Chapter 15

After Ted left Germany in mid-April of 1943, the tides began to turn slowly in the Allies' favor in May. Ted sent a message to the farmer with the radio in a code easy for Sophia to decipher. The farmer delivered the message to her. Ted was back at his base, safely arrived. That was all it said.

In May, the Allies took Tunisia, German and Italian troops surrendered in North Africa, after bitter battles there. German U-boats stopped cruising the North Atlantic and the eastern coast of the United States.

In July, the Allies landed in Sicily, and bombed Rome. The British bombed Hamburg. In August, the Americans bombed Regensburg and Schweinfurt in Germany in broad daylight. Three weeks later, in September, the Italians surrendered to the Allies. And in November, the British effected a massive air raid on Berlin. As the year came to an end, people were beginning to hope that the end of the war was coming near, with an Allied victory. It wasn't certain yet, but it was a growing possibility.

Soviet troops were fighting hard battles as well and began the new year advancing into Poland.

In March of 1944, there was a massive Allied daylight bombing of Berlin, and two weeks later, the British dropped three thousand tons of bombs on Hamburg. It was a savage war with endless casualties, and both sides were relentless in the pursuit of victory. But the Allies were coming closer. In June of 1944, fourteen months after Ted Blake had last seen Sophia, the Allies entered Rome, and the D-Day landings began on the beaches of the northern coast of France in Normandy, with the ultimate goal of reaching Paris and reclaiming France. The Germans were shipping trainloads of art treasures and plundered goods from France to Germany in case they were forced to take flight by the advancing Allies. They were taking all the spoils of war they could, although members of the French Resistance had hidden many of the national treasures in underground caves.

The nuns at St. Blaise occasionally got news from their friend with the radio. There were no messages from Ted, and Sophia had no idea if he was still alive. There had been so many American air strikes and combined missions with the British that she had no way of knowing if he was safe or not. She hoped he was. Her world remained small, confined to the convent, listening to the news on German radio. She was encouraged every time she heard of another Allied air strike on Berlin. The Allies were decimating the city and steadily weakening the German power base. She worried about the Sisters of Mercy in her convent there, but she knew that they were all willing to give their lives to see Germany defeated.

Only a few more children had joined the nuns that year when the families who had been hiding them couldn't keep them any longer. One of them had been hidden nearby and Sophia went to get her, the other two were brought to them by couriers from other cities, and within days, they blended in with the others. Their papers appeared to be in order, although all were convincing forgeries, and the local authorities suspected nothing. They left the nuns alone and had never suspected them of subversive activity, and believed them innocent.

Sophia had had a postcard from Hedi in Portugal, and one from Brigitte in Munich. She'd had a letter from Jo at Christmas, under another name. They were all leading their lives as best they could, given the war and air raids everywhere, except in Portugal. But it was good to know that they were alive and as safe as the times allowed. They wrote to her as Sister Anne. Sophia hadn't heard from her sister Theresa since she'd been sent to Ravensbrück. She was intending to contact her when the war was over. They had had no communication for three years, due to circumstances Sophia could do nothing about, and her sister didn't know where she was.

In July the newspapers were full of an account of an assassination attempt on the Führer, mounted by a group of German army officers, which had failed.

And in August, when Sophia was playing with the children with a garden hose and spraying them to their squealing delight—she was as wet as they were and the other nuns were laughing—the farmer who had brought Sophia Ted's message before arrived in his truck with a message he had written out for her, from Ted. "Paris has been liberated. Drinking champagne at the Ritz. Berlin is next. Keep the faith, T." It was the first message she'd had from him since his safe arrival back at his base in England sixteen months before. He was alive. And Paris was free. It was a long message for the farmer to have written down, not speaking English. She reported it to Mother Paul immediately.

"The Americans have liberated Paris. I had a message from Ted. He says Berlin is next."

"That won't happen overnight. It will be a hard fight for the Allies. The Führer won't give up easily," Mother Paul said. Sophia nodded and knew it was true, but the end was in sight, however long it took. "Did he say anything else?"

"He's drinking champagne at the Ritz." The two nuns exchanged a smile. Mother Paul didn't ask her any questions about her feelings for him. Sophia hadn't even known if he was alive for the past year and a half. He was a tender memory now, but no longer seemed real. And like when her father was at Dachau, she didn't want to harbor feelings for him, and assume he was still alive when he might have been dead for more than a year. They were ghosts in each other's lives now. He risked his life every day on his bombing missions. Her life had been quieter for the past year, with only one child she had transported. Children had long since been settled into hiding places or been given up to the Nazis and killed in the camps. It was the reality of children who were at risk during the war, usually because they were Jewish and their families were deported, with or without them. The Germans had even rounded up children in France without their parents and sent them to camps in Germany to be exterminated, "for the purification of the master race." Sophia thought of it every time she looked at the twenty-five children the nuns were harboring who could easily have met the same fate. It seemed so few children to save, but every life counted. The nuns had cheated death as many times as they could.

Sophia was eager to take her final vows. She had been due to take them in 1942, and was two years late, due to her arrest and being separated from her convent. She couldn't take her final vows with the Protestant nuns at St. Blaise. She had to wait until she was back with her own order in Berlin, whenever the war ended. Until then she remained a novice, but her conviction hadn't changed and she was still anxious to take her vows. She had had no contact with Mother Regina or anyone at her order since her arrest. She missed them, but she got along well with her Protestant sisters at St. Blaise, and one day she would go home to the Sisters of Mercy in Berlin and pick up the threads of her religious life with them again. She wasn't a practicing nurse here either. It would have exposed her forged papers, so the only nursing she did was for the children with runny noses, stomachaches, and flu, except for her two months nursing Ted with his severely fractured ankle. She missed nursing at times, but it had to wait for the war to end too. Everything did. Their lives were on hold until they could breathe again, and the Nazis released their chokehold on them—unless Germany won the war, which would be disastrous.

There was less and less food to be had these days, and the children were better off near the farms than in the cities. The soldiers took all they could from the farms, but the farmers the nuns knew always kept something in reserve for them and the children at the convent, and the local soldiers turned a blind eye to it. Many of them had children too. And although the Führer was not fond of religious zeal, the nuns had always been treated with respect locally. The fact that the nuns of St. Blaise were Protestant helped too. There was no question in any of their minds that they were better off here than in Berlin, which seemed to become more chaotic every day, with countless displaced people roaming the streets. At Saint Blaise, they were all safe and had a home.

There were no further messages from Ted in Paris, but at least they knew he was alive. And according to the farmer's radio, there was celebrating in the streets of Paris after the Germans left. The Americans were king there now.

From the liberation of Paris until the end of the year, the Russians were having steady victories.

Christmas was even thinner at the end of 1944. Food had grown even more scarce, rationing was more severe. The nuns' gifts to the children were smaller, and everyone was waiting for news of the war. Many of the children were old enough to be aware of it now. Some of them had the illusion that when the war ended, they would find their families again, but it was less than likely in most cases. Their families had most likely all died in the gas chambers.

As 1945 began, the Allies hammered German cities mercilessly. They took Cologne in March, and Soviet troops took Danzig. The Americans entered Nuremberg, as the Soviets began their final attack on Berlin. They reached the city in April. Adolf Hitler committed suicide at the end of April. And all German forces surrendered unconditionally to the Allies on May eighth. The nuns' farmer friend came speeding down the road and jumped out of his truck to tell them. All troops had vanished from the area. The war in Europe was over. The Führer was dead, and the Germans had lost to the Allies. The farmer hugged all the nuns and kissed the children. The nuns hugged each other. The terror and the agony, six years of hell and the shameful murder of innocents was over. Sophia thought of Hans Mahler in Ravensbrück and wondered if he had survived. In January, Auschwitz had been liberated by Soviet troops who told of unspeakable horrors, and the Allies had freed Buchenwald and Bergen-Belsen in April, and the Americans Dachau two weeks later. The troops relayed horrors that the world could not believe, of the millions of murdered people. Sophia knew she could have been one of them at Ravensbrück if she and her friends had not escaped.

There was considerable chatter among the nuns at dinner. Germany had surrendered and Berlin was free. Mother Paul saw the look in Sophia's eyes and spoke to her after dinner. She knew what Sophia had been waiting for, for years now, but the city would still be dangerous for a while, in the hysteria of the Liberation. It wasn't as docile as Paris, and competing armies had freed it, which was going to create chaos and fresh risks for citizens in Berlin. Russian, American, and British troops had freed the city, with the French on their way, which caused confusion and disorder in the streets, looting and pillaging, and even rape by soldiers out of control. Their commanding officers were doing their best to subdue them, with little success so far.

"Sophia, you need to give it a little time, before you try to go back," Mother Paul warned her. She could see how impatient Sophia was to return to Berlin.

"They're not going to attack me in a habit," Sophia tried to argue with her, to no avail.

"They're going to attack anything and everyone. They're going to be drunk and crazy, plundering and looting. There are three armies running loose there, the Russians, the British, and the Americans, and even their own officers won't be able to control them at first. You need to give it a few weeks, a month, even two, before you go back. I won't allow you to risk your life again. You've been away from your order for three and a half years, you can wait a little longer to go back. I know how excited you are to start the work that is crying out for you there, but you won't get anything done anyway in these early days. Give the armies time to regulate themselves, and then go back."

"My sisters there need me," Sophia pleaded urgently with Mother Paul. Technically, she wasn't part of the order and she didn't have to obey her, but she respected her, and wanted to leave with her blessing.

"They can manage without you for a few more weeks." Mother Paul smiled at Sophia. Even at twenty-six, she looked like a child, or a teenager, desperate to go out.

"They'll think I died if I don't go back now."

"They'll see that you're very much alive when you go back and walk through the door in one piece, ready to help."

It was an ongoing discussion between Mother Paul and Sophia for the next three weeks, as news of the chaos in Berlin was reported on the radio. Hundreds of thousands of refugees had poured into the city. Having liberated the city, the Russians took over at first, and then the Allies divided it into sectors, with each of the four liberating countries running part of the city, the British, the French, and the American, as well as the Russian. The French weren't onsite yet, but the others were. And Russian soldiers were being accused of savage treatment to the Germans, women were being raped, men were being murdered. The city had been reduced to barely more than rubble, with six hundred thousand apartments destroyed and a million people homeless and living in the streets. Food was only available on the black market, and there was mass starvation in the city, worse than during the war. The various armies who were running the city jointly were having trouble controlling their troops. Half the people who had lived there were still living there now, along with all the refugees who were pouring in.

What remained of the German High Command was also in disarray. After Hitler's suicide, one of his generals, Hermann G?ring, was captured by the Americans. Reichsführer Himmler also committed suicide, like Hitler. And the remainder of the High Command had been imprisoned by the Provisional Government of the city.

By the first week of June, a month after VE Day and the German surrender, the four Allied governments were struggling to calm things down. Sophia couldn't contain herself any longer. She packed a small bag with her few belongings and told Mother Paul she was going.

"God be with you, child," Mother Paul said, knowing that she couldn't stop her any longer. She had begged her to stay, and convinced her for a month, but Sophia wanted to go home now and see what she could do to help the lost souls of her home city.

She had tried to reach the nuns at the convent in Berlin but phone lines had been destroyed in the bombings and she couldn't get through. She also wanted to call Theresa to tell her she was alive and well, but the circuits out of Germany were constantly busy so she hadn't reached her yet.

There was a single bus to Berlin the next day, and Mother Paul and one of the other nuns drove her to it. Sophia kissed all the nuns and the children before she left. It was like leaving home again.

"Where are you going?" one of the children asked her as Sophia hugged her.

"I'm going home to the convent where I lived before, to see my other sisters and help people."

"Why can you go home, if we can't go home?" the little girl asked with a sad face. The real answer was because they didn't have homes anymore, or anyone to go home to. Neither did Sophia, but she had the Sisters of Mercy and the convent, and people in the streets who needed comfort and her nursing abilities. She couldn't wait another day longer, which was why Mother Paul had stopped arguing with her.

"It's still dangerous in Berlin, but I have God's work to do there," was Sophia's answer to the child.

"Let us hear from you," Mother Paul reminded her. "And be careful!"

"I promise I will, and thank you for everything." There weren't words enough to thank them for all they'd done for her, and she was deeply grateful for it, but now she had work to do. She had waited almost six years for this moment. And there were so many who hadn't lived to see it, like Claus and her father. But at least the monsters who had destroyed Germany and killed so many people were either dead or in prison.

She hugged the nuns one last time and boarded the bus to Berlin. It was old and dirty and half full as they headed toward the city. She had borrowed a small amount of money from Mother Paul, knowing she wouldn't need any once she got back to the convent and would return what she'd borrowed to Mother Paul quickly.

She waved as the bus pulled away. And as they drove to Berlin, she was shocked to see how many people were going there on foot, with no other means to get there, but desperate to get to Berlin. Probably Berliners who had taken refuge in the country. It would normally have been a four-hour drive, but it took them six because of the people walking, crowding the road. It reminded Sophia of when she and the others had escaped Ravensbrück and arrived in Windberge on foot themselves, through a tortuous route in the woods.

They reached Berlin at the end of the day, and the bus left them at the Stuttgarter Platz, near the Charlottenburg train station. The bus driver warned them that the bus and train stations were a hotbed of black-market activity now, with everything imaginable for sale at astronomical prices, and told them all to be careful. It was a long walk to the convent and her old neighborhood, and Sophia was impatient to get there.

She set out on foot carrying her small valise and hadn't eaten since breakfast. But she didn't see a single restaurant or café open and there was nowhere to buy food. All the shops were closed, there were throngs of people in the streets, some making deals, selling or trading food or blankets, others wandering aimlessly, many lying on blankets on the streets with nowhere else to sleep. She saw hordes of soldiers in many different uniforms. She had her forged travel papers, which would be useless to her now, but she had no other documentation, and what she had was false. The convent would vouch for her when she got there. She could hardly wait to see it. It shone in her mind like a beacon she was heading for.

She threaded her way through the crowds, past the familiar landmarks of Berlin, many of them damaged or destroyed. But it still felt like home, even in its current state of disarray. She walked past whole blocks of bombed-out buildings, and the hem of her habit was filthy. She was tired and hungry, but she didn't care.

It took her an hour to get to the convent on foot. She walked past the barren site of her old house and her father's hospital, and saw that many parts of the neighborhood had been bombed and lay in rubble. The site of her father's hospital was part of a much bigger bombed-out area now. It was unrecognizable, and brought into much sharper focus the extent of destruction in the city. But it was worth it if it had driven the Nazis out. It hadn't even occurred to her that the convent might be damaged, or worse, be in rubble too. She hadn't had news from them in years and didn't want to expose her location for their safety and her own.

She reached the convent a few minutes later. It was intact but the entire building was dark. There were no lights on, and she wondered if the sisters had turned the lights off not to attract attention, in case there were bands of soldiers roaming the streets. Much of the neighborhood had been destroyed by Allied bombs, and there were few houses with lights on. And some were abandoned. She wondered if the convent was too.

Many people had fled the city during the final bombings. She realized that the convent had a deserted look to it. The plants in front were old and dead. The paint was chipped on the front door. She rang the bell and no one answered, and she walked around to the back. She rang the back door, and no one answered that either. She peered in through a window, and it was hard to see anything. The house was dark, and it looked like some of the furniture was gone. But she had nowhere else to go, and she didn't want to roam the streets with the crowds of homeless people. She tried all the windows and found a broken one. She reached in and unlocked it, careful not to get cut by the broken glass, and slid it open. She hadn't thought to bring a flashlight with her. It hadn't occurred to her that she'd need one. As she looked in, she saw that what remained of the furniture was covered with sheets.

She tucked her habit around her and climbed in through the window. She was standing in the big cozy kitchen she had so often worked in. She flipped a switch and there was no electricity, and as she walked from room to room on the ground floor, she realized that the house was deserted. She had just come from Mother Regina's office when she heard someone running up the basement stairs, and she shrank into the shadows. She had no idea what she'd be facing. A man's voice called out asking who was there, and she was afraid he might have a gun. Shaking from head to foot, she took a step forward. He shined a flashlight on her face so she couldn't see him.

"Who are you?" he shouted at her, and then saw that she was wearing a nun's habit.

"I'm Sister Anne of the Sisters of Mercy. I live here." He shined the light away from her then and she could see him too. It was the handyman who had done repairs for the nuns when she lived there. He looked old and worn now and not quite so young, and he looked shocked when he recognized her.

"Little Sister Anne. What are you doing here? Where have you been?"

"I've been away for four years." It seemed incredible, even to her. "Where are the sisters?"

"They left two years ago when the Allies started bombing the city. They went to the Mother house in Cologne, and it was bombed, and then they moved to a house in Dresden, and it burned to the ground in a bombing raid. They're in Hamburg now. I haven't heard from them since the surrender. I'm sure they'll come back, but I don't know when. The phone isn't working, and I turned off the electricity. I've been staying in the basement since they left to keep an eye on the house, so no one breaks in and steals anything. It's been crazy here for the last month, and dangerous. You were brave to come."

"I tried to call, but I couldn't get through. I just assumed they'd be here," Sophia said, still shaking.

"They've been gone for a long time. So have you." She nodded, trying to think of what to do. "The neighborhood was badly hit a few times. A lot of people left, or were killed."

"Can I stay here?" She remembered that his name was Charlie.

"You're still a nun?" He smiled at her, happy to see her.

"Of course. I've been living with an order in the country." She remembered how dangerous Mother Paul had said it would be in the city, and she was right. But if she stayed here, she would have Charlie to protect her. And she had a right to be there, as a novice of the order, but she would have to tell them.

"Of course you can stay. You belong here. It's your home. They thought they'd be back sooner, and it would all be over. They left linens in the cupboards, and some other things. I locked up anything that looked valuable to me. I'll show you tomorrow." She knew what she wanted to do now, as she looked around in the dim glow of his flashlight. They had a lot of work to do, this was why she had come back to Berlin. She just didn't know she'd be doing it alone. But now she had Charlie to help her. She realized how lucky she was that he was still there. "Here, take my flashlight." He handed it to her. "I'll turn the electricity back on tomorrow," and then he thought of something. "Have you eaten?" She shook her head. "You can't buy anything, except on the black market. None of the stores are open. I'll be back in a minute." He ran back down the basement stairs and came back holding a heel of bread and an apple. "I don't have much else. I was going to try to find some food tomorrow. People here are starving, and willing to kill each other for a piece of bread."

"Thank you, Charlie," she said gratefully, and took the heel of bread and the apple. The bread was stale and hard and she didn't care. She hadn't eaten since breakfast at St. Blaise, which seemed a million miles away now.

"I'll fix the window tomorrow," he said, pointing to the broken one. "I thought you were a burglar."

"I thought you were too." She laughed.

"Welcome home, Sister. Welcome to Berlin, without the Nazis. It's a mess, but it will be beautiful again one day. Thank God, they're gone."

"Yes, thank God," she echoed his words, and he waved and headed back to the stairs.

"Sleep wherever you want. They won't mind."

"I'll go back to my old room," she said, and groped her way up the familiar stairs in the dark to the third floor where her cell had been. Most of the cells had been full when she moved in, and it was one of the last free ones. There was still a mattress, and she didn't know where the sheets were and didn't care. She sat down on the bed and looked out the window. There was a bomb site behind the convent, and the streetlamp was broken. It was pitch-black outside, as she sat on her old mattress and ate the stale bread and the apple. And when she thought of Ravensbrück, it was pure luxury, a meal she would have been willing to die for, and a bed without three bunkmates. After she ate, she went to the bathroom and found the water was still on. She drank some water and went back to her cell, lay down on the mattress in her habit, and smiled. She was home again. That was all that mattered. She was home, in Berlin. And then she fell asleep.