The Room on Rue Amélie(93)

“Go,” Herr Hartmann echoed before grabbing Nadia by the arm and barking orders at her in German. As several guards began trotting in their direction, Ruby took one last look at the two brave people risking their lives for her and slipped out the back door.

She sucked in a huge breath of air—brilliantly, gloriously fresh air—and began to make her way toward the edge of the complex. But a guard appeared from around the corner of the building, drew his gun, and bellowed, “Halt!”

No. Ruby couldn’t stop. Not now. Not when she was so close to freedom. Not when Nadia was inside risking so much for her. So she began to run, praying that the guard would miss if he tried to shoot. From the corner of her eye, she saw Nadia’s face framed in the factory’s window. Ignore me, Ruby thought even as she watched Nadia register the danger Ruby was in. Don’t make things worse for yourself.

But it was too late. Still yelling Russian obscenities, Nadia burst from the same factory door Ruby had just exited and hurled herself at the guard with the gun.

“No!” Ruby screamed, but everything was already in motion.

“I said go, Ruby!” Nadia cried, clawing at the guard’s face as he cried out in surprised pain.

Ruby hesitated for a split second, knowing she should go back, wanting to do all she could to save Nadia’s life. But then the baby kicked inside her, once, sharply, directly into her rib cage, and she remembered in a flash all that she was fighting for.

And so she ran. She ran for the nearly invisible gap, which was just where Herr Hartmann had said it would be, then for the woods, even as shots rang out behind her. She ran even as she heard Nadia’s strangled cry. She ran as her friend’s body hit the ground, riddled with bullets. She ran and ran and ran until the factory vanished, until the canopy of trees overhead obscured the blue of the sky, until she was alone in the middle of a silent forest, certain that there were no footsteps behind her.

And in the quiet, she began to sob. No matter what happens, Ruby, remember I am with you, Nadia’s voice echoed in her head. As long as you have Nadia, you have hope.





CHAPTER FORTY-ONE


August 1944

After the initial adrenaline of her flight had worn off, Ruby’s pace slowed. There was no one following her, and the underbrush grew trickier to navigate as she moved deeper into the forest. She couldn’t see the sun, and she was no longer certain of which direction she was going. Her body burned, her head throbbed, and her vision was blurry with tears. “Nadia,” she repeated over and over as new tears spilled. What had her friend done? Had she known, when she encouraged Ruby to flee, that this could happen? Was that what Nadia was trying to tell her, that she was prepared to die to protect her?

By the time night fell, the world was spinning. Ruby stopped near a creek, filled the bottle Herr Hartmann had given her, and drank it all down. She ate half a potato but vomited it back up almost immediately. She sat and leaned against a fallen tree and told herself she would rest for just a few minutes before moving on. But before she knew it, the night had closed in. Sleep overtook her, and her slumber was rich with nightmares about Nadia’s blood spattering the foggy German afternoon.

When she awoke, daylight was streaming through the trees, and Ruby sat up with a start. How long had she been out? There was no way to know; she had no watch, and she couldn’t see the position of the sun in the sky. She struggled to her feet, made her way back to the creek, and drank more water, followed by another half potato. This time, the food stayed down, but she knew she was still feverish. Her stomach swam; her forehead burned. But at least some of the dizziness had receded, which had to mean she was getting better.

She changed into the dress and shoes Herr Hartmann had given her, and she was surprised to realize just how well a child’s garments fit her. Had she really lost that much weight? She knew, as she looked down at her body, that the answer was yes. She was skin, bones, and belly. Herr Hartmann had also included a kerchief, which she tied around her head, knowing that her short hair might give her away as an escaped prisoner.

Ruby sat for a few minutes to gather her strength and to talk to the baby, then she stood and began heading in the direction she thought was west. It was possible, she realized, that she might even be trudging back in the direction of the camp, right into the arms of a search party. Then again, did they know she was missing? Perhaps the guard who had shot Nadia was humiliated that he let Ruby go. Maybe he didn’t say a word to anyone. She would have been missed at roll call this morning, but by then, surely they would have considered it too late to hunt for her. She only hoped that Herr Hartmann’s complicity in her escape hadn’t been discovered.

As she walked, Ruby begged God to deliver her safely into the hands of someone who would help her rather than turn her over to the authorities. After all, she knew that Ravensbrück wasn’t near anything but the Polish border, and heading east seemed foolish; the Germans still had a stranglehold on Poland, and there were, in fact, more horrific concentration camps located there. Before she’d fled, the camp had started receiving shipments of prisoners from Auschwitz, and those women looked even more skeletal than the women at Ravensbrück. They died by the hundreds each day, some dropping dead right in the middle of their forced labor, some simply failing to wake up in the morning.

“Hush, little baby, don’t say a word,” Ruby began to sing shakily as she walked, her hands protectively around her belly. “Mama’s gonna buy you a mockingbird. And if that mockingbird don’t sing, Mama’s gonna buy you a diamond ring.” Ruby couldn’t remember any more of the lyrics, so she sang the ones she knew again and again.