And I don’t know how the devil I do it. I guess that kind of necessary strength just arrives in your sinews when you need it. I lift Ursula up those steps somehow, lift her to the esplanade where the guards now run toward us.

“Hilfe!” I scream, in German.

Margaret swoops in to take the weight of Ursula’s limp body. “Help!” she screams. “She’s fallen into the lake!”

In the hotel, we take Ursula upstairs in the elevator. The attendant looks at us strangely, wet and seething as we are, almost bursting. “Fifth floor,” he says dully. He stops the elevator, opens the grille and then the door. We step out, supporting Ursula on each side. At the door, I fumble with the key, drop it, attempt to bend. My mind has gone numb, my fingers and my heart have gone numb.

“I’ll get it,” snaps Margaret. She leans down and snatches up the key, opens the door. We stagger through and ease Ursula on the bed. She’s shivering, nearly blue. I pull the blanket from my bed and wrap it around her.

“He’s dead, isn’t he?” I say, in French.

“Yes. I’m sorry.”

“When?”

“At Colditz, a month ago.”

I sink to the rug.

Margaret takes Ursula by the shoulders and screams—first in English, then in French. “Then why are you here? You might have just sent a message. Look at her, my God. How could you get her hopes up?”

“Quiet!” Ursula says. “Listen to me!”

“How did he die?” Margaret yells.

“A fever, that’s what they told me. Listen to me! And then a woman—a woman—”

“My God, what’s the matter?” says Margaret.

I stare at the iron bedpost, the indentation in the rug. Ursula’s brown, wet shoe before my face. She’s sobbing a little in her chest, this woman who’s a hardened operative, for God’s sake, running an escape line through Germany, and I think, I’m the one who’s supposed to be crying. He’s my goddamned husband.

Somewhere above me, Ursula’s speaking. “A woman—a woman came to take possession of the body.”

“What? Who? Who took him?”

Ursula chokes back another sob and says, Sa mère.

“His mother? My mother? That’s impossible! She’s dead, don’t you know that? She’s been dead for years! Dead!”

“She’s not dead,” whispers Ursula. “She’s in Switzerland.”

Elfriede

March 1944

(Switzerland)