Far to Go

Chapter Four



THERE WAS A CRIB AT MAX AND Alžběta’s that belonged to their little daughter Eva. Anneliese could not stand to look at it. Marta knew what she was thinking: how old would her own baby girl be now, had she lived? Marta tried to picture what she would look like. Dark curls, like Anneliese, or the slightly paler brown of her father? A kind child, or petulant? There was a phantom in the family, growing taller all the time, but never quite catching up to her brother, Pepik, to the world of living flesh and blood.

The Bauers unpacked their belongings. They waited to hear from Max, but there was no news. Maybe he was still en route to meet Alžběta and their daughters, or maybe he had other reasons to make himself scarce. Either way, the apartment was empty, and they moved into it like actors onto an empty set. Pepik chose the room that had been his Uncle Max’s when he was a boy: it had a bunk bed and a stag’s head mounted on the wall. Marta had a whole suite of rooms to herself—cook’s, butler’s, chauffeur’s. It was much more space than she was used to, but she tried to act nonchalant, wandering the large urban flat as though she belonged there. At night you could see from the front window of the parlour all the way down to the heart of Praha, the streetlamps lit and glittering like debutantes coming out for a ball.

“There’s the opera house,” Anneliese pointed out the first night, her cheeks pink with excitement. And beyond it was the castle itself, lit up, like the largest jewel in a crown.

“Hitler’s new house,” Pavel said flatly. He didn’t look his wife in the eye, still angry.

“I prefer the Belvedere,” Anneliese said.

“I heard someone call the castle ‘Hitler’s new house’ today,” Pavel persisted. He crossed his arms over his chest. “Over my dead body,” he said. But his voice sounded hollow to Marta. The new flat elevated Anneliese, but it had the opposite effect on Pavel. He seemed younger here, Marta thought, or smaller. He seemed defeated.

A night-letter arrived and Pavel left early the next morning to meet Max’s foreman, Hans, at the factory. Anneliese took Pepik and Marta out to see the city. Winter was just setting in, a dusting of snow over everything like confectioner’s sugar. Marta’s breath made puffy clouds in front of her face. She wiggled her toes to warm them in her stiff lace-up boots, and rubbed Pepik’s fingers in his mittens. They walked down Vinohradská, past Italská, Balbínova, and Španělská streets, past the Živnostenská banka and the Myslbek art gallery on Na Přikopě, which was showing an exhibition of Nazi paintings. They strolled the periphery of the broad tree-lined avenue, Marta looking around, trying to take it all in. She had never seen so many people in one place. Women in Chanel coats with silk scarves tied at their throats, groups of teenagers clustered together like grapes, old men riding bicycles. There was an Orthodox shop on a corner: through the boarded-up window she saw a calendar with a picture of a rabbi blowing a ram’s horn. The blue and white Zionist collection boxes abandoned.

Anneliese pointed out the bakery, still the same as when she was a girl. They passed the butcher shop and saw carcasses, pink and bloody, hanging on hooks in the front window. They looked, Marta thought, strangely human. At the Wagons-Litz Travel Agency there was a line snaking all the way out the front door, people trying desperately to leave the country. Red trolleys criss-crossed the square like fate lines on the palm of a hand.

Marta had had a picture in her mind of Prague, a picture she hadn’t even known was there and which she now realized was basically an enlarged version of their old town: two of each kind of shop instead of one. But Prague was something else altogether. “I feel like I’m in a completely different country,” she said.

Anneliese shrugged and smiled. “Welcome back to Czechoslovakia,” she said. A sign caught her eye over Marta’s right shoulder. “Look at what’s showing! Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. It’s that American fellow, Walt something-or-other.”

Marta looked down at Pepik, his cheeks pink like apples. “Well?” She clasped her hands in front of her chest, beaming. And before she knew it she was about to see her first moving picture.

The cinema was dark, with seats ascending on an angle. It smelled stuffy, like dust and stale peppermints. They were plunged into blackness and Marta reached for Pepik’s hand. There was silence, someone sneezing, someone unzipping a coat. For a moment they heard the tick-tick-tick of the projector and then all at once the screen lit up. A girl with creamy skin, jet-black hair, huge eyes. A princess, Marta thought. It was like entering another dimension, the vastness of the girl’s face, the brightness. Marta didn’t know where to look. The scene changed to a forest, and everything in front of her had life in it: the trees, the stones, the animals. Her whole field of vision teemed with colour. She wanted to glance over at Pepik to see how he was taking it but found herself unable to peel her eyes from the screen.

After the film there was a newsreel that showed Hitler spouting off about the expansion of his Lebensraum, but even this couldn’t dampen Marta’s spirits. When she exited the cinema it was as if no time had passed, and at the same time as if a new era had begun. She could hardly speak. It had been, she realized, so long since she’d felt pleasure. Anneliese looked at Marta and Pepik and clapped her hands. “I told you you’d like the city,” she said. “Didn’t I tell you?”

She too had a big smile plastered across her face, her tension with Pavel momentarily forgotten.

Pepik was hopping from foot to foot. “Dopey!” he shouted. “Sneezy!” And he began to make sneezing noises in the direction of his mother.

On the way back to the Vinohrady they passed the Havlíčkovy sady. Two German Jewish peddlers were sitting on a park bench selling pencils. It was a reminder of the hard times they were living in—but Marta didn’t want to be reminded. For now, even momentarily, the hard times seemed abstract. They had been shucked off like a pair of dirty trousers and dropped in a heap in the corner. The people, the automobiles, the vibrant pulse of the city: Marta felt she might as well be living in the fairy tale herself. In a place where war was a word never spoken. She climbed the hill home with lights in her eyes.

The following day, though, Karel Čapek died. The radio carried a tribute, noting among his literary achievements the coining of the word robot.

“Five years from now nobody will use robot,” Anneliese said. “One year from now.” She massaged the nape of her neck with her knuckles.

“You never know,” Pavel said testily. Marta saw that the death of his favourite writer depressed him. The radio broadcast had given the impression that Čapek had not even been sick, that he had lost his will to live now that his country was carved into pieces and Hitler was making doe-eyes at the capital.

For the next while Pavel was preoccupied with his new position, leaving the house before the rest of them were up and dashing out to meetings late at night. He avoided his wife, who was out all day anyway, at luncheons with Mathilde or getting a marcel wave with hot irons at the Salon Petra Měchurová. Marta wondered if they would celebrate Christmas, after the baptism incident. Though it was spoken of less frequently, Pavel was, she knew, still angry. On the other hand, Christmas for the Bauers wasn’t Christian; it was tradition, plain and simple. When Anneliese told her to go ahead, Marta threw herself into the preparations. The kitchen in Max and Alžběta’s flat was equipped with something called a blender—she had no idea what it was for—and an electric kettle with an automatic shut-off. Marta made vánočka, the traditional holiday bread, and slivered almonds and meringue macaroons with strings baked into them. She put Pepik to work on chains of coloured paper. She was worried that a tree might not appear on which to hang all their decorations, but finally, on the twenty-third of December, Pavel returned home with a scrawny fir. Where had he found it in a city as covered with concrete as Prague? He set it up in the corner of the parlour; the large room made the tree look small, like a naked child shivering after his bath.

“What do you say?” Marta asked Pepik. “We’d better put some clothes on him!” Usually the decorated tree would be presented to Pepik as a surprise, but the Bauers didn’t have time for that this year, and Marta was glad to be able to give her charge a project. The Walt Disney film had lifted his spirits temporarily, but he had now fallen into a sullen funk. He reminded Marta of a tiny field marshal, his lead soldiers spread around him like casualties.

On the morning of the twenty-fourth Marta got up early and peeled the potatoes and the parsnips and took the carp out of the icebox. She rolled out some dough for vanilkové rohlíčky, and soon the kitchen was filled with the sweet smell of vanilla crescents baking. What else did Sophie usually make? Fish soup, which was served before the carp: it would have to simmer for several hours. Marta made a list as Sophie used to do, and wondered idly where the girl was now. “You shouldn’t go,” she remembered Sophie saying. “There’s a man who is very angry about Mr. Bauer being hired in his place . . .”

Marta went down her list of tasks one by one, ticking off each thing. Finally, at quarter after five, Anneliese came home. “The carp,” she said. “Is it sweet-and-sour?” When she knew that was how they had it every year.

At half past six Pavel rang the little Christmas bell. Pepik had been lying on his top bunk staring at the ceiling, but he could not pretend he wasn’t excited by the holiday; he dropped to the floor and bounded down the hall to the parlour. Marta stood behind him, holding his shoulders, as they took in the beautiful room. Pavel had dimmed the lights and lit a fire in the hearth and all of the tiny candles in the tree’s branches. The flames leapt up and were reflected in the mirrors on the front wall of the parlour and in the big glass chandelier; it looked as if the room were alight with fireflies.

Pepik went straight for the lowest branch, took off a macaroon, and bit it in half.

The presents were laid out on a table by the breakfront. Marta got a big box of chocolates from the Lindt chocolatier shop in Prague. It was a much more expensive gift than the Bauers usually gave her. “No . . . really—” she started, but Pavel shushed her. “We’re grateful,” he said, “for all your extra work.”

His gift for Anneliese was in a small blue box: diamond drop earrings to match the sparkly watch. She held the earrings up to her ears; they were shaped like two perfect tears.

Anneliese’s gift for her husband was in a small creamy envelope with his name written on the front in fountain pen. Pavel peeled back the wax seal. Marta watched his eyes move back and forth as he read. She couldn’t tell from his facial expression the nature of the message from his wife. Had they worked things out, or was it just a temporary truce?

Marta, for her part, had picked a book about two Czech boys going to the market for Pepik; for the Bauers she had chosen a picture frame in which she had placed a photo of their son sitting on the front steps of the house in their old town. When Pavel saw it, his eyes filled with tears. “What a very thoughtful gift,” he said.

Even Anneliese seemed touched. Her fingers fluttered at her throat. “Marta,” she said, “you really should not have. This frame must have cost your whole—” But she stopped herself and said graciously, “Thank you very much, Marta.” She held the photo up and peered at it again. “It seems a long time ago,” she said, a peculiar look on her face. “Doesn’t it? If you think of everything that’s happened?” Marta knew Anneliese was thinking of Max. She had hoped he might join them for Christmas, but there was still no word from either him or Alžběta.

When the presents had all been opened, Pavel wanted to light the menorah. In the past when Chanukah fell at the same time as Christmas, the Jewish holiday was the one that got forgotten, but this year Pavel was determined.

“Aren’t we already . . . how many days—” Anneliese started.

Pavel brushed her away. He wasn’t sure, but they would light all eight candles to be safe. He also wanted to say the blessing, which was something that to Marta’s knowledge the Bauers had never done before.

Marta watched Pavel, with his eyes closed, chanting the Hebrew prayer. She was flabbergasted that he knew it by heart. Perhaps it had been taught to him as a boy? He threw in something he called the Shema—the Jewish prayer of God’s oneness, he said—for good measure. When he was finished he placed the menorah in the window. It was a mitzvah to do so, he said, but Marta saw Anneliese wince. She wouldn’t dare criticize her husband, not after what had happened, but then Pavel seemed to reconsider and moved the candle-holder back to the credenza, out of sight of people passing on the street. The lights from the Christmas tree, reflected in the wall of mirrors, filled the room to overflowing with brilliance. By contrast, the menorah seemed small and incidental. It flickered in the corner unnoticed.

Anneliese was behind closed doors, getting ready for the festivities. They were going to ring in the New Year at the home of Mathilde, her oldest friend from the gymnasium. Mathilde and her husband, Vaclav, who owned margarine factories, were having several couples over to celebrate. “Hitler or no Hitler,” Pavel said.

Anneliese finally emerged from her room, her face powdered and her hair piled on top of her head. A telegram arrived just as the Bauers were putting on their coats. Although it was sealed inside the usual envelope, Marta had a distinct impression that the delivery boy knew its contents. He furrowed his brow as he handed it over, as if he hated to be the bearer of bad news. Or perhaps it was just that every telegram these days contained bad news.

Pavel took the envelope from the boy.

“Is it Max?” Anneliese asked. She was wearing a clingy red dress Marta hadn’t seen before.

“Or Alžběta?”

“Pass me my . . .” Pavel nodded at his scarf, his eyes still on the telegram.

“Pavel. I’m speaking to you.”

“It’s your man.”

“I wish you would—”

“Your man Wilhelm.”

Anneliese froze with Pavel’s scarf in her hand. “The priest?”

“He’s been arrested.”

“Arrested? Why?”

“Forget the scarf,” Pavel said. “It isn’t even snowing.”

Anneliese glared at her husband. “Why was he arrested?”

“For baptizing Jews. Why else?” Pavel buttoned his coat quickly. “We’re late,” he said, without looking at Anneliese. They took turns kissing the top of their son’s head and went out the door.

Marta put Pepik to bed. There was a small fuss when he wanted to stay up until midnight, but she remained firm, and by the time she tucked him in he was so exhausted he fell asleep without even a story. She went into the kitchen and cleaned up the dishes, and then she listened to the president’s New Year’s address on the radio. It was easy to tell by Hácha’s voice that he was dreadfully sad. Despite everything that had happened, he said—despite the terrible events of the year—the people of Czechoslovakia still stood on their own land. But would they still be able to say so this time next year?

Marta made herself a cup of linden tea and sat down beside the Christmas tree, thinking about Father Wilhelm. Arrested, Pavel had said. For giving out baptismal certificates. She could picture the priest as though he stood before her, the bald patch in the shape of a kippah, the bony fingers interlaced as though in prayer. He’d been so kind to them, she thought, offering to help not only little Pepik but his mother as well. How many others were out there for whom he’d done the same?

Would the authorities now come looking for Pepik? It was certainly possible; an illegal baptism was sure to have repercussions. She shivered, wondering what exactly they might be. She lifted her cup to her lips, but the tea had cooled and the leaves tasted musty, too sweet. People, she knew, were just disappearing these days; it wasn’t unheard of for someone to be present one evening and gone by the break of the new day. Taken. But could it happen to a child? To Pepik?

And where was Max? He’d promised to be in touch.

Marta pushed her teacup aside. A sick feeling rose in her stomach: too much carp and vánočka. She glanced down at Pepik’s train where it wound between the legs of the table. Pepik had incorporated some of the lanterns from the Christmas tree into the scene; they stood in for lampposts in the little nameless town where his clothespin civilians went about their lives. One of the lead soldiers had fallen on its back and was staring up at her. Its mouth frozen open. It looked as if it were shouting something. As if it were trying to give a warning.

Max’s letter did not arrive until March. Pavel held it close to his face and read it aloud to his wife: “I trust you enjoy your books as usual. The one before The Castle is excellent.”

“Whatever does he mean?” Anneliese asked. “He’s talking about books? Now?”

“It was posted six weeks ago, in January.”

“Was it?”

“He seems to be writing in code.”

“The Castle. By Kafka?”

“That must be the one.”

“And what comes before it . . . Amerika.”

“That was after.”

“The Trial,” Anneliese said.

“The Trial. What’s the plot?”

She looked up at the ceiling, trying to remember. “The narrator is arrested for a crime that isn’t named.”

“For no crime.”

“Exactly.”

“I think we know what’s happened to Max.”

Anneliese was thrown into a panic. “What should we do?”

Marta was in a corner of the room, dusting the buffet. She saw Pavel spread his hands out in front of him: Don’t ask me.

The Bauers were sitting at opposite ends of the heavy Victorian sofa; the wall of mirrors doubled them. Everything the Bauers did in the new flat was copied by their doppelgangers: When the Bauers ate, their twins did the same. When they spoke, when they argued, so did the twins. It was as if someone had thought to make a copy of each of them in case something should happen to the originals.

“We should at least tell Alžběta,” Anneliese said to Pavel.

“But how can we tell her if we don’t know where she is?”

Anneliese reached for her Chanel purse and lit a cigarette.

“We could call Ernst,” Pavel said, “to ask what he thinks.”

Marta lowered her eyes, intent on her feather duster, but Anneliese was at the phone immediately, her cigarette left smoking in the ashtray. She spoke into the black horn in the middle of the wooden box on the wall and then covered the mouthpiece with her hand. “The operator says there’s a line through Frankfurt,” she said to Pavel.

“Our calls don’t go through Frankfurt. Doesn’t she know that?”

Anneliese put the earpiece back in its cradle and went over to the small fire in the hearth. She picked up the bellows and pumped vigorously.

“I had lunch with Mathilde.” She turned around to look at her husband.

“And what did the Queen of Sheba have to say for herself?”

“Eight thousand crowns will buy passage to Uruguay.”

“‘Oh, gazelle, her eyes have captured my heart’!” Pavel sang a line of the popular song.

“They’re thinking of going. She and Vaclav.”

“Are there margarine factories in Uruguay?”

“Maybe they’ll open one. It isn’t the point. The point is to get out.” Anneliese pumped the bellows for emphasis.

Marta moved a chiselled glass candy dish aside, along with a china bell—the kind used to summon a maid—and dusted beneath them. She had noticed over the past weeks that Anneliese’s infatuation with Prague was wearing off, like the novelty of a younger lover. And why wouldn’t it? The beautiful opera house had been closed. Almost nobody wanted to meet her for cakes at the Louvre Café: everyone had left or else was busy trying to. And now this news about Max. Arrested. For no reason. Where was he being held?

Pavel stayed seated, his elbows on his knees and his fingers steepled in front of him. “I did hear . . .” he said to his wife. “There’s something I heard.”

Anneliese put the bellows down. She smoothed down her skirt.

“There’s a man,” Pavel said. “A stockbroker. British.”

“Winton?”

“Poor bugger. The markets can’t be good.”

“I mentioned him months ago. Don’t you remember? Vaclav and Mathilde got their girls on his list.”

“What about Uruguay?”

Anneliese sighed. “They’re exploring every option, Pavel. That’s what people are doing.”

“I was thinking of contacting him. Winton,” Pavel said, his forehead resting on the heels of his hands. “To see if we can’t put Pepik on the list as well.”

Marta set the bell back down on the buffet; it made a tinkling sound. “It might be a good idea,” she said without thinking. Where she had got the notion that her opinion mattered she didn’t know, but it felt almost natural, somehow, to voice it. Pepik was her responsibility, after all. Shouldn’t she have some say in the decision? “It might be a good idea to put Pepik on the list,” she said again.

Pavel was looking at her, surprised, Marta thought, but not disapproving. In fact, if she wasn’t mistaken, he seemed almost impressed.

“Do you think?” he asked. His eyebrows were lifted, his face relaxed. But Anneliese had turned away from both of them, frowning out the window as though she’d noticed something unfolding below that required her full attention, and Marta grew suddenly self-conscious. She nodded once at Pavel, and moved back to the buffet to dust beneath Alžběta’s houseplants.

Anneliese fished her cigarette out of the ashtray and took a slow pull. “Why don’t we go together?” she asked Pavel, as though Marta hadn’t spoken.

Pavel turned back to his wife, the muscles along his jawline tightening discernably. “It’s not so simple, Liesel,” he said. “You need an exit visa. You need proof of citizenship. The lineups at the embassies are from here to Vienna. You need an entry permit for another country.” His eyes darted briefly back to Marta.

“Not for Britain,” Anneliese said. “Not until the first of April.” And she was right, Marta knew. In the wake of the Munich Agreement, legislation had been passed that allowed entrance into England without a permit. A little window; an apology for the betrayal.

You still needed an exit permit from Czechoslovakia, however.

The Bauers talked this over quietly. Pavel thought he could get hold of one.

“With a bribe?” Anneliese asked.

Pavel touched the sofa. “This needs to be reupholstered.”

“Not to be crass.”

“With money,” he said. “Yes.”

“Even without the Ariernachweis?”

“That’s hard for anyone these days. So many families have a grandmother born out of wedlock.”

In the mirror over the buffet Marta saw Pavel get up. He took his pipe and tobacco pouch from the credenza and hunched over the table, filling the little bowl and tamping it down. When the pipe was lit, he went back towards the phone to give it another try. The operator said there was a line through České Budějovice, the famous beer town, right away. The earpiece was at the end of a long cord, and Pavel fidgeted with it, waiting. He was put through and explained to Ernst immediately about the letter from his brother-in-law Max. There was a long pause while he listened to Ernst speak.

“Trieste?” Pavel said finally. “Hostage?” He held his pipe away from his face. There was another long pause. Marta could well imagine the voice Ernst would be using—patient, as though speaking to a child.

“You really think I could be taken hostage?” Pavel asked.

He waited for his friend’s response. After a few moments he tapped at the receiver on the wooden box. “Ahoj?” he said. “Ernst?”

But the line was broken.

The following morning Pavel surveyed his family around the breakfast table, each of them in front of a setting of silver. “How about a trip to the country?” he asked.

Anneliese looked up from her porridge.

“It’s March seventh,” Pavel said. “The anniversary of Masaryk’s birthday. Let’s make a pilgrimage to Lány.”

“What about the factory?” Anneliese asked.

But at the mention of an expedition Pepik had straightened in his chair and plunged his spoon back into his cereal bowl. “I want to go in the automobile,” he said forcefully. He was between schools, and lonely at home. There had been a call from the principal to say his Czech wasn’t good enough and perhaps he’d fit in better at the Jewish school. Pavel was furious—Czech was his son’s first language—but what could they do? Even he saw that to protest would worsen their case. You didn’t want to make a single unnecessary enemy.

“Well?” Pavel said.

“Sounds fine to me,” Marta said. “I’ll make some chlebíčky.” She looked over at Anneliese for confirmation, but Anneliese had pushed back her chair and risen from the table. “Have a nice time,” she snapped at the three of them, the circles of pink on her cheeks growing brighter.

“Liesel—” Pavel started, tenderly, but Anneliese interrupted him. “I’m not going. We’re on the brink of war and all you can think about is Masaryk. News flash! Tomáš Masaryk is dead!” She was refusing to meet her husband’s eye. Furious with him for broaching the subject without asking her first. Or furious about some other transgression Marta wasn’t aware of.

She knew that in another lifetime Pavel would have tried to convince his wife, but in the wake of Pepik’s baptism and everything else that had happened he seemed unable to summon the energy. “Nobody wants to go without you,” he said half-heartedly. He turned to Pepik. “It won’t be any fun without Mamenka, right, buster?” But Pepik’s nod was uncertain; he couldn’t make sense of what was going on between his parents.

“The automobile,” he said.

“I’m not going,” Anneliese repeated.

Marta groped around for a way to extract herself as well. “Why don’t you two gentlemen go together? The King and the Crown Prince.” But it was too late. Pavel had given Anneliese a chance and now he hardened against her. It had become a contest of wills. “Nonsense,” Pavel said. “There’s no reason for you to miss out, Marta. Go and pack those sandwiches. And a Thermos of cocoa for Pepik.”

She had no choice but to do what she was told.

Marta was relieved when they finally got in the car and left Anneliese’s fuming behind. She felt bad about Anneliese—she felt she should feel bad—but she couldn’t deny her excitement at the chance to ride in the front seat. Pavel was freshly shaven and had combed pomade through his hair. He was wearing field corduroys and a pair of cowhide gloves. He turned left at Belcredi Street, left again at Patočkova, and slowly made his way out to the main stretch of road. He was telling her about the Nuremberg Laws—the moment the occupation was a fait accompli the Germans had started drafting similar legislation for the Sudetenland—but he seemed for the moment to be discussing a problem he knew himself capable of solving. Pavel believed in himself, Marta thought. He weighed his options, made a decision, and then acted. What else did she know about him? Ordinary things, she thought, but the kinds of things that counted, that made people themselves. She began to list them in her head: He read the business articles first. His drink of choice was slivovitz. He’d begun to carry his Star of David in his pocket . . .

When they drove up the long gravel road to Lány, Marta saw they weren’t the only ones with the idea of honouring Masaryk on his birthday. There must have been a thousand people who had shown up at the dead president’s country residence to pay their respects. She hoped she would not be called upon to give any political opinions, but the atmosphere outside the estate was more conducive to a carnival than a debate. There were children on their fathers’ shoulders, boys in suspenders tossing a bright red ball between them, elderly men leaning on wooden canes. Pavel looked at her across the gearshift; seeing the outpouring of nationalism had bolstered his mood further. “Remarkable,” he said to Marta, “isn’t it?” His eyes shining.

Marta nodded: Yes, remarkable.

They got out of the car and were met with a wall of sound. Everyone was talking excitedly, it seemed, in families, in little groups of three and four. Marta heard a man in a general’s uniform—the Czech colours in his buttonhole—quoting Hitler: “The Czechs are a miserable little race of pygmies.”

“He said that?” another man asked.

“Prague will be occupied. There’s no getting out of it.”

“It’s a done deal in his mind,” the general answered. “He’s already moved on to Danzig.”

“Do you know what else he says about us Czechs? That we’re like bicycle racers: we bow from the waist but down below we never stop kicking.”

“That’s true,” said a man with skin like crumpled tissue paper. “It was true in the Great War.”

“The Brits modelled their Bren guns on our ZGB 33. The ones made in Brno.”

“Really?”

“Sure. Bren—Brno and Enfield,” the general said proudly.

“If only we’d had the chance to use them!”

The men were like little boys with their hands tied behind their backs, Marta thought, denied the chance to stand up to the schoolyard bully. They longed to fight the Germans, longed desperately, and she knew Pavel thought it still might happen. He believed there was still a chance, however remote, that France and England would come to their senses.

Pepik’s face was pressed into Marta’s hip. He tugged at her arm and she lifted him up, then thought better of it and put him back down. He couldn’t depend on her forever. “Why don’t you go play with those children?” she said, pointing to a group of boys racing around the perimeter of the field. But Pepik just whimpered and pulled at her arm again.

“You’re too big,” she said. But she let him rest against her and kept a hand lightly on the top of his head.

They waited in line for their turn to pay respects at the grave. Then they ate the ham-and-swiss chlebíčky. Pepik fell asleep in the car on the way home, a line of cocoa dried above his lip. Marta thought that he looked a little like the Führer himself—the small moustache, the thin shoulders—but she figured it was best not to point this out to Pavel. The automobile sped through the countryside. A short gust of snow turned to sleet—later she would think it had been a sign of things to come—and Pavel turned on the car’s single wiper. They rode for a while in silence with the steady thwack of it like a heartbeat, just there in front of them. Marta leaned her head back, letting her eyes close, luxuriating in the time with nothing to do but be carried along. The road whizzed past beneath them, the tires making a rhythmic thumping. She had almost dozed off when Pavel looked over at her and said, “I know very little about you.”

Marta’s eyes snapped open. There was a slight tone of accusation in his voice: how could she have worked for him for so long and managed to stay opaque?

“There’s nothing to tell,” she said. For some reason she felt herself flushing.

Pavel was looking at her, smiling. “A woman of mystery,” he said.

She looked back at him, at both his hands on the wheel.

“No, it’s just . . .” She faltered. Why did she want to keep quiet? It was not quite true that she had nothing to hide, but suddenly she felt that she might tell him anything at all. “What do you want to know?” she asked.

Pavel nodded, satisfied she’d acquiesced. “What do I want to know. Let’s see. You were born in Moravia?”

“Ostrava.”

“A textile town. Did your father work at the factory?”

She shook her head. “Farm.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Your father owned a farm?”

“No. He was the farmhand.”

He nodded, understanding.

“We slept in the . . . there was a loft over the stable.”

Pavel made a face as if he’d just bitten down on something distasteful, or maybe, she thought, he did not want to think of her there.

“Sisters? Brothers?” he asked.

“One sister.” Marta paused. “She died.”

Pavel cocked his head to one side. “Oh?” he said. “I’m sorry.” He seemed to be considering. “So you and Pepik have something in common,” he said finally.

Marta hadn’t thought of it in this way before. “We also both love trains,” she said, and was surprised by the confession, by the fact that she kept confessing. It was true. She took Pepik to the train station for her own pleasure as well as his. A train meant escape. The possibility of leaving. That forlorn sound that the whistle unspooled, as it drifted out across the dark countryside, seemed so lonesome, and yet so right. It was the exact sound of the emptiness in the centre of her being, like waking up and crying out in the middle of the night and hearing another sadness call back.

“Close family?” Pavel asked. He looked to her for confirmation and she shook her head almost imperceptibly: No. Something in the gesture must have told him not to push any further. “What about boyfriends? A pretty girl like you.” There was a sly look on his face, the start of a grin, and she saw he was teasing her, that she could get away without answering. But instead she said, “No. I’ve never . . .”

“Never. Really,” Pavel said mildly. He squinted, his eyes on the road.

They were quiet for a while, Marta reassuring herself: certainly Ernst didn’t count as a boyfriend. So it wasn’t a lie she’d told. Not exactly.

The countryside receded and buildings reappeared, first just a few and then many. The city was coated in a soft blanket of snow. When they got to the flat Pavel hopped out and opened the gate. He got back in and rode the clutch into the garage. He pulled the hand brake and punched the button that turned the lights off. But he made no move to get out of the car.

In the back little Pepik was still soundly asleep, his head bent back at an odd angle against the seat.

Pavel turned to Marta. He gave her a piercing look, his brow furrowed. “I’m sorry about Mrs. Bauer,” he said.

“Sir?”

“The way she behaved this morning.”

Something inside Marta tightened, like the lid on a Mason jar. It had been such a lovely day; why did he have to go and tarnish it like this? She was enjoying the chance to talk with Pavel—one on one, two adults—but the only way she could allow herself the intimacy was to put Anneliese out of her mind entirely. “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” she said.

He looked at her tenderly, or at least with an expression she took for tenderness. “And that,” he said, “is why we adore you.”

Marta’s breath quickened; she could not force herself to meet his eyes. But Pavel continued, as though he were speaking not to her but to himself. “You’re loyal,” he said. “Which is—” He paused, nodding. “—not something to be taken for granted.”

“Thank you, Mr. Bauer,” she said, but she was confused by the remark. She had the sense that he was referring not to her character but some other event she wasn’t aware of.

“I don’t take your loyalty for granted,” he said again, meeting her eye. “I appreciate . . . many things about you.”

The space in the car seemed to have shrunk; Marta was aware of the proximity of her body to Pavel’s, of the musky smell of the leather blanket in the back seat, and of Pavel’s hand resting lightly on the gearshift just an inch or two away. She looked down at it, and his gaze followed hers. They were still for a moment, both of them looking at the hand. Then she watched—it really was like something from a dream—she watched him lift it and place it, ever so lightly, on her leg.

Marta couldn’t speak; then she realized she wouldn’t need to. Pavel had opened his mouth first. “I wanted—” he said. But he stopped, and she saw he was looking at her face—she could see his eyes circling her forehead, studying her nose, her dimple—and then he leaned forward and kissed her.

She was so taken aback that it was a moment before her body registered the sensation. His mouth was warm and his lips felt full and hot. The slight taste of cocoa. There was a glimmer of his tongue and she felt a pang low in her belly, a sharp tug like nothing she had felt there before. She waited to feel herself stiffen and pull back, but she felt a different sensation instead—she wanted, she realized, for him to continue.

But Pavel drew away. He looked at her again with that same tenderness and tucked a strand of hair back behind her ear. Then he leaned in one more time. A short, firm finish to the kiss. It was as if he had come to a decision, she thought, and this was his way to seal it.

After that, Marta would think later, everything was ruined.

The following morning Max’s foreman, Hans, arrived at the flat. Together he and Pavel were running the show in Max’s absence. Marta took his overcoat and said, “Welcome, Mr. Novak.”

He tsked. “Call me Hans.”

“Yes, Mr. Novak,” she said.

He was a man with a large stomach, and jowls that made her think of a hound-dog. The sort of man, Marta thought, about whom women would say He’s got such a nice smile, or He’s got beautiful eyes, but only because they liked him and it did not seem fair that someone so kind should be so unpleasant to look at.

Marta showed him into the parlour, where Pavel had lit a fire in the hearth. The men took off their leather shoes and stretched their legs towards the heat, Hans with his hands folded over his enormous belly. Marta served café au lait from the silver service while they sucked on their pipes. Her trolley was covered with a white linen cloth. “A whore’s breakfast,” Hans joked. “Coffee and tobacco.”

Pavel smiled.

“There are pastries too,” Marta said, smiling. She had bought tiny plum donuts, dusted with confectioner’s sugar, and two little Linzer tortes from the beautiful patisserie in the Vinohrady. Pavel liked Czech pastries, but served in the French way. He liked to peruse them with the silver tongs in hand.

Marta moved towards Pavel to let him have his pick but found she could not look him in the face. The memory of their kiss was like an ailment spreading throughout her body, making its presence known in her chest, then on her cheeks, then in that unfamiliar tug low in her belly. It had been so unexpected, so out of the blue. And yet she felt, somehow, that she’d loved him all along. The mess with Ernst lifted from her mind like a ribbon of grey cigarette smoke. This is what it was like to be kissed by a decent man, a man who respected you. And she realized it was true—Pavel did respect her, without a doubt. The situation was complicated, compromised, but his feelings about her were pure.

For his part, Pavel acted breezy, at ease. As if nothing unusual had happened. He selected a pastry without looking at Marta. “Intermarium,” he said to Hans. “What do you make of it?” He set the donut on his plate and held the tongs out in front of him.

“A pact between Poland, Romania, and the Hungarians.”

“But what about us?” The tongs snapped closed.

“We’re lost already.”

“I went down to the Swiss embassy to try to get entry permits,” Pavel said. “I put a small envelope on the edge of the diplomat’s desk. He waited until the end of my appeal and then he threw it back in my face.”

Marta registered this new piece of information: so Pavel had tried to bribe the Swiss for entry. He too wanted to leave Czechoslovakia. But had he changed his mind too late?

“We’re stuck here,” he said, as if answering her thought.

His voice seemed strangely loud, Marta noticed. Perhaps he wanted her to leave, to give them some privacy. She moved her trolley into the corner of the room but one of the wheels was sticking; she had to stop and kneel to adjust it.

Hans carefully set down his cup on the china saucer, the dainty gesture comical in contrast to his size. He took on a businesslike tone with Pavel. “You’ll get a little reprieve before the Wehrmacht arrives,” he said. “I’ve received word that you’re needed to go to the Hungerland factory. On a flax-buying mission.”

“Received word from who? Max?”

But Hans ignored the question. “We will need to be prepared,” he said. “The borders will close. We need stock in order to stay relevant.”

Marta thought she caught an unspoken criticism of the way Pavel had handled things in their old town. If he had been prepared, Hans seemed to imply, he might have avoided the factory’s occupation. But Pavel didn’t pick up on it or else chose not to indulge the foreman. “I see,” he said. “To Paris?”

“No, not to Paris. To Zürich.” Hans enunciated the city’s name clearly. “You are requested to buy as much flax as possible. And meet with the son, Emil. No, not Emil; sorry, he’s the one . . .” Hans circled his forefinger beside his temple to show the man was crazy.

“If only we could really spin flax into gold.”

“Emil’s brother, Jan. He’ll be with Mr. Hungerland Senior. There will be a series of meetings about the matter I told you about earlier. You’ll have to go for three days.”

Marta watched Hans pop an entire donut into his mouth. He wiped the powdered sugar from his moustache. “Why don’t you take Mrs. Bauer and Pepik with you?” he said to Pavel, chewing, his mouth full. “Let them have a holiday. Marienbad is almost on the way. Perhaps you can join Mrs. Bauer at the spa.”

Pavel snorted. “And get covered in mud.”

Hans swallowed. “And then hosed down. That’s the good part, my friend. To be hosed down by a bunch of little milkmaids . . .”

“It’s supposed to be a medieval cure.”

“It’s some kind of cure! I’m not sure I’d say medieval . . .”

The men moved over to the big wooden chairs with hunting scenes carved into their backs, the same kind the Bauers had left behind at the old house. They filled the bowls of their pipes again and began discussing politics. There had been an urgent appeal for people to buy defence bonds to protect the republic, and the Bauers had invested in them heavily. “A lot of good it did,” Pavel said.

“I suppose it’s too late,” Hans agreed.

“If only Masaryk were alive.”

Hans said that in Masaryk they had briefly realized Plato’s philosopher-king.

Marta rolled her service trolley back into the kitchen. The name of the dead president brought back the pleasure of Lány, of Pavel’s kiss. She wanted to know the details of the Bauers’ trip, when exactly they would leave and where they would stay. They would be gone for three days.

Pepik.

Pavel.

She wasn’t sure, suddenly, if she could bear it.

That night Marta roasted a goose for dinner. She cooked red cabbage with apples and raisins and put a bottle of plum brandy from Max and Alžběta’s wine cellar on the table. Nobody asked what the occasion was. Marta kept thinking about the kiss, the unexpected heat of it. This was something other than what had happened with Ernst—the terrible push/pull of power—and something other than the violence she had suffered from her father. It was the same action, the same motion, but it sprang from a different place altogether. How was it that two entirely opposing emotions could take shape in an identical act?

There was something new here, something newly lit that she had not experienced before. A single bright candle on a birthday cake. She felt guilty about Anneliese but she tried not to think of it; she focused instead on feeling so alive.

At the table the Bauers were digging into their roast goose. “Is it true Hitler will invade?” Marta ventured. It seemed suddenly important to understand exactly what was happening around her.

She reached over and tucked a linen napkin into the neck of Pepik’s shirt. Red cabbage stained terribly.

Anneliese put down her monogrammed silver cutlery. “Yes, it’s true,” she said finally, shooting her husband a look.

Pavel said, “I told you, Liesel, we’re staying. Your brother-in-law needs me.”

Anneliese touched her napkin to her lips. “Keep your voice down,” she said. “Nobody has accused you of anything.”

Pavel cleared his throat. “Marta,” he said, “I almost forgot to tell you. I have to go to Zürich, on factory business. Mrs. Bauer and the Crown Prince will join me. So you’ll have tomorrow off and Wednesday as well.”

Marta nodded. He seemed nervous, she thought. She watched him move the knot of his tie below his Adam’s apple, and was suddenly hyper-aware of Anneliese there at the table between them. All it would take would be a little slip, a glance that lingered a moment too long, and everything would come crashing down like so much glass on Kristallnacht. But Marta was not afraid of giving anything away. Her job as hired help was to hide her emotions. She was paid for it; she was experienced. And Anneliese seemed oblivious anyway, her thin face bent over her cabbage.

“Are we going in the automobile?” Pepik asked.

“On a train.”

“On a train! Can Nanny come?”

Nobody answered.

After the Bauers were finished eating and had placed their knives and forks parallel on their plates, they sat smoking for several minutes beneath the oil portraits of Alžběta and Max. Pepik was excused and ran off to attend to his empire. In the kitchen Marta dreamily scraped congealed goose fat into the metal tin under the sink. She filled a big hrnec with water and added two whole onions, two whole heads of peeled garlic, and the heel of the red cabbage. All the while she imagined what would have happened if she hadn’t found Anneliese in the bathtub in time. If Mrs. Bauer hadn’t . . . made it. Could she—Marta—have been the new Mrs. Bauer? She ripped the one remaining drumstick off the goose and used the carving fork to lower the carcass into the pot. Pepik would accept her as his mother—God knows she loved him as one. But what about Pavel? She was a country bumpkin, unschooled in the ways of the world. It wouldn’t do for him to have someone like her for his wife. And yet she could have sworn, when he’d cupped her face in his hands, pulling her mouth towards his . . .

Marta lit the stove and left the pot to simmer. She would come back before bed and skim the fat off the surface. By morning the whole house would be filled with the smell of soup, and the Bauers would be gone on their mission to Zürich. She needed to go upstairs and pack Pepik’s bag.

Pavel and Anneliese had disappeared, which meant they must be in the bedroom with the door closed. There were two things they might be doing in there; she chose to assume they were fighting. Sure enough, at the top of the stair their argument came into focus. Something about jewellery, about Anneliese’s watch. “I want to bring it,” Marta heard Anneliese say.

“And where are you going to wear it?” Pavel asked. “In Zürich, where we are going for only three days?” He emphasized the brevity of the trip, but there was something else in his voice, some kind of resentment, or reproach.

“In the lining of the coat, then.”

“I told you, I was wrong. The market isn’t good. We can’t risk it.”

They wanted to sell the watch? Were things so bad? Pavel, she knew, had Canadian railway stocks, investments in a bauxite mine and in his friend Vaclav’s margarine factories. But Marta had caught only the tail end of the discussion, and the silence now meant that Anneliese had started to cry.

Marta moved down the hall to Pepik’s room. He was cross-legged on the floor, staring at the train, trying to divine some secret from the boxcars. She had a sudden urge to hold him tightly. “Come here, miláčku,” she said.

Pepik got up and came to her obediently, like one of Karel Čapek’s robots, programmed to do as it was told. He needed a haircut and his fingernails needed to be clipped. He was wearing, she saw, the same shirt he’d worn yesterday. She was overcome with remorse—she had let her mind wander, thinking of the father when the son was the one in need of her devotion.

She couldn’t imagine what it would have been like if the other child had lived and she always had to divide her attention. She sat down in the rocking chair and pulled Pepik onto her lap. “Já amor tebe,” she whispered in his ear.

His expression remained blank.

“Show me your Dopey face,” she tried.

It took him a moment to understand what she was asking. “My Dopey face,” he said, thinking. Then he rolled his eyes up and scratched his temple.

“Bravo!” Marta clapped. “How about your Happy face?”

He beamed. Just briefly—but it was enough to remind her of simpler times.

He ended with Sleepy, resting his head on her shoulder. Marta held him there, drowsing against her chest. She cradled him as if he were a baby and sang Hou, hou, krávy dou, about the cows dragging their heavy udders down to the river. Pepik was almost asleep when Anneliese came into the room, her eyes red. There was a streak of mascara below her left eye. “We’re leaving first thing in the morning,” she said.

Marta felt Pepik stir and awaken against her. “Up you get,” she said, patting his backside. “You’re a big boy.”

Pepik blinked and rubbed his eyes. “Will you measure me?”

“Not now, darling.”

“Why don’t you go make yourself a cup of tea,” Anneliese said to Marta. “I’ll get him packed.”

“Measure me,” Pepik whined.

“I’m fine, Mrs. Bauer,” Marta said. “I was just getting up. I’ll pack his suit, and the brown knickerbockers . . .”

Anneliese touched her pearls. “No,” she said. “You go on downstairs.” She fluttered her hand as though shooing away a stray dog.

Pepik pulled on Marta’s arm. She stood up, uncertain. “His nightshirt is in the bottom drawer,” she said, unable to restrain herself. Anneliese had never in her life packed a travel bag for Pepik.

Marta almost bumped into the door frame leaving the room. In the hall she passed Anneliese’s open valise, a set of silver hairbrushes slipped through the loops. The kitchen was already filling with the gamey smell of simmering soup. She skimmed off the fat and turned the heat up again. Fished out the limp vegetables and got a fresh cabbage to throw in. All the while going over it in her head. Why did Mrs. Bauer want to pack Pepik’s overnight bag herself? Had Marta done a bad job last time? When was it? The trip to Paris last winter to see the mechanical Père Noël—there hadn’t been any complaints.

And why the fuss about the diamond watch? Why had Anneliese suggested sewing it into the lining of a coat?

Marta turned her back and the cabbage rolled off the counter and thudded onto the floor. She picked it up, brushed it off, and laid it back on the board. Lifted the cleaver and hacked it in half. The pattern inside was intricate, the tight curls like two halves of a brain. Marta put the cleaver down on the cutting board, wiped her hands on her apron. She stood, not moving, next to the soup on the stove.

It began at that very moment to boil.

She knew where to look. There was a silver letter opener on Max Stein’s desk, and some creamy stationery with the factory’s address running across the top. Pavel’s Star of David lying next to the pot of ink. There were telegrams stacked under a paperweight: a round stone painted red with a ladybug’s black dots by Max’s daughter. Marta picked it up carefully, as though it might be hot. Under it were telegrams from Ernst and from someone named Rolf Unger. And beneath the telegrams, there they were—passports.

She opened one, saw the picture of Pepik staring out at her, and the exit permit stamped onto the following page. If it was fake, it was remarkably well crafted. Under Pepik’s name was a cursive C, for Christian. She let the little passport fold shut in her hands. There were three of them, she saw. One for each of the Bauers.

Marta took a slow breath. She covered her eyes with her hand, as she had once seen Pavel’s mother do while blessing the Sabbath candles. She told herself that finding the passports did not mean anything. The Bauers would need them to cross the border into Switzerland to buy flax. But somehow, seeing them there, a certainty made itself known. Pavel was not taking his family to Zürich; they were going somewhere else. She was sure of it. And they were going without her.

The Bauers were up early the following morning, and Marta was up along with them to make their breakfast while Pavel loaded the suitcases into the car. Pepik wanted to bring his Princess Elizabeth engine along, and he said so over and over, getting no response, until finally Anneliese shouted at him to be quiet, they were going on a real train, which would be much more dangerous and exciting. She was flitting around the flat, picking up things at random—a tennis racquet strung with catgut, the French translation of Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms. She poured enough water into Alžběta’s wilted hydrangea that it leaked out the crack in the bottom of the pot and Marta had to go for a sponge.

Marta served the porridge, not taking any for herself, and went upstairs to her rooms in a haze. She would clean the dishes once the Bauers had left.

After a half-hour of shuffling and clattering down below Anneliese called up to her. “Marta?”

Marta didn’t answer. She heard Anneliese say, “We should at least go . . . We might not . . .” And Pavel said, “No, it would seem too . . .” He pitched his voice louder and called up. “We’re off, Marta! See you Saturday!”

There was a pause while he waited for her reply.

“Have a safe journey!” she called back finally, sounding shrill in her own ears. She had been crying, and she was afraid her cracking voice would betray her. She waited until she heard the door close and the key turn in the lock, then watched the car pull out onto Vinohradská Street. Pepik’s little face was pressed to the glass. His eyes blinking up at her in the window. She didn’t smile, didn’t wave—she couldn’t bring herself to. Instead she backed away from the window, a palm pressed over her heart. Marta waited until the Tatra was gone from sight. She flung herself across her blue quilt and began to sob.

It was afternoon when she woke. She came down and set the kettle to boil and made herself a cup of linden tea. She and Pepik had gathered the leaves the previous autumn, had dried them and put them in a glass Mason jar labelled “APRIL 1938.” Pepik had drawn a smiling sun on the label beside the date. They had brought the jar along with them from their old town. Marta sat for a long time at the kitchen table watching the steam rise off her tea. Her hands resting, palms down, in front of her.

She looked around, at Pepik’s half-finished bowl of porridge, the spoon sticking straight out of it like a Nazi flag claiming yet another territory, and at the wooden mill with coffee grounds spilled beneath it. The pan from last night’s goose was still soaking in the sink; a skim of yellow fat had hardened on the surface. There was an ashtray on the table, filled with cigarette butts stained by Anneliese’s red lipstick. Marta thought she’d better get cleaning—and then she realized she was in no hurry. No hurry at all.

The Bauers were gone. They weren’t coming back.

She left the mess and took her tea into the pantry, where she made a quick inventory of food. The big pot of soup would last several days if she needed it to. And before the Steins had fled, Alžběta had stocked up on those trendy new soup cubes. How, Marta wondered, could something so tiny produce a real soup with hunks of sausage and dumplings or with curled potato peelings? But maybe it was possible. They were able to do the strangest things these days. The Baecks, Anneliese had told her, had a machine to dry their laundry.

Marta lit the stove and scraped the fat off the roasting pan. She was getting angry now, going over the details of her abandonment. The pilgrimage to Lány had obviously been Pavel’s last patriotic nod to Masaryk. She’d been dragged along, an oblivious accomplice. And Pavel’s advance had not been so different from Ernst’s after all: he had taken advantage of her, knowing he would never see her again. Last night’s dinner table conversation seemed different too—Pavel’s nerves, the way he’d kept moving the knot of his tie back and forth below his Adam’s apple. It was not about the kiss after all. He was ashamed to be telling her a bald-faced lie.

The thought of what had happened seemed suddenly unbearable to Marta. She ran downstairs and quickly filled a galvanized pail with water and Helada soap—it was the brand she bought for Pepik’s benefit, because of the pictures of locomotives that came in every box. She started to work vigorously on the inlaid hardwood floors. The flat was large and the panels were wide and knotted: it was a big job. Marta worked, not thinking. When the truth of her predicament threatened to crash over her, she held her breath and scrubbed harder, as though she could use the rising flood of pain against itself, to scrub away her own terror. To scrub away the image of Pepik’s small face, staring up at her from the automobile’s window.

She didn’t stop for lunch or even for a cup of tea. When she finished with the floors, she moved on to the silver. It needed polishing; whoever worked for the Steins had been lazy, doing the cutlery but leaving the big, intricate pieces that were used less frequently, like the Passover Seder plate. As Marta polished, some Hebrew script came clear. They were cowards, she thought. All of them. To run away so easily from who they were.

When she was finished, she went down the hall and looked at the empty crib. In the Steins’ bedroom—which she had already come to think of as the Bauers’—she rifled through the drawers but found nothing other than some lacy undergarments she hadn’t seen before and a half-emptied jewellery box. The diamond watch was gone. She left the drawer open—because she could, because nobody was going to return home and catch her. She went into Pepik’s room and looked at his small jackets hanging from the antlers of Max’s prize stag. Anneliese had forgotten to pack her son’s nightshirt: it was still folded in the bottom drawer.

Marta slept badly that night. The empty flat was full of noise: creakings and a ticking that was too uneven to be the grandfather clock. Around three in the morning she thought she heard a key turning. She crept in her bare feet along the Persian rug that lined the hall, and stood looking at the ornately carved wooden front door. A slow squeak came from the latch. She saw the handle turn, but the door didn’t open. She waited a full fifteen minutes, shivering under her nightdress, but nothing else happened. Finally she heard footsteps retreating down the building’s corridor. She stood there feeling she should do something, notify someone, but there was nothing she could think of to be done, and so she forced herself to go back to bed. She lay there for a long time though, tossing and turning, unable to fall asleep. She was thinking of a sheet of paper she’d found, crumpled up in Pavel’s wastebasket. A single question typed in the centre: What if she changes her mind?

The following afternoon the brass cowbell on the yellow cord by the front door rang. Marta was lifting the newly polished Seder plate up to the highest shelf; she froze with her hands in the air, as if she were being held up at a bank. Her heart leapt when she thought it was the Bauers, already back—but it was far too soon, she realized, and besides, they would just use their key.

The cowbell rang again and the handle rattled, someone testing the lock. Should she answer? She’d been moving around the flat with the drapes open and the electric lamps lit. It was already dusk. From the street she would have been clearly visible, so she couldn’t very well pretend nobody was home. She looked at the door, wishing she could see through the heavy wood to the other side. The knocking started up again; it went on for a full minute. Whoever was there was going to break down the door.

Marta crossed the room, smoothing her hair with the flat of her hand. She moved quietly, and when she pulled the handle the man on the other side gasped in surprise. “Marta! You scared me!” His hand flew up to his chest.

He knew her name. It was Ernst. He was wearing a day cravat and a black homburg. “May I come in?”

Ernst took off his hat and made to step past her, but Marta blocked the door. Her heart was thudding in her chest. Ernst belonged to the old town, to the old factory, not to this new world of Prague. She’d almost succeeded in banishing the thought of their affair; to see him now was to be reminded of a part of herself she’d prefer to forget. She’d relegated him to that tiny corner of her consciousness where her father’s memory was hidden. It was a corner she did not visit often.

But Ernst gave her a look, and she found herself stepping aside in deference. He didn’t speak at first but put his homburg down on the settee and crossed the parlour, his hands clasped behind him. He stood in front of the silver-framed family photos on the mantelpiece, gazing at them for quite some time. “So this is Anneliese’s brother’s place,” he said finally.

“Sister’s,” she answered.

“Alžběta. Right.” He peered at a picture of little Eva Stein. “What a beautiful baby,” he said, his back still to Marta.

He lifted the heavy menorah in one hand, testing its weight. “Are you here alone, Marta?”

She glanced down at her clothes, the dull tweed skirt and the blouse with a stain on the collar. She felt caught out somehow, as though it was her own fault to find herself without the Bauers’ protection at a time when she needed it most. “No,” she said, “I’m not.”

Ernst turned towards her. She was still surprised to actually see him in the flesh, in front of her. It was a little like seeing a ghost.

“The Bauers will be back on Thursday,” she said automatically, picking lightly at a flap of skin by her thumbnail.

Ernst set the menorah back down on the mantel and gazed at her, vaguely amused.

“They’ll be back on Thursday,” she repeated.

Ernst made a little clucking noise. “Is that what you really think?”

Marta shrugged.

“Lying doesn’t become you, miláčku.”

To hear him speak to her this way—the word miláčku soft and surprising after the other, harsh sounds—brought tears to her eyes. She thought for a minute that he was going to try to kiss her, and she took a step backwards. The desire to protect the Bauers rose fiercely inside her. “Mr. Bauer had to go away on business,” she heard herself saying.

“Did he.” Ernst stayed in his place. “And let me guess . . . He had to take the wife and child with him?”

It was unnerving to hear him refer to Anneliese and Pepik in those generic terms—wife and child. She brought her thumb to her mouth and tore away the hangnail with her teeth.

He raised his eyebrows at Marta. “Well?” Still she didn’t answer.

Ernst pulled a mahogany chair out from the table; it squeaked across her newly washed floorboards. He sat down and folded his hands in front of him and leaned across the table, looking at her intently. “Marta,” he said, “listen to me.”

He waited.

She was listening.

“I’m sorry for what happened between us. For how I behaved.” He paused again, as though he’d rehearsed this speech and was trying to remember his lines. “I’m sorry,” he repeated. “But Prague is about to be occupied. It won’t be like in the old town. Hitler is going to take it all now. Everything.” He gestured around him to include the flat, the city, the whole country.

Marta glared at him. Did he think she was stupid?

“I know that in the past I have said some unkind things about the Bauers,” he said. “But I need to speak with Pavel now. It’s about . . . the factory. It’s very important. I need to contact him—for his own good.”

Ernst was lying; that much was clear. Either he’d forgotten how frank he’d been with her in the past, or he really did underestimate her intelligence. She was a means to an end, nothing more. She thought of telling Ernst that he too was a bad liar, but she was afraid that if she opened her mouth she would begin to cry.

“They gave you up,” he said softly.

She closed her eyes, the truth overwhelming her. She’d been keeping busy cleaning, avoiding it, but she couldn’t deny now that Ernst was right. There was no way around it. She’d been abandoned.

“Where have they gone?” he asked. “To England?”

She could feel the tears rising. She held up a finger to show Ernst she needed a moment.

“Take your time.”

The grandfather clock doled out its ticking.

“To Wales?” Ernst suggested gently.

Marta shook her head and closed her eyes again. They were gone. But where? She thought back to Pavel’s conversation over coffee with his foreman, Hans.

You’re needed to go on a flax-buying mission.

I see. To Paris?

No, not to Paris. To Zürich.

They’d been speaking so loudly, like two deaf old generals. Marta remembered how odd it had seemed at the time, and realized all at once that they’d wanted her to hear. That she had been the intended audience for their little performance.

Pavel had been trying to confuse her.

“You know where they’ve gone,” Ernst said.

She nodded yes. Her jaw was clenched shut. After everything they’d shared—the years of her employment, that beautiful kiss—what did Pavel take her for? Something that could be forsaken along with the silverware and linens? He should have known better, she thought. She’d been taken advantage of too many times already. She would not be made the fool, not again, not this time.

She thought back again to the words Hans had spoken: No, not to Paris.

Marta closed her eyes and rubbed them with the back of her hands. She looked up at Ernst. “They’re on the train to Paris,” she said.





Part Three

Occupation





12 March 1939

My dear Max,

I am writing from Paris. Anneliese and Pavel were due to meet me yesterday. They never arrived. No wire, nothing. I don’t know what to do.

If only you were here to advise me.

Where are you, my darling? It has been more than two months since your last correspondence. I am sick with worry and can neither eat nor sleep.

Shall I mail the envelope now? I’m afraid that our time is drawing short, that if we don’t follow through on this option the window will close altogether. My instinct tells me to act.

Still, I will await your instructions.

The day is almost done; you are here next to me in your silver frame, your smile beaming in my direction. How I wish I could kiss you! Thinking about you gives me courage. I have said it before, and I don’t want you to think me overly sentimental, but it is simply true. I could not live without you.

Your Al

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





I WAITED A LONG TIME FOR YOU TO SHOW UP.

Every time the restaurant door opened and the little bell above it jingled, my nerves jingled right along with it. I’ve become good at identifying people I’ve never met, based on a few photos of their relatives or a letter about how they loved to play marbles as children. I watched the older Eastern European men come in, the Ashkenazi Jews with their thin grey hair and their pocket watches. None of them were you.

I thought: He probably won’t come. Why should he want to talk to an old lady anyhow?

But I had put on lipstick before leaving the house. I placed my Star of David on a silver chain around my neck—the only piece of jewellery I have from my mother. I combed my own thin hair and looked at myself for a long time in the mirror.

My eyes are watery, a problem that has increased with age. I blink and blink but they will not clear.

I must seem perpetually on the verge of tears.

You and I had spoken on the phone.

“I need to tell you something,” I said.

Silence.

I made myself speak. “You had . . .” I faltered. “A sibling,” I said. Careful to say this in the past tense. I waited for your response, for the shock or, at the very least, surprise.

“I know,” you said.

“You know?”

“I have a photograph,” you said. “My father has a baby in his arms.”

I was quiet then, puzzling. I had a hundred questions but I wanted to ask them in person. We made plans to meet at 8 p.m. at Schwartz’s, a popular Jewish deli on Saint-Laurent. It was a bit of whimsy on my part, but you didn’t argue. Our phone conversation, the few words you spoke in that muddled accent of yours, kept playing over and over in my mind afterwards, like the opening phrase of Dvořák’s haunting Prague Cello Concerto—I couldn’t sleep that night for the music it was making.

The morning of our meeting I forced myself to sit at my desk, pretending to transcribe an interview with a woman in Montana who had just discovered the “Jewish branch” of her family. In all honesty though, I was unable to work, as full of excitement as a teenager heading off on a first date. I’d been waiting for this for more than—Well, I’d been waiting forever.

I should have known better than to get my hopes up. The one thing you most want will always elude you. That’s the rule. And I don’t care if you call me a pessimist; I come by it honestly. I am also fretful and fussy, even with the people I study. Especially with the people I study. Truth be told, I think of myself as a kind of a mother hen to them. Which is ironic, given our respective ages.

“Would you like a menu?” The waitress looked fifteen years old max. Her halter top showed the delicate dot of her belly button. An outie.

“No, thank you.”

She took a step back. “If you don’t want to eat . . .” She gestured around at the busy tables. Two old men in sweater-vests were arguing in Yiddish.

“I’m waiting for someone,” I snapped. Which felt like a lie even though it was the truth.

I sat in my booth peeling at the plastic on the menu the teenager had left. Latkes, I saw, and Russian borscht. I told myself I would order as soon as you arrived. I was trying to be hopeful.

There are reasons for optimism. Reasons to have faith in humanity. There were righteous Gentiles whose behaviour during the war exemplified the best of the human spirit. But most people, of course, were not up to the task. And some even made it their purpose to turn Jews over to the authorities. The cases that are the hardest for me to imagine are the ones where the betrayer was known to the family. What could make a person turn against those whose daily lives they understood intimately?

Maybe those betrayers did not understand the full implications of their actions. Maybe they came from a background of betrayal themselves. This is one of the things the social sciences teach, one of the few things about which psychology is abundantly clear: we will re-inflict our own wounds on those in our care. And yet these factors don’t quite add up. There remain instances that give pause, that force us to consider the darker side of human nature: what the Jews call, I believe, the yetzer hara.

Speaking of which, I sat and waited for you for more than an hour. The deli was closing. People were getting up to leave, the women with their glossy mink coats, the men with their felt hats and spectacles. The couples looked happy, even the older ones, and I was reminded that tomorrow was the Sabbath, the day on which it is mitzvot for a couple to make love.

At first I felt angry—furious—that you’d stood me up. But under that was something softer, a tugging. I have to be honest: I was sad you didn’t come.

I wanted to have someone to belong to.