She took a steadying breath and began to move quietly forward through the throng, which parted easily, for no one wanted to be visible today; they were all jostling to hide behind one another. In a minute, she found herself at the front of the crowd, which was filled almost entirely with young women, small children hidden behind them. Their courage made Yona draw a deep breath; they had all placed their bodies here deliberately to protect the youngsters behind them. They didn’t understand that their flesh and bones would offer no shield against a volley of bullets.
“This priest!” the German officer was saying as he paced, his face flushed with anger. “He is dead because of all of you. A week ago, there was an attack on a German soldier, and the assailant got away. Yesterday, we arrested a hundred citizens of this village, with the intention of making them pay for the crime, as an example to all of you. But this priest stepped forward this morning and offered his life for theirs. So, too, did these eight nuns.”
Yona gasped aloud, the sound absorbed by the anguished murmur of the crowd. Suddenly, she understood. The nuns had been planning this all along; when Mother Bernardyna had mentioned last night the bargain she’d hoped to strike, this had been it. This morning, Sister Maria Andrzeja had given Yona her papers because she knew she wouldn’t need them any longer. “No,” she murmured.
“We accepted their bargain,” the German continued, shouting at the crowd. “All of you must be punished today, so that the lesson sticks, which is why you’re gathered here to watch. You’re like children, all of you, and this is the only way children can learn. Maybe today, you will understand.”
Yona tried to catch Sister Maria Andrzeja’s eye, but the nun continued to stare resolutely ahead. Yona was so focused on staring at the nun that it took her a few seconds to realize that there were eyes on her, too. She turned to see the German officer she’d encountered yesterday, the one who had seemed so perplexed by her eyes, standing off to the side in a cluster of other officers. He was watching her, a strange look on his face, and as their gazes locked, he murmured something to the officer next to him, a tall man with graying dark hair, whose back was turned to the crowd.
The taller officer turned slowly, and as he did, time seemed to stop for Yona. In the background, she could still hear the German on the steps, and the rumble of the frightened crowd, but it was as if her field of vision had suddenly narrowed as the man’s face came into view and his eyes met hers.
His face was creased like worn fabric, and though his mouth pulled down at the corners, though his eyes had sunken farther into his face with age, she recognized him in an instant, the sight of him triggering long-latent, milk-scented fragments of memory. A face above her long-ago infant bed. A smile at her first step. A hand slipping into hers, huge and warm, to steady her.
And here he was, impossibly, more than two decades later, more than nine hundred kilometers from the apartment on Behaimstrasse in Berlin where she’d seen him last.
It was Siegfried Jüttner, the man who’d once been her father.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
His eyes never leaving hers, Jüttner started down the steps toward her, trailed by the officer who’d spoken with her yesterday, and as she stood there, paralyzed, she registered dully that he was a high-ranking officer, his uniform decorated with elaborate, silver-braided shoulder straps and collar patches. He had almost reached her before she snapped out of her shock and began sliding backward away from him, away from this man whose blood she shared. Her whole body was shaking, and her legs trembled as she melted into the crowd, never taking her eyes off him.
Lives are circles spinning across the world, and when they’re meant to intersect again, they do, Jerusza had said on her deathbed. Now, suddenly, Yona understood. The old woman had foreseen a moment like this, a terrible reunion. Perhaps the current had been pulling Yona west after all, to this. But why? We believe in God’s plan, Sister Maria Andrzeja had said just that morning, but how could any of this be it?
Up on the church steps, the angry officer was still bellowing. “So you see? Now you will witness the deaths of these eight nuns!” he barked, and the ensuing panic of the crowd was enough to let Yona slip deeper into the mass of people, hidden from her father, who was now scanning faces wildly as he moved closer. Heart thudding, tears prickling her eyes, Yona made herself smaller and smaller, letting the frantic crowd swallow her. “And maybe you will remember this the next time you consider crossing us!”
The crowd stirred, mothers bending to their young children, old men falling to their knees to pray, teenagers mumbling about rebellion and powerlessness. On the church steps, the officer was beckoning to eight soldiers, one for each of the nuns, to step forward with handguns. Suddenly, Yona stopped in her tracks. She could still see her father, but he couldn’t see her, though he was scanning the crowd desperately. She felt suddenly ill, and though she didn’t have the right vantage point to see the nuns anymore, she could feel their pain radiating out over the assembled group.