Echoes Page 0,131

We live in Berlin. Do you know it?” he asked with a look of concern. If not, he would have to teach her everything about it. Photographs, maps, restaurants, shops, museums, streets, parks, people, movie houses. She would have to learn it better than the town where she was born.

“Well enough. My mother's sister moved there when she married. I didn't know her. But I visited it as a child.” He nodded. That was a start. He knew she was from Cologne. He even knew her mother's maiden name. And the name of her sister. And the date they had been taken. He knew the school she had gone to before she entered the convent. There was very little he didn't know about Amadea. All she knew about him was his name and code name, and that he had been one of the organizers of the Kinder-transport, but she didn't mention it. They were not making friends, but only learning a part.

They talked all the way to Paris, about the things she needed to know, as he drove a car someone had given him. His papers were impeccable, as was his French. According to his papers, he was from Arles, and was a teacher there. She was his girlfriend. The single soldier who stopped them waved them on. They looked like a very respectable couple. He left the car where he had been told to, half a mile from Serge's house, and they walked the rest of the way, still talking. She had three days to learn the part. And to look it. He wasn't worried about that. She had the makings of a beauty. The one thing she didn't look like to him was a nun. They were halfway to Serge's house from the drop where they left the car, when he asked her about that. “Why did you enter the convent? Were you disappointed in love?” She smiled at the question, people assumed such strange things about why one entered a religious order. It was far less dramatic than they suspected, particularly at the age she had been then. She was twenty-six now. And he was forty-two.

“Not at all. I did it because I love God. I had a vocation.” He had no reason to ask, but he was growing curious about her. She was an interesting young woman.

“Are you married?” she asked as they walked along, her hand tucked into his arm, which was appropriate for the part, and a habit she would have to grow accustomed to with him. He was a little daunting, but as he had said, she had to become comfortable with him. It wasn't entirely easy. In spite of the rough clothes, there was an air of authority about him. And she knew who he really was. More or less.

“I was,” he said as they strolled toward Serge's place. Their strides were an even match, which he found pleasant. She didn't take little geisha steps like very small women, which he had always found annoying. He did things quickly and well, and had a tendency to be impatient. The rest of the world didn't always move quickly enough for him. She did. “My wife was killed in a bombing raid. And my two sons. Early in the war.” As he said it, Amadea felt him tense.

“I'm sorry,” she said respectfully. They had all lost someone. Or many. She wondered if that was why he was so willing to risk his life now. Like her, he had nothing to lose. In his case, he did it for his country. In hers, she did it for whatever lives she could save, and for the crucified Christ, to whom she felt she was married, or would be one day, when she took her solemn vows. She would have taken her solemn vows that summer, if life were still normal. Instead, she had left the convent nearly two and a half years before. But at the appropriate time, she renewed her vows now each year on her own.

They reached the home of Serge's grandmother then, where Amadea had come when she first came from Prague, with Wolff, the partisan who had brought her there nearly fourteen months before. It seemed aeons ago. Now she was going to be putting herself at great risk again, with this man.

They stopped to greet Serge's grandparents, and within moments went down the stairs at the back of the closet. Within seconds they were in the bustling room where Amadea had