Word Weld

I didn’t want to open my eyes. What had happened? It seemed like I had been sleeping for ages, or that I didn’t even exist (if one can cease to exist and still think about it, that is). My thoughts didn’t seem to have a coherent point of reference. I remember thinking what a night I must have had not to remember anything about myself or my situation. There was no pain, no discomfort, only the sensation of being a little cold, but that was all. It was just one of those mornings, but I felt confident that once I managed to drag myself out of bed everything would come back to me. For a moment I actually thought it would be fun to find out everything about myself. Doubtless life got boring from time to time and it would be fun to start over discovering my life.

Slowly I opened my eyes. My calm amusement began to wane as I stared up. I expected to see a ceiling I was familiar with, one that would jog my memory and cause everything I had ever known to come rushing back into my thoughts. But that didn’t happen. Instead, I stared up at a mass of grayish-white, like a gigantic blanket nailed to the ceiling. It was no ceiling, though. It was an overcast sky. Suddenly it occurred to me that I must be outside! I sat up, and the scene around me took shape.

It started with the house, whose quaint, two-story form stood framed against the trees beyond, white trees–white with snow. All around me was snow, I found, and I must have been lying in it for some time, for I was partially coated with it. As I rose and brushed myself off, I learned the first interesting fact about myself. I discovered that I was a girl by the fact that I brushed snow off my dress. I didn’t know how old I was quite yet, but doubtless the house had a reflective surface not covered with ice that would yield that information. Interestingly, when I found out I was a girl, everything about being a girl came back to me, and I ran my hand through my hair. That was when it all began.

I had some snow in my hair, but there was something else there that, at the moment, I could not identify. My hair felt a little greasy, but it felt better as the snow brushed out. But when I got to the back, it was matted and wet. Wet was fine, for I had been lying in the snow, but matted? Then I straightened it out a little with both my hands and looked at them. As I looked at my hands, there was something on my fingers–something sticky, and deep red, almost black. Suddenly, I felt sick to my stomach, and I gagged. It was blood.

At once I turned around and hid my hands behind my back, as if the blood would go away if I could not see it. But there was no escape from the burgeoning nightmare I had awoken into. I looked, having turned away from the house, and there, on the ground, was one of the most horrible sights I have ever seen in my life.

Before my feet was a depression shaped like my body. Around where my head had been there was blood, kept moist by the warmth of my head. It was greatly diffused into the snow, but it was plainly visible. Just to the right of where I had lain there were other depressions. Each one had a person in it, lying on their back, staring lifelessly into the white abyss far above. Images I almost could not believe were memories burst into my mind’s eye.

I saw them each one standing in a row, and I saw myself, as if out of my body. Around us were soldiers, men with helmets and guns. A handsome officer in a nice uniform, with an eagle above the bill of his hat and a gun in his hand, walked slowly and deliberately along the line. On the far end was my father, a respectable-looking man in his early forties. My mother stood beside him, clutching his arm. I remembered that I always thought she was so pretty, but in the memory the look on her face was fear. My father’s look was only calm reservation. Next to my mother was my brother, who was fifteen, and my baby sister, who was eleven. I was at the far end, and I remembered my feelings were fear mingled with something strange (a thought, or perhaps an emotion) that felt like a weight on my mind, dragging it down and dulling my perceptions.

The officer came to my father and asked a question. He spoke in German, and my father replied, calmly, in German. The officer then struck him across the face and cursed him. How handsome the German officer was had become completely lost on me. I was terrified of him. My father recovered and made a brief statement. Without another word the officer brought the gun up, and, pressing the muzzle to my father’s forehead, pulled the trigger. The sound of the shot was dulled as my father’s body fell backward into the snow.

I heard my mother’s voice, much calmer than I expected, pleading for her children. My old self was looking forward now, not daring to watch. I could tell that something had been wrong with me. I must have been drugged or drunk, because my horror, my fright, was all outside of the vision I was seeing. The “me” in the vision was, at the time I experienced my father’s murder, in some kind of state where I could not comprehend what was going on.

Then came the next shot, and my mother fell beside her husband. My brother’s stubborn look is something that will ever be with me, but the shot that killed him fell on my dull ears only a moment later. I saw my little sister pulling on my hand in the vision. She was crying profusely, but while I felt sorry for her, it seemed that in the vision I could not understand why she was crying! I must have known what was going on, but my mind would not acknowledge it for anything!

The officer was looking at me in the vision now as my sister clung to my side. His face, while handsome and young, was pure evil. Yet, my laboring mind could not understand anything but an overwhelming fear that surpassed even thought. Then my sister let go of me. She ran! She made for the woods some distance behind us. I watched her running, and while I watched the scene I wanted her to reach the woods. In the vision I only called her name, as if I didn’t understand why she was running away from me!

They let her get perhaps halfway to the woods before the German officer pointed his pistol at her and fired. I saw her drop in the snow, not ten feet from the safety of the trees. Then I heard the soldiers chuckling. All but one thought her attempt at escape to be very funny, and the officer made some remark about his target practice that angered me as I watched. The “me” in the vision I did not even understand what he meant.

Then the man came right up in front of me and kissed me right on the lips! I was so startled I did not know what to do or think! I had never been touched or handled in any way, much less kissed, by a man, one I knew or didn’t know. How I knew that I do not know, but I just knew it at the time. I made a strange noise that (as I watched the vision) angered me. It was a noise like a young child would make. The officer smiled at me and placed the muzzle of the gun against my forehead.

“Goodbye, imbecile,” he said.

The vision disappeared, and I felt myself thrown back, but before I hit anything my eyes opened. I found myself standing there alone, staring at my family, each one dead, with the knowledge that I, too, had died. Was I a ghost? I felt real… and I didn’t look transparent. My feet left prints in the snow, and while I did not feel as cold as I should have, I was still cold.

“Hello?” I called, just to see if my voice worked, and it did. My words were German.

I decided there had to be something to this. Feeling my forehead, I found no hole where the officer had shot me, and though my hair was still a little matted, I could find no exit wound. Yet the blood on my hair, on my hands, and on the ground, could be no one else’s.

I turned to the house in search of answers. The door was open, and as I went inside, I felt that I had been inside that house many times before. It was not so much in my head that I had been through that doorway many times, but more that I felt where things were, as if my very body were used to traveling through the house. It was filled with items I knew and (presently) had no interest in. That is, until I walked to a corner of the living room where was a little doll.  I remembered it quite well. As I lifted it up and looked at it, my mind fled to another scene.

My parents were with me in that same room, and I was sitting on the floor playing with the doll. My mother was seated on one side of the couch, my father sitting beside her.

“I don’t know what we can do about Mercy, Carolin,” my father said, looking troubled. “Last time the soldiers came through she almost gave herself away. You know what they would do to her if they found out about her?”

“What can we do? Evert, if we give her to them it will be no better! They’ll kill us anyway, since we’ve obviously hidden her for a long time.”

In the memory I must have been fifteen. Yet, for some reason I could not explain, I didn’t pay any attention to what they were saying. I watched as the younger me just kept playing with the doll. Why was I playing with dolls at fifteen? Suddenly something very dark started to occur to me.

As my parents talked, I saw myself get up and begin to pretend to dance with my doll, twirling and twirling. But in doing so I stepped on my mother’s foot.

“Ouch!” she yelled, and the young me stopped altogether. “Be careful, dear! You hurt mommy!”

By this time I already knew what was going on. The vision continued for a few moments with my mother rising from the couch to hug me, for I had started weeping hysterically. I was devastated because I had hurt my mother a little on the foot. Soon the memory faded from my mind’s eye and I stood in the deserted living room, holding my doll. Quietly, I took the doll and laid it on the couch. I trembled, and could not help crying. Why was this happening to me?

It was all very clear now, as the memories came back one by one. I had been the mentally retarded child of a wealthy German family. We lived in western Germany, and it was 1944, just after the New Year. The War was in full swing and our family had fled Berlin to escape persecution. But why were we persecuted? Was it just because I was retarded, severely retarded, and the Nazis killed the mentally ill like one would kill an injured horse?

Again my feet took me through the house until I reached what I knew was my room. There, on the nightstand, was a little Bible. Picking it up, I clutched it and pressed my lips against it. We fled because we were Christians, and it had not yet been found out. We helped Jews escape to the French Resistance, which was a powerful force in all of Nazi Europe. As Christians, we were in danger enough. As Jew supporters, we were condemned to die. And we did.

But I was still alive! Why? How? I had been shot with the rest. My hair was bloody, the snow around my head was bloody… Why was I still alive? Could I really be dead, and only trapped in a memory of my former life? Was this really death? Or was I in Hell? I remembered accepting Christ, despite my mental illness, when I was but a child. But what if it wasn’t enough? What if retarded children couldn’t be saved? What if I was really in Hell? It was certainly much colder than I imagined…

I made my way back outside and stared at the corpses of the people who were most precious to me. Wherever they were now, I was not with them. So I concluded that I must have been in Hell. I was doomed to exist in a frozen world consisting only of my dead family’s bodies and the knowledge that I was at fault. Yes, I remembered now why the soldiers had found us. My father had been right. They searched the house again, and when one of the soldiers had confronted me… Then they knew, even if they did not know we were hiding Jews, that my parents hid their retarded child, and that was enough for this officer.

It was too much for me, and I knelt in the snow before my family and begged their forgiveness, knowing I would never receive it.

“Oh, God!” I cried through angry tears. “Why put me here? I would rather burn for eternity than sit here in this nightmare! Let me out, God! Send me away! Oh, you hateful, hateful God…”

That was when something very strange happened. I heard a noise, and looking into the sky, I saw the dull clouds glow! They parted, and from the whitewashed ceiling came a fiery form, streaking toward me! It bent downward and plummeted into the snow just past a little hill off to the right, nearby where the road wound from the wood to our house.

For a moment I stood, but soon I ran, not even thinking, not even daring to think. My heart raced as I thought of that fiery form, like an angel of God… no, it was an angel of God… no, it was God.

Yet, when I reached the hill and looked over it, my heart fell into my feet. There before me was no Theophany, no archangel, but the wreckage of an aircraft, burning steadily and melting the snow around it. For the moment I was too disappointed to even realize that there was anyone inside it. I could only stand with my utter, crushing disappointment. I did not even stop to ask that if I was in Hell, why was this plane here? I stared at the flames, until the smashed cockpit filled with them. Then it snapped into my mind that there might be someone inside! I took a step forward, not knowing what do to, not knowing that I was too late to do anything.

I felt myself thrown fully backward! The plane, burning and billowing smoke, violently exploded. As the fireball turned into a mass of black smoke before my eyes, a new kind of horror filled my mind, a horror I could not truly comprehend. I got to my feet and walked back and forth along the length of the plane, pulling at the roots of my hair, almost breathless. Whoever had been inside that plane was now dead, and I could have saved them… I could have helped them…

It was clear to me now. I was a disease, a poison, a plague. I was doomed to live in a false world where everyone I touched, everyone I met, would die. Perhaps it was unreasonable, but the thought invaded my senses and drove me nearly out of my mind. I turned from the burning plane and ran through the snow. I was now very sick, my insides tied into a sailor’s knot, and if I had had anything in my stomach I would not have been able to hold it down. I ran, now in pain, back across the open ground in front of the house, past my dead family, and into the woods, the same woods my little sister had tried to reach.

Passing under the heavy, snow-burdened boughs, I ran, much hindered by the snow, for some time. I don’t even know to this day how long it was I ran. I ran until I was exhausted, and fell to my knees in the middle of the forest. All around me were dead-looking, half-frozen trees, populating a desolate world of ice in which I was a prisoner. The wood would go on forever–of that I was certain. But there was still another way out.

My dark blue dress had a belt on it. This I removed, and I had to tear it off for it was sewn in the back. Then I found a tree tall enough and climbed onto a low branch just higher than I could reach. I secured the belt to the branch with its buckle and the rest I tied securely around my neck. My weight tightening it would keep it from coming loose. Strangely, I felt victorious, as if I had defeated God’s punishment–as if I were going to escape from this horrible place, this world of death. Thus, with tears on my cheeks and a smile on my lips I eased myself off the branch.

Down I went, and looking down, I saw my feet reach for the snowy ground, only to stop short by a few inches. My neck jerked but did not break. I had hoped it would be quick, but this would have to do. Pain shot through my body, and of course, I could not breathe. Strangely, as I hung there, strangling to death, I began to have second thoughts. I reached up to the branch above my head, but the underside of the branch was frozen, and my hands could not reach around it. My fingers went to the knot in the belt. I found the end and yanked, but nothing happened. Suddenly, though I had worked hard to make this happen, I found myself panicked and trying desperately to free the knot in the belt that was killing me. I reached for the branch again, but my fingers slipped off. I kicked, I pulled at the knot, I tried to climb the belt (which only gave me another moment’s worth of air), but in the end I realized it was in vain. I even tried to scream, but I had no air to scream with, and if I had, there would have been no one to hear me. I was dying… again.

As my air ran out, my thrashing ceased and my hands, gripping the belt tight, relaxed. Though my eyes did not close, my vision faded into a blackness I knew, a blackness that had come suddenly once before.

Waking, I coughed, and found myself coughing into snow. I pushed myself up and had no idea who I was or where I was. The wood was calm and quiet, and snow was now falling between the branches. How long I had been lying there I could not say. Then I looked beside me.

There, in the snow, was my belt.

All of what is written above came rushing back into my mind. I took the belt in my hands and wept bitterly. That I had fallen from the tree was not that strange, though it was improbable. After all, the knot had been very tight, too tight for me to loosen, but it could have come loose, though it wasn’t likely. But if that were not enough, there was the fact that the belt was not hanging from the branch. It was there in my hands, completely detached from the branch. I had looped the belt around the branch and made it pass through the buckle, then tied the end around my neck. There was no way, apart from the belt breaking, for it to have come loose from the branch.

I could not die. I had thought that I had defeated God–that I had escaped from this kind of Hell. But I was defeating no one, and I was not going to escape. I was trapped, locked, imprisoned in a world of death in which I could not die. I knew that if I had jumped off a cliff, I would have woken up at the bottom. It didn’t matter. I was trapped… trapped!

Getting up, I replaced my belt, then walked. I was cold, very cold, but I knew I could not die of cold, so it did not concern me. Into the beautiful wood I went, yet I was oblivious to its beauty. To me everything in this world was just another torment, another stripe on my back from God’s whip. Why was God doing this to me? What had I done? Surely I could not have helped the things I did as a mentally retarded person? I could not remember a time when I had not been retarded.

Thoughts upon thoughts upon thoughts each took their turn bouncing around in my head as I walked. I could think of nothing to do but walk, and so I did, ignoring the cold. In my mind I only knew that nothing would ever change. I would walk on forever. Maybe I would end up where I started, at the house. I would keep walking, no matter what I met with.

Quite of a sudden I stopped. I had been walking for some time (how long I don’t know. As you can tell, time had very little meaning to me at this point), and now I saw something that startled me. There was, up ahead, a somewhat more open spot in the woods, though the branches above were still close together. In the poor little excuse for a clearing was a man.

He was lying on the ground, very still. Above him, caught high up in the branches, was a parachute, the straps still hanging down. The man had obviously been caught hanging in the tree and in releasing the straps for the parachute, had fallen a considerable distance. This all went through my mind in a piece of a moment too small to convey. What happened was that I found myself hurling through the wood, stumbling and tripping my way to the prostrate form on the ground before me. When I reached him, I knelt by him and turned him over. I put my hand on his chest (in between all his gear) and felt for a heartbeat or heaving of his chest. To my great astonishment, he was alive!

But the heartbeat was very faint. The breathing was very slow. Fear gripped me once more as I thought to myself, what if he is meant to die here, only to further my suffering? I recklessly threw my arms around him and pulling his head up under my chin, I held him. Tears streaked down my face and I wept audibly, pleading with God.

“Oh, God!” I cried. “Don’t let him die! Please don’t let him die! I can’t live in a world of death! Please be merciful to me! Save this man…”

And there I sat in the woods, snow falling all around me, clutching a dying man I was powerless to keep in this world. Then I felt something, a sensation that I cannot truly explain. It felt mostly like someone had literally drawn my air, or my blood (or both), right from my body. Suddenly I was tired, very tired. My weary body sagged, but still I held the man as tightly as I could, and became lost in that moment, just as time had ceased to exist several times before.

Time, however, was in no way slacking for my sake, no matter how I felt. After some time, I felt the man in my arms cough. Startled, I let his head fall back and looked into his face. His eyes opened and he looked up at me, squinting. I was immediately overcome with joy. I was no longer alone in this nightmare! I did not even stop to thank God.

But as quickly as my joy came, it faded. The man sat up and stared at me. I began to realize I had no idea where I was or who this man was. I stood and took a few steps backward. Meanwhile, the man bent his legs, then rose too. He was looking down at himself, frowning, and then he stared at me. My joy had collided with reality and had transformed into fear. I was alone with this man in the woods.

The man was obviously a soldier, and most likely an airman. Not this only, he was foreign, American, in fact. Though I did not register it at the time, he was a tall man and handsome, with dull brown hair and dark blue eyes. He took a step toward me and I took two steps back. I was caught between my fear of this man and my need of him, for without him I was once more alone in my Hell.

Then came the moment I had expected would come, that I had dreaded. He spoke to me.

“Hello, there, sugar,” he said. “I don’t suppose you speak English, do you?”

My tongue had read too many Bible passages. It took this as its cue to “cleave to the roof of my mouth.” Forcing it down, I made it say, “No, I’m German. I don’t speak English very well.”

The man stared at me, a blank, puzzling look on his face, and his lips parted. At first it didn’t occur to me why he stared at me like that, until I realized what I had said. Every word I had spoken was in perfect English. My accent didn’t get in the way at all. It frightened me even more.

“I have to go,” I said, deciding this situation was not to my liking. I wasn’t thinking about being alone anymore. “Goodbye…”

“Hey, wait!” he called as I turned and started back in the direction I had come. When I didn’t turn back around, I heard footsteps behind me. My heart almost stopped. He was following me! I kept walking, but turned my head, and saw him gaining on me! He said something else, but I didn’t hear him. I began to run, and soon I was making tracks just as fast as I could. All the while I could hear him behind me, but I didn’t look back again, fearing he would be right on top of me! On and on I ran, until I suddenly found myself at the beginning of a fairly steep slope down to a semi-frozen creek. I didn’t want to stop, so I kept going, but it was quite steep, and I was going quite fast, and my heel soon caught on something under the snow. Then the world began to spin as I tumbled down the hill. My shoulder struck something, maybe a rock, maybe another root, but the snow cushioned me until I reached the creek. I fell over the bank and landed in the rocky creek. My head must have landed very hard on a rock, for I immediately blacked out.

When I awoke yet again, I hoped that this would be the last time. I hoped that I had suffered enough and that God had taken me to Heaven or else cast me into Hell. But this time I awoke much like I had thought I would the first time. I found myself staring at a familiar ceiling. I sat up at once, not feeling like I had when I had tried to hang myself. I remembered everything, and I just felt a throbbing in my head, but only the trailing edge of it. I was covered with a blanket, but I was lying on the couch, not a bed. Whoever had put me to bed had taken off my shoes, and I soon slipped back in them, for I could not remember if I had any boots or where they were. My thick stockings would have to do. I must have been unconscious for some time, because my clothes were only a little damp still from the creek water, and I actually felt quite warm. At the door I looked in on the coat room and found something that had been mine. It was a long fur coat. I found gloves stuffed into the pockets.

Outside, I walked down the steps and into the drive, where the shapes of my parents and siblings were still embossed in the snow. Their bodies, however, were gone, and after a moment of staring, I turned to the left, where the snow was heavily disturbed. I followed the marks until I came to the left side of the house. There was a yard there with firewood. Inside this yard there was less snow, it being surrounded by a wooden fence. The gate being open, I stepped into the opening and looked inside. I had heard noises as I walked up, and now, as I stared at the scene before me, emotions overwhelmed me.

There, each in turn, was a series of graves, with little crosses made of twigs tied together with string. Sweating despite the cold was the soldier I had discovered. He was looking at me and wiping his brow. With his left hand he leaned on a shovel. Tears sneaked down my face, though I did not shake or breathe hard or sniff. I wasn’t looking at him. I was looking at the graves.

“What happened here?” he said, and there was care in his voice.

I did not answer at once, and I could not pull my eyes away from the graves.

“The soldiers killed us,” I said, quite truthfully. “They killed everyone… everyone…”

“But what about you?”

Now I looked at him. I did not expect him to know about me.

“There was a spot in the snow just your size, with blood all over it,” he went on. “It was the same amount of blood as theirs. Was it not you? Was it someone else?”

“No,” I replied. I could not imagine lying to him about this–he would not believe me anyway. “I got the same as the rest of them. My parents were hiding me. I was retarded, mentally ill, and they hid me. But something happened and… they found out. The soldiers didn’t like that and lined us up and shot us, one by one.”

My voice was strangely steady, and not wracked with tears, though the emotions were just as strong as ever.

“They shot you?” he frowned. “I don’t understand. You aren’t hurt at all. The blood was around the head where you lay…”

“He shot me in the head, just like the rest of them.”

“But you survived?”

“I just woke up later. And I’m not retarded anymore.  I don’t expect you to believe me. I’m dead, or at least I was.”

“You’re not dead,” the soldier shook his head. “I carried you over here myself, so you’re flesh and blood, but you can speak English, but you didn’t think you could…”

“I don’t know what’s happening,” I told him, and I was very miserable. “All I know is that I was shot and killed, and God brought me back. I’m alive now. I know that much.”

“God brought you back?”

“Maybe you don’t believe in God,” I said. “But I do, and I think only He can bring people back. God brought me back, but I don’t know why.”

“You know, you may find this strange, tuts, but I believe something is going on here that isn’t normal. If there’s a God, it might just be that, because when I fell out of that tree back where I met you, I fell pretty hard. In fact, I’m almost positive I broke both my legs when I fell out of that tree. Now I don’t know about you or your situation, but I do know that I was almost unconscious when you got to me, and after a few minutes I felt no pain at all. When you got up, I did too. My legs aren’t broken anymore, sugar.”

I stared at him, then at his legs. Obviously his legs were in good condition if he was able to carry me all the way from the woods to the house along with his gear, which he still had with him.

“So what happens now?” he asked presently.

“I don’t know,” I said. While he had been healed, I did not immediately think about it. After all, I was dead and now alive, so maybe this was just the day for God to feel like being nice to people. I still thought He was not being nice to me, though I did not understand how merciful He was yet. I decided to omit the fact that I had proven to myself that I could not die. I’m not sure why I did. Perhaps it was because I was still afraid of the American soldier, though I should have known he had no interest in hurting me. I was his best chance to get out of Nazi Germany alive.

So we stared at each other, until I looked again at the graves. Then I frowned.

“There are only three graves,” I said.

“There were only three bodies,” the soldier declared.

“That’s impossible,” I went on. “My sister, Gabriela, she ran and they shot her by the woods.”

“I searched over there, but there wasn’t a body. There was blood, and a lot of disturbance in the snow, but the footprints had been pretty well covered up, because it’s been snowing.”

It was all I needed. It was a glimmer of hope, a chance that God had been merciful! Gabriela was alive! We worked with several other local German groups to ferry Jews out of Germany and to the French resistance across the border, which was not far from the property my father owned in the country. These German resistance workers would have come by the house only to find our family dead. If they found Gabriela alive, they would have taken her away and hidden her, perhaps to try to get her to the French resistance or to England. Now there was hope, but what could I do?

“I’m sorry about your family,” said the soldier, interrupting my thoughts. “I’m Captain Casey Stewart, United States Air Force. I guess, however it happened, I owe you my life, miss. Do you have a name?”

“My name is Mercy, Mercy Edith Spengler,” I was forthcoming. “My family and I helped the German resistance smuggle Jews out of Germany and to the French resistance across the border. It’s possible they came here at some point and took my sister away–I have to find her.”

“Well, that sounds just fine with me, since I could use their help to get out of here before I end up in a POW camp,” he said dryly. “We were doing an escort mission, protecting bombers on their way back to England, when a couple of very desperate Nazi fighters got in a lucky shot. I was lucky to bail out in time. By the way, Mercy, it’s a pleasure to meet you.”

“You’ll help me find my sister, Captain?” I confirmed.

“Sure, but we should move quickly if you know which way to go. The krauts might have seen me bail out and could be searching the area.”

“You’ll need some other clothes,” I determined, and urged him to follow me. Inside the house I found plenty of things among my father’s that would fit Captain Stewart, though Father was a little bigger than him. For a moment I thought how awful it was for me to have to travel with someone dressed in my murdered father’s clothes. But all I could think of at the moment was finding Gabriela. I had even forgotten my troubles: the fact that I was dead, the fact I could not die, and the fact that I had somehow healed this man. Part of me didn’t really believe any of it.

While I was there I packed a bag with another change of clothes for myself. I also found some boots more appropriate for walking in the snow and put my other shoes in the bag with my spare clothes. Then there was papers–for of course if the Nazis found us, we would be arrested without them. My father kept false papers for the fugitive Jews. My mother had actually developed quite a hand at making them, and Gabriela had been getting good at helping her.

I obtained papers for Captain Stewart and some for me as well (after all I did not know if the Germans would have my death on file, or when they would). There was just as much risk in my real papers as in any fake ones. It took time to get a picture for the Captain, to take it, develop it, and age it, but I had no choice.

Thus, better dressed and with a pack of food I had put together, we prepared to leave. As I did, I spotted something in my mother’s room. It was a brooch with a cross in the middle. She didn’t wear it for fear of the Nazis, but something in me couldn’t let it sit in that house to be destroyed by a stray bomb. It had belonged to my grandmother. Slipping the piece into my coat pocket, I left the room. The only other thing of sentimental value that I took with me was a page torn from my little Bible. The Book itself was too dangerous to bring with me, as the Nazis hated Christians and any mention of Christ or God. That one page, which I folded up and put in my pocket, was to be my one comfort in the near future. It was a piece of the book of Psalms, including a few chapters or songs, and I chose the page for Psalm 143. As we set out in search of the other resistance members, my sister, and ultimately safety in England, the words of that Psalm went through my head, and somehow calmed me.

Hear my prayer, O LORD, give ear to my supplications: in thy faithfulness answer me, and in thy righteousness.

And enter not into judgment with thy servant: for in thy sight shall no man living be justified.

For the enemy hath persecuted my soul; he hath smitten my life down to the ground; he had made me to dwell in darkness, as those that have been long dead.

Therefore is my spirit overwhelmed within me; my heart within me is desolate.

I remember the days of old; I meditate on all thy works; I muse on the work of thy hands.

I stretch forth my hands unto thee: my soul thristeth after thee, as a thirsty land. Selah.

Hear me speedily, O LORD: my spirit faileth: hide not thy face from me, lest I be like unto them that go down into the pit.

Cause me to hear thy loving-kindness in the morning; for in thee do I trust: cause me to know the way wherein I should walk, for I lift up my soul unto thee.

Deliver me, O LORD, from mine enemies: I flee unto thee to hide me.

Teach me to do thy will; for thou art my God: thy spirit is good; lead me into the land of uprightness.

Quicken me, O LORD, for thy name’s sake: for thy righteousness’ sake bring my soul out of trouble.

And of thy mercy cut off mine enemies, and destroy all them that afflict my soul: for I am thy servant.

 “But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength,” I whispered to myself, being in the lead. “They shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.”

“What was that?” said Captain Stewart, coming up beside me.

“Isaiah 40, the last verse,” I replied, feeling Psalm 143 in my warm pocket. Somehow I remembered Isaiah 40, though I had had a lot of trouble memorizing it as a retarded child.

“Well, I’m not mounting up on wings again for a while,” he quipped. “How far is it from here?”

“About two miles.”

That was how it began. That was what started the next chapter of my life. Or perhaps it is better to say that those events began the first chapter of my life. Whatever was going on in my life, I had to find Gabriela if there was any chance she was still alive.