The entire story was made up: She had been a nun since she was nineteen. There had been a kitchen fire. She had been badly burned. She was on her way back to her convent after being treated. But mostly, Father Gabriel said, he expected she would never have to go into that great of detail.
A stick snapped nearby.
“Karol?”
“Yeah.” He appeared, and they stood apart a little way.
Her heart did a little flip. It surprised her to realize that she looked forward to the way he could make her smile. “I couldn’t sleep,” she said.
“Are you still sore about the medicine?”
“I feel betrayed.”
“I can understand why you feel that way,” Karol said. “Aleš is right though. We don’t even know whether the medicines would make it to the Taubers, and the chances are relatively slim.”
“Everyone keeps telling me to be brave, to take risks, that I’m needed. And yet the one time where I know I can accomplish something to make a difference, they hold me back. I thought we were doing this to help people, to win the effort.”
“There is a cost to all of this,” Karol said.
“Then why can I not just be one of the casualties?”
She could tell by the way he flinched that he was taken aback. “What is it about the Taubers that makes you so—I don’t know—willing to put your life on the line?”
Magda thought about it. “They may as well be my family—”
“But they aren’t. You were employed by them.”
“I was the boy’s sandek.”
“You were? That’s why you’re called the Godmother. I thought it was because of what you did to the Koenigs’ son. That, by the way, required some true chutzpah.”
There it was. The smile. “I think it had to do with both children.”
“You wanted to avenge the Taubers, didn’t you?”
Magda closed her eyes. “Why does everyone say that?”
“Because that is what we do when we are really angry, when we’re really injured. We want to get back at the people who have hurt us. It’s natural, Magdalena.”
She looked up at him. “And what about forgiveness?”
Karol laughed. “That’s pretty sanctimonious for these days. The fewest of us are capable of that. It’s something to aim for, but in this craziness… I don’t know, don’t you just feel angry all the time?”
“I do. And I hate myself for it. And fear. And I am ashamed of that.”
“And now you’re angry with Aleš and Renata.”
“Yes. And I fear them a little. I don’t know what they have planned.”
To keep warm, she started to walk, and he followed her. “What about you?” she asked. “The hate you must feel for what the Germans did to you, for the imprisonment in the ghetto. It’s got to be eating away at you. Do you think about killing them?”
Karol did not answer for a long time. “I’m glad the partisans are getting organized now. I’m in soldier mode now.”
“Have you ever killed a man?” She waited again.
Finally he said, “I haven’t. But I know I could if I had to.”
“What makes you think you could?”
“Because I value my life greatly. I’d do it to survive, to protect myself or my loved ones.”
“Did you have to protect loved ones before the Germans deported you?”
Karol took in a great breath. He stopped behind her.
“I don’t think I could ever kill someone,” Magda said quietly.
“You don’t know that.” He sounded angry.
“I’m sorry. Please. I don’t know what got into me.” I thought I could talk to you.
“Let’s talk about something lighter. What do you imagine your life will be like when this is all over?”
Magda scoffed, following him now as he passed her. “I can barely think past the next five minutes. My brain is freezing, and it’s not from the cold. Our days have become something of a minute-by-minute miracle, don’t you find?”
Karol’s hooded head bobbed up and down in front of her.
“What about you? What do you imagine?”
He turned, and she could sense his smile even in the dark, heard it in his voice. “Food. Lots of food.” He patted his middle. “Growing fat and happy, having a huge family, lots of children.”
Magda’s smile disappeared. “Really? You can imagine all that?”
Karol’s coat rustled. “I think I almost have to. Don’t you ever want to have children?”
“I have a child already. Samuel is my child. I am his godmother, and a godmother takes care of her godchild when the parents…” No. She was not going to finish the thought. Stick to the immediate five minutes.
“Are you going to try and find him when this is all over?”
“There, that’s it. That’s what I imagine. I imagine finding Samuel.”
Karol took in a breath, blew it out, creating an icy cloud to float out into the night. “What about having your own?”
“Then there would have to be a third.”
He laughed. “You can have four if you want.”
“No. Then I’d have to have five. And that’s a lot when I do not even have someone to love.”
Karol was silent for a while as they completed the first circuit. “Have you ever been? In love, I mean?”
Magda lingered behind him. She did not want to lie to him so up close. “No.” Her heart ached for something as simple as Radek and his first kiss.
“But why five? Or only three?”
“There is bad luck in even numbers.”
“Like in a bouquet of flowers?” he asked.
“Like in a bouquet of flowers,” she said.
“The best would be,” Karol whispered into the dark, “if Samuel was reunited with his family.”
“The best chance for that to happen,” Magda said brokenly, “is if they get the medicine they need to assure that. And the people I thought were my friends are preventing me from doing that.”
Magda touched the sides of her head beneath the coif, the wimple, and the veil. It was the perfect guise. She was a Catholic nun, concerned about the rumors of disease and epidemics in Theresienstadt. Her convent was sending her to check on whether they might send
