Far to Go

Chapter Three



MARTA’S FACE WAS PRESSED INTO the cold concrete wall, her underpants down around her ankles. Ernst fumbled with the buckle on his belt; she wasn’t ready, but he didn’t seem to notice. He spat on his fingers and touched her briefly, then grunted, pushing himself inside her. She inhaled sharply, surprised by the pain. “Wait—” she started, but her back was to him and she knew he couldn’t hear, or was choosing not to. With each thrust her cheekbone dug into the rough wall; she braced herself with her palms, pushing back against his weight, but Ernst was stronger.

“Stay still,” he panted.

She felt a dribble on the inside of her leg. He was already close, she could tell. The head of his penis swelling. For a moment she thought of Pavel—a brief flash of his hand gripping her wrist—Ernst gave a final shove and moaned, emptying himself inside her.

He pulled out right away. Tucked in his shirttails and zipped up his fly, taking his time to adjust himself inside his pants. She turned to face him, leaning weakly back against the wall. Her knees were shaking. Ernst glanced at her, then looked again. “You’re bleeding,” he said.

She brought a hand to her face. He was right.

“You’d better watch it,” he said.

“The bleeding?”

“You’d better watch yourself.”

Marta’s underpants were still around her ankles; she bent to pull them up, followed by her stockings. Her body felt numb, as if it were made of rubber. She was suddenly shivering with cold.

“What do you mean, watch myself?” she asked, but she knew exactly what he meant. It was dangerous for her to be aligned with the Bauers—Ernst had been saying it for days now. That uncertainty she’d noticed in him, the need to be reassured, was gone. All at once it was like he’d never had any doubts, like he’d been dedicated to National Socialism all along.

Ernst was pulling on his jacket. He looked at his reflection in the shine of the flax-spinning mill and smoothed back his hair with the palms of his hands.

“Jews have taken over everything,” he said, gesturing around at the other machines on the floor, the industry Pavel and his father had worked so hard to build. “It’s time for it to stop.”

But Marta could hardly hear what he was saying; his voice seemed to come from very far away. Ernst was buttoning his jacket. He leaned in towards her, suddenly an inch from her face. “Clean yourself up,” he said, then turned to leave.

She touched her cheek again. Her fingers came away stained with blood.

The next night Marta lay in her single bed, breathing. Her palm on her stomach, the slight rise and fall under her ribs. Like the surface of the sea, she thought. She had never seen the sea, but she imagined its shimmer in late afternoon, the way the light would sparkle over the waves.

Cold black shapes slipped through her depths.

She shifted in her sheets, let her eyes slowly close. She tried to forget what had happened with Ernst the night before. His fingers digging into her flesh, the little row of bruises he’d left along her forearm. She tried to forget altogether that he existed. It had seemed so simple at first; not love, of course, but attention, something to relieve the monotony of her day-to-day. And for a time it had worked. But now the bubble had popped and the darkness was rushing back in. She should have known it would happen like this. The weight of Ernst’s body on hers was suddenly the same as her father’s; his hands were not a distraction but a terrible reminder. She worked always to forget what her father had done to her, the nights he would slink into her room, get in beside her, put a hand over her mouth. Her sister frozen with fear on the other side of the bed, the heat on her own face the following morning, not being able to look her sister in the eye. And now the old shame came back, newly disguised.

The Jews were dirty, Ernst had clearly said. But Jews were all that she had.

Ernst had explained his plan. The Bauers’ assets would be taken; it was unavoidable. If Pavel was going to loose his money anyway, Ernst could certainly use it. Pavel had always underpaid him, Ernst had told her. Marta knew this to be untrue, but Ernst seemed adamant. And now, he said, by keeping up the pretense of their friendship, he would get his due. He’d already convinced Pavel to transfer a portion of his investments into his name, “for safekeeping,” he’d told him. There was more, though. It would take time, and patience.

Marta wondered if Ernst’s motivations weren’t more complex; if, deep down, he didn’t still love his friend and feel more ambivalent than he realized. Regardless, she knew she needed to end their relationship—something had turned inside her. The filthy feeling, the repulsion, had come back stronger than ever. She could no more continue with him than she could willingly return to the country of her childhood. But Ernst would be angry. He could reveal their secret to Pavel, who would then have no choice but to fire her. Ernst was the one who was married, but she, the hired help, would be blamed. The same thing had happened with the Maršíkov maid, Helga: there’d been a brief affair with Mr. Maršíkov, and Helga was gone so quickly Marta had not even had a chance to say goodbye.

She pushed the sickness of her situation down into her stomach, but the images kept asserting themselves, rising to the surface like debris after a storm. A branch, a torn stocking. A silver key—to what? She reached out for it and it slipped through her fingers; she plugged her nose and dived down after it. There was the sound of the key turning in a lock; she sat up in bed with a start.

She must have been asleep.

She struck a match, touched it to the candle’s wick, and squinted at the clock on the wall: 12:15. She lay back down.

Pavel said, “Here, give me that.” The Bauers were standing directly under the stove vent; Pavel’s voice was so clear that Marta thought for a moment he was speaking to her.

But Anneliese said, “The slivovitz?”

“The absinthe.” Pavel paused. “You won’t embarrass me like that again.”

“Wouldn’t you say that this whole situation is a little—what did you call it?—embarrassing? Not being allowed out after ten o’clock and having to come home for a curfew like children?”

Marta heard the delicate snap of Mrs. Bauer’s earrings coming off and then the louder snap of her purse opening and closing. “Mathilde says we can stay with her and Vaclav in Prague if need be.”

Pavel snorted. “Will we bunk in with Clara and baby Magda?”

“She was just trying to be helpful. What’s happened to you? You’ve become so . . . contrary.”

“We’re not leaving.”

“All the more reason to consider my idea,” Anneliese said.

There was the barely perceptible click of her lighter.

Marta blew her candle out. She pulled her quilt up over her shoulders and willed herself to fall back to sleep. It was late, and she was beyond exhausted. And Pepik had recently taken to waking with the sunrise. But the longer she squeezed her eyes shut and focused on her desire to sleep, the more awake she became and the closer the Bauers’ voices seemed.

“That pork was undercooked,” Anneliese said, and Marta felt she personally was being accused.

“Listen to me, Liesel,” Pavel answered. “My grandfather was an elder of his synagogue. My earliest memory is of seeing him there on the High Holy Days, in his place of honour.”

“It doesn’t mean anything. To us. To you. When was the last time you set foot in a synagogue?”

“But this is my point. I am realizing it actually does.”

Anneliese scoffed. “You’ve chosen a perfect time to realize.”

“Do you know how long ago the Jews in Bohemia were granted equal rights?” The floorboards squeaked as Pavel started pacing.

Anneliese said, “I don’t know. And do you know something? I don’t care.”

“Which is odd, seeing as you are a Jew of Bohemia.”

“Hush, Pavel,” Anneliese said. But her voice was rising too. “I don’t feel Jewish,” she said forcibly. “No more than I feel . . . I don’t know . . .” Marta pictured her waving her hand through the cigarette smoke above her head. “. . . Catholic.”

“Yes, Liesel, I understand,” Pavel said. His voice revealed a sincere attempt at patience. “It’s not the religion I’m talking about. It’s the culture.”

“The culture?”

“The Jewish culture.”

“It’s not a culture, it’s a religion.”

Both of them were quiet then. Marta pulled her blankets higher, under her chin. She could tell from the silence that the Bauers were surprised to have stumbled on this difference of opinion about their faith. They had obviously never discussed it before, at least not from this particular angle; they had each assumed the other felt the way they themselves did. She had noticed this tendency in people who were married—the tendency to forget that the spouse was a separate person with a separate past, and secrets you would never guess at.

“My stomach hurts,” Anneliese said quietly.

Pavel cleared his throat. “It was 1848 when the Jews of Bohemia were granted equal rights. Less than a century ago.”

“That has nothing to do with our situation.”

“It has everything to do with our situation. My grandfather was the mayor of the Jewish City of Prague.”

“You said it didn’t mean anything. You said it was a charity that gave money to soup kitchens.”

“It meant something to him,” Pavel said fiercely. “All he wanted on his tombstone—the only thing he wanted—was Adolf Bauer, former Mayor of the Jewish City of Prague.”

“His poor wife,” Anneliese said. “And what about his children? I see you come from a long line of men unconcerned with the well-being of their children.”

Pavel now began to shout in earnest. “Don’t you dare speak to me about the well-being of my children!” There was a thump, as though he had thrown a heavy object to the floor, and the sound of the pacing resumed. “That’s exactly what this is about. I do not want Pepik to see his father shamed like a dog by a bunch of schoolyard bullies! He deserves a better example.”

“My sister had her girls baptized.”

“Alžběta? She has no more principles than you have!”

“It’s a good idea. It could save Pepik’s life.”

“Listen to me, Liesel. This is important. I want you to hear what I say now.” Pavel paused. “I would not convert to Christianity if I were the last Jew on earth. The very last Jew on earth!”

“That’s fine. Because nobody is asking you to convert.”

There was a note of desperation in Anneliese’s voice that had not been there before. Perhaps, Marta thought, she knew something that the rest of them didn’t.

“It’s the opposite of what you think, Pavel. I’m thinking of the big picture. Please,” Anneliese said. She was begging now. On the verge of tears. “Just in case. He’s my only child . . .”

The cloaked reference to the dead baby worked in Anne-liese’s favour. The voices from downstairs quieted. “I know,” Pavel said softly. “I know he is.”

What would Pavel have been like if the other child had lived? As the father of a little girl.

Pavel’s voice was now just a murmur, the sharp edges of his words smoothed out. Marta rolled over and put the pillow over her head. The fights always ended this way, she thought, in a kind of mutual stalemate. They weren’t willing to give in, nor were they willing to go to bed angry. They needed each other too much. They would be moving towards each other now, she knew, reconciling, Pavel wrapping his arms around his wife.

Marta loathed them for this with a ferocity she did not understand.

It wasn’t that she was jealous because she had nobody to hold her after a quarrel; she had nobody to quarrel with in the first place. What she resented was the Bauers’ softness. She needed them to be strong, to be above mortal failings. Instead they were human, after all.

The boy with the wine-stain birthmark showed up to deliver the coal. He was wearing the national colours in his buttonhole, and a peaked cap of the kind popularized by Pavel’s hero Tomáš Masaryk. Only on seeing the delivery boy did it occur to Marta to wonder about the date. Was it? Yes, it must be. October 28, Czechoslovak National Day. Pavel had been acting remote and preoccupied, and she wondered if the boy’s blatant show of nationalism would buoy his spirits. He seemed not to notice though, and when Ernst arrived at the house after lunch, Pavel didn’t mention the holiday at all. “Shall we go?” was all he said.

“Ready when you are,” Ernst answered, without catching Marta’s eye.

They rushed off without saying goodbye.

Marta gathered up the soup bowls and wrapped the cheese in its cloth. In the parlour Anneliese was holding her compact in front of her face, her lips pursed, putting on lipstick. “Don’t worry about cleaning up right now,” she called in to Marta.

Marta paused, confused. “Pardon me, Mrs. Bauer?”

“You can do it when we’re back. We’re going out.”

Marta hesitated, a ladle in her hand. “Are you sure? I could just . . .”

But Anneliese wasn’t listening; she was looking out the window to make sure her husband was gone. Then she called to Pepik, “Come here and put your sweater on.” He was big enough to do this himself—it had taken Marta some weeks to teach him how—but Anneliese didn’t have the patience. She guided his arms briskly into the little sleeves. The zipper nicked his chin: “Ouch!” Pepik said.

“I’m sorry, miláčku.”

But Anneliese didn’t seem sorry—she seemed distracted, preoccupied, her eyes moving repeatedly towards the window. Marta wondered why she was putting Pepik in a sweater at all when the afternoon was so warm, the sun shining. It had continued to be a striking fall, the colours more vivid than she remembered from previous years: the dazzling golds, and the red leaves like so many bloodied hands.

“Where are you off to?”

“I told you, you’re coming with us.”

Marta knew better than to ask any more questions.

They went down into the street, the three of them, Pepik sullen but his mother determined. She led them out through the gate and along the path by the river, towards the edge of town. She was wearing an Elsa Schiaparelli tailored suit, with big shoulder pads like Marlene Dietrich’s. Large dark glasses shielded her eyes, as if she were a movie star trying to conceal her identity.

They walked for several minutes in silence, passing the milkman’s cart, the containers on the back of the wagon empty.

“Can I pat the horsies?” Pepik asked.

But Anneliese ignored her son, hurrying them past Sanger and Sons, where a Victrola was displayed prominently in the window, and Mr. Goldstein’s shop, which had a CLOSED sign on the door. Even Marta had to work to keep up. Down a cobblestone alley they went and across the footbridge over the river. Pavel’s factory loomed in the distance, like something from an earlier life. Marta thought perhaps they were taking Pepik to feed the ducks, but Anneliese stopped in front of the Catholic church. It dawned on Marta all at once what was happening: Anneliese was taking action despite Pavel’s wishes to the contrary.

The church was the largest structure in town, grey stone with a cone-shaped spire that reminded her of the tip of Mr. Goldstein’s beard. Anneliese led them up the side staircase and into the dimly lit nave. It was cold inside, and they squinted around, trying to get a feel for the layout of the room. The priest who stepped out of the darkness must have been waiting for them; he appeared before them like a ghost.

“I’m sorry. Did I scare you?” He was a thin man with a long face and drooping eyelids. “Father Wilhelm.”

He extended his hand, but it was a small town: everyone knew who everyone else was.

When the priest turned around Marta saw that he had a bald patch on the back of his head the exact size and shape of a yarmulke.

Marta had been in this church only once before, but she remembered the heavy oak pews, the stained glass windows showing the Stations of the Cross. The priest ushered the three of them through a side door into a much smaller and more functional room. There was a leather-covered desk with an ink-pot on top of it. In the corner a statue of the Virgin Mary with her eyes rolled up towards heaven.

Marta crossed herself instinctively, like someone flinching before a raised fist.

Now that they could all see each other clearly, Father Wilhelm addressed Pepik directly. “Hallo, mein Kind.” Pepik’s face was buried in Marta’s pinafore. Anneliese moved forward. “Pepik, come here,” she said, firmly. “Say hello to Father Wilhelm.”

Pepik stepped forward and extended his hand. “I didn’t touch the horses,” he said.

The priest smiled and took Pepik’s hand in his own. He was wearing a gold ring, Marta saw, with a cross on it. “Let’s begin.”

The priest’s Czech was rusty as an old knife—he kept switching tenses—but when Anneliese said, in German, “Denken Sie dass das sonderbar ist?” Father Wilhelm only shrugged and answered, “The Lord works in mysterious ways.”

The priest busied himself with a folder on top of the desk, removing several sheets of carbon paper and spreading them out one next to the other. He dug in the desk drawer and came out with a quill. Then he turned to Anneliese and said, matter of factly, “If you’d like I can just sign the papers.”

There was a moment of confusion, and Anneliese and Marta looked at each other. They understood at the same time: he would baptize Pepik out of kindness. It was his small act of defiance against the Nazis. The priest knew this was not a religious decision.

Anneliese clarified, “You mean without the water?” She nodded at the font in the corner of the room.

Father Wilhelm nodded back and said, “I am happy to be of assistance in whatever way I can.” For the first time, though, he looked over his shoulder nervously, as though making sure nobody had slipped in the side door and was watching from the shadows. It was clear that he would prefer to get this over as quickly as possible. The whole thing had the feel of a shady transaction, Marta thought. Like a body being disposed of.

She thought of Anneliese in the tub, the water crimson red.

“Water or papers?” the priest asked, looking at the watch he wore on a gold chain around his neck. Anneliese was eyeing the font warily. Marta could tell she was worried that without the water the ceremony wouldn’t take. Not the actual baptism, but whatever protection it was supposed to eventually summon.

“Let’s do it properly.” Anneliese’s tone implied that she knew she was being superstitious but was willing to take the risk.

“Ganz richtig,” the priest said. “Come here, Pepik.”

Pepik stepped forward gravely, a young Isaac about to be forsaken.

Marta was half expecting something elaborate: a choir of angels emerging from on high, complete with white robes and tarnished halos. Or maybe Father Wilhelm would pull back a velvet curtain to reveal a galvanized tub in which the naked Pepik would be entirely submerged—even held down for a minute or two, just until he began to struggle. But Father Wilhelm only took Pepik by his shoulders and said, “Close your eyes,” as though he was going to give him a surprise for his birthday.

He dipped his fingers in the font and touched Pepik’s forehead and mumbled some words that Marta could not catch. Pepik’s eyes were clenched shut as though he were steeling himself against a terrible vision. Father Wilhelm had to give him a little shake. “It’s okay. It’s all over!”

Pepik opened his eyes and wiped the drops of water from his forehead with the back of his sleeve. He looked around tentatively, as though expecting to see something marvellous—his mother turned into Saint Nicholas, or the priest turned into a frog. Pepik lifted his arm and looked at it closely, inspecting the sleeve of his shirt. The priest laughed. “You’re just the same, mein Kind,” he said. “You’re just as before.” And he shook his head—in satisfaction or in regret, it was hard to say.

Father Wilhelm brought his hands to his chest and folded them, his long, bony fingers interlaced. Marta thought he was about to start praying, but instead he said to Anneliese, “I’ll see you out now, Mrs. Bauer.” He paused, as though he might have forgotten something, and looked at the font slantwise. “Unless you’d like . . .” He made a sound in the back of his throat.

“I’m sorry?”

“Unless you’d like the same for yourself.”

Anneliese opened her mouth and then closed it again. Did she want to be baptized as well? It was obvious to Marta that the thought hadn’t occurred to her. “I see we’re not the only ones . . . ,” Anneliese started, but her words trailed off. She looked at the font intently, as though an answer might somehow bubble to the surface, like a dumpling in the hovězí polévka. Then she looked back at Marta. “Do you think . . . ?”

Marta paused; she wanted to help, but the situation was beyond her. She knew how Pavel felt. Then again, look at what was happening all around them. “I don’t—” she started. “I’m not—”

But her fumbling had settled it. “No thank you, Father,” Anneliese said, smiling briskly. And she turned away, looking anxiously for Pepik as though he might have been spirited away by some evil demon.

The day was bright as they stood outside on the church steps, blinking. “I can’t see!” Pepik giggled. “I’m blind!”

He took one of his mother’s hands and one of Marta’s, letting them guide him down the steep stone stairs. He walked between them as if he belonged to both, and Marta felt for a moment as though it was possible to share him after all.

Anneliese led them home the roundabout way, sticking to the edges of town. She’d put her dark glasses back on to shield her eyes from the sun, but from the side Marta could see her glancing back and forth nervously. Anneliese looked perplexed, as if she was wondering what to say about what had just happened. “It’s how my sister Alžběta and her daughters got out,” she said finally. “They managed to leave the country. With passports saying they’re Catholic. And the papers to back them up just in case.”

She glanced over at Marta.

“Even the baby?” Marta asked.

“Yes.” Anneliese pushed her dark glasses up on her forehead to look Marta in the face. “Even Eva.”

“How did they get their Uebertrittschein?”

“I don’t know. They must have bribed someone.”

Pepik had broken away from them, run ahead and climbed up onto the stone wall. He was balancing along it with his arms outstretched; he looked like he was about to take off into flight.

“You know something?” Anneliese said. “I feel better. I’m glad to have done it. If it doesn’t help—well, it hasn’t hurt him.” She paused and brought a cupped hand to her forehead. “You’re not to tell Mr. Bauer about this,” she said. There was a pained expression on her face, as though she wished she did not have to be so explicit but wasn’t sure if she could trust Marta otherwise. It was, Marta knew, an indirect reference to their earlier conversation about the suicide attempt, another topic she’d been instructed to ignore and that she’d stirred up nonetheless.

It had happened after the baby died. Not immediately, but several months later. It wasn’t that Anneliese’s hope had withered or that she felt a large of part of herself had died along with her child, although those things were certainly true, she’d told Marta. It was that someone had taken an axe and hacked a hole in the centre of Anneliese’s chest. Only nobody could see it; the hole was invisible, as was the pain, the excruciating near-physical pain she was in. By comparison, she’d told Marta, the birth had been nothing, a tickle between her legs, a trickle of blood. Whereas after the baby died she could not turn over in bed or her severed heart would fall out of her chest cavity. She lay on her back with her breast ripped open while the wolves bloodied their snouts in her grieving.

Dasha brought her toast. Marta kept Pepik away. Pavel tried to carry on as if nothing were wrong. Anneliese was alone with the weight of her baby’s death, and it was simply too much. She couldn’t bear it.

It was Marta who’d found Anneliese unconscious in the tub. Marta still shuddered to think of it, Anneliese’s skin sallow, as though she was made of wax, her small breasts loose and exposed. Her neck had lolled back at a terrible angle that Marta had trouble forgetting. And there, on her wrist . . .

Marta had been the one who’d turned the spigot off, who’d stopped the bleeding, wrapped the gash in gauze. She’d been the one who’d stayed with Anneliese, nursing her back to health, telling Pavel that his wife was sick with influenza. This was when the bond between the women had formed.

Put another way, Anneliese owed Marta her life. The two of them never mentioned this but Marta felt it was always there between them, asserting itself, as the unspoken tends to. And it would change things in ways neither one could imagine.

Pepik had run back towards them and was leaping about like a little leprechaun, making whirring and clicking noises and flapping his arms. Then he stood still on one foot, his arm aloft holding an imaginary bayonet, pretending to be the statue at the centre of the town square. He said to Marta, gravely, “I got baptized. But it’s a secret from Tata. We made a pact.” And he made a motion of tying his top lip to his bottom, as he had recently learned to do with his shoelaces.

Marta saluted. “Yes, sir!” she said. “I will eat the secret and swallow the key, sir.” This was as much for Anneliese’s benefit as it was for Pepik’s, but she pretended all her attention was on the boy. She took her house key from the folds of her skirt and tipped her head back as though to swallow it, sliding the key at the last moment down her sleeve.

“Where did it go?” Pepik gaped at her, wide-eyed.

Anneliese kneaded her own shoulder and said to herself absently, “I had no idea how tense I was in there. I’m exhausted!”

“I gobbled it up,” Marta told Pepik. She patted her belly.

Pepik said, “Yum.”

The afternoon was waning, the long light lending everything a hint of heaven. They turned the corner and saw Mr. Goldstein coming out of his tailor’s shop. He smiled at Pepik. “How’s the lamed vovnik?”

“Fine-thank-you-and-how-are-you?”

Mr. Goldstein laughed. “Remember? A lamed vovnik is someone very important to the world. Someone on whom the world depends.” He cupped Pepik’s head with his palm, rocked it gently back and forth. “Remember I told you?”

Mr. Goldstein crinkled the corners of his eyes, but Marta thought he seemed tired, worn down. Despite his sunny nature the occupation must be getting to him. He raised his hand to show he was in a hurry, but before he rushed off he let Pepik twist the point of his long beard.

Marta looked at Pepik’s face, the flush of pure gladness. This was the gift of childhood, she thought. To be thoroughly delighted by small things. He was throwing himself into the air, making birdlike chirping noises, happy for the first time in weeks. It was like something in that bit of holy water had actually bought him time, had worked to hold some demon at bay. He looked as though he really had been saved.

Now that Sophie was gone, the shopping and cooking fell to Marta. Anneliese said they would hire someone new as soon as things were back to normal. Marta didn’t mind helping out, but coupled with her duties with Pepik, it meant she had twice as much work and often fell behind schedule. So it was that on November 9 it was late afternoon by the time she returned from the grocer. Dusk was already falling. She cooked hurriedly—česneková polévka using leftover garlic, vepřové for Anneliese—and ate alongside the Bauers, but she got up from the table before they did to start the dishes. The Bauers finished their cutlets leisurely and laid their knives and forks parallel on their plates. Then Pavel, who understood that no families would let their children play with the Jewish boy anymore, rolled up his sleeves and crawled under the table with his son.

Marta came back into the dining room to remove the serving dish from the marble-topped credenza. “What are you building under there?” she asked. Pepik’s train track snaked between the legs of the chairs; the clothespin people were grouped together at one end of the carpet and the lead soldiers at the other, protecting them.

“Only a kingdom,” Pavel said lightly. “We’ve already got the Crown Prince.” He gave Pepik’s bottom a little slap. “We’re looking for a princess. Do you know anyone?”

She moved the silver salt and pepper shakers back to the credenza.

“I don’t believe I do.”

“Are you certain? I think you yourself might—”

“What about me?” Anneliese called from the parlour, where she was leafing through the pages of a fashion magazine. She was warm towards her husband again now that her son was taken care of.

Pavel looked up, surprised and pleased by her tone. “Why, darling,” he said, “you’re already the Queen!”

Pepik was dinging the silver bell on the train’s engine over and over. He looked up and said, “Where’s that key?”

Marta paused, serving dish in hand. “What key, miláčku?” But right away she remembered the baptism and said, “Oh, that key. I swallowed it, of course.” She brought a finger to her lips to remind Pepik he was not to tell his father. Then she said quickly, “Your train has become so long! How did you make it so long?”

But Pepik was not diverted. “She swallowed the key,” he said to his father. He cupped a hand around his mouth and said, in a stage whisper, “The key to our secret.”

Pavel peered up at Marta from under the table, his eyebrows raised. “Secret? What’s the secret?”

Marta pretended she hadn’t heard his question; she squinted at the credenza, frowning, then picked an invisible bit of food off its surface with her fingernail. She heard Anneliese come into the room behind her.

“I’d like some port,” she said.

“Liesel? What secret?”

“Never mind. Don’t be foolish.”

“Liesel . . .” Pavel said, half warning, half teasing.

Anneliese crouched down so she was eye-level with her husband under the table; Marta saw her instep and the shine of her silk stocking where her heel lifted out of the back of her shoe. “It wouldn’t be a secret if we told you now, would it?”

Pavel paused. “I suppose not.” He smiled at his wife. “A queen has her secrets.”

“Now you’ve got it, darling.”

“You get a lot past me?”

“I’m sneaky with my king.”

“You’re sly.”

“I don’t deny it.”

She winked and Pavel blushed. Marta thought the moment had passed, that Anneliese had been successful in diverting Pavel’s attention. She picked up the serving dish in one hand and the salt and pepper shakers in the other, moving towards the kitchen, but she paused in the doorway when she heard Pavel ask, “What do you think about your mother’s secrets, buster?”

She turned in time to see Pepik make the motion of tying his lips together. He looked at his father meaningfully. “I can’t tell you.”

Pavel lunged and tickled his son again. “Tell me!”

Anneliese stood up, unsteady on her heel. “Careful with him,” she said lightly. There was a hint of panic in her voice. Marta knew this would egg Pavel on.

“Mamenka knows!” Pepik shrieked, gleeful. He was trying to squirm away from his father’s grasp.

“Does she?”

“Yes! Mamenka! And Nanny! And Pepik!” he shouted. He began to act out the baptismal scene, putting two fingers to his forehead and closing his eyes and muttering something unintelligible that nevertheless sounded to Marta quite a bit like Latin.

Anneliese was frozen in place; someone had to do something. “Pepik!” Marta shouted, as though about to scold him for some unspeakable transgression. He looked up, startled—she never, ever yelled. She couldn’t think what to say next, but before she was forced to speak a loud crash came from outside. Pavel jerked his head up, banging it on the bottom of the table. “Hovno,” he swore, rubbing his temple.

He crawled out from beneath the table, his son forgotten, went to the window and pulled back the drapes. It was as if he’d opened the curtain on a play, mid-act. They could all see, across the square, a group of Hitlerjugend crowded around the entrance to the Goldstein Tailor Shop. Night was falling but Marta could make out the armbands, the tall lace-up boots. The boys were shoving each other, a knot of pent-up anger, or perhaps, she thought, they were just drunk. One of them, the tallest, had a bat in his hands. He pushed the others aside and stood in front of the storefront, the bat held straight above his head as if reaching up to strike a piñata.

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.”

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.

There was more rustling and Pavel Bauer shouted, “No need to take your boots off! Just come around here so we can get a good look at you.”

It was Ernst Anselm who came around the corner. He was dressed in a bishop’s tall hat, a fake beard, and his wife Hella’s foxtail fur coat. Marta flushed and averted her eyes. She was having trouble catching her breath, her heart was beating so fast. She braced herself, waiting for him to address her, but he only said to everyone, “I’ve brought the Devil with me.” There was a slur in his voice—he’d been drinking. He looked around the table at each of them in turn and then tugged on a chain. Sure enough, a little man in a red suit came around the corner.

“See? The Devil.” Anneliese pointed to show Pepik.

Pavel threw his head back and hooted. “Look at you both!” he said. “A regular Pat and Patachon.”

“What a clever comparison,” Saint Nicholas said.

Pavel raised an eyebrow at his friend.

“You’re lucky I showed up,” Ernst said. “I mean, you’re lucky Saint Nick came.”

“But Saint Nick, you come every year. Why should this year be different?” Pavel was cheerful for the benefit of his son, but Marta could see he was confused by Ernst’s comment.

“Saint Nicholas,” Anneliese said, “would you like a drink?”

“He seems to have had enough to—” Pavel started, but the Devil interrupted. “Yes, he surely would.” He leaned back on his heels.

Marta recognized the Devil but she wasn’t sure from where.

Saint Nicholas tried to elbow Pavel, but missed and stumbled before regaining his balance. “Mr. Bauer, I’ll trade the drink for your Parker investment,” he said. Then he looked at Marta; his face registered surprise, as though he was just now remembering their last conversation, when she’d left him standing in the hall. He opened his mouth to speak. “And who do we—” he started, but Pavel grasped his shoulder. “Don’t you have some business to attend to?”

Ernst belched quietly into the back of his hand. “Ah, yes,” he agreed sagely. “I have some very important business.” He motioned for Pepik to come over, forehead furrowed, focused all at once on the task at hand. He had played the role of Saint Nicholas for Pepik since the boy was born. Every year the same charade. He was good at it, Marta had to admit.

He was good at all sorts of charades.

“Are you . . .” Ernst consulted a piece of paper in front of him, “Angus Bengali?”

Pepik was eyeing the Devil warily and clinging to Marta’s skirt. He shook his head no.

Ernst feigned confusion, crumpling his forehead again. “Oh,” he said, “I thought . . .”

He peered more closely at his list, which Marta could see was a newspaper article clipped out of Lidové noviny. “Herman von Winkledom?”

“No,” said Pepik, a smile starting to show.

“Ludwig von Twicky-Twacky?”

“No!”

“It says here . . .” Ernst said, bringing the paper close to his face. “I left my spectacles with Krampusse.” He ran his forefinger down the fake list. “You’re not . . . I don’t suppose you’re . . . Pepik Bauer?”

“I am!” shouted Pepik, who had now completely forgotten about the Devil. “I’ve been good!”

“Have you?”

Pepik nodded enthusiastically and then, unable to contain himself, he made a lunge for the sack of gifts. Ernst held it above his head. He paused, his eyes far away. “Have you really been good?” he asked.

A shadow crossed Pepik’s face. He drew back and crossed his small arms in front of his chest. He said, “No.”

“No?”

“I’ve been bad.”

The Devil gave a little laugh. “Finally I get some action!”

Ernst laughed too, but Marta could see he was unprepared for this. He was struggling just to keep his balance, swaying unsteadily on his heels. “Well,” he said, eyeing Marta slyly, “everybody is naughty sometimes. It’s never too late to correct one’s mistakes.”

She felt the heat rise straight to her face.

“Hear, hear.” Pavel raised his glass, unaware of what he was toasting.

“What I meant to ask,” Ernst continued, “is have you been good most of the time?”

But it was too late. Pepik shook his head gravely. “Ne.”

The whole thing had taken on the air of some kind of religious ritual, something akin to the confessions Marta remembered from her youth, and so she was not surprised when Pepik said, “I was bad. I let the water man put his water on my forehead.” He looked up at the Saint. “To make me not Jewish,” he clarified.

The room fell silent. The Devil and Saint Nicholas looked at each other. Anneliese lowered her head. It was Pavel who spoke first. “You were—” he glanced at his wife, whose face was in her hands, and back to his son. “You were baptized?”

Marta heard Ernst mutter something that sounded a little like amen.

“Miláčku? The priest put water on your forehead?”

Pepik nodded, hesitant, his eyes moving between his parents.

Pavel stood up. “I can’t . . . I don’t . . .” He looked at Anneliese, who would not meet his gaze. He opened his mouth and closed it again. He looked at his son and at the Devil and the Saint, and said, without expression, “If you’ll excuse me.”

The parlour fell silent. Only the teenaged Lucifer seemed oblivious to the implications of what had just taken place. “Who baptized you?” he asked Pepik. Marta saw that the Devil’s face was thin and there were two large boils on the side of his neck. It was Ernst’s nephew, she remembered—Armin? Irwin?

Pepik was fighting back tears. “Father Wilhelm,” he said.

Marta was astonished that Pepik had remembered the priest’s name—he could barely remember the letters she was teaching him. Then again, perhaps he knew what the important things were, where to place his attention. Perhaps he remembered more than they gave him credit for.

There was more strained silence, the remaining adults looking nervously at each other. Saint Nicholas inserted his fingers under his fake beard and scratched vigorously at his face, suddenly desperate to get the whole thing over with. “Pepik,” he said. “I see here now, on my list”—he peered at it again “—it says you’ve been good. So I’ve brought you a present.”

He shoved the box at Pepik, who held it uncertainly, as if it were a bomb about to go off.

“Go on, open it,” Saint Nicholas said. “I’ve got lots of other children left on my list.” He lifted his sack, which was clearly empty.

Pepik set his gift on the table. He sat down in front of it. He peeled back a piece of tape carefully.

“Go on!” Saint Nicholas repeated.

It was a terrible present in light of what had happened. Pavel had given his son his own grandfather’s prayer shawl. The tallit was nestled between two pieces of ivory tissue paper. Pepik unfolded it and held it in his hands, out from his body as though it was an offering. The adults looked at each other; nobody knew what to do.

Pepik too had clearly been expecting a new caboose, or a toy helmet with the insignia of the Masaryk government. A tallit was inappropriate for a boy his age. But he seemed to understand instinctually the symbolic weight of the gift. He unfolded his great-grandfather’s prayer shawl and draped it over his shoulders. The edges hung down, the tzitziot touching the floor.

“I don’t know if—” the Devil started, but Ernst jerked his chain to silence him.

Pepik looked up at the adults, one by one, defiant.

This is who I am, his look said.

The Bauer family left for Prague the following morning. The automobile was loaded up to the roof with trunks, boxes, Pepik’s Botanisierbuchse and butterfly net. The old town fell behind them like discarded skin.

There was stony silence in the front seat. Pavel’s jaw was clenched tight and his eyes glued to the windshield. His knuckles were white on the steering wheel. As they pulled out into the lane that ran around the perimeter of the town square, Marta saw that there was a rally going on, a pack of Hitlerjugend crowded together wearing armbands and lace-up boots. There were maybe forty of them. A man in front of the crowd yelled something into a megaphone. The crowd responded, shouting “Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil!” and shaking their fists in the air.

She had a flash of Mr. Goldstein lying dead on the cobblestones.

“Goodbye, old town,” Pepik said morosely.

Anneliese was dealing with her husband’s rage about the baptism by pretending he wasn’t there. She chatted brightly to Pepik and Marta about where they were headed. “Wait until you see Václavské náměstí. And all the spires, and Charles Bridge with the statues of the saints all along it.” She looked over her shoulder at her son in the back seat. “In the summer we can go on a steamboat and go to Kampě Island and have an ice cream and go swimming in the river! Wouldn’t you like that?”

“I forgot my pennywhistle,” Pepik said, forlorn.

But his mother persisted. “As soon as we’ve arrived we’ll go and see the astronomical clock. Every hour a trapdoor opens and Christ marches out with his Apostles. The skeleton of death tolls his bell as the hour turns.”

Pavel said wryly, “As though we need to be reminded.”

But Marta suspected he was relieved to be going as well, to be fleeing the German-occupied territory. Part of him too, even if he would not admit it, was afraid of what was happening all around them, a part of him that was eager to retreat into the fantasy of a picnic on the island with cold chicken wings and lemonade, and Hitler just a bad dream.

They had circumnavigated the area and were now pulling out onto the cobbled road. Marta turned back for one last look at her home. The crowd of Jugend looked larger from this angle, filling half of the town square. Boys, mostly, in thin winter jackets, Nazi insignia sewn onto their sleeves. They chanted along with the man at the megaphone. Marta saw one girl, a girl with frizzy hair: it took her a minute to realize it was Sophie. Her curls were tied back from her face and her mouth was wide open, screaming. There was a thin boy pushed up next to her. Marta knew him too.

It was Ernst Anselm’s nephew. Armin? Irwin?

The last thing Marta saw, her last memory of the old town, was Sophie holding the Devil’s hand.





Part Two

Prague





19 January 1939

Dear Pavel and Anneliese,

I am sorry to have been out of contact for so long. All is well. Business continues apace.

I trust you enjoy your books as usual. The one before The Castle is excellent.

Please give my love to Alžběta if you see her. And to the little girls.

Best regards,

Max

(FILE UNDER: Stein, Max. Died Auschwitz, 1943)





I’VE LIVED A LONG TIME.

“May I ask your age?” you said when we first met.

“You may not!” I smiled, feigning offence. It was the kind of teasing that usually passes between people who have known each other all their lives. Which I felt, in a particular way, I had.

I’d been looking for you for years, Joseph. Even when I didn’t know I was looking.

In Hitler’s Czechoslovakia, degrees of Judaism didn’t matter. There were families in Eastern Europe who were completely assimilated—ugly word, but that’s what they called it—families who’d had their children baptized, who celebrated Christmas. Even they had very little hope. All that mattered was whether there had been a single Jewish grandparent. People who were estranged from their families, who’d never known their parents . . . all it took was a little detective work on the part of the authorities and they were condemned. And, of course, the practising Jews, the ones rooted deeply in the richness and beauty of tradition, who lit the Sabbath candles and awaited the coming of the Messiah—I don’t have to tell you what happened to them.

They tried so hard, but it was almost always too little, too late. After the Anschluss in Austria they emigrated, but only as far as Amsterdam, say, or Prague. After Hitler made clear his designs on Czechoslovakia, they emigrated again, but this time perhaps only as far as France. In some cases people had exit visas but chose not to use them. While the bulk of European Jewry were begging and bribing, there were those who clung to their homes and their futures, even as those things were disappearing out from under them.

When I was working on my second book, I interviewed the granddaughter of a survivor whose own parents were murdered in Birkenau. “They had exit visas,” this woman kept repeating, as though trying to make it make sense. “Why didn’t they use them?” I tried to explain how her great-grandparents could not have anticipated the death camps, how the Czech Jews especially had enjoyed decades of peace and prosperity, how they thought they were doing what was best for their families and for the country they loved. I could see she didn’t understand, was thinking only of her mother’s suffering and her own terrible childhood as a result.

They can come off as selfish, the survivors and their children. As closed and cramped, dark knots of grievance. That too is Hitler’s legacy: the poison never fully flushed out.

After the war, nobody wanted to talk about what had happened. Things were still difficult by the time I did my doctorate: I remember how hard it was to find willing interview subjects. It wasn’t until much later that the stories started to come out. The survivors were ageing, and it was suddenly understood that if we didn’t hear from them now there would be nothing left to hear. A few of the Kindertransport children started talking then as well, but they were still considered the lucky ones, the ones who had escaped. In comparison to the others, the thinking went, they had nothing worth talking about.

Not that anyone said that directly to my face.

It was later, as the older survivors of Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen began to die, that these now-adult children started coming out of the woodwork. The first Kindertransport reunion sparked an incredible reaction. The participants came to understand that they had been part of something larger, pawns in a story for which they had not been to blame. They had been caught inside the giant train of time. They compared notes, and in the end they did not feel so totally alone.

Telling this to you now makes me wish I had been at that reunion. I still would have been an outsider, though. Isolated because my story is different from theirs. The truth is, it suits me being alone. Put me in a crowd and I only feel more lonely. Looking always at the shape of people’s backs. For someone in an orange sweater. For a kerchief.

Could you excuse me, please? I need a moment.

Don’t worry. I’m not about to cry.

It’s like this: since the sixtieth anniversary reunion in London in 1999 there has been a flood of stories about the Kindertransports. The word in vogue is testimony, although that word doesn’t sit well with me, with its implications of a justice system, the possibility of retribution. Still, the things people tell me are often remarkable. For example, two sisters. Their parents took them to the station on the date of the Winton transport and put them both on the train. But the smaller was only a baby, and she’d been sick with a flu that had been going around; at the last minute the parents pulled her off. The older girl remembers handing her infant sister out through the window, the weight of her tiny body like a warm loaf of bread. It was the last time she saw her sister. Or either of her parents, for that matter.

Another story: a boy whose parents left it too late. The Kindertransport was already full. The waiting list was three times the train’s capacity, but Winton’s secretary took a liking to the boy. Something about the way his ears stuck out, or how his knobby knees were wider than his thighs. He was just six years old and does not remember his father’s words, but he can still describe his happiness when the secretary moved his son to the top of the list. Perhaps a bribe was exchanged, but that’s not what the man remembers. He remembers seeing his father cry tears of relief; he might die—did die—but his only son would get out.

For several years—many years—I was able to lose myself in the vastness of these stories, the stories of losses and searches and discoveries. They allowed me to forget the person I was looking for. The child from the letter I carried with me. When I finally sought you out, I was surprised by how easy it was. I knew your last name: I looked you up in the phone book.

There you were, in my city. It was simple.

I gazed out the window while the telephone rang, trying to ignore the fact that I could hear my own heart. A single tennis shoe, tied by its laces, hung from the neighbour’s clothesline. I heard your voice on the answering machine and was confused by the muddled accent. I stood still, blinking rapidly, taking deep breaths. Finally I realized the machine was recording my silence. I forced myself to speak before it was too late: I gave you my name and a bit about my research. Then stumbled over my telephone number and had to repeat it several times. I must have sounded like a blubbering old idiot. Which, I suppose, I was.

When I hung up the phone, I did not step away from it. It was clear to me all at once that you probably wouldn’t call back. Why would you? I should have said something different.

But what should I have said?

The truth, I told myself.

Which is? I answered back.

Which is the most crucial piece of the puzzle.

I nodded. And all at once every bit of me agreed: I should have told you what only I knew. That I’m the sibling you never knew existed.