“Of course.” He lowered his head, his eyes on hers. “To exist in a place like this is like one long dark night of the soul. But always, at my lowest ebb, something would nudge me back from the brink of despair. Sometimes it was a small act of kindness from a fellow prisoner—like the time I found a scrap of bread hidden in my bedding after I’d been starved for one of the medical experiments. Other times, like the birdsong, it was nature that spoke to me. Once I caught a glimpse of a ghostly moon in a blue sky and thought of the stars that were up there, too, day and night, even though I wouldn’t see them until it got dark. It felt like God saying, ‘I’m here, I’m always here—even when you think I’m not.’”
Delphine held his gaze. “You told me before that you felt guilty for having survived when so many others died. But don’t you ever feel angry? If you could get past this fence and come face-to-face with one of those SS men, wouldn’t you want to kill him? I would.”
He nodded. “I understand that. Becoming a priest didn’t take away those instinctive emotions. But my faith forbids me from acting on them.”
“You would forgive them?”
“I would.”
“How? Why?”
“Because if I didn’t, I would be the worst kind of hypocrite. I believe in a God who, twice a day, washes all the sands on all the shores of all the world. He makes every mark disappear—from the gaping hole dug by a spade to the footprints left by a gull.”
“You’re saying that you’re as bad as them?” Delphine frowned, tilting her head toward the fence.
“What I’m saying is we all need forgiveness.”
“How can I forgive someone who stole my husband and my son from me? They might as well have ripped my heart out of my chest.”
“But no one can steal the memory of your love for them.”
Delphine’s eyes ranged over the buildings beyond the fence, at the watchtower with guards lolling against a wooden balustrade, at the soot-blackened chimney in the far distance. “That’s true,” she whispered. “But it doesn’t mean they deserve to be forgiven.”
“It’s a strange word, forgiveness,” he said. “I never really understood it until I studied Greek at the seminary. The Greek word in the Bible—aphiemi—means ‘to set free.’ When I heard that, I suddenly grasped what it was all about: forgiving is about freedom. It’s not just about pardoning the wrongdoer—it’s about releasing yourself from the power of what they did to you. Forgiving someone sets you free.”
“Do you really believe that’s possible?” She searched his face.
“I wouldn’t have said it if I didn’t.”
For a while, she went silent. Then she said: “I don’t think I’m strong enough to do that. But I am glad I came here. Just standing here makes me feel closer to Claude and Philippe: it makes me believe that I will see them again.”
He nodded. “You’re stronger than you think. You’ve already shown how strong you are.”
“Have I?”
“You could have stayed in Paris, hidden away, nursing your grief. But you didn’t.” He was looking at the wreath tied to the fence, at the holly berries, vivid red against the twisted foliage. “It’s what defines a person, the way they deal with life’s unfairness. And when you see your husband and your son again, you’ll be able to tell them all about Seidenmühle, about what you do, every single day, to make their lives count.”
CHAPTER 22
It was snowing again when Martha went to pick up the mail. For a whole week, the temperature hadn’t risen much above freezing. In the Frankfurt area, there had been a big dump of snow. The major had called to say that there would be no more transports to Poland this side of Christmas. Martha was glad. She hated the thought of her DPs heading off to a place where life was likely to be harder, not easier, than at Seidenmühle. Her DPs. She rolled her eyes. She was doing exactly what the major had warned her against. Identifying with them, thinking of them as family. But how could she help it? She had been living alongside these people every day for more than four months. She had witnessed their pain, their grief, and—occasionally—their joy. She had become godmother to a Polish baby, and she had fallen in love with a man whose language she could barely speak.
On her way back to the office, she sifted through the letters. It was something she always did as she walked. If, by some remote chance, there was a letter from Stefan, she needed to know before she reached the office. She couldn’t face making that discovery in front of anyone else.