Simple Faith (34 page)

“Peter!”

He looked back at Anja’s hissed call and saw that Mikel was gasping for air. He found a level space sheltered by an outcropping of rocks and pulled each of the others up to it. While Peter helped Mikel to a sitting position Anja gathered a handful of snow from a ledge. “Here, take this and let it melt slowly in your mouth.”

“There … is … a … monastery,” Mikel gasped. “Not far … Leave …”

“I’ll go,” Peter said, pulling out the rough map that Mikel had surrendered to him when he insisted on taking the lead. “Point me in the right direction.”

Mikel placed his forefinger on a spot and then indicated that this marked where they were. Then he ran his finger across about an inch of the paper and tapped it.

“Got it,” Peter said as he memorized the path and then folded the map and tucked it back inside Mikel’s jacket. “You stay here and rest and keep drinking that snow.”

“I can fill the goatskin again,” Daniel volunteered. But his face fell as he realized this time there was no stream conveniently nearby. Then he brightened. “I can fill it with snow. It will take some time, but I can do it.”

“Just stay here with your Mom and Mikel, okay, pal?” Peter gripped the boy’s shoulder then touched Anja’s arm. “I won’t be long,” he promised.

“Go. We’ll be all right.”

Knowing that the conversion of an inch on the map to miles on the actual path was guesswork at best and that the ground to be covered was not flat as it appeared on the paper, Peter set out to find the monastery. Along the way, he fortified himself by taking a handful of snow and stuffing it in his mouth. In spite of Anja’s constant reminders for them to drink water, he suspected that all of them were seriously dehydrated, and the high altitude wasn’t helping. So when he looked up as he edged his way past a bulging boulder along a narrow path that dropped off into a valley several hundred feet below, he was sure that he had begun to hallucinate.

Standing just beyond the huge rock was a figure in a long monk’s robe that was tied at the waist with a hemp rope. The person’s face was totally obscured by a hood, and he was wearing sandals. But when the man held out his hand to Peter, it looked real enough, and Peter took it gratefully.

He started to explain about Mikel and the others. The monk did not speak but nodded and in silence showed Peter another, easier way to retrace his steps back to where he’d left them. When they arrived, Mikel looked a lot worse than he had when Peter left them, but he smiled at the monk.

“Brother Francisco,” he murmured and then turned on his side and retched.

“He’s been vomiting up the water,” Anja explained.

Without a word, the monk, who was short and stocky but obviously every bit as strong as Mikel in his prime, lifted Mikel in his arms and motioned for Peter, Anja, and Daniel to follow him. Peter lifted Daniel as they followed the man without question. In silence but with the surefootedness of a mountain goat, he made his way over the rocky terrain and around a bend until they saw a rundown stone structure built into the side of the mountain. To reach it they had to cross an open area where hundreds of sheep were grazing on yellow broom grass and other spring flowers.

“It’s like a picture in that book you read me, Mama,” Peter whispered. “But it’s real.”

“Yes, it is, and isn’t it beautiful?”

“It’s just like the nuns used to describe heaven,” Daniel continued. “Except there is no lion.”

“Why would there be a lion, Daniel?” Anja asked.

“Because the nuns said that in heaven the lion would lie down with the lambs and everybody would get along and there would be no more fighting.”

Peter saw Anja’s eyes fill with tears, and he wrapped his free arm around her. “Out of the mouths of babes …”

Inside the monastery, the monk carried Mikel to a cell-like but pristine room and laid him gently on a narrow cot then left the room without a word. But a moment later, he reappeared, this time with another monk carrying several pillows, which the two of them placed behind Mikel’s head and back, leaving him in a half-sitting position.

“Yes,” Anja said. “Better for his breathing. Thank you.”

The two monks folded their hands in front of them and stood by the door as if waiting for direction. Anja seemed to understand the situation a lot better than Peter did. “If it would not be too much trouble,” she said, “could we have some hot water and perhaps an extra blanket or two?”

The men left the room and returned moments later with a cart set with cups, spoons, a pot of hot water, and another of hot broth. They also brought a stack of blankets and covered Mikel with two of them then wrapped one around Anja’s thin shoulders. Somewhere from the depths of the thick-walled building a bell tolled. The monks opened the door and gestured for Peter and Daniel to come with them.

Daniel glanced at his mother, who nodded before he agreed to follow the monks. Peter was more reluctant to leave her.

“Go,” she said. “They want you and Daniel to join them for their midday meal. And Daniel? It is like our meeting for worship—you must not talk.”

The boy grinned and made the gesture of locking his lips and tossing her the key then followed the monks down the narrow corridor.

“That goes for you as well, Peter Trent,” she added and gave him a weary smile before turning her attention back to Mikel.

“Take some of that broth for yourself,” he told her. “We’ve come this far, and I do not intend for us to fail to make it the rest of the way.”

“Stop giving orders and go eat,” she murmured, but he could see that she was smiling and that the reprieve of being in the monastery had already done wonders to smooth out the worried lines that had etched her mouth and forehead ever since they escaped from the farmhouse.

“We won’t be long,” he promised and hurried to catch up to Daniel and the monks.

Anja felt as if one of the large rocks they had scaled had been lifted from her chest when they reached the shelter of the monastery. Mikel had told her about this order of monks who lived their lives in total silence except for the chanting of prayers several times a day when they gathered for worship. She had immediately seen the similarities between their form of worship and the silence maintained by Quakers in worship. That had made her remember something that her late husband, Benjamin, had once told her as the Nazis continued to escalate their persecution of the Jews:
Governments are always starting wars in the name of politics, but the foundation of their disagreement always lies in what and how to believe. “Our way is right and yours is wrong. Believe as I do or pay the consequences.” Yet at the root of every major religion is the idea of one God—omnipotent and singular. The debate arises out of how one communicates with God
.

She thought about the political cartoons she had seen portraying Jews with horns as if they were the devil. And she thought about something she had once heard Lisbeth tell Josef when he had objected to her endangering herself in order to help Anja and Benjamin and the children reach safety. “We are all God’s children,” she had said. Reverend Mother had said the same thing.

Outside the thick wooden door, she heard the sound of footsteps, and a moment later Daniel, Peter, and one of the monks entered the room. Daniel presented her with a bowl of boiled grain that looked like oatmeal.

“Why thank—”

He frowned and touched her arm and shook his head. Apparently he had decided to take the vow of silence and expected them all to follow suit. She placed her finger to her lips to show that she understood and took a bite. She made an expression of delight, and Daniel grinned. And she thought how wonderful it was to see that mischievous twinkle that had been dulled by fear and exhaustion come back to her son’s dark eyes.

All through the rest of the day, she sat with Mikel, watching over him as he slept and trying to get him to eat some of the warm soup when he roused. Peter sat with Daniel on the floor of the small room. Peter had asked if by any chance the monks might have a bar of soap, and minutes later one of them returned with a large bar of laundry soap. Peter started showing Daniel how to carve an animal—a mountain goat as Daniel had requested. She saw how careful Peter was to make sure that he saved all of the shavings so that they could be pressed into a ball and not wasted.

As the sun waned, one of the monks came to the room, knocked, and entered with a tray filled with hot broth and tea for Mikel and food for Anja. Then Daniel and Peter left with him, presumably to share another silent meal. And so the day passed.

As darkness set in, a monk arrived with bedding that he spread on the floor and a lighted candle that he set on the ledge of the narrow window. Then he stood at the door for a long moment, his hands folded and his head bowed, and Anja realized that he was praying for them. That simple gesture gave her such a sense of peace. After he left, Peter touched her lightly on the shoulder.

“Spend some time with Daniel before he goes to sleep,” he said. “I’ll sit with Mikel.”

Gratefully she went to sit next to her son. “Did you finish your mountain goat?” she asked him, knowing that he was so very proud of the little sculpture.

“Isn’t it almost like real?” he asked, holding the soap animal up to the candlelight, having evidently decided to break his vow of silence. “Peter did most of it, but I helped some, and he said that in time I would get the hang of it. Does that mean that with practice I will be as good at carving as Peter is?”

“That’s exactly what it means,” she assured him. She took the carving and placed it carefully on the small table where the monk had left the tray. “And now you must sleep.”

Daniel yawned and pulled the blanket higher around his shoulders. “Mama, could we not stay here?”

“No, this is not our home, Daniel. We are only visiting.”

He was asleep almost before she had finished the sentence. She stroked his hair and studied his innocence reflected in the flickering light. She wished they could stay here as well. It had been a very long time since she had felt so free of fear and the constant need to be on her guard.

“Anja? We need to talk about tomorrow.”

She turned to face Peter. His face was in shadow while hers was illuminated by the candle’s glow.

“I know.” But she did not want to talk about tomorrow. Could they not just have this one day—this one night—of peace and serenity?

“I must continue on tomorrow,” Peter continued. “I have spoken with Brother Francisco—well, that is, I spoke and he nodded. I asked that the monks care for Mikel and you and Daniel until Mikel is well enough to travel again.”

“And then?”

“Then you must decide. I don’t know when the invasion will come, Anja, only that it will. And when it does, everything will change. The war may go on for months, but it will be a very different war.”

“You can’t know that. You have no idea what the Nazis are capable of doing.”

“No, and I hate it that you know better than I ever will, but you are the one who told me that in the end, good will triumph over evil.”

“Why must you go on alone when you don’t know the way and will have no guide?”

“Because that is my duty. I have an obligation to do everything possible to get back to my unit.” He eased himself onto the floor so that his back was against the cot and his knees were nearly touching hers. “Mikel loves you, Anja. More to the point, you and he understand each other—you have shared many of the same experiences in this war. He will make a good father for Daniel. The boy adores him.”

“But Daniel loves you.”
I love you
.

He reached for her hand and pressed it between both of his. “And I love him almost as much as I love his mother. That’s why I have to do this, even though it will be the hardest thing I have ever done and I know that I will regret it for the rest of my life.”

“Then why do it?”

“Because you have shown me that when you love someone, you do what is best for that person. Think of it, Anja. If you and Daniel went with me, what are you doing? I have to make it to Gibraltar and then back to England and eventually back to America. You would be walking away from everything and everyone you know—your grandparents, Josef, Lisbeth … and Mikel. You might never know what has happened to them. Could you live with that? Could you find happiness?”

“Nacht und Nebel,” she murmured, knowing he was right.

He tugged at her, shifting her position so that he could hold her. He kissed her temple. “Know this, Anja: you are the best thing that has ever happened to me in my life, and whatever happens to us as we go our separate ways—something we have both always known to be inevitable—I will always love you.”

She lifted her face to his, and he kissed her, a kiss that spoke of many things: his love for her and hers for him, and the certain knowledge that he was right and this was farewell.