Far To Go (30 page)

“You’ll get us killed,” she said evenly. She was wearing a new navy blue dress, her dark curls pinned in two buns on either side of her head.

“But how will they know?” Marta heard Pavel ask. “The company, fine. But the other . . .” He cleared his throat. Marta wasn’t sure if he was referring to the Canadian railway bonds or to his mother’s villa on the Seine or to various bank accounts he might or might not have opened in other countries. Ernst had got his hands on some of Pavel’s money but had been unsuccessful, Marta surmised, at accessing the bulk of his estate. So at least there was that small consolation.

The onions stung her eyes; she wiped away a tear with the back of her arm. Through the open kitchen arch she saw Pavel jab at the paper in front of him with the tip of his pencil. “How do they define a Jewish company?” he asked Anneliese. “What does it mean, ‘under the decisive influence of Jews’?” He made quotes in the air with his fingers. “It means nothing. You can’t prove that anything is ‘under the decisive influence’ of anyone at all!”

Anneliese put her newspaper down and crossed the room. She stood with her back to her husband, staring out the window. “They’re going to take it all now. Turn everything over to the
Treuhänder
. No exceptions.” She lifted a foot, balancing on one ruby heel.

“How are you such an expert all of a sudden?”

“It doesn’t take a genius,” Anneliese said.

Marta thought Anneliese sounded a little defensive. She wiped her hands on her apron and dumped the onion peels in the bin. She came into the parlour.

“My father,” Pavel was saying, “fought for the Germans in the Great War.”

“Really?” Marta asked.

“Yes,” he said. Surprised she didn’t already know. He picked up the paperclip and dug the point into the pad of his thumb. “So they’ll come and take the flat. And send us where? On vacation?”

“Just wait a little longer.” Anneliese’s voice was firm. “Something will happen.”

But Pavel loosened his blue silk tie, pulled it off, and threw it down on the table. “What do you mean, ‘something will happen’? Something like God sending down an Egyptian plague? Or something more along the lines of our child being sent out into the wild blue yonder never to be heard from again?”

Because this was the heart of it, Marta knew, the thing nobody was saying. It had been almost a month, and still no word from the Millings. Mathilde Baeck had received several letters, two from the foster parents, and a drawing by her Clara of the Hook of Holland, the sun rising over the bow of a big ship on which a herd of stick children were grinning. Marta tried to feel happy for the Baecks, happy that at least some people knew the whereabouts of their child, but despite herself she felt the unfairness of it, and a bitter jealousy. It was not that she begrudged Mrs. Baeck her knowledge of her daughter but that she so wished for something comparable from Pepik. Her longing for news of him was physical; her arms hurt for wanting to hold him. Already she was beginning to forget his voice, the little suckling sounds he made as he was falling asleep. His train was abandoned; the track was dismantled and pushed to the back of the closet. The lead soldiers were buried like casualties in a shoebox beneath the bottom bunk. There was no train under the parlour table now, but a ghost train had replaced the real one, and this at least was vivid in Marta’s imagination. She could see it flashing around the silver loop of its track, could hear the little bell singing its departure.

Anneliese was now gone from home almost all the time. She reappeared at odd hours, wearing shoes Marta didn’t recognize. Once she came home with a big bouquet of roses—difficult to get under the ruling Nazis—and Marta found a card torn up past legibility in the wastebasket. Not that she was snooping, of course. It was her
job
to take out the garbage.

She went into Max’s study to empty the bin there and found Pavel sitting behind the desk. The room smelled musty, like dust and ink. Darkness had fallen; Marta crossed the room and switched on the lamp. The little pool of light lit up Pavel’s face from below; he was wearing an expression of perfect sadness, his mouth turned down at the corners.

Pepik’s Sad face.

“Are you busy?” Marta asked.

There was a piece of paper in front of Pavel, a sheet of Bauer and Sons stationery. He was holding a fountain pen in his hand. “No, not busy,” he said. But he was casually trying to cover the letter with his elbow.

“I can just . . .” she said, nodding at the door. “If you’re in the middle of something.”

“No,” Pavel said. “Please.” He motioned to the straight-backed chair across from him. She wished he would come out from behind the desk and sit with her, as he sometimes did, in the velvet armchairs by the window—she felt like a client in a law office with the huge expanse of wood between them. But he stayed where he was and Marta made herself as comfortable as she could. Pavel, she saw, had pushed his paper under an atlas.

“I had a hopeful letter yesterday, from the embassy in Argentina,” he said. “When I followed up today, though, they told me my contact had been terminated.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Marta said. Truthfully, though, it was to be expected. Nobody was able to get out anymore. She was a little surprised that Pavel kept trying.

“Where’s the bin?” she asked, remembering what she’d come to do. She bent and looked under the desk.

Pavel ignored the question. “Slivovitz?” he asked. There was a silver tray with a bottle on the desk, and two little shot glasses.

She straightened and nodded. “Thank you,” she said. “Then let’s write to Pepik.”

Pavel uncorked the decanter; it made a loud
pop
. He cleared his throat. “I was just doing that.”

“Of course,” Marta said; she tried to keep her voice steady. But she lowered her eyes and looked at her hands. She’d thought writing to Pepik was something they shared, a common activity that drew them together. They’d been writing to him for days now: it was like reading to someone in a coma—there was no way to know how much was getting through. Pavel wrote in big block letters, as though his son might be able to read them himself, and Marta didn’t remind him otherwise. She felt it excused her own childlike hand. She addressed each envelope, added an
AIRMAIL
sticker, and affixed the Nazi postage. She sent each letter separately, so there would be more for Pepik to open.

The days went by and they waited. No reply.

“I was writing to the Millings, in fact,” Pavel said now, filling their glasses. Marta knew that he wrote frequently to his son’s temporary parents, thanking them for the safekeeping of his son. He never forgot to ask after Arthur, he’d told her, and send his best wishes for their son’s speedy recovery. He even went so far as to send his prayers.

He stoppered the bottle and looked up at her. “I was asking if the Millings need any work done. You know,” he said, speaking quickly, “if they need a handyman. Or someone to drive their car.”

Marta squinted, not comprehending.

“If they need me to do any work,” Pavel said. He looked at her fiercely, ashamed but defiant, and she saw all at once: he would be a butler, or a chauffeur. Anything to get them out. It was much easier to get the exit papers, she knew, if you had a letter of employment.

Still, this was wrong. It was not the way the world was meant to be. There was an order to things, and Marta did not want to think of Pavel, so kind and upstanding, as a servant in someone else’s home. She did not want to imagine him humbled that way. If this could happen to him then nobody was safe; there was no way of protecting oneself after all. A bit of blackness began to creep into her body. It was instantly recognizable, a grey haze at the edge of her vision that made her see things as other than they were. And the weight in her chest, the sense she was drowning . . .

She tried to change the subject. “Who is this Adolf Eichmann exactly?” She’d heard someone in line at the butcher’s say that the high-ranking Nazi had arrived in Prague.

Pavel’s voice was brisk. “The SS Jewish expert. So-called.” He drained his glass in the manner of the Russians: politely, but completely. He raised his hand. “Another?”

But Marta’s drink was untouched.

“Eichmann heads the Zentralstelle für jüdische Auswanderung,” Pavel said. “The SS department in charge of robbing and expelling the Jews. They set up shop in Vienna last year.” He paused, and she knew he was thinking of his brother Misha, forced to scrub the streets and then drink his pail of dirty water. Where was he now? And his son, Tomáš, and his young wife, Lore?

Pavel tipped his head back and swallowed again: two short bobs of his Adam’s apple. The room had gone from dusky to dark. The light from the lamp barely touched it. Marta expected this would be the end of the conversation, but Pavel said, “I saw him last week. Eichmann. Passing in the street. He looked . . .” He gave a half-smile. “He looked like a dog.”

“Eichmann? You saw him?”

Pavel nodded and she tried to imagine the man: small black eyes like messengers of death. Just then the doorbell rang. Marta put down her glass and ran a hand over her curls, stood up and straightened her skirt. She went into the front hall, Pavel following, both of them expecting a boy with a telegram. But it was as if Pavel’s description had conjured Eichmann out of thin air, and there he was in front of them.

“
Guten tag
,” he said. “I’m sorry to bother you.” His jaw was vaguely canine, it was true, but he was cleanly shaven, his hair cut very short, and so polite that Marta felt the Nazi uniform must be a mistake: he must be heading out to some sort of costume party or masquerade.

Behind her she felt Pavel freeze. He was taking in the stylized swastika, the military decorations. She could tell his instinct was to turn and run, but faced with this man, this paragon of good behaviour, the gentleman in Pavel rose to the surface to meet him. “Please come in,” he said, his German perfect. One man of the world recognizing another.

The man introduced himself: “
Ich bin
? Werner Axmann.”

So, not Adolf Eichmann after all. But a Nazi on your doorstep could mean only one thing.

And yet, Marta thought, the man was behaving strangely. He did not seem about to drag them off and throw them in prison. He hesitated, like a shy boy summoned to the front of the classroom to give a speech. Like Pepik, she thought for a moment, but the comparison was unseemly and she pushed it quickly from her mind. In front of her the officer stood waiting for inspiration, waiting for something to materialize from within the flat to guide him. A moment of silence passed. He looked down into his folded hands as though trying to read crib notes hidden there. “I’m sorry to disturb you, Mr. Bauer,” he said again, “but is your wife at home?”

The question was met by Pavel’s blank stare. “
Sicherlich
,” he said, but he made no move to fetch Anneliese.

The officer’s square jaw was set. He had green eyes, Marta saw, that looked almost like chips of emerald. He cleared his throat and shifted from one foot to the other. Somebody had to do something, Marta thought. She turned to get Anneliese and saw that Mrs. Bauer had already come into the room behind them. Her red lipstick was fresh, her eyes wide with fear. Marta said, “Mrs. Bauer, there’s somebody here to—” And then she looked at Anneliese again and saw surprise of a different kind on her face. Mrs. Bauer already knew this young officer. All at once it was clear to Marta that Anneliese was not about to be hauled off to Dachau. That the German was paying her a different kind of visit.

Anneliese stared at the man. “What are you doing here?” She closed her eyes and shook her head almost imperceptibly. “You promised me you wouldn’t . . .”

Marta looked over at Pavel. His cheeks were burning red. He too was starting to understand.

“I told you never to—” Anneliese said, but she couldn’t finish. Her eyes were full of tears. She looked from the young man to Pavel and back, two parts of her life colliding. The officer took a step into the hallway. His boots squeaked on the floorboards. He was younger than Pavel, bashful but emboldened. There was nothing Pavel could do to hurt him.

It was Pavel who spoke first. “If you have business to attend to with my wife,” he said stiffly, “I would ask that you attend to it elsewhere.” He did not look at Anneliese.

The younger man acquiesced, apologetic. “It will take only a moment.” He said to Anneliese, “I’m very sorry to disturb you, Mrs. Bauer.” He spoke formally, Marta thought, but his expression betrayed a close familiarity. He raised his eyebrows at her:
Let’s get out of here.

Anneliese had no choice. She crossed the floor and took her hat with the blue ribbon from the stand. She followed her young officer out the door.

It occurred to Marta then that life was inherently unstable. That things were always changing, and just when you thought you’d reached some sort of balance, some kind of understanding, everything would change again. That this, ultimately, was the only thing to count on. She’d thought she knew Anneliese—she did, she supposed, in many ways—but here was the wild card, the blind spot made suddenly clear. And though it was easy to judge what she now saw, she realized also that it wasn’t that simple.

The officer, for example: he must actually care deeply for Anneliese. Whatever was going on between them exactly, he was willing to risk his position—and maybe his life—to spend time in her company.

They looked good together, Marta thought. An attractive German couple.

You’d never guess. If you didn’t already know.

That evening Marta followed Pavel into the study. They stayed in there with the door closed for quite some time.

They did not speak of what had happened earlier, of the German or the various repercussions of what had been revealed. Instead they wrote Pepik, and then sat in quietness drinking their tea.

“I received an odd telegram from Ernst today,” Pavel said. “I wonder about him sometimes.”

“You wonder?”

“I just get the feeling—I can’t really believe—”

Marta stopped with her teacup halfway between the saucer and her lips. The linden-scented steam. “You can’t believe what?”