Far To Go (13 page)

He’d never called her darling before, but she braced herself against the endearment. She thought again of old Mr. Goldstein, the way the boys had dragged him by his earlobe, and how helpless he’d looked in the light from the flames. His death had clarified things. She could no longer deny what Ernst stood for. Not to others. Not to herself.

“It’s settled,” he said.

But she shook her head:
No.

“I’ll hang your coat behind the door,” she said. And she turned on her heel before she could lose her nerve, and left him standing in the hallway without her.

The following morning Anneliese’s brother-in-law Max showed up at the house. He was a barrel-chested man with a moustache and white hair, and Marta had always liked him. He didn’t ignore her as some of the Bauers’ other friends did, treating her like she was just another piece of furniture that happened to have legs and a face; instead he asked after her, remembering little details like the needlepoint she’d been working on when he’d last seen her several months ago. Maybe this difference in attitude came from not taking his good fortune for granted; he’d met Anneliese’s sister Alžběta late in life, Marta knew, at a charity ball given for the volunteer firemen of his father’s factory. His life with her and their two young daughters were gifts he would never stop being grateful for.

“I’ve fired Kurt Hofstader,” Max said now, coming into the front hall. He smiled at Marta as he passed her his hat.

“Your foreman?” Pavel asked.

Max paused. “Thank you, Marta.” He looked to Pavel: “Yes, please. Half a glass.”

“It’s a vintage ’29.”

“Not foreman. Plant manager.”

“A Nazi?”

“You know I wouldn’t let politics get in the way of business.” Max lowered his voice. “But I think he was informing.”

Anneliese came into the room. “Informing about what?” she said darkly, from the corner of her mouth, pretending to be Sam Spade. She laughed at her poor imitation and threw her arms around her brother-in-law. “Hello, Max!”

Marta made her way into the small sewing room off the parlour. Several pairs of Pepik’s stockings needed mending; things had been so chaotic lately that she’d let them pile up. From the other room came the sounds of a cork being pulled and of liquid being poured. Chairs squeaked across the floorboards. Marta licked the tip of her thread—it had split a little—and squinted, guiding it through the eye of the needle. She had to make several attempts; the light wasn’t good, she thought, or perhaps her eyes were getting weaker. She heard the click of Pavel’s steel Adler—he was jotting something down on a pad of legal paper. Then Max said, “I was wondering if you’d come and replace him.”

Marta paused, the threaded needle pressed between her lips. Max wanted
Pavel
to replace his plant manager? Did he mean they should go to Prague? She shifted her chair so she could see around the door frame and into the parlour.

Pavel cleared his throat; there was a long silence before he asked the same question. “In Prague?”

Max laughed. “You make it sound like the moon.”

Pavel cleared his throat again. “I’m flattered you’d ask,” he said. He lifted a hand and touched the chandelier directly over his head, as though to steady it, or himself. “I will certainly consider it,” he said finally.

Anneliese said, “I’ve been wanting to go to Prague all along.”

Pavel turned to his wife. “And now, my darling, we’d have a reason to go.”

“A job?”

“Employment.”

But Marta knew Anneliese wouldn’t let herself get excited too quickly. “What about the factory?”

He shrugged. “You know as well as I do.”

“And your mother?”

“She wouldn’t come.”

Max interjected. “I could send someone down to keep an eye on her.”

“Won’t a Jewish plant manager be as much trouble as a Nazi?” asked Anneliese.

Pavel smiled at his wife. “Prague is not under Nazi rule. And Max is your brother-in-law!” He grasped Max’s shoulder and shook it.

“You could stay in our flat,” Max said. “I’ll be leaving the country for a while to visit Alžběta and our girls.”

Anneliese straightened at the mention of her sister and nieces, but Max had made it clear he could tell nobody where they’d gone.

“Yes,” Anneliese said. “Yes, that sounds . . .” She was quiet again. And then she said, all at once, “I’m thrilled!”

Pavel threw an arm around his wife’s shoulders and gave her a squeeze. “We’ll leave in the morning.” He was wearing his overcoat; he looked as if he planned to rush out the door that very minute.

Marta was still, her sewing needle poised. Was this really happening? After all her years of service to the Bauers she was about to be abandoned after all. They were acting in their own best interest and forgetting about her entirely. And why shouldn’t they, she asked herself. They had never promised her anything; her position in their family was as hired help, nothing more. Still, she felt a panic rising in her chest. She tried to reassure herself that things would work out somehow, but another part of her couldn’t see how; she would starve to death all on her own. And part of her thought she deserved to.

“We’ll need some time to pack,” Anneliese was saying in the other room. “To wash the linen and cover the furniture and thaw the icebox and . . .” She gestured around the parlour.

Max cleared his throat. “I’m sorry, Anneliese, but I’ll need him as quickly as possible. Hofstader has already been let go. And I have a business to run.”

He smiled at Pavel as though to say that the world of commerce was beyond a woman’s comprehension. Marta thought perhaps he was not as kind as she’d imagined him to be. She felt tears rising and blinked in rapid succession, trying to clear her eyes. Be patient, she told herself; there’s time to figure something out. But clearly there wasn’t. The decision made, the Bauers had moved immediately into planning mode. “Your mother could look in on the house,” Anneliese said.

“Or Ernst. I’ll meet with him to tell him the plan.”

“And the school?”

Pavel grimaced. “They’re not teaching Pepik anything worthwhile down there anyway. They’ve got him facing the back of the class. Did you know?”

Anneliese coughed; there was the furtive sound of her raising a hand to her mouth and lowering her voice. “What about . . . ?” Marta looked up to see Anneliese tip her head towards the sewing room.

“Pepik can’t be without a nanny,” Pavel said loudly. “Marta will come with us.”

“But Sophie’s already run off. Maybe Marta is about to do the same.”

“You want to look after him yourself?” Pavel teased his wife. “You want to . . . you want to . . .” He was clearly searching his memory for what it was Marta actually did. “You want to cook his dinner? You want to give him a bath? Every night? And dry him, and dress him, and—” But Anneliese smiled and waved her hand to show he could stop. She did not want to do any of those things, and they both knew it—certainly not in Prague, where there were opera houses and movie theatres and her old friends from her teenage years.

“Marta!” Pavel called.

Marta made a stitch and pulled the thread taut. She waited a moment before setting down her needle and standing up and entering the room.

“We are going to Prague and you will come with us,” Pavel said, magnanimous.

He paused.

“If you wish.”

Marta had to blink some more to clear her eyes of tears. Such fear, and now such relief. She had nobody else—especially not Ernst—and deep down she knew she wasn’t capable of getting by on her own. Surely Pavel must know this? But he seemed to be waiting for a reply, so she bobbed her head quickly and said, “Of course, Mr. Bauer.”

Marta knew she should get Pepik ready to go first. But she was so relieved she couldn’t help herself: she hurried upstairs to pack her own belongings.

Two days later something woke Marta in the middle of the night. She lit the candle on her bedside table and lay still, straining to hear. There was the sound of someone putting a foot down at the top of the stair, then pausing, then slowly putting another foot down. An image of Ernst flashed in front of her eyes and she was overcome by the familiar feeling of being dirty, that compulsive need to wash and clean that she knew, in the back of her mind, was what made her such good hired help.

The footsteps continued on, ever so carefully, past her door.

Marta began to fear for Pepik. His room was at the end of the hall, in the direction the footsteps were headed. There had been looting reported again recently, in a Jewish home in Kyjov; a young girl had been taken by a hooded man and was still missing. Marta swung her legs over the edge of the bed and lowered herself to the floor. The wood was cold but she didn’t feel for her slippers; she took her robe from the back of the door and held it to her chest like a towel. Her movements made the floor creak loudly. Whoever was outside froze. Marta summoned her courage all at once and flung the door open.

She and the intruder stood there, gaping at each other. Sophie’s hair was loose and frizzy, the candlelight playing over her face.

“Soph!” Marta whispered. “What are you doing here?”

“Lovely to see you too.”

“Are you here for your things? I thought you already—”

“I forgot something. I came back for it.” Sophie held up her silver key to the house. It glinted like a pirate’s tooth.

“What time is it?”

“I’m finished with cooking.”

“But your room, it’s . . .” Marta pointed in the opposite direction, towards the other end of the hall.

Sophie looked uncertain. “It’s none of your business. What I’m doing is none of your business.”

Marta put a finger to her lips, then wondered why she was whispering. Shouldn’t she call out and wake the Bauers?

“I thought the Bauers had left,” Sophie confessed.

“Shhh! Did you hear something?”

“I thought they’d gone.”

“Not yet.”

“Mr. Bauer is still here?” Sophie touched her heart as she said Pavel’s name.

“Yes.”

“But he’s leaving?”

“We’re just . . .”

Marta pointed to the suitcases open in the hall. She saw Pavel’s boar-bristle shaving brush and the elastic of his underthings. White cotton peeked out; it looked like the strips of cloth Anneliese used during menstruation. Marta had a sudden urge to zip the suitcase shut, to shield the Bauers’ personal belongings from Sophie’s gaze.

“You’re going with them?” Sophie asked, eyes widening.

“You think they wouldn’t take me?” Marta clutched her robe to her chest.

Sophie scoffed. “I think you shouldn’t take
them
,” she said. “It’s very . . . you could get . . .” Her voice trailed off and she seemed at a loss for words. Then: “You shouldn’t go,” she said. “I heard there’s a man, a very important man, who is very angry because he was fired by Mr. Bauer’s brother-in-law, and because Mr. Bauer—Pavel—has been hired in his place.”

Sophie touched her lip unconsciously with her tongue.

Marta said, “I don’t see why that—”

But Sophie cut her off. “
Sie sind
dumm
.” She raised her voice, and Marta brought her finger to her lips a second time, but Sophie continued to speak loudly, disgusted. “Do what you want, Marta,” she said, and turned on her heel. “I’ll be seeing you. Or maybe,” she added, looking back over her shoulder meaningfully, “I won’t be.”

Marta saw that Sophie had a large empty sack over her shoulder, like a collapsed lung. She descended the stairs the way she’d come, the sack hanging loosely down her back. Marta waited until she heard the back door close. She went back into her room and hung up her robe. She cupped the candle flame with her hand and extinguished it with a short
huff
. Her bedsheets were cool, and she rubbed her feet together to warm them. She turned on her side and pulled the pillow over her head.

Only after she had been lying there for several minutes, her breath becoming more shallow, did it occur to her to wonder what Sophie had really been doing in the house. What exactly she had come back to retrieve.

Anneliese heard a rumour.

Or perhaps, she said, it was the truth. There was a young British stockbroker who was helping Czech children leave the country. On trains referred to as Kindertransports. “What do you say?” she asked her husband. “Could we consider sending Pepik?” On December 2 the Führer had spoken on the radio, announcing his intent to take Prague. But Pavel was firm. He had a job in Prague, and he wanted his son with him. Hitler or no Hitler, he said.

The departure for the capital was delayed, though, by a last-minute call from Herrick, the German in charge at Pavel’s factory. Pavel was summoned; he had no choice under Nazi rule but to go down and answer the man’s questions. When he returned home, Pavel said he could guess, based on the machinery that had been removed and on the industrial-size grey metal tubes stacked in the foyer, that the place was being converted into a munitions factory. Perhaps to supply the Skoda works. They had wanted to ask him about the bookkeeping, which was a complex system he had started in order to accommodate the jute cartel. His presence was required over the course of several days. The sixth of December, Saint Nicholas Day, found the Bauers eating their last supper in the house before their move.

They were in the middle of the
varenyky
, Marta’s first attempt at dumplings stuffed with beef and herbs—they had turned out rather poorly, she thought—when the doorbell rang. Pavel put down his silver cutlery. He cleared his throat and said, “Pepik, why don’t you get that?”

Pepik looked to Marta for confirmation. She nodded to show he should go.

He went into the hall and they could hear him struggling with the heavy handle. Pavel and Anneliese were looking at each other, little smiles of anticipation on their faces.

“Do you need some help?” Marta called. But the door was pushed in from the outside and Pepik gave a little squeal.

“Who is it?” Anneliese called out innocently.

A booming voice: “It’s Saint Nicholas!”

Pepik leapt into the dining room. He made a face like Henry in the comic book his great-uncle had sent from America: mouth wide open, hands on his cheeks but no sound. Then he stuck his head back out into the hall to make sure Saint Nick had not disappeared.