others, she had never been tattooed. They had just simply forgotten. They asked for her papers constantly, but never asked to see her number, and she was careful to wear long-sleeve shirts. Her hair was long by then, bleached even paler by the sun, and she wore it down her back in a long braid. But all who knew her knew that she was a nun. Among the inmates, she was treated with kindness and respect, which wasn't always the case for others. People were sick and unhappy, they watched tragedies happen constantly, the guards terrorized them frequently, beat them randomly, and sometimes even provoked them to fight with each other over a carrot or a parsnip or a piece of stale bread. But for the most part, people showed remarkable compassion toward each other, and once in a while even the guards were decent to them.

  There was a young soldier who came to work as a guard in the garden in May, who was mesmerized by Amadea. He was German, from Munich, and he confessed to her one afternoon when he stopped to talk to her that he hated being there. He thought it was filthy and depressing. He was hoping for a transfer to Berlin, and had been asking for it since he arrived.

  “Why do you always look so happy while you work?” he asked, lighting a cigarette, as some of the women eyed him with envy. But he didn't offer them any, although he had offered Amadea a puff and she declined. His commanding officer had left early that afternoon to attend a meeting, and the young soldiers unbent a little after he left. The one with the cigarette had been waiting for an opportunity to talk to Amadea for weeks.

  “Do I?” she asked pleasantly, as she continued her work. They were planting more carrots that day. The ones she had planted so far had done well.

  “Yes, you do. You always look like you have a secret. Do you have a lover?” he asked her bluntly. Some of the younger inmates had become involved with each other. It was a small ray of sunlight and warmth in a dark place. A last remnant of hope.

  “No, I don't,” Amadea said, and turned away. She didn't want to encourage him, and remembered the warnings the other women had given her. He was a tall, good-looking young man, with sharp features, blue eyes, and dark hair. Much like her mother's coloring. He was considerably taller than Amadea, and he thought her beautiful with her big blue eyes and blond hair. He suspected correctly that cleaned up she'd be a spectacular-looking woman. Even here, it was easy to see, with their filthy ill-fitting clothes and often-dirty hair. But in spite of that, many of the women were still pretty, especially the young ones, and Amadea certainly was.

  “Did you have a boyfriend at home?” he inquired, lighting another cigarette. His mother sent them to him from home, and he was the envy of his barracks. He often traded them for favors.

  “No, I didn't,” Amadea said, removing herself mentally. She didn't like the turn of the conversation, and didn't want to encourage him in that direction.

  “Why not?”

  She stood to look at him then, and gazed right into his eyes without fear. “I'm a nun,” she said simply, as though that were a warning to him that she was not a woman, but exempt from his attentions. For most people in the world as she knew it, that was a sacred state, and the look in her eyes said that she expected him to respect that, even here.

  “You're not.” He looked amazed. He had never seen a nun as pretty as she was, not that he remembered. He had always thought them rather plain when he'd seen them.

  “Yes. I am. Sister Teresa of Carmel,” she said proudly, as he shook his head.

  “What a shame. Did you ever regret it? …I mean before you came here?” He assumed correctly that someone in her family had been Jewish, or she would never have come here in the first place. She didn't look like a Gypsy or a Communist or a criminal. She had to be a Jewess, to some degree.

  “No. It's a wonderful life. I will go back one day.”

  “You should find a husband and have children,” he said firmly, as though she were his little sister and he was reproaching her for being foolish, and this time she laughed.

  “I have a husband. My husband is God. And these are all my children, and His,” she said with a sweeping gesture at the garden, and for a moment he wondered if she was crazy, and then knew she wasn't. She meant it. She was unshakable in her faith.

  “It's a stupid life,” he growled at her, and went to check on the others. She saw him again that night as she left, and hoped he wouldn't be the one searching her. She didn't like the way he looked at her.

  The next day he was back again, and without saying a word, he slipped a piece of chocolate into her pocket as he walked past her without even acknowledging her. It was an incredible gift, but a bad sign, and a dangerous one. She had no idea what to do with it. If she was found with it, she could be shot, and it seemed desperately unfair for her to be eating chocolate when o
thers were starving. She waited until he walked by again and said that she appreciated it, but he should give it to one of the children, and discreetly handed it back to him while no one was looking.

  “Why did you do that?” He looked hurt.

  “Because it's not right. I shouldn't have anything better than the others. Someone else needs that more than I do. A child, or an old person, or someone sick.”

  “Then give it to them,” he said tersely, shoved it back into her hand, and walked away. But he knew it would melt in her pocket, and so did she, and then she would get in trouble. She didn't know what else to do, so she ate it, and felt guilty for the rest of the afternoon. She begged God to forgive her for being greedy and dishonest. But it had been so delicious, the taste of it haunted her all day. It was all she could think of until she left. And when she did, he smiled at her. And in spite of herself, she smiled at him. He looked like a big mischievous boy, although he was about her age. He came to talk to her again the following afternoon. He said they were going to make her the leader of a group because she worked so well. But what he was doing was granting her favors and putting her in his debt, which was an extremely dangerous thing. She had no idea what he wanted from her, but it was easy to guess. She tried to avoid him at every opportunity for weeks after that. The weather was getting warmer when he stopped to talk to her again. She had just finished her soup and bread, and was on her way back to work.

  “You're afraid to talk to me, aren't you?” he asked softly as he followed her to where she had left her shovel. She turned to look at him.

  “I'm a prisoner and you're a guard. That's a difficult thing,” she said honestly, choosing her words carefully so she wouldn't offend him.

  “Perhaps not so difficult as you think. I could make life easier for you, if you let me. We could be friends.”

  “Not here,” she said sadly, wanting to believe he was a good person, but it was hard to tell here. Another trainload of inmates had been deported the day before. She knew one of the people who made the lists. So far her name wasn't on it, but it could be at any time. Theresienstadt seemed to be the gateway to other camps, most of which were worse. Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen and Chelmno. They were all names that struck fear in everyone's hearts, even hers.

  “I want to be your friend,” he insisted. He had given her chocolate on two other occasions, but the favors were dangerous, and she knew it, and so was this. She didn't want to be put in the position of rejecting him. That would be even more dangerous. And she had no experience with men. She had been in the convent, sequestered from the world, since she was a young girl. At twenty-five, she was more innocent than girls of fifteen. “I have a sister your age,” he said quietly. “I think of her sometimes when I look at you. She is married and has three children. You could have children one day too.”

  “Nuns don't have children.” She smiled gently at him. There was something sad in his eyes. She suspected he was homesick, as many of the others were too. They got blind drunk at night to forget it, and the horrors they saw on a daily basis. It had to bother some of them too, though not many. But in some ways, he seemed like a sweet man. “I'm going back to my order when this is over, to take my solemn vows.”

  “Ah!” he said, looking hopeful. “Then you're not a nun yet!”

  “Yes, I am. I was in the convent for six years,” it had been almost a year since she left. If all had gone well and she hadn't been forced to leave the convent, she would have been a year from final vows.

  “You can rethink it now,” he said happily, as though she had given him a gift, and then he looked thoughtful. “How Jewish are you?” She felt as though she were being interviewed as his bride. The thought of it made her feel sick.

  “Half.”

  “You don't look it.” She looked more Aryan than most of the women he knew, including his mother, who was dark. His father was tall, thin, and blond like Amadea, as was his sister. He had his mother's dark hair, and father's light eyes. But Amadea certainly didn't look Jewish to him. Nor would she to anyone else, when this was over. He had a mad moment of wanting to protect her, and keep her alive.

  She went back to work then and stopped talking to him, but every day after that, he stopped to talk to her, and every day he slipped something into her pocket. A chocolate, a handkerchief, a tiny piece of dried meat, a piece of candy, something, anything, to assure her of his good intentions. He wanted her to trust him. He wasn't like the others. He wasn't going to just drag her down a dark alley or behind a bush and rape her. He wanted her to want him. Stranger things had happened, he told himself. She was beautiful, obviously intelligent, and completely pure since she'd been in a convent for her entire adult life. He wanted her more than he had ever wanted any woman. He was twenty-six years old, and if he could have, he would have spirited Amadea away then and there. But they both had to be careful. He could get in as much trouble as she could, for befriending her. They wouldn't frown on it if he raped her, he knew that most of the men would find it amusing, plenty of them had certainly done it themselves. But falling in love with her was something else. For that, he would be killed or deported himself. This was dangerous business, and he knew it. And so did she. She had far more to lose than he did. She never forgot that as she walked past him every day, and he slipped his little gifts into her pockets. If anyone saw them, she'd be shot. They were extremely dangerous gifts.

  “You must not do that,” she chided him as she walked past him one afternoon. He had put several candies in her pocket that day, and much as she hated to admit it, they gave her energy. She didn't even dare give them to the children she visited, because she'd be punished for having them in the first place, and so would the children, who would be so excited to have them that they would tell somebody, and then they'd all be in trouble. So she ate them herself, and told no one. His name was Wilhelm.

  “I wish I could give you other things. Like a warm jacket,” he said seriously, “and good shoes … and a warm bed.”

  “I'm fine as I am,” she said, and meant it.

  She was growing used to the discomforts, just as she had those of the convent. These were simply sacrifices she made for the crucified Christ. They were easier to accept that way. The one thing she hated and never got used to was seeing people die. And there were so many, for different reasons, illness as much as violence. Theresienstadt was the least violent of the camps, from what everyone said. Auschwitz was the one they all feared. Theresienstadt was child's play compared to that, and supposedly fewer people died here. They were even talking about bringing officials here to show it off as a model camp, and to show others, to demonstrate how well they treated the Jews. They had a Kaffeehaus and an opera company, after all. What more did they need? Medicine and food. And Wilhelm knew that, just as she did.

  “You shouldn't be here,” he said sadly, and she agreed. But neither should anyone else. There was nothing either of them could do about it. He no more than she. “Do you have relatives somewhere else? Christian ones?” She shook her head.

  “My father died when I was ten. He was French. I never met his relatives,” she said as though it mattered now, which it didn't. But it was something to say in answer to his question. And then he lowered his voice, and spoke in a barely audible whisper.

  “There are Czech partisans in the hills. We hear about them all the time. They could help you escape.” Amadea stared at him, wondering if this was a trap. Was he trying to get her to escape, and then she would be shot trying? Was it a test? Was he mad? How did he think she would escape?

  “That's impossible,” she whispered back, drawn in by what he said, but suspicious nonetheless.

  “No, it's not. There are often no sentries on the back gate, late at night. They keep it locked. If you ever found the keys, you could just walk away.”

  “And be shot,” she said seriously.

  “Not necessarily. I could meet you there. I hate it here.” She stared at him, not knowing what to answer, and not knowing what she would do if
she did escape. Where would she go? She knew no one in Czechoslovakia, and she couldn't go back to Germany. All of Europe was occupied by the Nazis. It was hopeless, and she knew it. But it was an interesting idea. “I could go with you.”

  “To where?” They would both be shot for what they were saying if anyone overheard them.

  “I have to think about it,” he said, as his commanding officer appeared and called him. Amadea was terrified he would get into trouble for talking to her. But the commanding officer showed him some papers and laughed uproariously, and Wilhelm grinned. Obviously, all was well. But she couldn't get his words out of her head. She had heard stories of men escaping, but never women. A group of them had walked out a while ago, appearing to be a work gang going somewhere, the sentries hadn't been paying attention, and assumed they were authorized to work outside the camp. They said they were going to the nearby fortress to work in the prison, and then they escaped. They had just walked out of camp. Most of them had been caught and shot. But some had escaped. Into the hills, as Wilhelm said. It was an extraordinary idea. And of course it entailed leaving with him, which was a whole other problem. She had no intention of becoming his mistress, or his wife, even if he helped her escape. And if he turned her in, she could be sent to Auschwitz or killed right here. She could trust no one, not even him, although he did seem like a decent person, and he was obviously crazy about her. She had never before had a sense that she could have power over men just by the way she looked.

  It was more than that in his case. He thought that she was not only beautiful but intelligent and a good person. She was the kind of woman he had wanted to find for years, and couldn't. And he had found her here. A half Jewess at Theresienstadt concentration camp, and a nun on top of it. Nothing in life was easy.