The Room on Rue Amélie(90)

In her third week at the factory, Herr Hartmann pulled Ruby aside and asked if she’d like him to send a letter for her. “Your family must be very worried about you,” he said. She wondered, for a split second, if it was a trap, a false invitation designed to bait her into breaking the rules. But his eyes were as kind as ever, and after a moment, she whispered, “Yes,” her heart soaring. To know that there was at least a chance she’d be able to get word to her parents would be worth the risk. “But I don’t have any paper or a pen.”

He assured her he would provide both the following day. True to his word, he slipped her two sheets of paper and a pen on her visit to the corner the next morning, and that night, while her two bunkmates slept, she wrote by the light of the moon. She kept the letter light and devoid of most personal information and negative commentary, because there was always the chance that it would be confiscated.

Dearest Mother and Father,

Words cannot express how much I miss the both of you. I think of you all the time, and I dream of the day I’ll be able to see you again. In the interim, please know I’m all right. I am in a prison camp in Germany at the moment, but you mustn’t worry. Marcel died in 1941, but my cousin is in good health. She’s fifteen years old now, in fact. She can explain everything to you. Please do all you can to bring her to the States and to look after her if something should happen to me. Until we meet again, please know that it is my thoughts of you and of home that sustain me.

My deepest love always,

Ruby

She knew she couldn’t mention the baby, and she debated for at least an hour before deciding to include the verbiage about a cousin. She knew it would baffle her parents, but she hoped that if she were to perish in Germany, Charlotte would somehow find her way to them, and that they would understand who the girl was and how much Ruby had loved her. To mention any more, though, would be to put Charlotte in danger.

Thinking of Charlotte was painful. At least Ruby could fight to the death to protect the baby in her womb. Charlotte, by contrast, was hundreds of miles away. For all Ruby knew, Charlotte could have been picked up already, shot to death. Ruby gagged and heaved at the thought and tried to push it away, but she couldn’t sleep that night without seeing Charlotte being tortured.

“Are you all right?” Nadia asked her the next day after their contingent of prisoners had been marched from Ravensbrück to the factory in the hazy light of early morning. They settled next to each other on the assembly line and whispered, as they often did, when the guards’ backs were turned.

“I’m just thinking of someone I left behind,” Ruby replied. The letter to her parents was folded and pressed into her underclothes, just in case she was searched on the way in, but the guards seemed distracted this morning.

“Your beau?”

Ruby smiled. “No. There is a man, but . . .” She trailed off and shook her head. How could she explain Thomas to anyone? It all still felt like a dream to her, like he’d never been real at all. “No, Nadia, I was thinking of a girl who’s very important to me. Her parents left her with me two years ago, when they were taken, and she’s become like a sister to me. Maybe a daughter, even. I worry about her every day.”

“And there is someone hiding her?”

“There is a boy looking out for her. He’s only sixteen, but he loves her.”

Nadia’s expression softened. “How extraordinary to find love in the midst of war.”

Ruby nodded, again thinking of Thomas. “Extraordinary indeed.”

“She will be all right, then.”

Ruby had to laugh at the certainty in her friend’s voice. “I wish I had your optimism. You seem so sure about the future.”

A guard passed by then, glaring at them, and Ruby pretended to be deeply absorbed in her work. When he was gone, Nadia nudged her. “I am not sure of anything. But if we don’t have hope, we don’t have anything.”

“I wish I had your hope, then.”

“You do,” Nadia said. At Ruby’s confused expression, she smiled. “That is what my name means. Hope. So as long as you have Nadia, you have hope.”

Ruby smiled. It was a nice thought, the idea that hope itself could be embodied in a person. She was silent for a moment as another guard passed by. “Herr Hartmann has offered to send a letter home to my parents for me. You don’t think it’s a trap, do you?”

Nadia bit her lip. “No, I do not. I think he is a good man who feels terrible about the things that are happening to us.”

“Then why doesn’t he do something to stop it?”

“You don’t think he wants to? You don’t think there are many Germans who want to? I think that in a place like this, the system itself has grown so huge that it’s impossible to stop. Like a snowball that starts at the top of a mountain and has turned into a boulder by the time it reaches the bottom. I think, though, that there are people like Herr Hartmann trying to make a difference on a smaller level, with people like us. I think you can trust him.”

“So do I.”

Later that afternoon, Ruby passed by Herr Hartmann in the corner of the factory and slipped him the letter. “Thank you,” she whispered.

“It is the least I can do, Ruby,” he said gravely. “None of you should have to endure this.”

“But how can you stand to work for the Gestapo? To run an assembly line that produces weapons for the Nazis?”