Far To Go (3 page)

Pavel wasn’t home until eight o’clock that evening. Marta heard him say thank you to Sophie the cook as he passed her his felt hat. He came into the parlour, his jacket thrown over his shoulder and a copy of
Lidové noviny
tucked under his arm. Whistling. He was off-key but she recognized the first few notes of Smetana’s patriotic “Má Vlast.”

“Where is your train headed?” he asked his son. “Is it off to fight the Germans?”

Pepik was in his blue flannel nightcap. He nodded mutely, pleased with his father’s attention and suspicious of it at the same time. Marta could tell he knew something strange was astir. He sensed his environment, she thought, in the same way an animal could sense rain. She remembered the farm where she had grown up, how the chickens would fuss on a hot July evening. As the air thickened there was an increasing sense of panic. Or maybe that was just how she’d felt; hot weather meant her father would be restless.

“How’s the Crown Prince?” Pavel asked his son, trying again to engage him. But Pepik was allowed only a few more minutes of play before bed, and he ignored his father, focused on his train. He was fiddling with the little piece on the front—what was it called?—the fan shape that stuck out like a dustpan. It reminded Marta of Hitler’s moustache.

Vermin
, Hitler had called the Jews. But he spoke with compelling confidence.

Pavel gave up on his son and turned away and opened his leather briefcase on the oak table. He was wearing not his usual business suit and tie but informal soldier’s clothes: corduroy pants and a sweater with leather patches on the elbows. He pulled several manila dossiers out of the case, each neatly labelled, and smiled at Marta. “I’ll have a cup of coffee, please,” he said. He considered for a moment, then slid the files back into the case, snapping the clasps shut. “No,” he said. “I’ll have a whiskey.”

The decanter was chiselled crystal with a stopper shaped like the Eiffel Tower. Pavel placed two small glasses close together on a round silver platter.

“Care to join me?”

“Me?”

But there was nobody else in the room. “To what occasion?” asked Marta.

“To victory!” Pavel responded with gusto, but didn’t yet raise his glass. He looked at her, challenging, his jaw square. For a moment she saw what he must have been like as a child: stubborn, impulsive. Something else he’d passed on to Pepik.

“To beating the bastards down,” Pavel said, gesturing with his drink to the window and the implied enemy beyond it. “The Russians are on their way with support . . .” He railed on about fortifications, about the Maginot Line. Marta had never heard him so energized about anything. She wondered vaguely whether he knew that tomorrow was the first day of Rosh Hashanah. How did she herself know this? Someone must have told her—Mr. Goldstein? Yes. Who else could it have been? There was no Judaism in her family, of course—none as far as she knew—but she found the religion’s customs curious, the candles and skullcaps, the prohibitions against various foods. Marta thought about the Jewish New Year, and Yom Kippur, which would follow—the Day of Atonement, Goldstein had said, the day of repenting for sins.

Could she ask forgiveness for her own sins? If only, she thought, it was that simple.

“Either Hitler gives in,” Pavel was saying, “or there will be a war.” He paused, and Marta was suddenly aware that he had asked something of her, that he was soliciting her opinion. She blurted out the first thing she thought of. “Those white woollen knee socks,” she said. “Are they worn by Nazis?”

She was remembering Pavel’s story about his brother Misha, how he’d been knocked to the ground by the gang of boys and had seen their socks and
known
.

But Pavel ignored her. “Even if the government yields,” he said, “the army would never listen.” And the truth of this seemed confirmed for him in the act of speaking it aloud. “You,” he said to Marta, “have no idea how lucky we are now. Compared to the way it was before.”

Before
, she knew, meant before Tomáš Masaryk, before 1918, when Czechoslovakia did not exist. He was right, she thought; it was hard for her to imagine. She told him as much.

“That’s the peril of youth,” Pavel said. “The lack of experience against which to compare.”

He was thirty. There were only seven years between them, but he chose to assert them now.

“You old man,” Marta said, smiling.

“And you are a lovely young lady.” Pavel raised his glass. “To beating those Germans,” he said, holding her eye, just as they heard his wife coming up the stairs.

Anneliese Bauer’s fingernails were painted a deep shade of scarlet. She was carrying a flat white box tied with a blue ribbon, the signature of the Hruska patisserie. What she was doing buying the
medovnik
herself Marta couldn’t imagine, and for a moment she felt guilty, or neglectful, as though this somehow reflected on her own job as hired help. There was something wrong about it, something out of order. Then again, Marta thought, everything was topsy-turvy these days. And Anneliese, she reminded herself, was not one to do anything she didn’t want to do.

“Am I to be included in cocktails?” Anneliese asked now, stepping into the parlour and fanning her face with an open hand, as though her nail polish were not quite dry. Her brown hair was set in a finger wave, the wide curls clinging to the sides of her head. She looked like a model from an ad for the alpine spas where Pavel’s mother went to convalesce in the summers. Marta imagined herself sashaying across the Persian carpets, mingling with the men with gold-tipped walking sticks and women in hats with veils. The European elite gossiping over their wineglasses, shifting effortlessly between languages to get across the exact nuance of what they meant.

She curtsied, and Anneliese turned and acknowledged her, passing her the cake. “Put this in the icebox, please?”

“Of course,” Marta answered, part of her relieved that the natural order of things had not been eclipsed by the mobilization after all. Anneliese would still make requests and Marta would still carry them out.

Pavel had gone to the sideboard and was bringing down a third glass. “To what do we owe the pleasure?” Anneliese asked her husband.

“To war,” he said. He could barely keep the smile off his face.

From the corner of the room came the
tick-tick-tick
of Pepik’s electric train rounding its track.

Anneliese grasped her earlobes and pulled off her clip-on earrings one at a time. She snapped open her small Chanel purse and deposited them inside. “Let’s hope it’s over fast.” She dug around for her silver cigarette case. “The Fischls are leaving,” she announced to her husband.

Pavel was being generous with the whiskey; he did not turn to face her. “Bon voyage to the Fischls.” Now he turned and passed the glass to his wife. “Just goes to show. One bit of trouble and they’re out of here as fast as Jesse Owens.” He paused, pleased with his comparison.

“They’re leaving tomorrow. Hanna Fischl got an international phone call—from her mother in England,” Anneliese said.

Marta remembered the box of cake in her hand. She put down her whiskey and went to the kitchen, wondering if she’d understood correctly. An international phone call—but England was an ocean away. How was it possible to speak across such a distance? She pictured a thin wire high above the clouds, and then she pictured tiny men running back and forth through the hollowed-out centre of the wire to deliver their messages into the waiting ears of their listeners.

She put the cake in the icebox, just as Mrs. Bauer had asked.

“They’re all going,” she heard Anneliese say to Pavel. “Even Dagmar and Erna.”

“The nieces?”

“Oskar’s daughters.”

“And Oskar?”

“All of them, Pavel.” Anneliese’s voice revealed frustration. She was a gorgeous young woman, intelligent and sassy, who’d married a mild-mannered, average-looking industrialist. Marta loved both of the Bauers, but the match still sometimes confounded her. Anneliese needed someone with more . . . what? More
flourish
. Pavel was wealthy, well-bred, intelligent, but Anneliese was diminished by him somehow. She loved him, Marta thought, but part of her had been squandered.

“We did the right thing buying those defence bonds,” Pavel was saying as Marta returned to the parlour. Anneliese gave him a sharp look that meant
not in front of the help
. “To beating the Germans quickly,” she said, to change the subject. The Bauers raised their glasses.

Marta lifted her own glass, pleased to be included, and then waited for a natural pause in the conversation. “Would you like me to make the coffee now, Mr. Bauer?” Sophie was the cook and Marta the governess but Marta had been there longer. She knew exactly how Pavel liked it, the tiniest bit of sugar stirred in.

Pavel lifted a forefinger to show he’d like another whiskey instead.

Marta moved to get the decanter but saw that Anneliese was eyeing her, looking her up and down as though trying to make up her mind about something.

“Shall I?” Marta asked, suddenly uncertain, and gestured in the direction of the alcohol.

Anneliese nodded to show she should proceed, but she was still looking at Marta, evaluating. “Ernst seems to be around a lot these days,” she said finally.

Marta swallowed. “Would you like a
boží milosti
as well?”

Anneliese ignored the question. “He keeps stopping by.”

“Let me bring in a plate of cookies.”

But Anneliese wouldn’t let her get away so easily. “Why might that be? Any idea?”

“Perhaps because of what’s going on.” Marta paused, flushing. “The mobilization, I mean.”

She lowered her face and hurried into the kitchen. Reached up to the top shelf, flustered, and the tin crashed down, bits of cookies spilling across the floor. Marta cursed under her breath and knelt down to brush up the mess, replaying Anneliese’s words. What exactly did she know? And had she told Pavel? It wasn’t likely, Marta reassured herself. Anneliese had a secret of her own, something she wanted her husband never to find out. Marta had stumbled on it, in a matter of speaking. They were tied to each other, Marta and her mistress. Like runners in a three-legged race. If one went down the other would go down with her.

The next afternoon, Marta held Pepik’s small hand on the way to the train station. They passed Mr. Goldstein crossing the square, a piece of fringed material draped over his arm. “
Shana tova
,” he said to Pepik.

Pepik kicked at the toe of one shoe with the heel of the other. “Fine-thank-you-and-how-are-you?”

Mr. Goldstein laughed. “Have a good year,” he translated. “Remember I told you? About Rosh Hashanah?”

Marta held Pepik against her leg, her fingers combing through his curls. “I was just thinking about it yesterday,” she said.

“So my teaching has not been for nothing!” There were crinkles in the corners of Mr. Goldstein’s eyes. “And what about you, the little
lamed vovnik
?” He looked down at Pepik, but no answer was forthcoming.

Marta prompted her charge. “Do you remember,
miláčku
? About the Jewish New Year?” Of course he wouldn’t remember—the Bauers’ home was completely secular—but what was the harm? Marta had always liked the old tailor, and he was so kind to Pepik.

“The minute hand is longer,” Pepik declared solemnly, confirming her hypothesis that he had no idea what they were talking about. “Would you like a chocolate?” He held out his precious bag.

“How kind of you. But no, thank you. I have to get back.”

“Are you working?” Marta asked politely. Wasn’t work forbidden on the holiday?

Mr. Goldstein shook his head. “Not working. Praying.” And he held up his arm with the length of material—which she now saw was a prayer shawl—folded over it. He rolled his eyes, pretending to bend under the weight of the holiday’s rigorous requirements, but Marta knew how devoted he truly was.

She laughed. “Happy praying!” She squinted, trying to recall the correct salutation. “
Shana tova
?”

“To you too,” he smiled. He looked down at the boy. “
Shana tova
, Pepik.”

Pepik reached up to twist the tip of the tailor’s long beard. This was a joke that they shared. Mr. Goldstein’s beard held the cone shape as he hurried across the town square.

The train station’s platform was crammed with soldiers and housewives and young girls pushing prams and crying. A man with mutton chop sideburns wore a ribbon on his jacket, gold and black, the colours of the old Austro-Hungarian Empire. Marta held Pepik’s little shoulders, guided him around two women in wide-brimmed hats. She heard one of them say, “It makes sense to create one big country out of two German-speaking ones.”

“You mean Germany and Austria?”

“I mean Germany and the Sudetenland!”

Through the crowd she thought she saw the back of Ernst’s head. She checked herself; lately she saw the back of Ernst’s head everywhere. And what would he be doing here at the station?

Still, she craned her neck. She couldn’t help it.

Pepik was tugging at her dress. He wanted to be carried. “You’re a big boy,” she said, absently. “You’ve started school now.” She stood on tiptoe. The man with the mutton-chops moved and she got a clear view of Ernst’s profile, the pocked cheeks and high forehead—it was him after all.

“School is over,” Pepik said, triumphant. He was pleased with his reasoning.

Marta scanned the platform, looking for Ernst’s wife, but didn’t see her anywhere. He must be alone. She lifted a hand to the side of her face, trying to get Ernst’s attention, but discreetly.

“School is over,” Pepik repeated.

“It’s not over. It will start again soon. The soldiers are just using it as a base.” Her eyes were on Ernst, willing him to meet her gaze.

“Will they learn to tell time?”

Marta finally looked down at Pepik, a rush of affection rising through her. “Yes,” she said gravely. “Just like you.”

That was all he’d needed, she saw, a little bit of attention. He was emboldened. He ran across the platform with his bag of chocolate cherries clutched in his hand, shouting something at a blond boy he must have recognized from his class.