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strong. Although she was thin, she was a tall girl.
“I'm a nun,” Amadea said quietly. As soon as she said it, he looked up again, and then glanced at her papers, which said that her mother had been a Jew. He saw too then that her name was French.
“What order are you?” he asked suspiciously, as she wondered if there were other nuns there, and from what orders.
“I'm a Carmelite.” She smiled, and he saw the same inner light that others noticed about her. Rosa had seen it too the night before, even here.
“There's no time for that nonsense here.” She could see that he looked unnerved as he wrote something on her papers. “Fine.” He looked up at her with a scowl. “You can work in the garden. If you steal any of it, you'll be shot,” he said bluntly. “Be there at four in the morning tomorrow. You work till seven.” It was a fifteen-hour day, but she didn't care. There were others being sent to other rooms, other buildings, other barracks, and she wondered if some of them were getting tattoos, but he seemed to have forgotten hers. She had the distinct impression that her being a nun had unnerved him. Perhaps even Nazis had a conscience, though given what she had seen so far, it seemed unlikely in the extreme.
She stood on line for food that afternoon, and was given one black rotting potato and a crust of bread. The woman just in front of her had been given a carrot. The soup had run out hours before. But she was grateful for what she got. She ate around the rotten part of the potato, and quickly gnawed on the bread. She thought about it on the way back to her room, and reproached herself for gluttony and devouring it so fast, but she was starving. They all were.
When she got back to her barracks, Rosa was already there, lying on her mattress. Her cough was worse. It was freezing that day.
“How was it? Did you get a number?”
Amadea shook her head. “I think they forgot. I think I made him nervous when I told him I was a nun.” She grinned mischievously and looked like a young girl again. They all looked so serious and so old. “You should see one of the doctors for that cough,” Amadea said, looking worried. She tucked her feet under the mattress then, they were freezing in the wooden clogs, and she was bare-legged in her riding pants, which felt paper thin in the freezing air. She'd been wearing the same filthy trousers for over a week. She had meant to go to the laundry that afternoon and see if she could trade for some clean clothes, but there hadn't been time.
“The doctors can't do anything,” Rosa said. “They have no medicine.” She shrugged and then looked around. She had a conspiratorial look as she glanced at Amadea. “Look,” she whispered, and pulled something out of her pocket. Amadea realized it was a sliver of an apple that looked as though a thousand people had stepped on it and probably had.
“Where did you get that?” Amadea whispered, loath to take it from her, but her mouth watered when she saw it. There were no more than two bites there, or one good one.
“A guard gave it to me,” she said, breaking it in half, and slipping it to Amadea. She already knew that stealing food was punishable by death. Rosa quickly put her half in her mouth and closed her eyes. Like two children sharing a single piece of candy, Amadea did the same.
They said nothing for a few minutes, and then a number of the other residents came into the room. They looked exhausted. They glanced at the two women and said nothing.
None of the men she'd encountered outside working on the construction crews had bothered Amadea in the short time she'd been there, but standing on line all afternoon, she had heard stories from the other women, several of whom had been raped. The Nazis thought the Jews were the lowest of the low, and the scum of the human race, but it didn't stop them from raping them whenever they wanted. The other women had warned her to be careful. She was too noticeable and too beautiful, and she looked as blue-eyed and blond as they did. They told her to stay dirty and smell as bad as she could, and stay away from them, it