by Pam Jenoff
Suddenly a shot rings out in the air, then another. The scuffling ceases and the protesters freeze. The police must have fired into the air to stop the fighting, I think. Then, at the top of the stairs, I spot something bright yellow on the ground. Hans’s jacket. He lies motionless, arms flung above his head as though surrendering.
“No!” I gasp. I hold my breath, stifling the urge to scream. The crowd, stunned by the shooting, stands motionless. But the police, having caught the protesters off guard, now take the initiative. They leap forward, brandishing nightsticks. I watch, horrified, as a number of young men are beaten to the ground. Others are dragged away by the police. A cloud of smoke rises from the front of the crowd. Tear gas, I realize, as some of the protesters begin to clutch at their eyes. The crowd begins to flee, police in close pursuit. I have to get out of here, I think, as the protesters stream back past me in the direction from which we came. If I stay here, I am going to be arrested, or worse. I turn around. A police truck has blocked the street from which we entered the square. We are trapped.
I scan the far side of the square, spotting an open alleyway. Quickly, I make my way toward it, expecting a policeman to grab me at any time. When I reach the shelter of the alley, I begin to run, crossing blindly through the backstreets, feeling for the Old Town Square. My lungs burn. At last, I reach the square. Slowing, I look up at the Astronomical Clock as I cross, thinking sadly of Hans.
But there is no time to linger. The chaos of the broken demonstration has begun to spill over here, too. Protesters, their eyes watering from the tear gas, dart across the square alone or in groups of two or three. One man clutches a bloody wound on his temple. In the distance, police sirens wail, as if to remind the protesters that the crackdown is not over. I make my way hurriedly from the square.
A few minutes later, I reach the block where the hotel is located. I catch a glimpse of my reflection in a shop window. My cheeks are flushed from running and my curls have sprung free from the knot. I should go upstairs and freshen up. I look at the clock above the hotel entrance. It is eleven, one hour until my meeting with Marek, and I have no idea how long it will take to reach the park. There is no time. I walk quickly to the bus stop at the corner.
A few minutes later the C bus arrives and I board. It is empty except for a few schoolchildren clustered in the rear. I drop into a seat a few rows behind the driver, then look out the window. As we wind our way through the Old Town, I think about the ruthlessness with which the police tore apart the demonstrators. A shiver runs through me. I had known that the Soviet-dominated communist regimes were oppressive, silencing ideas that were contrary to their own. But I had not imagined that they would actually open fire on their own people. They are no better than the Nazis. I grasp my bag more tightly. Suddenly my mission seems more urgent than ever.
The bus turns away from the Old Town, stopping every few minutes as it follows the river south. At the next stop, the schoolchildren get off the bus and two women board, talking rapidly in Czech about the price of potatoes. One carries a basket only half full with groceries, the other a small pail of coal. The road grows bumpier, the buildings farther-spaced as we make our way from the city center to the sprawling outskirts of Prague. The houses here are smaller, more dilapidated. The bus stops again and the women get off, trudging slowly down a dirt road. An underfed cow stares forlornly out over a fence.
I look around the now-empty bus as it begins to move again. “Riegrovy Park,” the driver calls a few minutes later, as though speaking to a large group. I walk to the front of the bus as it slows, looking at the driver out of the corner of my eye. Does he wonder what I am doing here? But he does not look up as I step off the bus. The door closes behind me and the bus drives away.
I pause, surveying the park. Flat fields stretch endlessly in all directions, the grass dead and brown. Several hundred meters off to the right sits a thatch of bare trees. I spot a stone fountain beneath them. Drawing my coat more closely around me, I walk toward the fountain. Closer, I can see that it is made up of several statues of small children, their hands reaching upward toward the heavens. Dead leaves lay in drifts in the dry marble basin below. I look around. The park is deserted, except for a cluster of crows, picking at the ground beneath the trees. Where is Marek? He looked so nervous last night. Part of me wonders if he is going to come at all.
It is early, I tell myself, walking toward the trees. The crows watch me with disinterest, not moving. On the far side of the trees, there is a children’s playground with swings and a metal slide. Two boys play on the swings. A few meters away from them, on the edge of the playground closest to me, a woman stands by a bench, watching them.
I hesitate, studying the woman’s back. I do not want to risk drawing attention to myself, but perhaps she has seen Marek. I walk toward her. “Excuse me,” I say softly, but she does not seem to hear me over the wind. I move closer. Suddenly, I freeze, a lump forming in my throat. There is something familiar about the honey-blond color of the woman’s hair, the way it hangs in a loose knot against her neck. An image flashes through my mind of Emma’s hair, bouncing as she ran from the railway bridge. It cannot possibly be. I reach out, touch the woman’s shoulder gently. “Excuse me,” I repeat, louder this time.
The woman jumps, then turns slowly. As I inhale the familiar almond scent, I know there can be no mistake. There, standing before me, is Emma.
CHAPTER 18
“Hello, Marta,” she says calmly, gazing at me in her familiar unblinking way. I stare back, too stunned to move or speak. My mind races. Emma? It does not seem possible. She steps forward to kiss me on each cheek, as though we have simply run into each other on the ghetto street. “It’s so good to see you.”
“Emma?” I reach out and touch her sleeve, checking if she is really here.
“It’s me.” She takes my fingers and squeezes them.
“I—I don’t understand.” I cannot stop staring at her. “What are you doing here?”
“Why don’t we sit?” Emma walks to the bench. I follow numbly and sit down beside her. “I know you must be surprised to see me,” she continues. “I live here now, in Prague. I help, with the political work, I mean. Like you and I did in Kraków.”
So she and Jacob made it out of Poland and over the mountains, after all. If Emma is here, where is Jacob? “But I was supposed to meet—”
“Marek asked me to come meet you. I was glad to do it, of course,” she adds. “When Marek told me that you were here, that you were alive, I was overjoyed. It was too risky for Marek to come himself. He thought he was being followed. But he knew that no one would suspect two women with children in a playground. Those are my boys, by the way.” Emma gestures toward the swings. “You remember Lukasz, of course.” I nod. Lukasz was not technically Emma’s—he was the rabbi’s son whom Emma and Krysia had hidden after his father was arrested and mother killed by the Nazis. “And that—” she points to the younger child, who looks to be about six “—is Jake.”
Jake. I stare at the child, remembering. Emma’s pregnancy was the reason we had to get her out of Kraków so quickly. The Kommandant found out and wanted to send Emma away to raise his child in Austria. His child. That had been the question, though no one had talked about it at the time: had Jacob fathered Emma’s baby during their lone reunion before the resistance bombed the café, or had her pregnancy resulted from her affair with the Kommandant? Looking now at the boy, I have no doubt—his steely gray eyes are almost identical to those that stared lifelessly back at me on the bridge the night I killed the Kommandant.
“Jake,” I repeat aloud. At least the child has Jacob’s name. Suddenly, my breath catches. Jews name children after those who have died. “After Jacob…?”
“He didn’t make it, Marta,” Emma says, her voice cracking.
Pain rips through my chest. “No…”
“When I left you on the bridge, I found the Kowalczyk farm and Jacob was waiting there for me, just like you said.” I can barely hear her
over the buzzing in my ears. Suddenly I want to reach out and slap her or shake her, anything to stop her words. “He was still terribly weak, but we knew we had to leave then because the police would be looking for me. The snow in the mountains was so much worse than we expected. Jacob developed a high fever and collapsed, right after we crossed the border into Slovakia.”
I fight the urge to scream. “Jacob,” I say instead, seeing his face in my mind.
“I stayed with him, Marta.” I can hear the guilt in Emma’s voice, her desperate need to explain. “I stayed with him right until the very end, until he was gone.”
I swallow, struggling to find words. “And then?”
“I covered his body as well as I could, with rocks and branches. The ground was frozen; it was the best I could do. I didn’t want to leave him there, but I had no other choice. I couldn’t carry him and we couldn’t stay there. We had no food. Lukasz would have died, and the baby inside me, too.” The baby. Resentment fills me. If it was not for the baby, Emma would not have had to flee Kraków and Jacob would still be alive. Emma continues, “It was like you told me, Marta, the night on the bridge. Those who can go on must.” In my mind I hear myself, insisting that Emma flee and leave me behind wounded for the Nazis. Would things have ended differently if I had gone instead, saving myself? Could I have saved Jacob, too? “So I finished crossing the mountains and came down into Slovakia. I’d heard rumors that some of those who had survived from the resistance were in Prague. I made my way here and found Marek.”
Emma is here. Jacob is dead. I swallow, trying to process it all. “Were there others who made it?”
Emma shakes her head. “No one from Kraków. Everyone was arrested or killed, except for Marek and me. And you, of course, though we had no idea. But there were others who wound up here, from Lodz and Lublin, and from some other countries, too. A lot of people, like Marek and I, who resisted the Nazis, are fighting the communists now.”
“So you’re helping Marek with his work?”
“Yes, but…” Emma looks away, staring across the park. “There’s something else you should know. I’m not just working with Marek.” She hesitates, then raises her hand to reveal a small gold band. “He is also my husband.” I sink back, feeling as though someone kicked me in the stomach. “Marta, say something,” Emma pleads.
“Your husband?” I repeat, disbelieving.
“It didn’t happen right away.” Emma’s tone is defensive. “But when I came to Prague, I was all alone. I had nothing. Marek took us in, provided for me and the children. We grew closer and then he proposed.”
I pause, trying to understand. In the distance, a crow cries out. “Do you love him?” I ask at last.
“I don’t even know what that is anymore,” she replies, her voice hollow.
“But Jacob…”
“Jacob is gone, Marta.” Her expression is hard, unfamiliar. “I had to be practical, do what is best for my children.”
I follow Emma’s gaze to the swings where Lukasz plays. I think of Rachel. I went to work for Simon already suspecting that I was pregnant with her. And in spite of that fact, or maybe because of it, I let him court me. Would I have married Simon if Rachel had not been on the way? It is a question I have avoided asking myself for years.
I remember suddenly a fight Emma and I had when I confronted her on the street the night of the café bombing. How could she be involved with the Kommandant, I demanded, when she claimed to love Jacob? Emma begged me to understand then, too: she was doing what she had to do to help the resistance. At the time, I saw only that it was wrong. If Emma really loved Jacob, she would not be sleeping with the Kommandant. Things were so much simpler then, when the only love I had known was my crush on Jacob. Now I know that it is more complicated than that. I judged Emma once; I will not do it again.
“I understand,” I say at last, reaching out and squeezing Emma’s hand. Her fingers close quickly around mine. We are two girls back in the ghetto, confiding in each other.
She looks at me. “You do?”
Hearing the relief in Emma’s voice, I nod. “Yes. I have a child, too.”
“Oh, Marta, that’s wonderful! Boy or girl?”
“Girl. She’s one-and-a-half. Her name is Rachel.”
“Then what are you doing here? I mean, Marek told me you live in London now.”
“I’m trying to get back to my daughter as soon as possible. But I had to come here. You see, I work for the British Foreign Office. We both do, my husband and I. We desperately need to reach Jan Marcelitis. When the government found out that the only way to do that was through Marek and that I knew him, they asked me to help.”
“And you agreed?”
“I felt as though I had no choice, as though I had to try to help. Does that make any sense?”
“It does. But you should do what you need to do and get out of here right away. The political situation is very precarious. Any day now…” Emma stops speaking, and her expression grows fearful.
“Anyway, Marek sent me to tell you that he’s arranged a meeting with Marcelitis. You are to be at the Charles Bridge tonight at midnight. He said that once again you are to come alone.”
My heart leaps. Marek has arranged the meeting. I will see Marcelitis tonight and then I can go home. I look at Emma. “What about you?” I ask. “I mean, will I see you again?”
Emma hesitates. “I won’t be at the meeting tonight, if that’s what you’re asking. And after that you’ll be gone, and God only knows what will be. I certainly never expected to see you again. So I think this is goodbye for now.” A tear rolls down her cheek. “I want to thank you again for what you did for me in Kraków. You saved my life.”
I put my arm around her shoulder. “You know, don’t you, that you don’t have to stay here? I can arrange papers for you and the children to come to London.”
Emma wipes her eyes. “Thank you, but no. This is our home now. I’m married to Marek and I’ve taken vows, Marta. Vows that I will not break again.”
Seeing the guilt in her eyes, I know she is speaking of her betrayal of Jacob with the Kommandant. “It’s not your fault that Jacob’s gone, Emma.”
“I tell myself that every night,” Emma replies softly. “But it doesn’t change what happened, what I did. I’ve made my place here now, Marta. This is where I belong.” She stands up. “Lukasz, Jake,” she calls across the playground to the boys, who trot obediently toward her. Then she turns back to me. “I must go now.”
I stand up, and Emma reaches over and hugs me gently. “Goodbye and God bless you.” I open my mouth, but before I can speak, Emma turns and walks away.
An hour later, I walk through the door to my hotel room. Closing and locking the door behind me, I cross the room and sink heavily onto the bed, which creaks in protest. It is not yet two o’clock in the afternoon, more than ten hours until I see Marcelitis. I don’t want to risk going out for another walk and running into more trouble with the police. And Renata said before dropping me off last night that she would stop by this afternoon to see how my meeting went; I want to be here when she arrives.
My stomach rumbles and I pull the second roll I purchased that morning from my bag. As I eat, I try to process all that I have learned. Emma is here, married to Marek. Jacob is dead. This last thought hits me heavily again and I feel the pain anew. I picture the last time I saw Jacob, walking into the Nazi café carrying the satchel, a determined look on his face. He insisted on planting the bomb himself, saying that he did not trust any of the underlings to do it properly, that it was more important for Alek and Marek to survive and go on leading the resistance. But the device went off earlier than expected, blowing Jacob through the front window of the café like a rag doll. Alek leapt from the shadows and picked up Jacob’s motionless body from the pavement, hauling him from the bomb site before the police arrived. Somehow he survived his injuries. But for what? I wonder now. To die in the mountains a few short months later? At least he was reunited with Emma, was with he
r in the end.
I pop the last bite of roll in my mouth, then brush the crumbs from my blouse. I sink back onto the lone, hard pillow. There doesn’t seem to be much else to do but nap to pass the time. I close my eyes, imagining that I am home, reading Rachel a bedtime story in her toy-filled room.
A loud bang jars me awake. I sit up as another crash comes from outside the window. Jumping to my feet, I cross the room and peer out through the curtains. At first I can see nothing, but then, pressing my forehead against the glass, I can just make out a small group of people, clustered on the pavement in front of the hotel. More protesters? I wonder. Though I cannot make out what they are saying, their voices are loud and angry. Glass shatters. In the distance, I hear sirens growing louder. Run, I want to shout to the people on the street below. Run before it is too late.
Letting the curtain drop, I force myself to step away from the window. I cannot get involved and risk jeopardizing my mission. I look at the clock on the dresser. Five-fifteen. I had not realized I’d slept for so long. I expected Renata to have been here by now. I look around the room uncertainly. A bath, I decide. I walk to the water closet and turn on the tap.
When the tub is nearly full, I turn off the hot water and undress. I put one foot into the steaming water gingerly, then lower myself in slowly, feeling my skin go red. I lay my head against the back edge of the tub and stare up at the ceiling, thinking of Emma once more. She seems so much older and sadder now. How had I appeared? I had always felt so gawky and adolescent compared to her. Now I want her to see me as mature and poised. She seemed surprised when I told her I was married with a family. In her eyes, I would always be a child. Perhaps I should have told her about Paul.
