Echoes

“Smoking,” he said softly, shaking his head. It was a crime punishable by severe beatings, although to the inmates even finding a cigarette butt was considered a rare treat. One they had to keep carefully concealed, like stolen food.

When Amadea finally reached the officer who was dispensing job assignments, he looked like he'd had a long day. He stopped for a moment and looked up at Amadea, nodded, and reached for a sheaf of papers. There were several officers lined up at desks next to him, and official stamps and seals being put on everything. She had been given camp identification papers the day before, and she handed them to him, trying to look calmer than she felt. No matter how much she was willing to sacrifice for the God she served, standing in front of a Nazi soldier in a work camp was a frightening ordeal.

“What can you do?” he asked tersely, making it clear he didn't care. He was trying to weed out doctors and nurses and dentists and people with construction and carpentry skills, who would be of use to them. They needed engineers, stonemasons, cooks and lab technicians, and thousands of people to serve as slaves.

“I can work in the garden, cook, and sew. I can do a little nursing, although I'm not trained,” but she had helped frequently with the elderly, sick nuns, at the convent in Cologne. “I'm probably best in the garden,” she added, although her mother had taught her some of her needlework skills, but the nuns she had worked with said she could make almost anything grow.

“You'd make someone a good wife,” he joked, glancing at her again. “If you weren't a Jew.” She was better looking than most of the inmates he saw, and she looked healthy and 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.