Kurt found himself wandering through his orders lost in a marvelous haze of his fantasies.  Kurt thought of Nora and saw them both in white, standing outside beneath a canopy and reciting the prayers he’d learned.  His duties had him overseeing the building of a new air-raid bunker, but his head was filled with images of a home being built somewhere.  He saw children’s feet running across its floors, heard voices ringing out in German, or Polish, of English or it really didn’t matter, until, finally, he heard the voices in Yiddish.  

One hot afternoon the shriek of the air raid siren rang out, and Nora was about to duck away into the nearest bunker, but she felt something grab her hand.  She turned around and saw Kurt there.  Together, they darted away back into the guard’s barracks.  They made love on Kurt’s bed, their cries of passion ringing out through the abandoned building.

Their lives were divided between separation and togetherness.  Separation was easily blurred with fantasy, but when Kurt opened his eyes, reality crashed into him like a train.  When she was gone, breathing became a burden, the world around him felt as if it were a movie projected on a screen. The only thing that was real at all was Nora’s absence.  When he was with her, everything seemed suddenly bright.  She was some kind of wondrous being in his arms, something beyond the workings of time.  The universe all centered around her, and Kurt cared for nothing else.  He lay on top of her, breathless, face to her chest.  Their mingled sweat made his hair stick to his forehead in dark clumps.

“I shouldn’t have done this,” he said, “You should be somewhere safe.”

“Why?” said Nora, “So I don’t get killed?” she laughed softly, “I never thought I’d get out of here alive, anyway.  I’m still not out.”

“Don’t say that,” said Kurt, looking up into her eyes and stroking the side of her face, “I’ll get you out of here.”

Nora just smiled at him and said, “I’m not afraid of dying.  You can’t face something every day and still be afraid of it.”  Her frank admission was startled Kurt.  He stared at her lying naked beneath him, completely vulnerable.  The sweat shining on her face made her glow, and her black hair fell around her head like a halo.

“There’s a way to get you out,” he said, “I mean it, I just need the right opportunity.  I’ll get you out...”  Nora just laughed.  She swept the hair clinging to his face behind his ear and kissed his forehead.

“It’s God’s decision,” she whispered.

“God?” said Kurt, “God and I haven’t gotten along in years.”  Nora just sighed a wistful sigh.

“I’ll just call you Israel while you wrestle with God, then,” she said.  The all-clear siren blew outside.  Kurt swore.  He and Nora detangled themselves and hastily put their clothes back on, ready to sneak back to the places they were supposed to be.  As Kurt opened the door to head out, Nora touched his elbow, and he turned to face her.  She gave him a final lingering kiss, and then they parted, going back into the darkness of separation.

Kurt began to formulate possible plans.  He kept reading his father’s letter, sensing the possibility in it.  He’d have to make Nora a false identity; that seemed the safest and easiest way to go.  Lying was second nature to him, and he had a profound talent for it.  Nora’s German was very good, but she still spoke with a subtle but noticeable accent.   She became the one receiving lessons, learning about umlauts and inflection.  Kurt beamed at her as she spoke to him with a flawless accent, surprised by his teaching skills.  Nora would make a thoroughly convincing German-Polish girl who he’d met when she got a job as a secretary at the camp.  He could get the right documents and whip up a forgery for that so easily.  He kept them hidden in is desk, waiting for his collection to become complete.  The difficult part would be actually getting her out of the camp.  

Every day, the Soviet Army inched closer to the Polish border.  The other guards mumbled about it, wondering if they’d be called out to the front.  One day in October Kurt asked a group if anyone had any idea what might happen if the Soviets should reach the camp.  He got only vague replies, most pointing to the idea that the prisoners might be evacuated or left as it was.  

Kurt had to help suppress another escape attempt in November.  It was a bold and utterly stupid plan with a few pilfered arms and about forty or so men.  It was more of a suicidal riot than anything else.  Kurt did his part, knocking rioters to the ground, kicking them in the ribs, shooting when necessary.  Soon the ground was littered with bodies that looked like nothing more than piles of broken bones.  The prisoners who survived were all lying face-down in a neat row along the fence, still receiving the occasional blow from a guard’s club.  The wounded and dying made the pitiful moans and wails that Kurt was too familiar with.  The smell of the blood on the ground made him nauseous, so he left before he was officially dismissed.  They didn’t need him.  It happened in an area of the camp outside of Preuss’s authority, that was all he really cared about.  Any executions would be handled by someone else.  He didn’t mention his involvement to Nora.  When she asked about it, he said simply that he’d been called in to help put it down.  He tried sheepishly to hide the dust and dried blood on his uniform.

Kurt got himself a map of Poland and the nearby Soviet Union and began marking the progress of the battle line across the border.  He decided that it really didn’t matter what happened to the camp, the SS would have to leave it.  

“I’ll take my father’s job in Berlin and take you with me as my new wife,” he explained to Nora, pointing to the dots on the map representing the camp and Berlin.

“Your wife?” said Nora.

“I thought it would be the easiest way,” Kurt replied, looking at her.

“You’re not even going to get down on one knee and propose to me?” she asked.  Kurt felt his cheeks reddening.

“It’s fake,” he stammered, “I mean, for all legal reasons, it’s a marriage, and I’ve got the real form and everything, but, it’s you know, with forged signatures and of course… you as a German…  If you don’t want to marry me, we can fix it when the war is over, I guess…”  To him, it had felt only natural that they should present themselves as married.  It would grant him considerably more power to protect her, as well as be a good excuse to get her into Berlin.  And, of course…

“I want you to marry me,” he whispered, “Legally, illegally, I don’t care.”

Nora just smiled at him, taking his hand in hers, “I will marry you with a Rabbi in the eyes of God.  Until then, what the German state says means nothing.”  She kissed him.

As Kurt lay in bed that night, he couldn’t stop smiling.  He also couldn’t care less what the law had to say about marriage.  Spiritually, he had married Nora a long time ago.  She had a piece of his soul that no one else could touch, and she would always have it as a piece of her soul.  

Nora herself began a small collection, taking things that came into the sorting room, the sort of thing a young woman would have upon moving to a new city with her new husband.  Things were stolen from the sorting room constantly, mostly by the guards.  They stole anything that might have been considered valuable, something that could be sold or given to impress a woman: jewelry, perfume, little pretty trinkets.  Nora was careful and practical in what she slid into her dress to be given to Kurt later: fashionable but practical dresses, not too fine but not cheap or poorly-made, sensible shoes, a few warm-looking coats, small inexpensive bits of jewelry: pearls, a little emerald-studded cross on a fine gold chain, an engagement ring with a petite oval-cut diamond.  She got herself some womanly basics: a Bakelite comb and hair brush, makeup, soaps, perfume. And, finally, she remembered her status as a newlywed, and got herself a few slinky nightgowns that she secretly delighted in imagining Kurt seeing her in.  She cut herself an image of a smart, independent, modern young woman ready to take up the tasks of marriage.  It was something she wanted to be.

Kurt watched the shrinking battle lines inch nearer and nearer to the Polish border and, finally, ecstatically, across it.  It was decided that the camp would be evacuated.  It was too large of an undertaking to simply execute and dispose of all the prisoners, and the SS could never just abandon the camp.  Yes, evacuation was the most sensible, and it would be in the chaos of the evacuation that Kurt could take Nora out of there, simply going away with the rest of the people there.  Kurt wrote his father saying he was interested in the job, but he was unsure of what the camp would need of him.  He told Preuss that he was interested in taking up the job with his father, depending on what happened with the war. He left himself plenty of room to sneak around.  He devised a plan to take one of the SS cars to take his new wife to nearby Krakow where they’d take a train up to Warsaw and, from there, Berlin, where he would introduce his family to the pretty young secretary he’d met at the camp and flirted with.  He’d tell them he knew that if they parted ways in the evacuation, he’d never see her again, which was a thought he couldn’t bear, so they got the right signatures for marriage and then spirited off to Berlin to surprise his family.  

Kurt knew his father would realize Nora was a Jew right away, not through any cracks in her disguise, which Kurt made sure was flawless, but because his father simply knew when he was lying.  He’d put the pieces together quickly enough.  And he wouldn’t be able to do anything about it.  He could never indict the son that he placed all of his personal pride and expectation on with something as vile as blood treachery.  And it would be pointless, anyway.  The Reich was collapsing upon its own hollow ideals.  That was the glory of it all.  Kurt could finally spit at that upon which he had once broken himself.  It thrilled him.  He couldn’t wait for it.