Far To Go (7 page)

At the word
past
a silence rose up between the two women. Marta liked to pretend that nobody knew the depravity she came from, but that of course was not the case. Anneliese knew. Maybe not everything, but she knew enough. And was kind enough to pretend she did not. What if things were otherwise? What if she weren’t so gracious? Anneliese exhaled cigarette smoke and fanned above her head as though trying to clear the air of what had suddenly materialized. The ghosts seemed to respect what Mrs. Bauer wished; the moment passed and Anneliese crushed out her cigarette, climbing the stairs to her room.

Pavel was gone for hours, returning only in the middle of the afternoon, with Ernst. They came in the door mid-conversation. “It might be wise,” Ernst was saying.

“All the accounts?”

“Just as a precautionary measure. To have them in a Gentile’s name.”

Marta looked up. What was Ernst up to? She tried to catch his eye, but the men took the stairs to the study without even removing their overcoats. She heard the heavy door closing behind them. By the time they came downstairs again the sun had slunk from the square like an old stray tabby. Anneliese had still not reappeared, and Marta was feeding Pepik an early meal of
knedlíky
cut into bite-sized pieces.

The men had obviously concluded whatever business they’d been discussing. The conversation had moved on to lighter things. In the front hall she saw Pavel pass Ernst his hat. “What’s the definition of the perfect Aryan?” Ernst asked.

Pavel made a face to show he didn’t know.

“Number one,” Ernst said, raising his forefinger, “he’s as slim as the fatso Goering. Number two, he’s eagle-eyed as the bespectacled Himmler.” He paused. “Number three? Swift and stealthy as the club-footed Goebbels. And number four, he’s as blond as the dark-haired Hitler!”

Pavel laughed, then the two men lowered their voices, speaking for several minutes in hushed tones. “There’s something else,” she heard Ernst say to Pavel.

“What’s this?”

“Put it on your lapel.”

“But they must know I’m—”

Marta peeked into the hall and saw the small flash of the swastika Ernst was pinning to Pavel’s breast. He looked up as he did it, catching and holding Marta’s eye. He winked. She felt, for a brief moment, like she was going to be sick.

“It can’t hurt,” Ernst said to Pavel.

“Are you sure?” Pavel asked.

“Just don’t forget to take it off if you cross into France!”

Pavel clapped Ernst on the back. “Good man,” he said. “Thank you.”

Marta turned back to give Pepik another bite. She heard the sound of the door opening and closing, of Pavel turning the lock.

Pavel Bauer was a thin man; Marta would even use the word
small
. And now as he sat at the table, he seemed, she thought, like a lost little boy. His shoulders were narrow and the skin at the back of his neck where the barber had shaved looked as pink and exposed as a newborn’s. She could barely stand to look at him, so vulnerable, so unaware of his friend Ernst’s shifting allegiances.

Pavel Bauer sat for along time with his hands folded in front of him.

He slowly lowered his head into his hands.

Now that the factory had been occupied, there was nowhere for Pavel to go during the days. He took Pepik across town to visit his Baba and brought him back home in time for dinner.

“I feel all cooped up,” Anneliese said at the table. “Like a rabbit in a hole.” She held her silver cutlery to her head like long ears. It was an analogy she had grown fond of in the past several days, an analogy she thought was particularly apt. But Pavel said, “Things will change. I just need to make myself indispensable.”

He tucked his linen napkin into his shirt. “Pepik,” he said. “Stop that.”

Pepik had massed his mashed potatoes like mountain ranges and was—with his fingers—placing individual peas in a row behind them. The peas were soldiers taking refuge behind the potato peaks. “Those are the bad guys,” Marta whispered in his ear. “You’d better eat them all up!”

Sophie had left the house earlier that afternoon and was still not home by five o’clock, so Marta had taken it upon herself to braise a small red cabbage from the root cellar. Cooking was not her job, nor her strength, but she was willing, these days, to help in whatever way possible. Pavel was distracted and Anneliese kept repeating that her nerves were shot; Marta felt that it fell to her to preserve some semblance of normalcy. Along with the cabbage she’d prepared chicken with butter and seasoning salt, the way she knew Mrs. Bauer liked it. It was now 7:05 and there was still no sign of the young cook. Marta hoped there was still some strudel left over from last night that she could serve for dessert. She leaned over and moved Pepik’s hands away from his plate, showing him again how to properly hold his cutlery.

“But darling,” Anneliese was saying to her husband, “there’s no way for you to be indispensable.” She cleared her throat. “To the Germans,” she clarified. “Of course you’re indispensable—to me!” She laughed. “But there’s no way they will see that.”

“You’re right,” Pavel said. “Why can’t they see it? They need flax. They need cloth. If they convert the factory . . .
Think
of the area we supply. Think of all the smaller factories that will grind to a halt. Lipna and Trebelice and Marsponova and . . .”

He stabbed at a piece of chicken with his fork. “Pepik, I said
stop
.”

“Not to mention Krumlov,” added Anneliese.

“But what should I do? Am I supposed to just walk away? From what it took my father fifty years to build?”

Anneliese nodded her chin at her son. “There are more important things to worry about now than money.”

Pavel Bauer sighed. “I didn’t say it was about money.” He paused. “Well,” he said, “of
course
it’s about money. You have no idea—thank God Ernst suggested—” Then he said, forcefully, “It isn’t about money. It’s about family.”

The implication was that Pavel would teach his son about the business in the same way his own father had done with him, that to give it up would be to forsake not only the factory but Pepik’s own future.

“Pepik is a child,” Anneliese said.

“Children grow up.”

Marta considered how hard it was, at the moment, to imagine. She had resorted to spoon-feeding Pepik his peas, a hand cupped under his chin as if he were an infant. She agreed with Anneliese. It was difficult to picture him at the helm of such an industry. He was too sensitive, too introverted. It would only mean disappointment for everyone.

Anneliese said, “There was a telegram from—”

But Pavel knew about the telegram and interrupted. “Liesel, we are not leaving. Give me some time!” He began to speak rapidly in German—it was Anneliese’s mother tongue and the language the Bauers reverted to when they fought. Marta did not understand the words, but she understood the way Pavel jabbed his fork in the air, the chicken dangling precariously.

Pepik had left the battle between potatoes and peas to wage on his plate. His eyes were now moving from one parent to the other, as though watching strikes being exchanged between the famous Italian fencer Aldo Nadi and his brother Nedo. Marta tried to remove herself from the Bauer’s argument by focusing on their son. “
Miláčku
,” she said, hunching over him, “try one more bite,” but Pepik was saved by a knock at the front door.

The family fell silent and waited one heartbeat for Sophie to answer it, before remembering that Sophie was not there. Marta jumped up and smoothed down her apron.

“Shall I, Mrs. Bauer?”

Pavel straightened his tie and put down his fork. He was working to rearrange his facial features, to hide his frustration.

At the door, Ernst handed Marta his coat. He looked over her shoulder to make sure they were alone, then reached forward and pinched her nipple.

Marta winced, and then giggled. “What are you doing here?” she whispered. Up close, Ernst’s pockmarks appeared even deeper than usual, but there was something about them that she considered vaguely handsome.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“You’re here all the time,” she said.

“And so?”

“I thought you felt . . . Mr. Bauer is—”

She had been about to remind Ernst of Pavel’s religion, but Ernst interrupted her. “Pavel is my dear old friend.” He looked at her intently, as though this should explain things, but Marta was still perplexed. It must have shown on her face, because Ernst spoke again. “My dear old
wealthy
friend.” He held his earlobe briefly between thumb and forefinger.

So Marta’s suspicion was confirmed: Ernst was taking advantage of the occupation to try to get hold of Pavel’s money. A wave rose within her—guilt, and shame, and something even darker she couldn’t name. Part of her wanted to extricate herself; another part wouldn’t allow it. She moved to press herself against Ernst, trying to blot out her feelings, to forget what he’d said. She turned her face up to his, waiting to be kissed. The Bauers were right there in the next room, but something in her suddenly wished to get caught, wished to have the whole thing out in the open. The liaison was exhausting, not to mention the secrecy—and this new information about Ernst’s motivation. But Ernst raised his eyebrows to show a kiss was too risky.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered.

Marta shrugged, pretending indifference.

“Don’t be like that,” he said. “I need you on my side. Don’t you know that?”

Marta didn’t answer but she saw all at once that he meant it. He was more uncertain than he was letting on, about his feelings towards the Jews and how his old friend Pavel might fit in with them. He wanted to be bolstered, reassured. Ernst too, Marta realized, felt guilty. Even if he himself was unaware of it.

He winked at her but moved away towards the parlour, towards the sound of the Bauers’ voices. Partway across the hall, though, he turned back to her. She thought he was going to kiss her after all, but he only drew her close, rather roughly, and pressed his mouth to her ear. “Did you hear me?” he whispered. “I need you on my side. You’d better decide whose side you’re on.”

In the dining room Pavel and Anneliese had successfully transformed into a tableau of a happy couple. Ernst said, “No, no, don’t get up,” but Pavel stood anyway, the embodiment of perfect manners. He leaned across the table and shook his friend’s hand.

“What’s going on at the factory?” he asked, as quickly as it was polite to do so. Pavel had been let go because of his religion, but Ernst, his Gentile plant manager, still had to report to work each day. “What’s Herrick doing down there? Any news?”

“Would you like some chicken?” Anneliese asked.

Ernst took Pavel’s cue to sit. “Herrick is bumbling around like the idiot that he is. He wants to know about the jute cartel. He wants to know about the accounting system, and the American Fraser investment. I told him he’ll have to ask you, that if they would only bring you back in . . .”

Ernst paused and shook his head again. “No,” he said. “No news.”

But he had removed a piece of folded paper from his pocket, which he now pushed across the table in Pavel’s direction.

Marta wondered at the extent of the deception. First the joke making fun of the Nazis, and now this. Ernst was presenting his usual face to Pavel—a kind one, the face of a friend. He seemed willing to go to extraordinary lengths to present himself as other than he really was.

It was, she realized, a trait she recognized in herself.

Anneliese was fussing with the silver pepper mill. “We are living in a very historic time,” she said, laying her cutlery down to peer up into its mechanics. “When has it happened—I mean, when in the history of the world has it happened—that a state has voluntarily given up part of its territory?”

She looked at her husband enquiringly. Then she turned to Marta. “I think this needs refilling,” she said, holding up the pepper mill like a hammer.

Marta nodded and moved to stand.

“After dinner will be fine,” Anneliese said.

“You’re right,” Pavel answered his wife. “But we have a good army. We have—” He stopped and swiped at the edge of his mouth with his linen napkin. “We
had
the Skoda works and the munitions. Think what we’ve given up. What they’ve taken. The industry.”

“The industry, yes, and seventy percent of our steel,” agreed Anneliese. She turned to Ernst. “Did you know we’ve lost seventy percent of our steel? And seventy percent of our electrical power? And three and a half million citizens!”

“Well,” said Pavel, “they mightn’t see it that way.” He was referring, Marta knew, to the many German Czechs who saw Hitler’s arrival as something that would reunite them finally with their
Vaterland
.

“It was President Beneš who was betrayed,” Pavel continued. “But he’ll come through for us. How, exactly, I don’t know. But I believe—”

“You believe what?” challenged Anneliese.

“Pepik,
please
.”

“Beneš couldn’t help if—”

“Masaryk would not have let this happen, it’s true. But mark my words, there’ll be hell to pay from Beneš when it is all over.”

Ernst had been sitting silent, with his elbows on his knees and his fingers pressed against each other in front of his face. Now he straightened. He touched his necktie and said, “I don’t know that Beneš . . .”

Pavel looked at his friend. “You don’t know that Beneš what?”

But Ernst, Marta thought, seemed to realize that responding might expose his allegiance. “No,” he said quickly. “Never mind.” He cleared his throat; the edges of his mouth turned up in the faintest of smiles. “What does Marta think of all this?” he asked.

Anneliese lifted her head sharply, looking from one to the other. Marta cursed Ernst internally, and her desire to be discovered completely vanished. It was all well and good for Ernst to make fun—he had a family to go home to. She felt Anneliese’s eyes on her and didn’t speak, her own eyes lowered and her hands in her lap. Eventually the moment passed and the Bauers kept talking.

“You understand,” said Anneliese to her husband, “that if we lived in Germany right now we would not be allowed to attend the theatre. We would not be allowed to attend a concert. Or the cinema.” She paused, tapping the polished tabletop with a perfectly filed red nail. “We would not be allowed to sit on a public bench!”