Éva’s heart somersaulted at Patrik’s announcement. Friemann Avraham. The name couldn’t be more Jewish.
Why had he uttered it? Perhaps due to the delirium. That could be. He’d helped Jews, people like Zofia. Maybe he’d helped others. This could be the name of a man to whom he’d given aid.
Perhaps this was the secret he’d hidden from her. She studied his features, his dark hair, olive skin. Maybe it was true. He wasn’t the perfect German version of Aryan, that much was clear. But what blood flowed in his veins? Jewish? Magyar? A little of both?
She had trusted him once enough to want to marry him. He’d broken that trust. Little by little, she’d come to forgive him, to move past the hurt. But now this. Just when she understood his motivation for lying, yet another falsehood. He hadn’t needed to keep his very identity a secret from her. She wouldn’t care if he was Jewish.
What else was he lying about? Maybe even his belief in Jesus? That would be enough to destroy them forever.
The doctor with the Nazi flag in his window knelt on Patrik’s other side.
The older man glared at Éva, Zofia, and Ernő. “That’s a Jewish name. What is going on here? What is this all about?”
“He’s delirious. I … I can prove that’s not his name.” With shaking fingers, Éva drew Patrik’s identity card from his pocket, the one that labeled him as an Aryan.
The doctor waved her off. “That could be forged. Half the Jews in the country have false papers these days.”
“You have to believe us and help us. We have to get to Nagyvárad as fast as possible. My, uh, my mother is dying. But I won’t leave this man. Please, please.”
The doctor shrugged and lifted the pants leg from Patrik’s wound. “Just as I suspected. Infection. But I don’t have penicillin.” He reached into his black bag. “Here’s some gauze and bandages. Use alcohol to clean the wound. I’ll leave some aspirin for you to give him.”
The doctor all but threw the items at Éva. Then he clicked his bag shut, came to his feet, and brushed off his pants. He glanced around their little group, blue eyes narrowed as if memorizing their faces. Then he tromped off through the woods.
Éva released a pent-up breath. “That was close.”
Zofia brushed her burnished bangs from her eyes. “More than close. He knows the truth.”
“He does?” Éva clutched her chest. “I thought we covered well. Is he going to turn us in?”
“As soon as he can.”
“Then we have to get out of here. Now.” What was going to happen to them? Not a labor camp. They hadn’t come this far to get caught.
Zofia tottered to her feet. “Get ready.”
“Where are we going to go? And how are we going to transport Patrik?” Éva fought to keep the tears at bay. Everything, absolutely everything, had gone wrong.
Life was a mess. And possibly at its end.
Ernő rubbed Éva’s shoulder. “Listen to me, both of you.”
Éva relaxed under her brother’s ministration. Her heart ached for Apu and Anya, but at least her big brother was here. By her side, just as he had always been from the time she was little. He would take care of them.
“This is what we’re going to do. I’m going back to the train. There have to be blankets. The bombs didn’t obliterate everything. We’ll make a stretcher for Patrik and transport him to the train. That’s a place no one will think to search for us. After we get some rest, we’ll decide what to do.”
With a quick kiss on Zofia’s cheek, Ernő raced off, his footsteps in the woods fading to nothing.
Éva used the water in the teacup and a piece of her slip to bathe Patrik’s hot face. Where were they going to get alcohol to treat the infection? The doctor had given them the other supplies, but not that.
She sat back and rubbed her gritty eyes. Zofia sat beside her and drew her into an embrace. Such a motherly gesture. “God will take care of this. He’s in control. All we have to do is trust.”
“Trust what? Who?” Éva faced Zofia. “Is it true, what Patrik said? Is he Jewish?”
“That’s not for me to say.”
“If it weren’t true, you would deny it.” Éva jumped to her feet and kicked at the dirt with the toe of her oxford. “Why would he hide it from me? Why not tell me?”
“Please don’t ask me questions I can’t answer.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
“Save them until Patrik is better. When he is awake and strong enough, he can give you the information you want.”
So it was true. Dear God, it was true. Yet again, Patrik hadn’t trusted her with the truth.
Ernő’s arms ached from carrying Patrik from the woods to the burned-out train. The black monstrosity sat twisted and mangled on the torn-up tracks. Even the grass around it was singed and pockmarked by the bombs, but smoke no longer rose from the shell. It was safe to return.
They had made it just before sunrise. Now Ernő kept a lookout while the rest of them slept. Not that they had anywhere to go if the Germans or Reka came searching for them.
Pink tinged the sky above the eastern horizon, where the Soviets edged their way ever closer to Hungary. If only the four of them could wait here until the Russians liberated them.
But it might be too late.
A scent of honeysuckle tickled his nose. Even after all they’d been through, Zofia still smelled beautiful. He turned to her as she came and sat beside him on the edge of the boxcar. She wrapped the blanket they had found among the debris around her shoulders.
“You couldn’t sleep?”
She shook her head. “Between your child kicking me and the thoughts running through my brain, slumber has proven elusive.”
He longed to reach out and touch her belly, to feel his child growing in her womb. But he held back. Her betrayal still stung.
And there was a question he had for her. “Is it true?”
“Is what true?”
Ernö ground his teeth. “Please don’t act like you didn’t hear Patrik.”
She studied her hands as she twisted them in her lap. “That is for Patrik to tell you, not me.”
Heat rose in his chest. “So you will not share it, even with your husband?”
“It’s his story, not mine.”
“I think I have my answer.” He returned his gaze to the wooded scenery in front of him, the trees’ leaves now touched with yellow and gold from the sunrise.
She brushed his arm, and he flinched. “Don’t pull away. We’re about to have a baby together.”
“We share the most intimate of relationships, but I don’t have any idea who you are.”
“I’m the same woman you married.” There was a catch in her voice.
“You aren’t.”
“Don’t you see? They could do to you what they did to my mother. And I couldn’t bear another loss. I begged Patrik to tell you I was in hiding. That I was alive and well. He thought it best not to. That’s why I sent you that note.”
He turned to stare into her shimmering eyes. “The Gestapo came after me anyway.”
“I know. Maybe it wasn’t the best choice, but at the time, Patrik believed it was my only one. Over my better judgment, I allowed him to persuade me.”
“What about Patrik?”
She sighed and blinked several times. “He has his own story, his own trauma from his past. To survive, he took on an Aryan identity years ago. Many of the Zionist Youth do the same. I would have if I could have. But there were too many other requests ahead of mine, and they never got around to me.”
“So he withheld his identity to protect Éva?”
“Éva and himself and many others. Even I didn’t know his true name until tonight.”
“But you knew he was Jewish.”
“Igen. The Zionists all are.”
Ernő took some time to digest this information. Had her motives been pure? Patrik’s too? Could there be room in a marriage for deception of this kind?
“What I did, what he did, was out of self-preservation and love for those around us. Nothing is black-and-white these days. Who is to say what will or won’t save us?”
“Isn’t God able to do that?”
She twirled a lock of her red hair. “Yes, He is. But sometimes, to accomplish that, He uses us, much like He used Rahab to protect the Israelite spies. When He asks us to trust Him, He doesn’t call us to be foolish.”
He grunted in half-hearted agreement. The first rays of the day crested the tops of the trees and illuminated the ground in front of them.
His wife took him by the hand and guided him to feel the child moving within her. “We have this little one to think about. We’ll be parents in a few months. He needs both of us to love him, to nurture him, to teach him. I can’t do this alone. I don’t want to.”
The baby kicked. What an amazing sensation. Together, with the Lord’s help, he and Zofia had created new life. Inside her rounded stomach was another tiny human being.
This child would need both of his parents. “No more lies.”
“I have shared with you all of my secrets, the ones closest to my heart, the ones hardest for me to express.” She nuzzled against him. “I have bared myself for you. There is nothing between us now.”
From his pocket, he pulled out a pamphlet she had written. He shouldn’t carry it on his person. In fact, he should have destroyed it. But something made him hang on to it. He unfolded the paper, the black ink barely visible in the half light. “You really wrote this?”
“I did. And many others like it.”
“I never knew I was married to such a talented writer. What you’ve penned has made me see the world in a different light. The Jews haven’t been treated well in this country for a long time, many years before the alliance with Nazi Germany.”
He smoothed the creased sheets. “What does it matter what blood flows through our veins? Did God not create us all the same? Do we not all have the same father in Adam? The differences between Jews and Gentiles are in our genes, not in our characters. There is good and evil in the Jewish race. There is good and evil in the Aryan race. When the Lord judges us, He will not judge us on our ancestry but on our belief and faith in Him.”
“I believe every word of it.” She pursed her lips. “Do you?”
He pulled her close and kissed her lips. “I do. Until I read this, until I really opened my eyes and looked around me, I never understood my prejudice. When I see you, I don’t see a Jewish woman. I see my beloved wife.”
“Can we move on from here?”
“I would like nothing better.”
Someone stirred behind them, and Éva appeared, dark bags underneath her eyes. “You two are early birds.”
“The alcohol we found on the train and doused on his wounds helped. The infection is receding, and his fever is down.”
“That’s good.” Ernő nodded. “We can be on the move soon.”
What was that sound? He pricked his ears. A hum. The hum of a car. Many cars. And machinery. In the distance, an armada appeared, including trucks and cranes.
Everything needed to remove the train.
With them inside.
Éva sat transfixed as the machinery moved in the train’s direction.
“We have to get out of here.” Ernő pulled Zofia from her spot on the edge of the car.
Éva turned back into the train. “Wait. There’s something I need to find.”
“Nem. Not now, Éva. We must leave. It will take us a while to get Patrik moved.”
“Just two minutes. That’s all I need. Please.” Without waiting for her brother’s answer, she sped away.
From behind her came Zofia’s soft voice. “Let her go.”
In which of the burned-out cars would she discover her clarinet? Where had she been sitting? The cars were all the same, and now not much of them remained.
She picked her way around charred seats and twisted metal. God, lead me to it.
Her original seat had been near the middle of the train. That’s about where she had to be now. Luggage and belongings filled the aisles, blown all over the place and burned.
Wait. A flash of yellow and green caught her eye. Her favorite dress, the lemon-colored one with a leaf pattern. This was the right car.
Careful of the jagged shards of train sticking up, she knelt on what was left of the car’s floor and sifted through the items. A man’s shoe, or what was left of it. Her fuzzy pink sweater, covered in burn holes. A blackened strand of pearls. Perhaps Reka’s.
And then she found it.
Her clarinet case.
Nem, nem. The heat of the fire had burned through the lid. The instrument’s wood was charred. No longer could she distinguish her family’s stamp, the rock with a cross on top of it.
Ruined.
Unplayable.
A sob caught in her throat. “Why, Lord, why? Haven’t You taken enough from me? This too? I don’t understand. I have no home. I may never see my parents again. I’m not sure I have a future with the man I love. You can’t take my music from me, too. Don’t do this to me.”
As great sobs rushed over her, she covered her face. Too much loss. Too much destruction. Though she almost never cried, this time she gave in to the tears.
“Éva?”
She wiped her eyes and peered up. Like a vision, there—the early morning sun streaming behind him—was Patrik. Hunched over, he limped toward her, stopping now and then. To save him the effort, she hurried to his side. “You shouldn’t be up.”
“We have to move. When Ernő said you’d run off, I knew where to find you.”
“It’s ruined.” She pointed at her clarinet’s remains.
“I know. You can get another one.”
“Apu made that one especially for me. Fashioned it the way I liked it. That instrument was his masterpiece. All I had remaining of him. Now it’s gone. How much more are we going to lose?”
“We don’t have much left to give. Only our lives.”
“That’s why I’m so afraid.”
“You still have me.”
Having cried out her entire store of tears, Éva wiped her face. “Let me help you back to the others. We have to leave.”