Far to Go

Chapter Six



PAVEL DID IT WITH A BRIBE.

Nobody said as much, but Marta knew there was no other explanation for the sudden retraction of the secretary’s firm decision. Winton could use Pavel’s money to further finance his altruism; Pepik was on the list and some other child was off. The Bauers didn’t speak of this, or of the finite number of futures that could be secured, or about who might be lost because Pepik had been found. Marta’s fate was not mentioned either. There was no time for existential questions; the whole thing was so last-minute that they had to leap immediately into preparations.

A list arrived detailing the harsh British weather conditions, and Marta was sent to the tailor to have some new travelling trousers and an anorak made for Pepik. The sole of her left boot was wearing thin and she had to stop several times along the way to adjust her stocking inside it. When she got back to the flat, Anneliese was bent over her Czech-English dictionary. Marta looked around for Pavel or Pepik, but neither was anywhere to be seen. This was the first time the two women had been alone in quite some time—was Anneliese avoiding her? Anneliese lifted her head but kept her eyes on her dictionary. “I’ll have a cup of coffee,” she said. She was feigning disinterest, but Marta could tell from her voice that she too was nervous about the two of them being alone together.

Marta took off her boots and rubbed the round blister that had risen under the ill-fitting heel. She put the package from the tailor, wrapped in brown paper, on top of the breakfront and went into the kitchen; then she ground the coffee beans extra fine and cut an apple into thin slices the way she knew Anneliese liked it. Grateful to be able to do something—anything—for her. There was a mass of guilt churning around in Marta’s stomach all the time now. She’d prevented the Bauers from leaving; she’d sheltered Ernst’s agenda; and now she had this closeness with Pavel. She loved Anneliese. Adored her. Marta had always thought of herself as the passive victim, as the one ruled by the will of a foreign body, but she saw now, all at once, that Anneliese felt threatened. Pavel was a country Marta had occupied. And Anneliese was like the native Czechs. Forsaken.

Marta came back into the parlour and set the coffee down gingerly on the table.

“Do you think it’s good that Pepik is going?” she asked. Trying to make conversation. And Anneliese looked unsure how to answer. Whether to address Marta as her help or as her equal.

“It’s just for a while,” she finally said. “Just until all of this blows over.”

“Do you think the Allies might still come to our rescue?”

“Just until all this Jewish business blows over.” Anneliese ran a finger around the rim of her china cup.

“He’s such a little boy,” Marta said. But then she thought this might seem unworldly and provincial. “Did you travel as a child, Mrs. Bauer?”

“Certainly I travelled,” Anneliese said. “With my parents, as a family. As a five-year-old? Alone? Of course not!” She spoke harshly but Marta knew it was out of worry and she chose not to correct Anneliese, not to remind her that her son had recently turned six. “How will you tell him?” she asked instead.

Anneliese leaned her head on her hand and then lifted it again: she had been to the salon and was trying not to ruin her finger wave. She looked up at Marta, an odd mixture of vulnerability and defiance on her face. “I hadn’t thought about telling Pepik,” she said. She paused. “Perhaps you could do it.”

Marta should have expected as much. The difficult tasks were always left to her, and in a way it pleased her to be given the responsibility. Still, something about it seemed not quite right. She touched her dimple. “Of course, Mrs. Bauer,” she said. “I’d be happy to. But I wonder if he shouldn’t be told by . . .”

The words his mother hung in the air between the women.

Anneliese nodded yes. “But you introduce the idea. Warm him to it.” She blew on her coffee.

“Certainly, Mrs. Bauer.”

“But don’t actually tell him. Leave that part to me.”

“To his mother,” she added.

As though the idea had been hers in the first place.

Evening had fallen while the two women spoke, and Marta imagined how they would look from the street, silhouettes in a small pool of lamplight, sisters perhaps, confiding in each other. Twenty-three and maybe twenty-six years old, their whole lives ahead of them. She liked to think of her life as a story, of herself as the heroine: a bad start, some stumbling blocks, but she’d make good on her natural promise. She owed that much to Anneliese. She owed it to herself.

“There’s something else,” Mrs. Bauer said. Her cup rattled when she set it on the saucer. “Would you stay on as cook? Once Pepik is gone?”

“Of course!”

Marta spoke quickly and then hesitated, smoothed down the front of her dress.

“That is, if you’ll have me.”

How, she wondered, could Anneliese be so gracious? It was the perfect excuse for her to let Marta go, no explanation required, and yet she was choosing not to. Perhaps, Marta thought, it was because everything was topsy-turvy with the occupation. Things were shifting and dissolving, reconfiguring. Who did Anneliese have to lean on?

Marta got up to clear the coffee. “Would you like anything else, Mrs. Bauer?”

“I suppose there is one other thing . . .” Anneliese touched her dictionary with a perfectly shaped scarlet nail. “The English word for betrayal. I can’t find it in here.”

Marta flushed. “That one I can’t help you with.”

Anneliese shook her head sadly. “I didn’t think so,” she said.

Marta made her way down the long corridor. The hardwood floor smelled of wax. There was no sound from Pepik’s room, and when she opened the door, she saw he had fallen asleep in the middle of the carpet, the loop of his train track surrounding him. His suspenders had been pushed off and several lead soldiers lay scattered around his shoulders. Marta put the package from the tailor on the dresser and looked down at him. His head was thrown back and there was a slight film of perspiration on his brow. He looked as if he was following some epic battle, his eyes moving back and forth rapidly under his lids. She crouched down and tried to pick him up without waking him, but he stirred and opened his eyes.

“I’m sorry, miláčku,” she whispered.

Pepik squinted and rubbed his face; it was pink and creased with sleep. She pulled back the patchwork quilt on the bottom bunk, propped him up against the feather pillow, and bent down to unbuckle his shoes.

“I don’t want to,” Pepik said.

“I’m sorry, my darling, but it’s already past your bedtime.”

“No,” he mumbled; he was still half asleep. “I don’t want to go on the train.”

Marta looked up from his shoes. “You don’t want to play with it?”

“I don’t want to go on it.”

His eyes had fallen shut again, his lashes dark against his face. Marta shook his leg gently. “On this train?” she said, pointing to the Hornby cars stalled on their short loop of track. “That’s good, because you’re such a big boy you’d never fit in it!”

Pepik kicked his foot away from her. “I don’t want to go on a real train,” he said. There was a waver in his voice; he was caught between throwing a tantrum and falling back into oblivion. How did he know? Had he heard them talking? He couldn’t have . . .

Marta lifted his limp arms one at a time and pulled off his little sweater. There were patches on the elbows she herself had sewn. She buttoned up his nightshirt quickly so the draft wouldn’t further wake him. He had almost drifted off completely when Anneliese came into the room. “Good night, Pepik,” she said, her voice bright, and Pepik’s eyes flew back open.

“I don’t want to go on a train!” he shouted.

Anneliese shot Marta a questioning look, not angry so much as hurt that Marta would act so explicitly against her wishes. Later that night Marta tried to explain that Pepik had somehow divined what they were planning, that she hadn’t told him anything. She could see that Anneliese didn’t believe her though. A second, auxiliary betrayal. Which worked against them both in the end.

A letter arrived from the family that was taking Pepik.

Scottish, it turned out, not British. The note was brief but generous, introducing themselves and saying they were looking forward to meeting Pepik. They had a son just around his age, a son named Arthur, who was bedridden. They hoped Pepik’s presence would help in Arthur’s recovery. This worried Marta but the Bauers didn’t mention it, so she didn’t either. The letter closed by saying that the fifty pounds was a sacrifice but they were firm believers in doing Christ’s good work. Pavel had been reading out loud; he stopped here and looked at his wife accusingly. “I’d like to have the rabbi come and bless Pepik,” he said. “Before he travels.” He pulled unconsciously at the skin under his chin, as though evoking a long beard.

“Of course, darling,” Anneliese said. Marta waited for her to qualify her remark, but nothing else came, and it was she who asked finally, cautiously, “What about the baptism?”

The Bauers turned towards her, one mind with two faces. Their shared expression told her to drop it.

Marta realized suddenly that there were many things she did not know about the Bauers’ relationship, things she didn’t understand and never would.

The packing for Pepik’s trip was now taken up in earnest. Anneliese had brought out his valise and measured it; finding it two centimetres smaller than the allotted size, she had sent Marta down to the Sborowitz department store to buy a larger one. It was red, with a beige plaid lining, and several centimetres bigger than what was permitted, but Anneliese said she was willing to take the risk. There would be more important things to be done on the platform than measuring children’s suitcases.

Anneliese began to tick off the items on the packing list. She replaced the short pants with longer wool trousers and substituted his well-worn buckled sandals with a pair of tiny galoshes. The tailor was at work on a jacket that could be worn over short sleeves in the summer and over a sweater in winter.

Anneliese said to Marta, “Of course, he’ll be back before the snow comes.”

In addition to clothes there was the matter of what the packing list referred to as “sentimental items.” In a small envelope in the valise’s side pocket Anneliese placed a photograph. It was the family portrait taken after the baby girl’s birth: Marta behind Pepik, touching his shoulders, Anneliese off to the side, her sunglasses lowered, and Pavel holding the bundle in his arms. Marta was surprised that this was the photo Anneliese had chosen to send. She thought it would be confusing for Pepik, who didn’t remember his sister. “It’s just for posterity,” Anneliese said, and Marta wondered what she meant. Anneliese kept repeating that the separation would be temporary and brief, but she was packing as though she expected never to see her son again. She attended to the suitcase as if it were a matter of life or death: it was like a body open on the operating table, the internal organs being removed and replaced at will. It was the second time Anneliese had packed a suitcase for Pepik in two short months, and Marta saw that this time she was determined to get it right; it was as if she thought that if she could only choose the right contents they would somehow ensure her son’s safe passage.

Pepik observed the packing and unpacking of the suitcase as if he were witnessing a complicated surgery: equal parts curiosity and repulsion. Marta had taken Anneliese at her word, that she would tell Pepik what was happening—children, after all, need to know what to expect—but five days before the departure date Marta found him peering into the depths of the suitcase. “Is Mamenka leaving?” He paused. “Are you leaving?” His earlier premonition had vanished from his mind like a nightmare forgotten on waking.

Marta swept him into her arms: his wonderful weight. The buckle on his suspender dug into her side, and she shifted him on her hip, took him into the bedroom, and pulled him onto her lap in the rocking chair. Before she could second-guess herself, she said, “I’ve got a big surprise. You, miláčku, are going on a trip!”

The little smile that had appeared when she picked Pepik up began to drain from his face.

Marta forged ahead: “You’ve seen all the soldiers in the street? The bad Nazis? You get to fight them. From Scotland. You’ll march away and help protect the good guys.” Pepik’s bottom lip was trembling but she blundered on. “You’ll stay with a wonderful family named the Millings. In a beautiful house! By the ocean.” The lies spilled from her mouth now as if someone else was speaking. “They have a dog!” she heard herself say—where that had come from she had no idea whatsoever. “And a boy just your age named Arthur. So you’ll have someone to play soldiers with.”

“Another little boy?” Pepik’s face brightened. It had been so long since he’d had a playmate of any kind.

“Yes,” she said, “but.” She stopped and held up a forefinger, about to reveal a top-secret piece of intelligence. “Arthur is sick. He can’t leave his bed. So you have a very important job. You’ll be responsible for helping him get better.”

“That’s my job?”

“It’s your duty. Can you do it?”

He nodded solemnly. “I promise.”

She thought later that she should not have taken this approach. She had not meant to unnecessarily burden little Pepik. But, by the time she realized, it was too late.

Pepik was dead. Marta was sure of it.

She went into his room in the morning and opened the wooden venetian blinds; slats of sun slapped on the floor. She said his name once and then said it again, louder. She crouched down and blew softly on his forehead, which usually woke him laughing, but he didn’t stir. Finally she had to take hold of his face and almost yell directly into his ear; he opened his eyes and looked at her, confused, his cheeks flushed.

He didn’t recognize her.

She held the back of her palm to his forehead. He was burning up.

Marta assumed he must be upset about their conversation the previous night, and that if she could just take his mind off his impending departure he would be fine, but as soon as he was able to stand, which he could do only clutching her elbow, he leaned over and threw up into his slippers.

“Oh,” Marta said. “You’re a sick bunny.”

Pepik’s knees buckled and he collapsed on the bed, banging his temple against the ladder between the bunks.

He slept for the rest of the morning. It was as though hearing about bedridden Arthur had given Pepik ideas of his own. Marta spent the day in the rocking chair next to Pepik, watching him drift in and out, a loose piece of driftwood by the shore. She felt terribly responsible, as though he would not have fallen ill had she done a better job telling him about Scotland. He was soaking through nightshirts faster than she could change them. In the end she decided to leave him naked, with cold cloths on his forehead and neck and just above his tiny, circumcised penis. His sleep was punctuated with little grunts and moans. He woke around midnight and looked at her blankly and asked for a rope ladder. Marta didn’t know how to respond and said nothing, thinking he would slip back into unconsciousness, but he furrowed his forehead and repeated the request with force, adding the name Vera at the end. “My rope ladder! Vera!”

He fell back onto the pillow but the moaning got louder. Was he referring to his little cousin Vera, whom he’d not seen for ages? And a rope ladder! Where had he come up with it?

By the second day the fever showed no signs of letting up. Pavel came in to check on the two of them; he crossed the room and stood very close to Marta. She could smell his aftershave. Something sharp and sugary, like cedars in the sun. “Is he any better?”

“Maybe a little.”

“I wanted to teach him some English before he goes.”

“Hello?” Marta had recently learned the word.

“Good morning.”

“And Where is the toilet?”

“Good one.”

“I’m hungry.”

“And what about I love you?”

Pavel turned away from her, averting his eyes.

Pepik’s sick stomach had reasserted itself and Pavel wanted to prop his son up to be sure he didn’t choke on his own vomit. Pepik’s body was difficult to manipulate, as if its owner had vacated and left a heavy lead dummy in his place. It took Pavel and Marta several minutes to arrange him, leaning him sideways against the oversized pillows. Their hands touched twice during the operation, sending little sparks up Marta’s arm.

The fever burned between them.

“Should we call the pediatrician?” Marta asked.

“We already did.”

Marta waited.

“The summons was ignored.”

It was the Jewish thing. Pavel didn’t say so, but Marta knew.

There was still no improvement by the third night, and the whole family gathered round Pepik’s bed. He was flat on his back with the thermometer sticking out of his mouth at a ninety-degree angle, as though from a pork roast. His fever had reached 103 degrees, and Marta had a feeling that they were gathered around a campfire, something hot and dangerous, crackling and spitting. Pepik seemed to sense their presence: his hallucinations came fast and strong as if he were up on stage before them, an actor charged with holding a vast audience’s attention. He spat out the thermometer and pulled at the flesh on his cheeks and puffed them out. He began to recite Der Struwwelpeter in a high, whiny voice. He pushed back his sheets and made to stand up on the bed, and when Pavel tried to move him back under the covers, he bit his father’s hand.

Time had seemed elastic to Marta during the worst of the illness, but with only two days left until Pepik’s departure it snapped firmly back into place. Anneliese had to settle on the final contents of the suitcase—she would send the winter pajamas with the feet attached but leave the suspendered bathing costume and cap. She also slipped her diamond watch down into the side pocket of the valise. Marta saw the note: For my boy who knows how to tell the time. A lovely gesture. Still, she thought, it was a large gift for such a small child. Perhaps Anneliese had other reasons for wanting to be rid of it.

Marta was responsible for putting a picnic into Pepik’s rucksack: two crabapples, some sausage, a small loaf of dark Czech bread. She taped a note to a bottle of Aspirin with instructions that Pepik should take one every three hours. The note was addressed to nobody in particular, and there would be nobody on the train to administer it, but it seemed to comfort Anneliese to include it, and Marta had to admit she felt the same way. Maybe there would be some older girl who would see that Pepik was sick and take him under her wing. It was like putting a message in a bottle: they had no idea if it would arrive.

“Marta.” Anneliese drew the strings on the rucksack. “There’s something I think I should tell you.”

“Those Aspirin have expired?”

Anneliese paused, leaned in closer. Marta saw new wrinkles in the corners of her eyes. “It’s just that—” Anneliese started, but stopped when Pavel came in with the suitcase. He fiddled with its lock for several minutes before laying it on the parlour table. It stayed there overnight, like a body before burial.

It was Marta who spent the last evening with Pepik, up in the room that had belonged to his Uncle Max. In the pantry she found a white tray patterned with blue windmills and brought him up a bowl of chicken soup and a little dish of cherry preserves for dessert. “Are you hungry, darling?” she asked.

She didn’t wait for him to answer. “You’re leaving in the morning! What a lucky boy,” she said. “And we will come and meet you in Scotland.”

Pepik nodded gravely. His eyes had cleared and he was eating the soup quickly, like a starving man.

“You’ll meet me?” he asked, the spoon halfway to his mouth.

“Your mamenka and tata will come as quickly as they can.”

“And you too?”

“And me too,” she promised. “And me too, miláčku.” She didn’t want to think about the fact that Pepik was leaving—leaving for real—but nor did she want to miss her chance to say goodbye. In the morning there would be parents and crowds of children and train crew. As much as she didn’t want it to be true, she knew that this might be their last time together, just the two of them, for quite some time. For weeks, most certainly. Possibly for months.

“Show me your Sneezy face,” she said.

Pepik put down his soup spoon, his bowl empty. He made four rapid achoo’s into his elbow. Marta clapped her hands together under her chin. “Well done!” she said. “Goodbye, Sneezy.”

She thought for a minute. “Your Bashful face.”

Pepik fluttered his eyelids shyly. He covered his face with his hands and peeked out at her from between them. She kissed his forehead and both of his ears and said, “Goodbye, Bashful. Travel safely!”

She asked for his Dopey face and his Happy face and his Grumpy face and kissed them all at length.

When the ritual was complete, Pepik lay back on the big feather pillow. He looked pale and sweaty and Marta felt badly for exciting him. She touched his brow: he was still running a fever.

She sat beside him for a while, stroking his hair and wondering what to tell him. It wasn’t clear how much he understood about what was happening, and she didn’t want to upset him further. She looked down at his soft, round face; his little eyelids fluttered shut. She bent down to his level. “I love you very much,” she whispered into the curl of his ear. But somehow this didn’t seem enough. There was something else, she thought, something else she should say. “Open your eyes, miláčku.”

Tears were running down Marta’s face now. She blinked, trying to hide them from Pepik, but they came hot and fast. He looked at her, searching, and lifted a little hand to touch her cheek. “My darling,” she whispered, “may you live to be a wise old man.”

As soon as she’d spoken she wished to take the words back—she would see him very soon, after all, and she’d not meant to alarm him. But he pushed his head into her chest now, clinging to her tightly, and then he lifted his eyes and nodded. He’d understood her wish for him: a long and happy life. And it seemed—although she might have been imagining it—it seemed he was wishing the same for her.

In the car on the way to the station Anneliese looked out the window, hands in her lap, tearing the packing list into smaller and smaller pieces. It was a short drive, but Pepik put his head in Marta’s lap and fell asleep as soon as the car started moving. He woke when they arrived, looked around weakly, and vomited his porridge onto the floor of the automobile. Anneliese pretended she hadn’t seen it. It was left to Marta to wipe up the mess with her handkerchief.

Pavel applied the parking brake and turned the key to turn off the car. He had pulled up beside the Hlavní nádraží with its stained glass windows and the carved faces of women representing Prague as the Mother of Cities. There was already lots of activity on the platform: a long queue of adults in front of a table, and children racing around the entrance to the public toilets. Pavel leaned sideways against the car door so he could see his wife in the seat beside him and Marta behind them. He was grouping them together, corralling them. “Let’s make a plan,” he said to the women.

“What do you mean?” Anneliese asked. She was dressed in a little velvet Greta Garbo hat, a new jacket with shoulder pads, and leather gloves.

“How will we do this?” asked Pavel.

“Oh, it’s revolting.” Anneliese rolled down her window against the smell of vomit.

Pavel nodded towards Pepik, who had fallen immediately back to sleep in Marta’s lap. “Should we carry him?”

“Of course not. If they know he’s sick they’ll never let him on.”

“I’ll get the suitcase.”

“He can walk,” Anneliese said.

Pavel scoffed. “The Crown Prince doesn’t look in great shape for walking.” Marta could feel Pepik breathing against her, the low heat from his head like a flanker.

There was an hour left before departure but already the train had pulled into the station. It stood on the track in the morning sunlight, steaming, a mirage. Pavel got out of the front seat and Marta heard the trunk door slam and the sound of the suitcase falling over on the pavement. Pepik sat up, his eyes glassy. “Are you ready for your big adventure?” Marta asked him.

He clutched at his stomach and hiccupped loudly.

He was indeed able to walk on his own, though, steadied between his parents. Marta was relegated to picking up the rear. This was how it always was, she thought: she dressed, prepared, and comforted in the wings and then passed the child off to his mother before their grand entrance. The Bauers entered the full frenzy of the station with their son wedged firmly between them. “Your tie is crooked,” she heard Anneliese say to Pavel. And she watched as he obediently straightened it.

The first thing Marta thought when they entered the station was that all of their worrying had been for nothing. Pepik could have been covered with a bloody, oozing rash and nobody would have noticed. The platform was crammed with families immersed in their own version of what the Bauers were going through; nobody was paying the least bit of attention to anyone else. In every corner there were women weeping into hankies, fathers crouched down before their children, handing out last-minute advice, trying to make up for years of absence. One of the porters had started to stack some of the suitcases and a group of boys was racing around the pile at top speed, like puppies chasing each other’s tails. The shouting and crying and counselling combined to form a uniform din out of which only the occasional sentence could be discerned: from behind her Marta heard someone say, “We’ll see you again in a free Czechoslovakia!”

But the voice was hushed; there were Gestapo on the platform.

Marta had a sudden flash that there was something they’d forgotten. But she couldn’t think what it might be.

Three rough lines were forming at the doorways to the train. A whistle screamed through the morning sunlight. There was a pause in the bedlam, everyone united. The moment drew itself in, solidified, a glass sphere that hung suspended above them throwing off rainbows and sparkles of light, and then it shattered onto the station floor. The crying started up again, and the rapid instructions, and the shrill sound of women’s voices feigning cheer. Above it all now the conductors’ voices could be heard as they tried to herd the children into the passenger cars. The lines began to move forward slowly. At the front of each queue someone was ticking off a list and hanging a number around each small neck. There were plenty of children too young to know their own names.

Marta had a sudden inkling of what it meant to give up a child you had birthed. She wanted very badly to touch Pepik. She wanted very badly to touch Pavel.

Over the clamour she heard someone say, “I can’t believe everything we used to take for granted.” She saw Anneliese smile demurely at a uniformed soldier.

They were being swept forward now, by circumstance and time, by the great push of people moving towards the train. There was a commotion at the front of the line; Marta craned her neck, looking over the heads of a group of grey-haired ladies, and saw the Bauers’ friend Vaclav Baeck. He had put his two daughters, Magda and Clara, onto the train, but now it seemed he’d changed his mind. He was speaking rapidly to whomever was in charge, a young man who was shaking his head, No.

Vaclav tried to push past the conductor but was restrained. He tried a different tactic, walking several metres down the platform and speaking to a girl hanging out of the train window. There was some more jostling and Marta’s view was blocked by a tall man with a high black hat. When she looked again, both of Vaclav’s girls were at the window, Clara holding her baby sister Magda awkwardly in her arms. She passed the baby out the window to their father: Vaclav reached up and accepted his daughter as if he were accepting the gift of the rest of his life.

He stood with his wife, blowing kisses at their older daughter, Clara, who would now make her journey alone.

The Bauers too had seen Vaclav’s decision, and now Pavel bent down and took Pepik by the arm. “Do you want to go?” he asked, his voice calm. “To Scotland?”

Anneliese’s cheeks flushed. “Pavel! That isn’t fair.” She reached inside her jacket to adjust one of her shoulder pads.

“I didn’t have time to teach him any English. How will he manage?”

“The Millings will help him.”

But Pavel’s eyes were fixed on his son’s face as though he were trying to read the future from a cup of muddy tea leaves. “Miláčku,” he said, “tell me. Do you want to go? Or do you want to stay here with Mamenka and Tata?”

Pepik looked bewildered: the train was shiny and alluring; he was hot and wet with fever.

“Stop it,” Anneliese said again, her voice rising. She grasped her husband’s shoulder but he shook her off roughly. “I want to know,” Pavel said. “I want to do the right thing, the thing that he wants.”

“Pavel, he’s a child. He has no idea what he wants.”

Pepik’s eyes were darting, panicked. There was shoving behind the Bauers and several people pushed ahead. They were holding things up: the line began to flow past them. Suitcases banged against each other and children hopped back and forth in excitement. But Pepik would not be going: Pavel had changed his mind.

There was a loud hiss from the train, the release of a long-held breath.

Marta had been silent throughout the conversation, a slow wall of unease rising inside her. Now she snapped into action. “Pavel,” she said. It was the first time she had called him by his first name out loud, but nobody seemed to notice. “Mrs. Bauer is right. We’ve told Pepik he’s going. We should put him on the train.”

She was thinking now of her earlier transgression: she had prevented Pavel and Anneliese from getting out of the country. But could redeem herself still, with their child.

Anneliese folded her arms across her chest. “Exactly,” she said.

Pavel looked not at his wife but at Marta. He was still uncertain, but her confidence settled it.

“If you’re sure,” he said. He looked down at his son, whose chin had fallen down on his chest. “You’ll go, miláčku?”

Marta could see Pepik was not following what was being said, but he nodded weakly, and that was enough.

The Bauers re-entered the line and were pushed quickly forward. Everyone was crying; the organizers had assigned a woman whose job it was to physically remove each child from the parents’ arms. It was like asking them to chop off their own limb: you couldn’t expect them to do it themselves. Pepik was gone from them before they realized what was happening. His little back was swallowed up by the train. Marta and the Bauers shoved their way down the platform, through the dense crowd of bodies, trying to follow from outside his progress through the cars. Marta could smell the rank body odour of an elderly man behind her; he shifted and she was elbowed in the ribs. She angled her body away, trying to see Pepik, but there were so many parents with their faces pushed up against the window that she couldn’t get close to him. “Where is he?” Anneliese asked, desperate. “You’ll see him soon,” Marta consoled her. “He’ll be back before we know it.”

The train gave a low moan; it began to move slowly down the tracks. The crowd shuffled along next to it; the air filled suddenly with a hundred white handkerchiefs.

It was Marta who spotted Pepik finally—he’d made his way quite far down the train and was hanging out the window, calling to them. His little cheeks pink with effort, or with fever. She suddenly remembered what it was they had forgotten: the blessing from the rabbi, for safe travels.

Pepik looked as if he’d just realized the same thing. Someone must have jostled him or pushed him from behind, because his expression changed, as if he had looked into the future, as if he had suddenly remembered something that he desperately needed to tell them.

This was the last thing—the thing Marta would remember: his little mouth wide open, that O of surprise.