The Things We Cherished (33 page)

The road wound downward, depositing them at the monastery gates. There was no intercom or guard and Charlotte wondered how anyone might know they had arrived. But a moment later a nun shuffled toward them.

Brian rolled down the window. “We’re here to see Sister Anastasia.” Charlotte held her breath, half expecting the nun to deny them entrance. The woman seemed neither surprised nor troubled by the unannounced visitors before dawn, though, opening the gate and waving them inside. Brian pulled onto the patch of gravel she indicated.

Charlotte stepped out of the car, breathing the crisp morning air as she took in the panorama below once more. A breeze blew gently, sending the waters lapping against the rocks. There was little time to marvel, though—Jack and Brian were already following the nun down a path made of smooth, flat stones toward the high entrance to the monastery. It was Sunday morning, Charlotte noted, trying to get her bearings in relation to the days that had passed since leaving home. But the convent was quiet and still. They passed through a courtyard with a magnificently tended flower garden in the center, its pinks and blues a sharp contrast to the otherwise colorless surroundings.

The nun led them wordlessly down a corridor into a room that Charlotte took to be a dining hall, with long wooden tables pushed to either side. The ancient walls and floor gave off a damp smell.

The woman walked from the room, closing the door behind her, and the three of them stood in awkward silence. In the distance,
a bell began to chime. Charlotte gazed out the window at a bird that swooped low over the rolling olive groves on the far side of the lake. What would it be like to live here, to wake up each day in such tranquil surroundings?

Suddenly aware of someone watching her, Charlotte lifted her head, her eyes meeting Jack’s. She expected him to look away, but his gaze met hers, held. Her breath caught. Her mind spun back to the story Jack recounted of seeing her for the first time years ago. If she had looked up and noticed him, would it have been like this?

She shivered involuntarily, then wrapped her arms around herself against the chill. “Here,” Jack said, coming up beside her and draping his jacket around her shoulders.

She hesitated, caught off guard by the intimate, unexpected gesture. “Thanks. It’s colder in here than outside.”

Behind her, Charlotte heard a scuffling noise and the three of them spun toward it in unison. There was someone else in the room, she noticed then, a woman wearing a plain gray dress that blended into the granite wall behind her, which had made her almost undetectable when she had been motionless. She stood facing away from them, looking out the window. Her hair was covered in matching gray cloth, a simpler version of the habit that the nun who escorted them in had worn.

“Hello?” Charlotte said uncertainly. The woman turned toward them and as her face became illuminated in the pale light, Charlotte gasped. She knew then exactly who the woman was and why she would indeed be able to help Roger, if anyone could. For though the habit obscured her hair and her face was lined with age, the features were unmistakable.

She studied the woman with disbelief, as though seeing a ghost. “Magda?”

The woman shook her head slightly, her faint smile almost
imperceptible. No, of course she wasn’t. Magda had died in the camps. And Magda would have been Roger’s age, even a few years older maybe. The statuesque woman who stood before them, beautiful even in nun’s clothing, could not have been much more than sixty-five. But the wide cheeks and dark eyes were almost an exact replica of the images she had seen of Magda. Except for the dimpled chin, which was pure Roger.

“Anna?” Charlotte tried again, taking a step forward. “Anna Dykmans?”

The woman blanched slightly, as though stung by the name. “Yes, I was once called Anna. I go by Anastasia now.”

Charlotte’s mind raced. Magda and Anna had died in Belzec. So how was it possible that she was standing here before them?

No, she realized. Anna had not died. Magda had died in Belzec and the presumption had been that a child as young as Anna would have perished along with her mother. She remembered Roger’s account of a rumor that a girl had escaped. Roger had assumed through his haze of desperation and hope that by “girl” they had meant a young woman, and he had spent the intervening years searching for Magda. But perhaps the witness really had meant a small child, now the woman standing before them.

“Anastasia,” Charlotte said aloud, processing it. The name bore a hint of Anna, the girl that she had once been. But it was different enough that no one would have linked her to her former life. And the choice was ironic too, Charlotte reflected. Anastasia had been the youngest daughter of the Russian czar Nicholas, and the legend persisted that she had escaped the execution of the royal family by the Bolsheviks and was living somewhere under an assumed identity. Risen from the ashes, as the woman standing before them seemed to be. “But you were Anna Dykmans?”

“Yes. Darien is my married surname.”

Married, Charlotte reflected. So the woman hadn’t been in the convent her entire life. What would prompt one to give up the outside world and retreat here? Charlotte thought of her own flight to Philadelphia after the pain of her mother’s death and Brian’s betrayal. Perhaps vows of solitude weren’t such a strange idea after all.

“You are wondering,” Anastasia said in broken English, “how it is that I am alive? There are a great many answers to that question: fate, luck, the goodwill of strangers, some of whom died as a result of their selflessness …” She drifted off, as though lost in her memories.

“How did you escape the camps?” Charlotte prompted gently.

The woman looked up at her, eyes clearing. “Oh, I was never in the camps. When my mother heard the Nazis coming to our door, she somehow got me to our neighbors, the Baders. They were known as people who had helped Jews.”

Charlotte tried to process the information. The whole time Roger had been searching for Magda and Anna, the child had been so close by. In fact, when he had gone to the Baders to ask if they had seen anything, Anna would have been right there. Why hadn’t they returned the child to him, or at least let him know that she was there? Were they doing what they thought best to protect Anna, or had they simply been too afraid?

So Magda had been able to spirit Anna away before her arrest. Of course, the Nazis would have known that Magda had a child, would have demanded her whereabouts. But Magda surely had not given up that information and she had paid with her life.

“The Baders were good people, but ultimately the Nazis grew wise to their ways and came back for them. We were all arrested and sent to a detention center.” The older woman shuddered “From there we were put on a truck headed to one of the camps.
But before we reached our destination, Frau Bader pushed me off the truck into the woods. I don’t know how she expected me to survive. You can imagine the odds.” Charlotte nodded. A young child, alone in the forest. She might have starved or been picked up by the Nazis or someone sympathetic to them. “A couple found me and hid me until after the war.”

She continued, “It wasn’t one of those fairy tales you hear about these days, the family adopting the little child and raising her as their own. They kept me in the cellar and when food was scarce, I was the one who went without. It was a nightmare and I sometimes wished I was in the camp with the Baders.” Anastasia’s voice trailed off and Charlotte found herself curious and relieved in equal parts when the older woman did not say more about her experiences in hiding. “After the war, they deposited me at a displaced persons camp. A woman in East Berlin took me in exchange for a modest government stipend that was being offered to anyone who would care for children.

“Of course, I never knew most of this. I was less than two years old when I lost my mother and my memories were hazy, soon obscured by time. The woman in Berlin who raised me, Bronia she was called, became the only mother I had ever known. Then, when I was older, I was able to escape over the Wall and flee to the West.”

“Have you been a nun ever since?” Brian interjected and Charlotte cringed inwardly, hoping his outburst would not stop Anastasia from speaking freely.

But she shook her head and continued. “I married and lived in London for a time. But I never really felt at home in the outside world. So after my husband died, I made my way here. You must think it strange, my being in a convent when my birth mother was Jewish—my stepmother, Bronia, as well. But after I fled Berlin, I was taken in by some nuns in the south of France and it was there
that for the first time I found peace. At the time, I didn’t know that this would be my calling so I went out into the world.”

“How did you find out?” Charlotte asked. “About your real family, I mean.”

“Right before I left Berlin, Bronia said something that made me wonder about my childhood. My curiosity grew over time, and years later, well after the Iron Curtain fell, I returned to the East to do some digging. I found Bronia’s adoption file and the records from the displaced persons camp, and ultimately even the documents where the Nazis had registered me with the Baders at the time of our arrest.” Watching the woman’s face, Charlotte could imagine her search for answers, finding the documents that chronicled her own history of tragedy and suffering. “Finally, I was able to discover my real family in Breslau. There was nothing there anymore, of course; the house had long since been expropriated, first by the Nazis and later by the Communists. But I learned that my mother perished in the camps.”

“I’m sorry,” Jack said gently. “And your father?”

Charlotte looked up. Was he referring to Roger or Hans? But Jack was being purposely vague, she could tell, unsure how much Anastasia knew.

“I’ve researched it,” the woman replied. “And I learned that Hans Dykmans was killed by the Nazis shortly after his arrest.”

Charlotte stifled a gasp. Anastasia had no idea that her real father was Roger.

Your father is alive, Charlotte wanted to shout. But she did not. That information, on top of everything else, might upset Anastasia, keep her from telling them what they needed to know.

“You contacted us about some information?” Jack prompted.

“Yes, recently I learned about the Dykmans case. It’s been in the
news for some time, I know, but we have so little contact with the outside world here. A few weeks ago, a visitor to the convent left a newspaper behind and that’s when I saw the story.”

“Did you know about your uncle?” Charlotte asked, the last word sticking in her throat.

Anastasia shook her head. “I’d learned from my earlier research that my father had a brother and a sister, but I assumed they were long since gone. Then I saw the article and started digging—I was amazed to discover that Roger Dykmans was still alive. And that’s when I remembered the clock.” She paused, swallowing. “When I went back to Breslau, I mean Wroclaw, I knocked on the door of the neighbors who I learned had saved me, the Baders. They had perished in the camps, but the woman who lived in the house was an elderly cousin of theirs and she gave me a clock that she said had belonged to my family.

“At the time I was struck because the clock was exactly like one I had seen in Berlin years earlier, right down to the maker’s insignia. One I had stolen, in fact, to finance my escape to the West.” Was it the same clock that they had seen in Salzburg, Charlotte wondered? What were the odds of two such unique timepieces existing and crossing the paths of this one woman in a lifetime?

“It wasn’t until some time after I brought the clock back with me that I discovered the telegram,” Anastasia continued. Charlotte’s breath caught and she willed herself to remain silent and let the older woman continue, rather than demanding to see the document. “I wanted to know more about its significance, so I wrote to the Baders’ cousin, but my letter was returned unopened—the woman had either moved on or died.”

Which explained, Charlotte thought, why Roger had come up empty when he had later returned to Wroclaw, looking for the
clock. “And then, when I heard about the charges against my uncle and realized that the telegram might somehow be relevant, I knew that I had to contact you.”

“Do you have it?” Brian asked. The woman reached behind her and produced a timepiece identical to the one they had seen in Salzburg.

Charlotte stepped forward and studied the clock. It could be a replica, she thought, willing herself to be calm. But the farmer’s initials engraved in the bottom left little doubt. How was it possible? He must have made more than one, she realized.

“It’s in the bottom,” Anastasia said in a low voice, reading Charlotte’s unspoken thoughts. With trembling hands, Charlotte turned the clock over and opened the compartment. She pulled out the piece of yellowed paper and even before she unfolded it, she knew.

It was a telegram from Roger. She studied the German, then handed it to Jack to translate aloud:

My brother:

Magda arrested. Czech camp plan compromised. Make alternative plans at once. Roger
.

Charlotte and Jack exchanged looks behind the older woman. So Roger had written the telegram after all. But why hadn’t the Baders sent it for him as he had requested? Perhaps because the Nazis had arrested them before they had the chance. Or maybe they had simply been too scared. Things would have been so very different for everyone if they had—not just for Roger and Hans but also for the children who might not have died and the generations that might have come from them.

“Will this help?” Anastasia asked, gesturing to the paper. “I mean, surely people can see that my uncle didn’t mean to hurt my father at all.”

“It will,” Jack replied, but there was a hesitation in his voice, and
Charlotte knew that he was picturing Roger, slumped over in the conference room, having learned the truth about Magda and lost his will to live. The telegram alone would not be enough without Roger’s testimony. “But there’s one thing that would help even more.”

“Anna, I mean Anastasia,” Charlotte said tentatively, “we need to ask you for something else. We need you to come to Munich with us.”