Far To Go (12 page)

Pavel was transfixed. “Liesel,” he said, without moving his eyes from the scene. Anneliese crossed the room to her husband in time to watch the young man bring the bat down, just once, into the window.

Marta could not see this—the distance across the square was too great—but she imagined lines spreading out across the glass of Mr. Goldstein’s storefront like a map of Adolf Hitler’s ever expanding
Lebensraum
.

A chunk of glass fell to the cobblestones. Then a second chunk. The boy with the bat kicked at what was left with his steel-toed boot, and it too fell out of the frame. Where before there had been a surface that looked like nothing, now nothing itself took its place. Anneliese gasped. “What—?” she said. “What are they—?”

She leaned her chest into Pavel’s back for protection, resting her chin on his shoulder.

The Hitlerjugend entered Mr. Goldstein’s shop via the now windowless storefront. Six or eight of them, eighteen or nineteen years old. The last of the light was draining from the day like dirty water down a drain. Marta squinted hard but the young men had all disappeared into the shop. Several minutes passed before they emerged again, their facial features now completely blurred by the November night. The Bauers stood at the window together, not speaking. There was a lick of flame. Perhaps Mr. Goldstein had seen what was coming and kindled a small fire in his hearth. A small blot of light against the darkness.

Except the flame was getting higher in the night.

The storefront was again crowded with the gang of
Jugend
; there was more pushing and shoving amongst them. The light from the fire reflecting across the shards of broken glass made it easier to see now. The tallest boy appeared dragging Mr. Goldstein by his ear. Until now it had seemed to Marta that she was watching some kind of macabre spectacle put on as entertainment, but now, seeing the old man, it was suddenly real. She panicked, wanting to protect Mr. Goldstein and knowing there was nothing she could do, that to attempt to intervene would be to risk her own life. The tailor looked small in his nightshirt, his beard reaching almost down to his waist. He was doing a kind of sideways crab-walk, leading with the earlobe that was pinched firmly between the gang leader’s fingers. If it hadn’t been so terrifying there might have been something comical about the sight, the old man’s eyes darting in confusion, his nightcap slipping off the side of his head. The next thing Marta saw was Mr. Goldstein on his knees surrounded by the ring of young people. The fire was roaring now, eating up the store, making long shadows of the scene.

She was caught behind her own pane of glass; it was like watching a film, she imagined, with the volume turned all the way down.

For the second time Marta saw the bat rising and falling.

She put a hand over one eye, as if she were reading an eye chart.

She covered both eyes, disbelieving.

When she looked again, the street was clear. Except for a single person—a body—crumpled on the cobblestones.

The following night at supper, nobody spoke. Pepik was free to mass his
knedlíky
into mountain ranges as he desired. He seemed to think he had done something to provoke the silence at the table and began guessing what he was supposed to apologize for. “I’m sorry for playing with my food like a baby?”

The Bauers kept eating.

“I’m sorry I wet my bed last night?”

Anneliese looked at Marta with raised eyebrows, and Marta nodded to show this was true. Pavel got up and kissed the crown of his wife’s head. He turned on the Telefunken. They heard static, and then a voice flared like a struck match. Pavel lowered the volume. He fiddled with the dial until a different voice, with a British accent, came through. “I don’t doubt that the orders came from above,” it said.

“How can you be so certain?” another man asked. Marta didn’t understand the words but his voice was slightly different; she had heard that in England you could place a person within thirty kilometers of their birthplace based on speech. Here there were only four or five accents. A slightly different pitch if one came from Brno. And the singsongy lilt adrift on the voices of Prague.

Marta wondered what was being said, but it wasn’t her place to ask. She waited patiently until Anneliese said, “Can you help us out, darling?” She was holding her husband’s wrist loosely in her hand.

Pavel translated the first man’s answer: “Because of the coordination. The timing was so precise, with the shops being vandalized not just in one town but all across Germany.” He paused, working to catch up. “And indeed across Austria, and the Sudetenland. Both of which, of course, now belong to Hitler’s Reich. The—what’s that word? coordinated?—No, the
synchronized
nature of the pogroms leaves little doubt—I myself would say that it leaves no doubt—that they were planned by a central body.”

The first voice interrupted and Pavel looked at the ceiling, concentrating. “He’s asking if it could just have been a series of lootings by thugs,” he summarized. “And now the other man is answering.” Pavel resumed the direct translation: “Certainly the so-called thugs and low-lifes may have jumped on board without any urging. But the timing of the attacks, in so many different towns and cities, leads us to believe—leads us to
conclude
that they were coordinated. Also, the violent nature of so many of the . . .” The man speaking searched for the words, and Pavel paused along with him. “. . . of so many of the bodily attacks.”

Pavel snapped the radio off. He tipped his head back so his chin was pointed directly at the copper Art Deco chandelier; he took a deep breath, which he let out slowly. He crossed the room to his rack of pipes, chose one, and began to tap tobacco down into the bowl. The match he took off the mantelpiece was long, meant to reach into the back of the massive stone fireplace, and he misjudged its reach and nearly singed his eyebrows.

Pepik was mashing his dumplings with the back of his spoon.

“Goldstein,” Pavel said, his pipe clamped between his teeth. “They’re talking about what happened to Mr. Goldstein.” He held the pipe away from his face. “It could have been us, darling,” he said to Anneliese.

Marta looked to Mrs. Bauer, but her face was blank, unreadable. “Of course it couldn’t have been us,” she scoffed. “We’re different. He was . . .” She did not need to finish her sentence. Mr. Goldstein had been Orthodox, practising. The Bauers were assimilated, secular.

Pavel shook his head. “Those distinctions don’t matter any more,” he said.

“What do you mean ‘don’t matter anymore’?”

Pavel drew on his pipe; Marta found the smell familiar, comforting. There was something almost sweet about it, like cookies ready to come out of the oven.

“I mean just what I say,” said Pavel. “Things have changed. The Germans care only if you’re Jewish. It’s black and white. In their minds.”

“Really?” Anneliese asked. “How is that possible? We couldn’t be more different if . . .”

But Pavel didn’t answer. He’d been looking at the silver candlesticks in the middle of the table; he now lifted his face towards his wife. “I’m proud to be a Jew,” he declared. Marta shrunk back, waiting for Anneliese’s answer, but she was silent. “I didn’t realize it,” Pavel said, “until now. Until all of this.” He moved his eyes in the direction of the window. The drapes were closed tightly. Behind them someone had taken the old tailor’s body away.

“Proud, darling?”

Marta could see Pavel searching around for what he was feeling, discovering it himself as he spoke it aloud. “It makes me . . . I’ve always been so proud to be Czech, to be a
vlastenecký
. It’s like I’d forgotten this other . . .” He cleared his throat. “This thing that has happened to Goldstein,” he said. “It’s changed me.”

“I hope it’s not you next.”

“What I mean is, I’m starting to know our own value. As a people.”

“I hope I won’t have to sit shiva and tear my clothes into rags!” Anneliese’s laugh was shrill. “And cover . . . the windows?”

“The mirrors,” Pavel said quietly. Then he added, “I finally understand what’s important.”

“Being
Jewish
?”

“Teaching Pepik who he is.”

Marta locked eyes with Anneliese. She knew the baptism was fresh in both their minds.

“You see what happened to Mr. Goldstein?” Anneliese started. “You see
why
it happened? Because of his religion.”

But Pavel took his wife’s words not as dissent but as agreement. “Yes,” he said. “Exactly! We’re lucky, Liesel. There’s still time for our son to grow up knowing the worth of his people. With a fierce sense—” He was smiling now, wryly, aware of the irony of the timing. “With a fierce sense of Jewish identity!” He put his hands on his wife’s shoulders, shaking his head. “Who would have thought,” he said.

Marta was frozen in her chair, her mind racing, as though she, not Anneliese, was going to have to answer for the baptism. And wasn’t she equally responsible? Hadn’t she gone along with it willingly? She could have resisted, could have stood up for what she knew Pavel felt. Part of her wanted to leave the room, to find something that needed washing or mending and escape the consequence of her actions. Another part, though, longed to be held accountable. Something of great magnitude had happened, something she’d been involved in, and the feeling of importance was hard for her to deny. Although, of course, she’d have to defer to Mrs. Bauer.

Marta looked up at Anneliese; she was holding a knuckle on her right hand between the thumb and index finger of her left. “Pavel,” she said.

“My darling?”

“I should tell you.”

“You should tell me what?”

Marta thought for a moment that Anneliese was about to confess. But she only paused and looked up from her hands.

“I should tell you that I love you,” she said.

Pavel hatched a new plan. He would negotiate with the government—with the Czech government, in Prague—to be sent on a goodwill mission to South America. He would go as a sort of ambassador for the Czech textile manufacturers, to try to persuade the business community there that Czechoslovakia, even in its reduced form, would continue to be a reliable trading partner.

Anneliese agreed with Pavel’s new idea but wasn’t sure how they’d pull it off. “Who are you, to represent the whole Czech textile community?” she asked one evening as she and Pavel relaxed in the parlour. Marta was ironing quietly in the corner. She could see a copy of the new Henry Miller book,
Tropic of Capricorn
, and a Czech-English dictionary open in Anneliese’s lap. “I’m playing devil’s advocate,” Anneliese clarified.

“That’s a racy book,” Pavel said.

“And do you like my reading glasses?” She batted her eyelashes at her husband from behind the thick frames. Marta knew that Anneliese would wear them only in the privacy of their own home.

“Okay,” Anneliese said, “let’s figure this out.” She clapped her hands together like a schoolteacher. “How can we convince them that you’re the one to represent the industry if your factory has been occupied by Heinlein?”

“My reputation precedes me,” Pavel said. “Perhaps I am the man for the job precisely because the factory has been occupied.”

“How so?” Anneliese asked.

Pavel paused, and Marta could tell he was grasping, that he couldn’t make it make sense. “Now that Hácha has been elected . . .” he said, referring to Beneš’s replacement.

“Hácha will be of no help,” Anneliese said. “He’s a Catholic with no political background. A lawyer. A
translator
.” She snapped her Czech-English dictionary closed in disgust. “I have faith in you though,
miláčku
,” she said to her husband. “I know you’ll think of something.”

Pavel had pulled his grandfather’s Star of David out of his pocket. He touched it now, as if it might help.

There was a knock at the door, three short raps. Marta set her iron down; it let out a hiss, a steam engine departing. She went into the front hall and undid the deadbolt. Ernst was standing there, two inches from her face. Her hands rose of their own accord to smooth down her hair.

“Hello, Mr. Anselm,” she said.

Ernst mouthed something Marta could not make out. She looked over her shoulder to make sure nobody was watching, and leaned in to better hear him.

“Tonight,” he whispered. Then: “May I give you my coat?” he said loudly.

“Certainly.”

Marta reached out for the boiled wool cloak and summoned her courage. She shook her head.
No, not tonight.

Ernst raised his eyebrows, not angry so much as concerned. He took a step in towards her. “Marta,” he whispered, “what’s wrong?”

The Bauers were still in the next room, Pavel saying English words and Anneliese repeating them back to him. Marta shrugged, her arms crossed over her chest. She bit her bottom lip, afraid that if she spoke she’d start to cry.

“Has something happened?” Ernst whispered. It was as though he’d forgotten the other night entirely, how rough he’d been with her, how cruel. His gaze was soft, genuinely worried, and part of her wanted to relax, to lean her head against his torso and have him stroke her back like a child. But she touched her upper arm and felt the bruised skin, the place where he’d gripped her so tightly. She remembered Mr. Goldstein, the terrible tumble of his body to the street. “Pavel trusts you,” she whispered back.

A flush rose to Ernst’s face. “And what does that have to do with you and me?” His voice hardened and she felt suddenly young, afraid of standing up to him and losing everything. Who else did she have?

Pepik, she told herself. She had Pepik—and he depended on her. It could have been him, Pavel had said.

Ernst looked over Marta’s shoulder at the doorway beyond. They only had another second or two before the Bauers would wonder about her absence. He lifted his hand in the air. Marta had a sudden, unmistakeable feeling that he was about to strike her—her father’s memory evoked yet again—and she flinched, her arms lifting automatically to shield herself from the blow. But Ernst only laid his palm against her cheek. “Don’t be silly, darling,” he whispered. “I’ll see you tonight.”