Martha thought about how quickly she had lost habits that had seemed like second nature when she and her grandmother had stopped going to their neighborhood church in New Orleans. “You don’t think it’s possible to go on believing unless you’re with others who share those beliefs?”
“It’s possible, yes. But it’s not easy.” He grunted. “Not even if you’re a priest. That’s one thing I learned in Dachau: if I had just one or two others to talk to, to pray with, it built me up. The times when I was all alone were the hardest. But the other thing Dachau taught me was that they can take everything away from you except what’s in here.” He raised his hand to his chest. “It’s like the memory of someone you love: you carry that inside yourself always—even if you can’t be with them.”
He must have seen the expression that flitted across her face. She wondered if Stefan had spoken to the priest about her, in the confessional perhaps. Because the look he gave her was one of such compassion—as if he knew her pain.
“You know, I pray for you every day: for all of you.”
“Well . . . thank you.” God knows we need it. She’d almost said the words out loud. But that would have sounded flippant. “I did go to church when I was a little girl: to a Catholic church. I thought it was so beautiful—the candles and the statues and all of that.” There was no need to tell him that, at the age of twelve, she’d started to think of religion as being like believing in fairies and Santa Claus.
“Do you still pray?”
The directness of his question caught her by surprise. There had been many times—especially since coming to Germany—when she had shot silent, fervent requests like arrows into the sky. Why? She couldn’t answer that. “I suppose I do, in a way,” she murmured.
“God hears those prayers.”
“Even from people who don’t know what they believe?”
“You believe in love, don’t you? You spend all day, every day, caring for people in need. You didn’t have to take that path—you chose to. And that kind of love is the essence of what God is.”
As he handed back the list, she wondered if the people whose names it contained thought of her in the same way he did. She hoped they realized that it hadn’t been her idea to try to get rid of them with the lure of food.
And if striving every day to provide for them was a kind of love, then yes, she did love them. Her mistake, in Stefan’s case, had been to allow that sort of love to turn into a different kind.
As she was walking out of the chapel, his face filled her mind’s eye. Without even realizing it, she fired off another silent plea. Not for him this time, but for herself: for inner peace and acceptance of what she couldn’t change—qualities she’d tried and failed to nurture since the day she’d said goodbye to him. Like the people on the list in her hand, she had to let him go.
Two days after the Poland-bound train pulled out of Fürstenfeldbruck station, Kitty received a telegram from the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee.
“Oh, Martha . . .” She looked up. Her face had gone ghostly white. Her lips were trembling. “They’ve found them. They’re alive!”
They ran all the way to the hospital to tell Delphine. Father Josef was there, too. After many hugs and tears, Kitty passed the telegram around for them all to see:
HERMANN AND ELSA BLUMENTHAL. LEOPOLDSTADT VIENNA. ALIVE AND WELL SHANGHAI. EXPECT LETTER.
“Twelve words,” Delphine said. “Isn’t it incredible: that your life can be transformed by just twelve words.”
The letter came three weeks later. Kitty stared at her name on the envelope, momentarily paralyzed by the sight of her mother’s handwriting. She opened it very slowly and carefully, as if it were a delicate relic from some bygone age.
Martha and Delphine were there with her, listening eagerly as she translated from the German:
“Darling—what utter joy to know that you are alive! We had given up hope when our letters to you in London were returned to us. Papa and I thought we might die of happiness when we were given the news that you have been searching for us.
“For two years we have been living with a Chinese family in the countryside south of the city. They sheltered us in their home, and in return, we worked for them, making clothes. We didn’t find out until last month that hostilities with the Japanese were at an end.”
Kitty looked up, open-mouthed. “They didn’t know the war was over. All those months, they just carried on hiding.” She turned back to the letter: “We are now living with the Medavoys, who helped us when we first arrived in Shanghai. Thank God, we are both in good health and able to work until such time as we can leave China. We long for the moment when we will be reunited with you, my darling—but we have been told that there is no prospect of getting passage out of the country until the political situation here eases . . .” She trailed off, staring at the piece of paper in her hand.