فصل 95

emilia

Florian Beck. The knight was Florian, like Saint Florian, the patron saint of Poland. The Nazi soldier had tried to cause problems. He was clearly full of hate. If he discovered I was Polish, he would throw me off the boat into the Baltic.

Joana paced the floor, sewing the ear of the rabbit back onto its body. She was mad or thinking. Maybe both. The wandering boy walked over to my cot and peeked at the baby.

“Hallo,” he said to her. “I’m Klaus.”

I looked at the boy. His cheeks were red, burned from the cold and wind. The large blue life vest dwarfed his body and hung down to his knees. He was alone, like me, but he was only six years old. Where were his parents? Mama said that a transplanted bud doesn’t prosper. The shoemaker loved him, though. I could tell. He would take care of him, protect him, unlike Frau Kleist.

“Four years. We’ve kept you for over four years,” Frau Kleist used to complain. “Do you know what that’s cost me?”

“My father will come for me,” I told her. “He will pay you.”

She whipped around, furious. “Your father’s dead. Why do you think I’m so annoyed?”

Dead.

Her words had squeezed at my throat, run down through my windpipe and strangled the air from my lungs.

“It’s not true,” I whispered.

Please. It couldn’t be true.

August appeared at my side. “Of course it’s not true.” He pulled me by the arm. “Come on, Emilia, let’s snip the roses for the jam.” He shot his mother a fierce look.

• • •

The old feelings of fear began to churn within me. The baby stirred in my arms. I looked down. Her little head bobbed, almost nodding at me. And then our eyes fastened. Her sweet yet steady stare calmed me. My shoulders released and the fear dissipated.

The shoemaker arrived in the maternity ward, panting and out of breath. “You must wait for me, Klaus. These old sticks can’t move as fast anymore.” He saw the baby and his hands flew to his face.

“Look, look. A miracle, indeed.”

“Isn’t she beautiful?” said Joana.

“What’s beautiful,” said the old man, “is that she has beaten this war. You saw it on the road. Ingrid through the ice, death and destruction all around. Look what’s transpiring down on that pier. Frantic desperation. The Russians are just around the corner.”

He moved forward and gestured to the baby. “Yet amidst all that, life has spit in the eye of death. We must find her some shoes.”