My Enemy's Cradle (22 page)

Her question struck me. I fell back on the bed, laughing, the movement feeling strange in my shoulders. "It's been quite a while, Neve. Maybe never, now that you mention it."

Neve rolled her eyes and began to undress.

Suddenly I had an idea. "Neve, what do you do with it?"

"The food? I flush it away every couple of days. I like thinking that I'm helping some German soldier go hungry."

"On Fridays, can I have anything you're going to flush away instead?"

"On Fridays?" She stood in her slip, a graying hand-me-down, with her bottom lip pushed out, thinking. With her thin legs and her head cocked on her thin neck, she looked like a little wren. Suddenly I realized I liked Neve a lot, in spite of how much she didn't seem to want that. "Oh. The cleaning woman?"

I nodded. "I'll start doing it, too."

"I don't know..."

"I'll tell her to be careful. And if someone finds out, I'll take all the blame."

Neve thought for a moment. "I suppose if you go into my top drawer on Fridays, I'm not really involved. And it's better than flushing it away." She gave me a tiny smile, then she pulled the one good dress she owned from the wardrobe and tugged it on over her belly. She looked at me and seemed to notice for the first time that I was already dressed for bed. "Aren't you coming downstairs?"

"No. I'm staying away." I waved at some books on prenatal care I'd brought up from the library. "I'm just going to read."

"You're crazy," she muttered, putting on her shoes. "Music! How long since we've heard music! And dancing ... I just want to see dancing again."

"They're not going to let you in. Do you know what it really is?"

"I know." She combed her hair behind her ears, then blew a fine strand from her eyes. "A stud party. I don't want to go in. I just want to watch. And listen."

"It doesn't bother you?"

"I feel sorry for them. But they're getting what they deserve. No love, no lust even. What's the point? The Germans are a nation of rutting goats."

"That's a nice image," I laughed. "I'm not going to be able to keep a straight face when I look at Frau Klaus now."

"I take it back. I've seen goats rutting—the males, at least, are enjoying it. Can you imagine how horrible it would be to have some man pumping away at you, not wanting you at all, only doing his duty? No, thanks, I'll take love or lust."

"Neve," I started, then hesitated. Neve kept a strict fence around certain things. But tonight she seemed to have unlatched the gate. I risked my question. "Which was it for you and the father?"

She gave a wry smile and looked at me as if to say, yes, that's the question, isn't it? "One of each. That was the problem."

I was glad she didn't turn the question on me.

She went downstairs and I closed the door behind her; still, I could hear the phonograph and the laughter. The dark roar of the men's voices seemed dangerous in this place of soft, fleshy girls. As the night went on and the men grew drunker, their cries grew louder. I got out of bed and went to my calendar to mark off another day. Suddenly I thought of something and began to make some calculations. Yes; it was the first night of Hanukkah.

It had been five years. But tonight the idea of a miracle for Jews seemed a good thing to celebrate. I pulled a candle from the drawer and lit it, whispering the blessing.

From downstairs came the sound of glass breaking, followed by a surprised silence, and then more laughter and more glass.

I blew out my candle and put it away.

January first came, the new year. A week passed, and then another. Word spread about the Americans; after a few days of excited whispering among those of us from occupied countries, our hope faded as nothing changed. What had we expected? That the Americans would come roaring up to the homes in their big Cadillacs to escort us back to suddenly rebuilt towns and suddenly welcoming families? Whatever was going to happen would take months or years, and pregnant girls measured time differently. Another week passed and another. Surley, Isaak had gotten my note by now. Still, he didn't come.

One day became another, indistinguishable from all the others, unmarked even by walks out-of-doors. Lunch after breakfast, night after day, sun after snow. I began to nap constantly and when I awoke, at first I could only tell whether it was night or day by the loudness of the clock—at night each tick was a gunshot.

The dull light of boredom had settled over all the rooms in the home with the exception of the labor room—as often as I could I would go there to stand on the waxed floors and look through the sparkling windows just to feel the shimmer of anticipation that hung in the air—and the newborns' nursery. One morning, though, I went to visit the nursery and found it empty; there had been three babies there only a few days before, so I was puzzled.

"The little boy's gone. The two girls have been moved over to the orphanage. They're big enough."

I felt a sudden loneliness and the day stretched out before me, unbearably infinite.

"Ilse, may I go there? To the orphanage?"

Ilse shrugged. "It's not off-limits. But the girls don't. Why do you want to?"

I shrugged back. "The babies. It's something to do."

"It's something to do, all right. And I'm glad to have a few days free of it. But let's go see if you can visit. Why not?" Ilse stopped for her coat and handed me a sweater. "It's fastest this way." We left the east wing and crossed the patio, where curls of swept snow frosted the flagstones, and Sister Ilse pulled at the oak entry door, which opened immediately onto a heavy set of swinging doors. Even before we entered those, I heard the crying. My womb tensed at the sound, which, once we stepped inside, was so loud it seemed impossible we hadn't heard it in the east wing.

"Why isn't anyone here?"

Sister Ilse gestured to the nurses' station across the hall. A nurse was sitting beside a lamp, scratching the back of her neck, bent over a ledger. "There she is."

"But these babies are crying!"

Ilse looked back toward the cribs, as if she had to see if this was true. "A few are. If anything were wrong, she'd come out."

"They're lying here crying!"

Ilse shrugged. "At night I know they separate them—the crying ones go into another room. Maybe it's time for their feeding now, it's probably not a good time to visit. Sister Solvig is in charge here. She's a friend. We could come back when she's here."

Ilse turned to leave, but I stood rooted, looking over the room. A dozen white cribs, larger than in the newborns' nursery, formed two straight ranks along the windows. Little soldiers already, except for their cries, which sounded especially forlorn in this room of hard sunshine and glass, of hard polished tiles and long steel cabinets. The only soft things were the nine babies in their iron cages.

"Anneke—this is a Lebensborn. You don't have to worry. These are the best-cared-for babies in the country."

"Are they?"

"Of course. That's what they do here. They're fed every four hours. They're clean, they have vitamins, medicine ... they have the best of whatever they need."

"What happens in between?" I asked.

"In between?"

"What happens to them in between the feedings?"

"I don't know ... this isn't my wing. They sleep, I imagine. They're babies."

Suddenly I felt Benjamin in my arms. He would fuss if he was awake and alone; my stepmother said I spoiled him, carrying him around all day, but she stroked my hair and smiled at me when she said it. And Benjamin had smiled at me, too, all the time ... a big, drunken love-smile that only I got as we caressed each other's faces.

My baby, curled and nestled tight against my ribs now, would never lie in a crib crying. Whenever he needed me I would hold him. Or Isaak would ... well, but I would have to teach him that. I tried to picture Isaak's face and felt a moment of panic when I couldn't. But then I conjured an image of him lying beside me in his narrow cot—his profile, with his eyes closed. And I remembered how his skin tightened as if chilled when my fingertips brushed against it. I would have to teach him.

I bent down to the little girl in the nearest crib and stroked the soft skin of her hand. She didn't move, only stared up at me, wary. When I teased her palm open with a fingertip, she squeezed it, still looking at me cautiously.

In the next crib, another little girl furrowed her face and began to whimper, adding her thin distress to the others', and again I felt it in my womb, as if a wire were drawing it up my spine.

"Some of these babies must be six months old, Ilse," I said, deliberately using only her first name. "Are you telling me no one holds them or plays with them? What are they even doing here? I thought they were all adopted."

"They will be. Some families don't want infants. They'll all have their families soon enough. I think we should leave. It's not good to upset yourself in your condition."

"My condition?" I stretched my open hands toward the cribs. "I'm carrying a baby, a living baby like the ones in here—it's not a medical condition!" Leona's words. They hadn't worked for her. "Ilse, where is Leona's baby? Was he adopted already? Or is he here?"

"I have no idea."

"Can you find out?"

She shook her head. "Probably not ... I wouldn't even know how. Let's go back, Anneke."

"Why can't you find out?"

Ilse glanced at the nurses' window again and then leaned over to place her palm on the belly of a stirring boy. "For one thing, the records aren't even kept here." Her voice dropped. "There's a separate registry in Munich. These numbers and names on the cribs ... they're not going to refer to the birth mothers."

"Please. I want to know if he's here."

Ilse straightened and put her hands on her hips. I mirrored her and held her gaze until she shook her head and sighed. "When was he born?"

On the last day of January, I lay on my bed in the middle of the morning solving a crossword puzzle and hoping to fall asleep. I rolled onto my side and felt something shift inside—just a little flutter, but separate from me. Alive. I rolled back and forth trying to feel it again, but my baby was hiding. Smiling at me in his secret game. When I went downstairs for lunch, eager to find Neve to tell her, I had another surprise: a small blue card in my mailbox. An appointment notice for my six-month examination, the next afternoon. I stood rooted in the hall and stared at it. A panicked urge to flee ran through me—a feeling I had more and more lately—and I reasoned it down.

I had calculated that Anneke was either six or ten weeks ahead of me. This notice told me it was six—better than ten, but still, a doctor would spot the discrepancy. I went to the newborns' nursery immediately.

"I need something."

Sister Ilse looked up from her report and then stopped writing, looked at me harder. "Are you feeling all right?"

I motioned her over to the bank of windows farthest from the hall and looked out, not daring to meet her eyes. "I need my chart. Please don't ask me why."

Ilse was quiet for a moment, looking out at the frozen mountains in the distance. "The files are locked, Anneke. There are a lot of secrets here."

"Just tell me how to get in, and you don't have to be involved after that."

"It's not that easy. The office is locked, too. And only a few of us have keys."

"I wouldn't ask if I didn't have to. Please trust me."

Ilse put her hands to my shoulders and turned me to face her. She let her eyes tell me what she wanted to say next. I met her gaze without wavering and reached down to stroke my belly, telling her it was for my baby I was asking. A lie I didn't have the courage to commit in words.

She sighed. "There's a staff meeting tonight. I'll slip out at seven forty-five. Be at the main desk. If it feels safe, I'll let you into the office."

I was there exactly at seven forty-five, sweat prickling and then cooling under my arms. Ilse came down the hall toward me looking grim, as if she regretted her promise. "Five minutes," she said. "The key to the filing cabinet is in the third drawer of the desk under the window. The meeting's almost over. If someone comes, I'll rap if I can, and you'll have to hide. I can't help you more than that."

I found Anneke's file and went through the documents. It was difficult to see her laid out like that—a series of statistics fitted into neat boxes. I had to stop reading the words and only look for a date. There it was, on the top of Anneke's gynecological-exam report. One May. I took the pen from my pocket and was about to cross out the date when I realized how lucky I was. I drew a three in front of the one.

I had just bought myself thirty days.

In the hall, Sister Ilse put her finger to her lips and hurried me away. Suddenly she put her arm around my shoulder. "Don't worry about it. It's completely normal. Let me know if you have any spotting."

There he was rounding a corner in front of us—Dr. Ebers himself, the chief medical officer of all the homes, with his brilliantined hair and his mouth a neat, wide slash across his jaw as if cut with an ax.

"It's nothing," Sister Ilse assured him. "A little cramping. An overanxious mother."

He nodded and smiled down indulgently, his mouth split even wider. "Never hesitate to bring any concerns to us. Better safe than sorry,
Fraülein,
eh?"

I curled my fingers around the pen I still held and gave a weak smile. "Thank you again," I said to Sister Ilse. "I feel much better now."

We parted in the lobby and Ilse took my hand, casually, and pressed a slip of paper into it. In my room, I opened it up. Just a name—Adolf K—with a number after it.

So Leona's baby was here, and tomorrow I would get to see him. I smiled ... it had not been a bad night. But with my relief came a surge of anger. Where was Isaak? Or my aunt? They'd looked into my eyes and promised they'd come for me, promised I'd be safe here until then. Were they worrying about me today? Did they even remember? I was so tired of everything—so tired of hiding and lying and worrying. My laundry basket sat at the end of my bed, full of the folded left-behind clothes I'd been wearing these days—nothing I had come with fit anymore. I knocked the basket to the floor and threw myself down on the bed.