Chapter 14

For Ted Blake—Sophia called him Ted now at his insistence, and no longer "Captain," and he had finally convinced her to tell him her given name, although he never said it when someone else was present—the room lit up whenever she was in it. They were comfortable with each other and spoke about every subject. Sophia loved their conversations and she knew she would miss him when he left, but it didn't sway her from her decision to stay in the religious life now or when the war was over. There was so much she wanted to do to help people then.

Mother Paul was concerned about her too. She believed that much of Sophia's determination was sincerely based in faith, but she wondered if she was afraid of what the outside world would be like if she didn't have a habit to protect her, and the convent to hide behind. Both of her parents were gone, and she hadn't seen her sister in three years. She had survived a concentration camp and lost her father to one. The world had been a dangerous place for her, and to Sophia the love of a mere man, and not the Almighty, seemed like a dangerous place to her. What if a man or a husband stopped loving her one day, or died, or abandoned her? She knew that she could rely on God forever. The people she loved most had disappeared all too quickly. Mother Paul was well aware of that, and she also saw how much the American captain had come to love his nurse, and she was sad thinking that Sophia might miss an opportunity that would never come again, in order to lead a life of deprivation and self-sacrifice. She was still so young, at twenty-four, and could have a full life with a good man one day, and Mother Paul saw nothing wrong with that. There were many ways to serve God, not just as a nun. And she was certain that Sophia would always find ways to serve Him.

She said as much to Sophia one afternoon while they were driving to a neighboring farm to pick up eggs for the convent. The local patrols almost never stopped them. The nuns were a familiar sight in the area, and they never caused any trouble. The young soldiers let them pass with a wave without bothering with their papers, although Sophia's heart nearly stopped every time she saw them. Mother Paul wanted her to be a familiar sight as well, so her presence didn't arouse curiosity among the patrols, so she took Sophia on errands with her whenever she could.

"You know, our religious path is not for everyone," she said gently, and Sophia wondered where she was going with it, and if Mother Paul was questioning her faith. "There are many ways to serve God, even as a mother and wife. Not everyone is cut out for a life of celibacy, and a union between a man and a woman can be a sacred thing and a great blessing to both of them," she said.

"Have I done something wrong, Mother?" Sophia asked, worried. "Do you think I'm unsuited to the religious life?"

"No, my dear. I think you're very much suited to it, maybe even too much so. I just don't want you to deprive yourself of the love of a good man, or having a family, and regret it in later years, when you don't have a husband and children."

"Do you regret it, Mother?"

"No. But I never met a man I loved, or the right one who loved me."

"And you think I have?" Sophia asked her, beginning to suspect the Mother Superior's reason for her comments. Mother Paul glanced at her and nodded.

"I do. I don't know if he has expressed it to you, but I think Captain Blake is very much in love with you. I think he's a good man, and a good person, and you might be very happy with him." She thought Sophia should examine all her options and be open to what life offered her, before making a final choice when she took her vows.

"I like being a nun," Sophia said, sounding petulant for a moment, which was unlike her. She was good-natured about everything, which Ted Blake had noticed too.

"It's a long life, Sister. You enjoy his company, and he values yours. You might miss him one day. I think you will when he leaves, more than you think. And these are strange times. If you do love him, I don't think you should let your vows in the novitiate hold you back. You've done a lot as a nun. And I think you could still do a lot for the world as someone's wife."

"That's what he says, not about him with me, but generally. He doesn't think I should stay in the convent. But I'm happy there. I feel safe."

"He could make you feel safe too, after the war is over. For now, none of us is safe. I pray about our safety every day."

"So do I," Sophia said, momentarily confused about what Mother Paul had said. "I've never had any doubts about joining the order." At Ravensbrück Hans had loved her too, and she had never been tempted for a single moment to violate her vows, but he was a Nazi, and that was different. She and Ted had very like-minded ideas, but she didn't want to give up being a nun. "I'm sure about my vocation, Mother. I promise you, I am," she said fervently, and the Mother Superior nodded.

"I wanted to be sure. Remember, there are many, many ways to serve God, not just one. And some of them in the world, not behind convent walls." Sophia nodded and they drove on in silence while she thought about it, but she was sure she was already on the right path, no matter how good a man Ted Blake was. She was certain that, like Edith Stein, her destiny was to be a nun.

Despite their many conversations on a multitude of subjects, the one subject Ted had never dared broach with her, even after a month, when they called each other by first names and nothing seemed taboo, were the scars he had glimpsed on her arms. She had none on her face and hands. It was all he could see of her. But he had glimpsed the angry-looking, vicious scars on her arms several times while she nursed him. He knew there had to be a frightening story to the scars, but he was afraid to ask. And she never mentioned them or how she got them.

They were playing cards one afternoon after lunch, and the sleeve of her habit fell back as she held her cards. They were laughing about something, and his expression grew serious as his eye caught her badly scarred arms again. He spoke to her softly when she noticed what he was looking at.

"Would it be too intrusive if I ask you about that?" He was a gentle person, and he didn't want to hurt her or revive ugly memories, but he knew it had to be an important chapter in her life. He wanted to know everything, in case she ever softened her position on remaining in the religious life. She had been adamant so far, as he skirted around the subject as carefully as he could. He had always hoped she would explain the injuries herself, after he'd seen them on the first day.

"No," she said quietly, and folded her cards, and put them facedown on the table. She couldn't tell him about it and play cards. "I try to put it all behind me, but there are reminders of it that come up."

"Do you have Jewish blood?" he asked her. It was the simplest explanation for it, but she shook her head.

"No, I don't. My father was an extremely successful doctor, with his own private hospital. He was a surgeon. People came from everywhere to be operated on by him. Some of his patients were among the High Command of the SS.

"I never knew what happened and he never told me, but a year after the war started, he was arrested for treason against the Führer and the Reich. There was a medical program they had instituted right after the war started, called Aktion T4. It was a program to ‘euthanize' anyone the Reich deemed undesirable, people with handicaps, old people, babies, children with minor defects.

"I treated children like that myself as a nurse, a little boy once who was very intelligent but partially deaf. As nurses, we had to report any anomalies or chronically sick or damaged or disabled people to the Health Ministry. I never did. The Health Ministry had a board of ‘experts' who decided which patients to kill. They euthanized them by lethal injection. I've always wondered what happened to the little deaf boy. I think they killed him. There were killing centers for Aktion T4 apparently, to speed up the process, and private doctors were asked to participate. It was called euthanasia, but it was apparently wholesale murder of anyone the Reich wanted to get rid of. Some physicians were ‘invited' to join the program, by invitation of the Führer. A Nazi officer told me about it, so I believe it's true. My father would never have participated in something like that. Never. He profoundly believed the oath he had taken as a doctor to preserve and improve life, to heal and not to harm. He even taught me that as a nurse. I think that may be why he was accused of treason against the Führer personally and the Reich. It's only a guess. It's the only reason I can imagine them accusing him of treason. He hated Hitler but was discreet about it, and he treated all of his patients equally, rich or poor. But I can't think of any other reason they'd have to accuse him of being a traitor, although it doesn't take much these days. I was already in the convent then—my sister had already left, which made a bad impression. She and my brother-in-law escaped to Switzerland and were safe, and still are, but her husband's parents were arrested like common criminals and everything they had taken from them. They were sent to a concentration camp, and no one knows what happened to them. They're probably dead by now.

"The day my father was arrested, his whole hospital was destroyed, vandalized and burned to the ground while the firefighters stood by and watched. The fire had clearly been ordered by the SS. They burned our home too, with everything in it, after they took the art. They sent my father to Dachau, and I didn't find out till last year that he died seven months after he got there. I didn't find out for nearly a year, and then only because I met someone in the records office. My father died in a concentration camp as a traitor, which I can promise you he never was. I was more of a traitor than he was, which they never knew.

"I belonged to a small, quiet group of dissidents and went to meetings twice a week even before the war, and after it started. When they started deporting the Jews in earnest and taking whole families away, one of my friends from the meetings was saving children, and I escorted them sometimes from one safe place to another. I was an intermediary, a chaperone, sometimes with great frequency, at other times less often. And I did it even from the convent. The Mother Superior knew. I continued doing it after my father went to Dachau. I thought that every life we saved was a life stolen from the Nazis, and a victory. I was never caught. I was careful. But I was stopped by a patrol one night on my way back from dropping off a child. They let me go. But they came to see me several times. They had no evidence, but they were suspicious of me. My father was a traitor, my sister and her husband had escaped. They assumed the worst of me, and they were right, although they couldn't prove it. I was arrested as a criminal and sent to Ravensbrück. It's a concentration camp for women, and a hellhole of the worst kind. People were beaten, whipped, killed, and starved. I won't tell you all the things they did there. Sometimes they had the prisoners torn apart by dogs.

"We were four to a bunk, and five hundred women assigned to three toilets. The barracks were at double and quadruple occupancy. Babies, women, and children were killed. I made four friends in my barracks—three were my bunkmates, and one had the bunk below us with three other women. I was sure I wouldn't survive if I stayed there, nor would the others. I came up with a plan for the five of us to escape. It took three months to get ready. I was in Ravensbrück for eight months, the closest to hell I will ever get on this earth. By sheer miracle, the plan worked. It took us two days to get here last June, eight months ago. One of the women died in the woods the night before we got here. She was sick and her body just gave up. She was older than we were. I was the youngest. The other three have gone on, with false papers and new identities. One is in Portugal now, another one in Munich, one went back to France, to the free zone, and I'm here, safe at St. Blaise. The Nazis have better things to do than track me down. They probably figured we got killed along the way by a patrol. You don't get far in Germany without papers. But they're not as smart as they think. People find ways to get out if they want to badly enough. My sister walked over the mountains into Switzerland nearly seven months pregnant. People run to save their lives, or their children.

"So that is how I got the marks on my arm. In Ravensbrück. I have them on my legs and back too. I've been free for eight months, and I don't believe it yet," she said solemnly, and she saw that there were tears sliding down his cheeks as he listened, and he was holding tightly to her hand. He couldn't imagine what she'd been through, but he had never admired anyone so much in his life. He loved her more than ever and wished he could protect her now, but he was in danger himself, and indirectly putting her and all the nuns at risk too. He realized that even more acutely now.

"Why don't you go to Switzerland now, to be with your sister and be safe there?" he asked her.

"Because I'm not like her, and I don't have a husband, and children to protect. I can't walk away from those who may need me here. I can't leave children in danger and suffering, hidden away like you are now, some of them for years. Some of them have been in hiding for seven or eight years, even before the war, and it won't be over for them until the war is over and the Nazis are gone. I can't walk away now, Ted. I can't. If even one of them needs me, I want to be here, not in Switzerland having lunch with my sister's friends." He nodded. He knew now that that was who she was, and had guessed it for a while.

"And if they call on you again for help, to transport a child or children to safety, would you still risk that now?" He needed to know, for his own peace of mind, to know if she would be safe when he left her, or even alive if he came back.

"Yes, I would," she said simply. "That's why I'm here, and who I am, why God sent me here, and why he saved me from Ravensbrück, so I could be useful again. It's what they do at St. Blaise. The orphans they have are all Jewish, their families deported and probably killed. They all have new identities and papers, but that's how they came here, and if more need to come, we'll take them, and I'll bring them myself if I need to. We can't let a single one of those children die because this country is being run by madmen."

"For God's sake, Sophia, will you at least be careful?" He looked desperate as he asked her. It was the answer he had expected but not the one he wanted to hear.

"I always am. I was never caught. Only suspected. I'll be more careful next time."

"And if they catch you again?"

"Then I'll either die for my sins, whatever they are, or I'll escape again, or die trying."

"That's not reassuring," he said, profoundly upset. He loved her and didn't want to lose her. And she wasn't even his.

"Will you stop flying bombing missions when you go back?" she asked him, and he smiled and shook his head.

"No, I won't. I guess we're freedom fighters, both of us, fighting for what's right and the lives we can save, but when this bloody war is over, then what? When do we get our turn to have a life?" He wanted a life with her.

"I don't need a life. I gave mine to God to use as He wishes. And when this is over, I want to help put the broken back together, to find a home for the children, better than an orphanage. I want to comfort the men and women who lost all their children, and the children who lost their parents and brothers and sisters. There is a lifetime of work to be done, and I want to be here to do it. I need to be, Ted. It's who I am."

"There are other ways to do that," he said to her.

"How? Where? Unless I'm here where it started, how can I help finish it? When this is over, you'll go back to New York. I'll be here, with lots of work to do in Germany. I'll go back to Berlin when the war ends. It's where I'm meant to be."

"Maybe not. And maybe I'll be here working at the war trials, and there will be war trials after the atrocities that have been committed here, and we don't know the half of them yet," he said, and she nodded in agreement with him. "When this is over, I'm coming back to see you, Sophia. I want to see you again, and you can tell me then what you want to do. None of us knows how long this will take, or how much damage there will be when it's over." There was a good chance that neither of them would be alive when it was, but he didn't say it. "I just want you to know that if I'm alive and breathing, I'm coming back." She smiled, wanting to believe that it would happen, even just as friends. She still missed Claus, her friend from the meetings, who had gotten her started transporting children, saved Theresa and Heinrich, and died trying to blow up a train. It was a savage war, which caused savage casualties. She hoped she and Ted wouldn't be among them, as two more. But for now, nothing was sure. And both of them were still in danger.

Ted spent another month at St. Blaise after that. He looked at her differently after he knew her story, with even more respect and admiration than before. But he still didn't believe that her destiny was to be a nun, and that she couldn't serve those in need in some other form. But he knew he couldn't convince her of that now. She wasn't ready to hear it yet.

It agonized him to imagine the horrors she had seen and experienced at Ravensbrück, and how lucky she had been to escape. She didn't tell him about Hans, but there wasn't much to tell, except that they had been friends to the limited degree they could be, as enemies in a war. But she was grateful that Hans didn't seem to have reported them that night, or they probably would have been caught. So he had had a hand in their successful escape. Whatever she had said to him that night had hit its mark.

There was a strong feeling of peace between her and Ted. They knew everything that there was to know about each other. He knew the tragedies that trailed behind her. And she knew his goals and what tormented him. He felt guilty every time he dropped a bomb while on a mission, wondering who he had killed. But his guilt and her scars were the price of war, which they were willing to accept. What Sophia would not accept was to do nothing. He understood that now.

It took a full two months for Dr. Strauss to be satisfied with the healing of Ted's ankle, and sure that the bones had knitted properly. Ted was still using one crutch to support himself, although he needed it much less. He stayed another two weeks, until mid-April, when he was steady on his feet and could make a safe escape. He was grateful for every minute he could spend with Sophia, and she didn't admit it to him, but it was getting harder and harder to resist the logic and emotion of his arguments, and she was beginning to question her own path in light of the love she felt for him as well. She thought that in the long run, she would be glad she remained true to her vows, and she would always know he had loved her, and she loved him. She told herself that knowing that would be enough, and she would remain faithful to her vows. She knew they wouldn't be able to communicate with each other after he left, until the war was over. And she hoped he would still be alive then. The coming months or years were going to be far more dangerous for him than for her, flying bombing missions. Every time he flew, he risked being shot down again.

In the middle of April he made radio contact with the intermediary who could help him. One of the farmers Mother Paul knew had a radio, which they used from time to time for subversive purposes. A code message came back two days later, and Ted knew where he had to go. It was a few hours' walk from where they were, and he was able to cover the distance now.

They said goodbye in the cellar room where he had spent two and a half months and they had talked for so many hours. And even knowing he shouldn't, he kissed her, and she didn't stop him. It was the one kiss she allowed herself before closing that door forever.

"I love you, Sophia," he whispered to her with all the emotion he felt for her. He was taking the memory of her with him.

"I love you too," she whispered back. She felt like two people now, one of them in his arms. She was both Sophia Alexander and Sister Anne. Sister Anne would remain to do her work, and whatever was asked of her, no matter how much risk was involved. Ted knew that she was too brave for her own good.

Ted thanked Mother Paul and the other nuns, got a glimpse of the children he had never met, and set off across fields and behind farms and across small streams, in the direction he'd been told to go. He looked tall and strong, with his blond hair shining in the sun as he turned back and waved. A slim figure in a nun's habit, Sophia stood and watched him, and he knew he'd always remember that final image of her, and then he disappeared in the trees. They were going to pick him up at six o'clock in a daring move on an old, deserted airstrip. They'd have to be fast and lucky, and he was hoping to be both, when they landed and took off again within minutes shortly after sunset, and headed toward England and his base.

Sophia was just shepherding the children in for dinner, coming back from the field where they'd been playing, when she heard a humming sound above them, looked up into the sky and saw a small plane in the distance roll and dip its wings and then head straight up into the sky and disappear into the clouds. It was his final goodbye, as they both prayed they would meet again.