Saving Amelie (23 page)

“Germany is at stake—heart and soul!”

Jason nearly whistled and stomped.
He gets it!

Bonhoeffer declared, “When the church stops standing for Jews—for anyone—then we stop being the church. Grace is costly—it took the death of our Lord Jesus Christ, our Savior, to achieve that grace. It requires just as much from each of us.

“But we’ve come to practice cheap grace—grace that appears as a godly form but costs us nothing—and that is an abomination, a stench in the nostrils of God!”

Jason had not heard anyone so openly address the responsibility of the German church to stand against Nazi cruelty to Jews, against Hitler’s manipulation of the National Reich Church—not even behind closed doors. It was a death sentence. And yet the young preacher didn’t seem afraid for himself—only for the fate of Germany, and for the soul of the collective church.

Glancing around the room, Jason wondered if the others got it too. The woman who’d welcomed him smiled in return and nodded, a fire of purpose in her eyes.

He couldn’t sing the last hymn for the preacher’s words ringing in his ears. All he could think was,
What now? What can we do?

Late in the afternoon, as the three women drank roasted chicory and shared slivers of sugarless seedcake, Lea explained to Rachel that she never knew who their father was.

“My poor Ibine was raped while visiting friends in Munich,” Oma insisted. “She never told me the man’s name. I don’t even know if she knew him. There was a party, and she was found unconscious in the bushes the next morning.” Tears streaked Oma’s cheeks, and she drew a deep breath. “She was never the same. So we sent her to stay with relatives near Frankfurt until she had the baby, hoping it would help her. Such a mistake! They took her to the Institute to deliver her child. It was the closest medical facility to their home. They never imagined—
I
never imagined my daughter would not return . . . or that she’d borne twins.”

Lea didn’t wait for Rachel to absorb that information but grilled her about her adoptive parents, her life in America, her father’s research, details about the files she’d seen, and about Amelie. She’d barely finished when Oma, somewhat recovered, made the observation about their names.

“Rachel and Lea . . . names from the Bible. They were sisters—daughters of Laban.” She puzzled, “If my Ibine did not live to . . . to see you, I wonder who chose your names? The doctor or midwife who delivered you? They aren’t typical German names.”

Rachel shrugged helplessly.

“From the Bible—both good wives of Jacob.” Oma nodded approvingly, then blinked, as though she’d just thought of something.

“Do you think that’s why we were named so—some literary allusion? Does that mean something?” Rachel looked from one to the other. “I don’t know the story. Can you tell me?”

Lea knew that Oma would not say. So she did what she must, what would come out sooner or later anyway.

“A man named Jacob—heir to the covenant God made with Abraham—loved Rachel and wanted to marry her. Her father, Laban, promised his daughter to Jacob on the condition that he work for seven years. But on the wedding night Laban tricked Jacob and sent the older daughter, Leah, to his tent.” Lea moistened her lips and glanced at Oma, who stared into the coffee cup cradled in her hands. “When Jacob discovered he’d been fooled, he was furious and demanded Rachel as well. Laban gave her to Jacob soon after, but forced him to serve another seven years for her.”

Rachel’s eyes widened in disbelief. “That’s horrible! What a long time to work for, to wait for someone.”

Lea did her best to control her voice. “Laban said it was their custom that the older daughter marry before the younger. But perhaps it didn’t seem so long—because Jacob loved her. Rachel was the more beautiful of the two, the woman he desired.” Lea forced herself to look Rachel in the eye, challenging her reaction. She glanced again at Oma and knew her grandmother understood her heart.

“At least he ended up with two wives.” Rachel laughed—self-consciously.

“And many children,” Oma observed, as if trying to match Rachel’s optimism and engage Lea. “Just like your children’s choir.”

“Yes, she gave him many children. Leah was not barren.” Lea glimpsed the flush across Oma’s cheek. “But he only truly loved one.” The perpetual knot in Lea’s stomach tightened.

Oma shifted in her seat, as if that would change the subject. “We must decide on a hiding place for you—and the child.” Determination strengthened her voice. “I won’t—I can’t—let you go so soon.” She looked from Rachel to Lea. Lea had rarely seen her grandmother so happy. “And when they come looking again, they will find no one.”

Rachel responded in kind, radiating gratitude, happiness, no matter that they could all be signing a death warrant, no matter that they’d thought of no way to hide her or the child. Lea watched the familial bond spring between the two—withered flowers soaking in spring rain. Brightening, straightening, strengthening before her eyes. And that, too, was dangerous.

She stood. It was nearly time for the children’s choir practice. “Do you have everything you need before I go, Oma?”

“I do!” Oma reached for Lea’s hand, beaming, still clasping Rachel’s with her other. “I do!”

“If it’s settled then, I’ll write the note to bring Amelie.” Rachel beamed in return. “Can you post it for me tomorrow? It would be safer not to post it here in the village.”

Lea nodded, though her heart was not in it. The coded letter would bring the child—now Rachel’s child. Leah fingered her letter to Friederich, tucked into her pocket. She’d post that today—general as it was and omitting so many important events.

Keeping her emotions in check, she pushed her arms through her coat sleeves and wound her muffler round her neck. Rachel strode from the room to prepare her note, purpose in every step. It was the first moment since Rachel had arrived that Lea and Oma were alone.

“It will be all right,” Oma whispered. “Everything will be all right; you’ll see.”

“Rachel and Lea. It’s almost laughable, were it not so pitiable—so true a picture.”

“But it’s Lea your Friederich loves—has always loved. You’re the one with the home, the husband, the lifetime we’ve shared, the Passion Play, the children’s choir. Rachel is running, hiding. She’s been betrayed—no home or family but us, no understanding of life beyond herself, no faith as near as I can tell. You are the one with abundance, my dear. It’s possible to be generous, isn’t it?”

“They probably said that to Leah when Jacob spurned her.”

“He did not spurn her for long,” Oma teased. “They had seven children!”

Lea pulled away from her grandmother. “Because she’d not been sterilized. And, I’d wager, neither has Rachel.”

For two days Bonhoeffer’s words haunted Jason, the challenge they issued in his brain growing ever louder.

“It’s not even my country,” he argued with the mirror as he shaved in miserably cold water. “And even if it was, who can stop Hitler?” He scrutinized the question one way after another as he ate, as he tossed and turned before sleep, as he stepped from the trolley, then found himself in the newspaper office—never realizing he’d walked the distance between the two.

He couldn’t get the preacher or the image he’d created of Jesus’ costly grace out of his head.
What is this costly grace that compels Bonhoeffer? What compelled Jesus?

It wasn’t until the third morning that Jason summoned enough courage to face his own shortcomings. He’d track Bonhoeffer down and talk with him. But it was too late. Frau Bergstrom, the woman who’d hosted the preacher’s service in her house, told him that Bonhoeffer had left for Pomerania. She gave Jason his book,
Nachfolge
, saying that would better explain the preacher’s position.

Jason read, mentally translating
Nachfolge
, or
Discipleship
, into English over the next three days, though he had to reread portions five and six times before he understood them. The German was difficult enough, but Bonhoeffer’s ideas were astounding.

Is it possible to live like that? Like Jesus did? And if it isn’t, what was the point of Him teaching us? Showing us?
That’s what Bonhoeffer was saying. And much as it went against the grain of “get all you can as long as you can” and “scoop the next story before some other guy
scoops you,” Jason knew he was right. It was the missing link—in Germany, in everything.

Bonhoeffer’s book had forced him to look inward. He wasn’t too happy with what he saw. Life wasn’t about him. It wasn’t even just about Rachel and Amelie, though helping them was part of it.

One thing was certain: from the time he closed the book, all Jason’s reference bars changed. They shot higher, out of his line of vision, too high to reach. But he knew, for the first time, that he couldn’t and wouldn’t have to reach those bars alone.

When Jason finally turned in his Bonhoeffer story, his editor nearly choked. “You can’t say that! You want to get the guy arrested? Sent away for good? Rewrite!”

Jason leaned back in his desk chair. He pushed strong fingertips into his temples, willing the pain to go away as he reworded the article in his brain.

Everything he’d written was true but sensational, intended to incite, to make readers think. Yet Nazi censorship had grown so severe, he bore no hope of seeing it in German print. The truth might get him a quick trip home, or maybe a long vacation in a concentration camp. And New York editors tended to bury Germany’s stories in back pages, certain nobody wanted to read or could believe the atrocities—the mowing down of Jews in Poland; throwing political activists and pastors and priests into concentration camps; using girls too young to be mothers to breed SS babies; killing children deemed expendable because they weren’t picture perfect.

Did readers think it was all propaganda? Jason shook his head. He’d been told a dozen times that America had its own worries, and he knew that was true—the miserable stock market, lousy crops and poor harvests, lynchings throughout the South that looked more like Germany’s treatment of Jews than they’d want to admit. The Yanks couldn’t be bothered with Europe’s mess.

“Face it, Young,” his coworker Eldridge had laughed, “you’ve gotta
play to win. Give ’em enough to sell a story, but get off your high crusader horse. Martyrs don’t win, and in this climate, that’ll only get you busted by the censors—or crucified—and your heroes killed. Schmooze a little with the Krauts; a little groveling won’t kill you.” He laughed at his own joke and thumped Jason’s chest with his forefinger. “It’ll get you some juicy tidbits and keep you in the game.”

Jason walked the long way back to his hotel room that night. All he could think about his work, his very life, was
cheap grace
.

25

J
ASON
HAD
WORRIED
about Amelie ever since his first contact was arrested. The little girl could have no idea what had happened to her mother, why she’d been made to look like a boy, why she was suddenly swept from the city life and home she’d known and plopped with strangers in the country. He guessed she must be frightened, confused—no matter how good the woman who kept her might be. And somehow he doubted the woman’s maternal nature based on the continual increase of money she’d demanded.

But not in a million years would Jason have anticipated that Mark Eldridge, ready to scoop him at every turn, would be his link to helping Amelie. Jason, Eldridge, and their editor in chief were just closing the stale and smoky newsroom for the night when Eldridge complained, “It stinks. Hitler’s silent crusade to rid the world of anybody different from him.”

“Jews, you mean.” The chief pushed his pencil behind his ear and ground his cigarette into a tray.

“Yeah, Jews—but not just,” Eldridge countered. “Anybody.”

“Those with divergent political views. Communists,” Chief agreed.

“Poles, Czechs, Gypsies, homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, priests,” Jason jumped in. “Confessing Church members who don’t want the Führer for their god. Christians in general who aren’t happy replacing pictures of Jesus with Uncle Adolf—you name it.”