My Enemy's Cradle (24 page)

Karl stood a moment, looking at me, then the envelope. Then at me again.

"I'll take care of it today." I crossed the room and picked up his overcoat, wet with snowmelt, and handed it to him.

"How is she?"

I set my jaw and looked away.

Karl took his coat and walked to the doorway. He put his hand on the knob and then turned back. "I wrote to her. She didn't answer. Will you tell her something for me? Tell her that I think about her and hope ... well, I hope she's happy. Just tell her that."

I could only nod, my lips pressed together so they couldn't give anything away. I looked to the door, but he still didn't leave.

"You know, whenever we met it was almost as if you were there, too—she talked about you that much."

I felt the danger rise in the air and my chest tighten.
Please stop. Please leave now. Please.
But he leaned back against the glass doors and looked at me more deeply.

"She showed me some of your poetry. There was one line ... it was in a poem about wood, about what wood meant to you. I don't remember it now, but when I heard it I thought, Yes. That's exactly how I feel. I wanted to tell you that. And look," Karl smiled, his teeth so white it startled me, his eyes too blue. "Look. Now I have."

For an instant, I actually smiled back. He had touched a place I had forgotten to harden against him. "I'll take your name off the forms today." My voice was cold.

Karl looked as if I had stung him. Good. He pulled the door open and left, his boots clicking down the hall in sharp military steps, and I collapsed onto the sofa, my hands pressed to my racing heart. The blood was pounding in my ears and I didn't hear him return, but suddenly he was back in the room in front of me.

"No." He threw his coat onto the chair. "I remember something."

"What are you doing here?"

The look in his eyes was not unkind, but I recoiled.

He straightened and I followed his glance. Through the other glass doors—the ones leading to the dining room—two of the kitchen staff, setting the table for dinner, had stopped to stare at us. From the hall came a burst of chatter.

"We'll take a walk." He offered his arm to help me up from the sofa.

I pushed his arm away but told him I would get my coat. Upstairs, I crumpled onto the bed. I knew what he had remembered, what Anneke had told him. It was in the way he looked at me. The other night at dinner, one of the girls had whispered about the Jews found hiding in Zaandam. I stood and crossed to the dresser and splashed water onto my face from the basin. Panic was a luxury my baby could not afford. I still had choices—and one chance.

I would pull myself together, take a walk with Karl, and say whatever it took to get him to leave without reporting me until after he returned to his headquarters. Whatever it took. Because in another few hours it would be dark.

Frau Klaus was behind the desk at the main door. Karl identified himself and told her we would be taking a stroll around the grounds.

"The air is good for her," she agreed. "The girls don't go out enough in the cold weather." She looked us over and seemed to approve. I forced myself to smile up at Karl, as if I were happy to see him again. Karl smiled back and I understood what had made Anneke trust him—it was the kind of smile that could make you believe any lie. I wouldn't make that mistake, though.

Outside, the snow had stopped but it was still windy. Karl turned on the step and tugged my coat together. "It doesn't button around your middle. You need a new one." Then he pulled his gloves from his coat pocket and my breath stopped. I tasted leather and motor oil. And blood.

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing." I walked away from him. He was not the
Oberschütze.
He was as dangerous, though. I began to walk along the path to the back gardens, swept into commas of dry snow, with him following me. "What do you need to know?"

Karl crossed to my other side and walked sideways, his body blocking the cold wind. "Everything. What are you doing here? This isn't a safe place for you."

"I'm pregnant. That's all."

"That's
not
all. Why are you using Anneke's name?"

I looked away.

"Ah. Papers. But what's Anneke doing for papers, then? Where is she?"

I still didn't look at him. "You're right. I needed her papers. She doesn't need them. You can leave now, Karl."

"No. Something doesn't make sense. Why do you want to be here?"

"Why do you care? This doesn't involve you."

"It does. I'm named as the father, remember? I think that gives me the right to know what's going on. What are you doing here?"

You have a right to know nothing,
I thought.
You have no rights at all because you didn't ask about Anneke's baby. Your baby. Because you're pre
tending you didn't know about him.
I bit my lip so the words wouldn't escape.

We turned the corner and a rush of icy air stung my face. Karl stepped in front of me and walked backward, waiting for my answer. I didn't want his protection. I turned and headed back to the courtyard.

Karl caught up with me. "All right. I can guess. You got pregnant and this place looked good to you, for the food and the doctors. But you didn't think you could get in without the proper papers. So you used Anneke's. Is she gone, Cyrla? Where?"

"She is gone." If Karl heard my voice waver, he didn't show it.

"I still don't understand why she put my name down."

"I told you—I'll take care of that."

We had reached the courtyard. Karl motioned to a bench tucked into a corner out of the wind. "Sit." He took off his overcoat and wrapped it around my shoulders and sat beside me, so close I could smell his scent—almonds and pine. Too close.

"She's angry, and this was a way to hurt me—is that it? No, that's stupid and dangerous. I don't believe she'd do that. And I don't believe you're pregnant by a German soldier. Cyrla, tell me what this is about."

I was so tense my skin felt like a network of fine wires, buzzing with electricity. But I was angry, too. "And if I don't? What? You'll turn me in?"

"No. Of course not. I just want to know what's going on. I'm not leaving until you tell me."

"You can't force me. I'll lie."

"No. You won't do that." Karl said it with so much confidence, as if he knew me.

I looked straight into his face then, thinking how much I hated this man and keeping my feelings masked. He didn't know me at all. But I knew him. This man was so selfish, he had walked away from my cousin after getting her pregnant, after telling her lies about loving her. He had left her so hopeless and alone she had bled to death trying to empty the womb he had filled. He was the worst kind of coward.

I wanted to accuse him of all this, to make him stand trial here in front of me, at least. But I couldn't afford to anger him. The pent-up words were a pressure in my chest, hardening into a diamond and clearing away my fear. Karl was right—I wasn't going to lie. It didn't matter what he knew about me now, anyway.

"Fine. I'm hiding here. Someone turned me in, or threatened to. You, probably."

Karl reached out and I jerked my head away from his gloved hand. But it wasn't my face he wanted: He pushed back my hair and gently lifted one of Anneke's moonstone earrings. Surprise and hurt were in his eyes.

"She doesn't want these?"

I pulled the earrings off and handed them to him.

"My grandmother's," Karl said, looking at them lying on his glove as if he couldn't understand how they could be there. "She doesn't want them anymore?"

He looked into my eyes, but I didn't look away fast enough.

"What? Oh, no. God, no!"

But my silence told him,
Yes.

"Anneke died, Cyrla? What happened?"

I raised my palms to him and shook my head as I felt my eyes fill. Karl reached as if to put his arms around me, then pulled back.

"Please tell me. No—she can't be dead."

For an instant, I had an urge to comfort him. Then I came to my senses. This man had killed my cousin as surely as if he had fired a bullet through her heart. And he would turn me in without another thought tonight. But he
did
care about Anneke; that part was real. And it suddenly came to me, as if Anneke herself had whispered in my ear, that his need to know what had happened to her would buy me my escape.

"Come back tomorrow," I whispered. "I can't talk now. Come back tomorrow and I will tell you everything."

Karl hesitated.

"I promise. Tomorrow."

He nodded. "I'll be back in the morning."

"I'll be here," I lied.

Back in my room, I felt weak with relief. Too weak, too loose, as if my muscles and spine had melted to jelly in the steam heat. I opened the wardrobe and began to plan what clothes to layer.

"The bell rang for first sitting ten minutes ago."

I jumped at Neve's voice behind me.

"What?" she asked. "You're so flustered by your tall soldier you forgot to eat?"

"I...I did." I laughed, and it sounded high and false even to me. I pushed everything back inside the wardrobe and closed its door.

"What did he want? I thought you said it was over."

"Are you going down? I'll go with you."

She patted her abdomen, rising huge and taut now. "I can't fit much in these days, but I'm always hungry. I just have to change my shoes." She pulled her clogs out from under her bed and stepped into them. "I can't believe I'm wearing
klompen,
like a farmer," she sighed. "But they're the only shoes that don't pinch." Her ankles were swollen and shot with tiny broken veins—her time was near. I looked more closely at her face. It was drawn and waxy with plum-colored shadows beneath her eyes. In the past month her angles had finally softened and she'd begun to look full and lush, but now she had the look of fruit left too long on the tree.

"Are you all right?"

"Fine. Let's go."

"Neve," I said. "You're going to be all right."

I wasn't hungry. But I would be out walking for hours in the cold, and might not come upon food again for a while so I ate. I stuffed a thick piece of ham into a roll, and then, when no one was looking, I slipped it into my pocket. There was a new Dutch girl at our table. I said hello, but her gaze drifted and I was glad. Around me, the other girls were chatting, but their words were like moths, weightless, flitting in and out of my head. My mind was on what I still needed to pack, on which direction I would set out, and how I would know whose house to trust when I had reached it. My eyes went to the windows, watching for signs of more snow. It was dark, but I wanted to wait until after the night shift began at eight o'clock, when there were fewer guards. Eight-thirty; I would go at eight-thirty.

"How about you? Would you go, Anneke?"

I froze, a spoonful of soup halfway to my mouth.

Betje shook her head and rolled her eyes. "Haven't you been listening?"

"Go where?" I put the spoon down carefully. "I'm sorry. The baby was kicking and I wasn't paying attention."

"Here. To Germany. If you lived in Norway." She leaned in to me and lowered her voice, even though now, with so many girls from Belgium and Holland, we filled our own table. "I overheard two of the Sisters talking this morning. In Norway, the Germans have begun to encourage the girls to come here and to stay. Why just get the calf when you can get the breed cow? They're making it very attractive—bribing the girls."

"They're kidnapping them," the new girl interrupted. She set down her glass of milk and looked across the table at us. "Or at least blackmailing them. If they want to take care of their babies after they're born, they'll have to go."

Betje shrugged. "Another year of the war and there won't be anything left of the Netherlands. Or Norway. Those girls should come here and be glad of it. I wish I could stay."

I looked around the table then, waiting for someone to argue.
The war can't last much longer.
I hadn't heard those words since I'd left Scheidam and now they hung like an accusation. I tried to make myself speak them, but couldn't. Betje was right. Still, I felt discouraged when she pressed the point.

She tore a piece off her roll and buttered it. "Our children will all be here. The men who got us all pregnant will all be here. What else do we have?" She leaned in and gestured at the new girl with her knife. "What else do
you
have?"

The new girl straightened. "Nothing. I have nothing left." Something in her voice drew every eye to her. She gestured over her belly without touching it. "I was late coming home. After curfew. Two soldiers did this. My boyfriend won't look at me. My whole town ... they took everything I had. I won't stay in this country for a second more than I have to."

There was silence at the table then, long and brittle. I reached across the table and touched her hand. "I want to go home, too. I don't care what's left; I just want to go home."

She looked at me gratefully for a moment, then down at her soup. It had been untouched so long the fat had risen to the top in a thin orange sheen. She folded her napkin and stood, and I had the curious impression that she rose tall and weightless, and that her belly floated ponderously up to meet her—a separate thing. She walked to the dining-room doors, but paused there for a moment as if deciding something, then it seemed her shoulders tightened into her spine and she lifted her head. When she walked out, I had a sense of loss.

I pushed my plate aside and followed her and caught up with her at the top landing. "It happened to me, too." I had had no warning I would say those words.

She bit her lips into her mouth for a moment and her eyes hardened. "It's not a club I want to belong to," she spat after a long silence.

"I only thought—"

"Leave me alone!" She turned and walked away down the hall to her room, two down from mine. I waited until she'd closed her door before walking to mine, wishing I had said good-bye to her.

Neve came up and asked if I was going down to watch the film.

"What is it this week?"