Echoes Page 0,104

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.