Sometime later, Yona drifted once again to sleep, but this time, her slumber was dreamless, and when she awoke to light streaming through the windows, she felt well rested for the first time in weeks. She sat up, startled that she had slept so soundly. How could she have let down her guard? Quickly, she got to her feet, smoothed her dress and her hair, and headed for the door, which opened easily; Jüttner must have unlocked it when he’d risen that morning.
“The nuns?” she asked without greeting as she entered the kitchen. “They are all right?”
Jüttner was in full uniform, sipping a cup of coffee at the small table. He looked up and smiled indulgently, almost as if she were a child asking for an extra serving of cake. Yesterday he’d looked as if he was unraveling. Today he looked polished and unflappable. The swift transition chilled her. “Good morning, Inge. And how did you sleep?”
“The nuns?” she repeated.
“They’re fine, Inge.”
But his eyes were cold and hard, and she didn’t believe him. “Show me. Please. I must see them.”
He gestured to the seat across from him, and as she sat, slowly and reluctantly, he rose to get the silver coffeepot. He poured her a steaming cup and then sat back down. “I was just about to go myself.”
“Take me with you.” Yona held his gaze.
He hesitated. “That would make you happy? Very well. But first, you will have some coffee and some food. You are my guest.” Jüttner didn’t wait for an answer before pushing a hunk of bread with a fat pat of butter toward her. Yona stared at it in disbelief; she couldn’t imagine any Polish citizen had tasted butter since the start of the war. There was cheese, too, and a small platter of cold sausages. Yona hadn’t eaten since the day before, but the food, the utter bounty of it, made her stomach turn. She began to push the bread away, but then she saw Jüttner’s expression, and instead she picked it up and took a small bite, which earned her a nod of approval.
“Thank you,” she said once she’d swallowed, though the words tasted as bitter as the bread.
“You’re welcome.” Jüttner’s eyes slid away. “I thought you might try to leave during the night.”
Yona bit her lip before she could ask if that was why he’d locked her in her room like a prisoner.
“You see, Inge,” he said, his eyes returning to her. There was something softer there now, something more familiar. “It would have broken me.”
She felt a surge of pity for him, but she wouldn’t forget who he was, what he had become. “I am still here.”
He bowed his head. “You cannot go. I haven’t been whole since…” He paused and then stood abruptly, busying himself with carrying his plate and cup over to the kitchen counter. “It would be a humiliation.” He cleared his throat a few times, his back to her, and then he was silent.
“The nuns,” she said after a few minutes had passed. “Please. Will you take me to them?”
He wiped at his eyes before turning around. “We’ll leave in five minutes. Finish your bread, Inge.” He brushed crumbs from the corner of his mouth and smiled. “There are people starving out there.”
* * *
In the bright light of morning, the quarter where Jüttner lived was both beautiful and eerily deserted. As they walked in silence toward the church square on the north side of town, their footsteps were a conspicuous tap-tap on the stone, and Yona imagined people peering through slits in the curtains of the windows above, wondering who she was, what she was doing with a Nazi commander. They would assume she was like him. They wouldn’t know she was only here to save the women in the church.
But it was more than that, wasn’t it? She was also rooted in place by the familiarity of Jüttner’s face. He was a part of her, even if she abhorred the role he was playing in this war. Yona had never known what it felt like to be part of a family, and here was a man who, despite all his enormous flaws, had once loved her. Perhaps he still did. But was craving that love, even in part, a silent acquiescence to the choices he had made? Or was it simply human nature? And if that was it, how would she ever turn those feelings off? She couldn’t stay forever, but once she departed, she’d be alone again, and in the process, she might be breaking her father’s heart anew. Did she bear responsibility for the pain that would inevitably come?
“Be careful there,” Jüttner murmured, touching her arm to help steer her around a puddle in the street. It was only as she passed that she realized the water was pink with stale blood and that there were bloodstains on the sidewalk and against the base of the storefront to her right, a butcher’s shop that had been boarded up and abandoned. Her stomach turned, and she pulled away from Jüttner, hating herself for being warmed, even in part, by his concern for her. People had been murdered here, and recently—she could still smell the metallic scent of death.