For Such a Time (6 page)

He glanced back to where the commandant’s Mercedes had been. All that remained was a depression of tire tracks in the snow, like the heaviness that pressed against his heart as he thought of the woman inside that house. She with the blond hair and blue eyes of his beautiful niece . . .

“You keep standing there holding that pick like a golf club, and the captain will surely be back,” Yaakov warned. “Then we’ll all end up in the Little Fortress and Mrs. Brenner won’t have anything for the pot.”

Morty raised the pick for another blow.

“Here, give me that.” Yaakov snatched the pick from his hands. “Already you’ve mangled two potatoes, see? You’ll need to dig out the rest by hand.”

Morty arched a brow. “You know I have bad knees,” Yaakov grumbled. “Leo’s too weak to dig. You must do it.”

Morty crouched beside the furrowed hole. “I miss her, Yaakov. The young woman Joseph wrote to us about this morning? She sounds so much like Hadassah.”

“But you’ll get . . . your chance to see her, won’t you?” Leo spoke up. “Yaakov said because you are Elder of the
Judenrat
, you are invited to a welcoming party for the new commandant at the end of the month, ja?”

“
Invited
, Yaakov?” Morty shot a withered look at his stocky friend. “As Elder, my only obligation is to organize the musicians for the party. A guard will escort them to the house. I doubt I’ll even be allowed outside the ghetto walls.”

“Too bad. Joseph could smuggle you some of that delicious food they’ll be serving.” The Czech looked wistful. “He is a clever one, that boy. Sometimes too clever—like that dangerous game he plays with you sending secret messages back and forth.”

Morty’s cheeks flushed. Even though Joseph had devised the plan, Morty found himself too starved for news from the outside to object. As for danger, well . . .

One risked death by simply existing in this place.

“Ech! What’s the use of talking to you?” Yaakov said in exasperation. “Stop thinking so much.” He smiled then, displaying a row of widely spaced teeth. “I’m sure your maideleh is safe. Probably tucked away in some warm, safe place with a full belly and a happier disposition than the three of us.”

Like the woman in the brick house? Morty forced a smile. “You’re probably right.”

He breathed the chill air, feeling it sear his lungs as he bent to dig out potatoes. His thoughts returned to Mannheim. The Nazis had appeared without warning. They herded his people into a part of town that formed a
shtetl
, a ghetto separating Jews from the rest of the Gentile community. Hadassah had gone to work in Heidelberg that morning. He hadn’t seen her again. How long had it been? Weeks? Months? Years? He struggled to remember.

“Hand me those potatoes, Morty. I’ll . . . carry them,” Leo called out.

Morty stared at the ground. He’d unearthed ten of the little jewels. His numbed fingers managed to grasp them and toss them one by one into Leo’s aproned shirt. The rankness of the wrinkled, wet skins filled his nostrils, but he didn’t care. Any addition to their daily ration of watery gruel would be an improvement.

Food had been scarce in the shtetl as well, and housing cramped—as many as fifteen people stuffed into a single room.

A luxury compared to what he had now.

He scrambled to his feet. “Let’s get these to Mrs. Brenner.” Snagging Leo’s pick, Morty led the way past the guardhouse toward the main gate of the fortress . . . and back into their world of hopeless existence. He turned and cast a last glance at the brick house. A heavy sigh rose in him.
I do not doubt your message, God. But I
do wonder when . . .

He told himself to be patient. Many events in the vision had already taken place. Yaakov was right. Hadassah was alive. With her false identification papers, she must have escaped.

A sudden calm settled over him. The prophecy would be fulfilled.

She would be their salvation.

 6 

Then on the thirteenth day of the first month the royal secretaries were summoned.

Esther 3:12

M
ONDAY
, F
EBRUARY
21, 1944

D
eath lists.

A chill swept through Stella as she scanned the papers in her hand. She’d been impatient after her week of mandated bed rest and arrived at the library that morning sharply at eight for her first day of work. Nervously anticipating her employer’s summons, she’d removed the gray cloth cover from the typewriter, then sorted through a mound of folders on top of the green filing cabinet beside her desk.

Stella spied one folder marked
FINAL
SOLUTION
, along with a terse note to re-file it. Peering inside, she found scores of pages with names, presumably those of prisoners inside Theresienstadt. Typed headers ran the length of each sheet:

Name     Prisoner Identification     Arrival     Departure

Arrival dates varied for each name, but the same departure dates continued for several pages. The second of November was the last recorded, almost four months ago.

A chill ran along her spine at the word
Auschwitz
scrawled in pencil across the top of each sheet. Rumors had spread as far away as Dachau of a place where Jews were sent and never returned. Where Krematorium fires burned day and night . . .

“Fräulein Muller!”

Stella jerked at the sound of the colonel’s voice. She quickly shoved the lists back into the folder. Grabbing up her steno pad and pen, she rushed from her desk into his office.

After a week’s absence, the colonel still looked formidable. Seated behind his large mahogany desk, elbows against its top, he gestured her toward a chair across from him.

She edged onto the leather seat and waited. He said nothing as he studied her a long moment. She wondered when he’d left the note to re-file the Auschwitz deportation lists.

“Anxious to get this over with?” He nodded at her death grip on the steno pad and pen.

Stella’s cheeks warmed as she eased back into the chair. “I’m merely eager to get started, Herr Kommandant.”

He exposed her lie with a sardonic smile. She raised her chin, refusing to back down.

“I’m glad to see the shadows gone beneath your eyes. You’re sufficiently rested, then?”

She’d slept almost nonstop for days. “Yes, Herr Kommandant.”

“And your cheeks are starting to fill out.” He scrutinized her as though she were a ripe tomato at market. “Helen’s food must agree with you.”

The brusque woman brought increasingly larger meals to her room each day, and she seemed to enjoy Stella’s discomfort at having to force down every bite. “As you see,” she said curtly, then thought to add, “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

His gentle tone affected her like an unwanted caress. Traitorous heat rose in her face. She felt as if she’d lost some unspoken battle between them.

“Nightmares?”

She shook her head and flipped open the steno pad on her lap, unwilling to continue this one-sided laundering of vulnerabilities. “Shall I take dictation now?”

“Ah, yes, to work.” His sigh could have been amusement or exasperation. “To SS-Obersturmbannführer Adolf Eichmann, SS Headquarters in Berlin. Heil Hitler . . .”

When he’d finished dictating his letter, Stella read her notes:

. . . after our meeting in Prague, I received new information that the International Red Cross plans a “surprise” inspection of Theresienstadt as early as March. In light of this important event for the Führer and Herr Reichsführer Himmler, you will agree we must postpone the final matter we discussed.

What final matter? She glanced up to find the colonel had left his chair to stand in front of the barred window of his office. Watery light filtered through narrow panes of glass, casting him in ethereal shadows.

He seemed pensive. She wondered which of the letter’s contents he found more disturbing, the Red Cross visit or the postponement of some unnamed “matter” with Lieutenant-Colonel Eichmann.

The colonel moved slightly, and Stella glimpsed his face in the light.

His abject misery shocked her.

She envisioned him as a young man leaving his father’s house; perhaps he’d vowed for some painful reason never to return. Not until the older man’s death forced him back.

Sudden empathy seized her. She rose from her chair to reach out to him, to . . . to . . .

The deportation lists flashed in her mind. “Will that be all, Herr Kommandant?” She gripped the back of the chair, shaken by what she’d nearly done.

“Yes.” He turned to her, his breath coming fast, uneven. “We are finished.”

Ten minutes later, Stella sat at her desk typing, unable to shake the colonel’s last remark. Did his words hold some double meaning? Why did his mood bother her so much?

Each day that she grew stronger fueled her determination to leave—with or without his permission. If she chose the latter, she would need time to work out the details of her escape: what supplies to take, where to go once she managed it, and how to survive the coldest part of winter.

The folder on the green cabinet caught her eye. She dared wonder about her uncle: Could he be here, at Theresienstadt? Was Morty’s name on those lists?

Stella had made discreet inquiries after him in Mannheim before her ill-fated abduction. Her efforts had never borne fruit. Maybe he lay dead in some other camp . . .

But what if he
was
here? She glanced at the finished letter in the typewriter, torn between risking the colonel’s wrath by delay and her desire to search the file for her uncle’s name. Anxious thoughts plagued her. Was Morty sick? Did he have warm clothes . . . and what about shoes?

A bittersweet ache pierced her. Mannheim’s cobbler, Herr Schiffel, had made a special pair every year for her uncle, who happened to own the largest pair of feet on the Roonstrasse
.
The neighbors always gave Morty a ribbing on that day—“Flatboats,” “Toe skis,” “Yaks”—but he endured their jibes with good humor.

His last pair of shoes must be in tatters by now. The Nazis wouldn’t bother to have others made for him. What if he was barefoot in this weather?

Her cheeks felt hot as she wiggled her bare toes under the desk, having freed them from the too-tight shoes. Morty wasn’t the only one risking death in this cold.

Joseph told her about the clothes. “SS surplus,” he’d explained
on her second morning when she discovered the various sizes in her armoire had been replaced with clothing that fit her perfectly. Stella browsed through the expensive garments, noting the occasional outline of a star over the left breast on several sweaters and jackets.

Her clothes had been stolen from Jews.

She didn’t want to imagine the woman who had owned such beautiful clothes. Likely she now wore a thin cotton dress much like the one Stella had arrived in.

Even her shoes were stolen goods. Stella ignored their discomfort as she slipped them on and rose from the desk. Their previous owner likely now wore chafing clogs—if she still lived.

Gripping the colonel’s letter hard enough to crease it, Stella marched into his office. She envisioned those suffering behind Theresienstadt’s walls, people huddled together like shivering sticks in the cold while her employer indulged in the luxury of his own melancholy.

He hadn’t moved from the window. “Your letter, Herr Kommandant,” she said, banking her hostility.

He turned to her, his stony features back in place. “Wait while I proofread it.”

Stella barely breathed as he took the letter and returned to his desk. He fished his glasses from his pocket and perused the document for several minutes.

Then he reached for his pen and scrawled his signature in flawless, bold script. The air eased from her lungs.

“Impressive.” He handed the letter back to her. “Have Sergeant Grossman post it immediately.”

Pride and relief flowed through her.

“I think your job is safe enough for the moment.” He made an effort to smile, but she could tell it cost him; her wisp of satisfaction surrendered to another unwanted pang of compassion. Or was it more than that?

Days without his company hadn’t dampened her awareness
of him; his rough, uneven features were pleasing to the eye, and though he had the strength to crush her, he’d shown her only gentleness and consideration . . .

He walked around the desk to her, his troubled eyes searching her face. “Stella . . .”

He placed a hand lightly against her shoulder, and heat emanated from his touch. She pursed her lips as a pang of unwanted tenderness threatened to overpower her better judgment.

His hand fell back to his side. “That will be all for now.”

Stella felt a ridiculous urge to cry. Heat suffused her face as she spun away from him, desperate to leave his presence before he witnessed her condition.

Back at her desk, she took deep breaths until the ache in her throat subsided. She couldn’t rid herself of his haunted look—a desolation that threatened to penetrate her caution, breaking down every survival instinct she possessed.

She would be a good secretary. She owed him that much. Anything beyond that . . .

Through the shadow of her memories rose a face with long dark lashes and golden brown eyes. Then the loud shot of a pistol, a child falling to the frozen earth . . .

Stella’s eyes burned.
It should have been me.

Angrily she glanced toward the colonel’s open door. No,
he
was the enemy. Aric von Schmidt may not have pulled the trigger, but his brethren had.

Leave him to his own torment.