by Alison Pick
“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!”
She gave a little chuckle. “What we would be doing sitting on a public bench I have no idea—but you get my drift.”
“That’s just in Germany,” Pavel said, stubborn.
Anneliese spread her hands open in front of her. “Welcome to Germany,” she said.
School resumed a few days later, on October 5—Marta knew better than to mention the fact that it was Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. Mr. Goldstein had told her so. She also didn’t say anything to the Bauers about the note she’d found from Sophie, tucked under her pillow: Sophie was leaving for good; she refused to demean herself by working for Jews. Marta thought that Sophie must have left a similar note for Pavel and Anneliese, but they didn’t bring it up, and neither did she. They were all, Marta knew, trying to pretend that nothing had changed.
It was clear, though, when she went to pick up Pepik at the end of his first day back at school, that things were indeed very different. Classes had resumed, but under German control. Pepik was waiting for her outside his classroom, clutching his slate, the sponge dangling from its string. He looked so helpless, so vulnerable, she thought, in his cap and short pants with his little knees exposed.
“I had to sit at the back of the room,” he told her.
“In your usual seat?”
He shook his head. “Facing backwards. With Fiertig.”
Fiertig, she knew, was the only other Jewish child in the class.
Marta rushed towards Pepik and knelt in front of him, kissing his cheeks, right and left, back and forth at length, but she didn’t ask for more details. She couldn’t stand to hear them. As they were leaving the schoolhouse she saw that a large swastika had appeared in the front hall, along with three new photographs outside the principal’s office. The first showed Hitler, with his little moustache that reminded Marta of the snout on Pepik’s electric train. The second was of Heinlein, the leader of the Sudeten Nazi party. The third photo showed a man Marta didn’t recognize—there were round glasses perched on the bridge of his nose. Maybe it was the bespectacled Himm-ler from Ernst’s joke about the perfect Aryan.
When they got home, Pepik ran upstairs to play with his train. Marta heard the sound of someone moving around in the pantry, a grunt as something heavy was lifted, and then the squeak of a chair being pushed across linoleum.
“Sophie?” she called. She fully expected Sophie to have changed her mind and returned—she was like that. Unreliable. Easily influenced. Marta took off her coat, wondering where the girl had been. Maybe serving strudel at the “soup kitchen” the Germans had set up for their poor starving countrymen who had been living so long under Czech rule. Talk about Greuelpropaganda! If Sophie wanted to discuss the spreading of false rumours of atrocities . . .
“Sophie?” she called again.
But it was a slimmer rear end that met Marta’s gaze when she stuck her head into the pantry, and narrower hips. Where Anneliese’s skirt had risen up at the back of her knees a creamy fringe of lace from her slip was visible. She twisted around, almost losing her balance. “Oh, Marta, for God’s sake. Don’t do that.”
Anneliese laid her palm over her heart and closed her eyes. “I’m sorry. You scared me. I thought I was alone in the house.”
It was close and warm in the pantry. Marta undid the top two buttons of her cardigan. She looked around and saw several large crates of groceries and an oversized sack of potatoes. “Did you buy all of this?” she asked Mrs. Bauer.
Yom Kippur, Mr. Goldstein had told her, was supposed to be a day of fasting, and here they were surrounded by food. There was a huge stack of tinned sardines, piled on top of each other like Pepik’s wooden building blocks. An enormous piece of lard that Marta knew would never keep. There were fifteen or twenty jars of preserves—lindenberry, it looked like, and plum. The deep bluish purple was the same colour as the sapphires in the watch from Paris, the one she’d imagined herself wearing as she waltzed across a glamorous dance floor. The one, she saw now, that Anneliese was wearing.
Anneliese followed Marta’s gaze, then extended her arm to give Marta a better view. “It’s lovely, isn’t it?” She nodded to show Marta could touch it. The diamonds were cool and neatly symmetrical, like a child’s milk teeth.
Marta wished for a moment that she was the one who owned it, the one with the privilege to show it off. But she had to pretend she’d never even seen it before. “Beautiful,” she said, her jaw tight. And then she thought how odd it was for Anneliese to be wearing the watch in the middle of the day, when it was clearly meant for dinners or balls. She looked at Anneliese closely—her complexion seemed suddenly pale. And she kept craning her neck to look over Marta’s shoulder, as though she suspected they were being watched.
“Is everything okay, Mrs. Bauer?” Marta asked.
Anneliese bristled. “Of course it’s not okay. Look at what’s happening all around us! The Germans are now claiming places that are purely Czech. They use some technical or strategic reason, like the railway line. They’re swallowing up everything other than—”
Marta cleared her throat. “What I’m asking is . . .” She cast around in her mind, trying to put it delicately. “Are you okay, Mrs. Bauer?”
Anneliese got out her compact and rouged her cheeks, looking at Marta slantwise. “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.” She snapped the compact closed and reached for her cigarettes.
Marta passed her the silver Zippo, flipping back the catch with her thumb. “I was worried you might . . . I was thinking of the time . . .”
“What time?”
There was reproach in Anneliese’s voice, a kind of warning, and Marta knew she should drop it. Instead she said, “I was remembering when you—”
Anneliese flicked the lighter closed before Marta could finish the sentence. “I know what you’re thinking, Marta. And I’ve asked you not to bring up the subject.”
Marta felt herself flush. “Certainly, Mrs. Bauer. It was only out of concern for your well-being.” As she said this, though, she knew it was only partially true. She didn’t want what had happened to ever be repeated, but also—if she was honest—part of her enjoyed the fact that she could either keep or tell Anneliese’s secret. The power she held in this one single arena. She was, she realized, still upset about the other day, when Anneliese had diminished her role as Pepik’s governess. She hadn’t forgotten about the jab after all; she hadn’t forgotten about any of the jabs, but rather had let them build up inside her like a big pile of palacinky. And now, to top it off, she found herself jealous of the watch. Which, she realized, was ridiculous. What had she ever done to deserve something so beautiful? Not to mention that she’d have nowhere to wear it . . .
“As I’ve said to you before,” Anneliese said, “those were special circumstances.” She inhaled, holding the smoke in her lungs for a long moment. Then she exhaled. “The baby,” she said.
Marta saw Anneliese’s hands were trembling, and realized she had really unnerved her. And for no reason at all. “Of course, Mrs. Bauer. I understand. I’m sorry.” But Anneliese
still looked pale, and Marta knew she was now thinking of the lost baby girl, was slowly being sucked into the tide pool of grief. Now look what she’d done! Anneliese already had enough to worry about without being reminded of the greatest tragedy of her life. Marta had the sudden thought of repenting even further, to distract Anneliese by letting her in on another secret. “I know someone else who tried to kill herself,” she said. As soon as she’d spoken, though, Anneliese’s face fell, and Marta cursed herself for her bad judgement. Why didn’t she just stop talking already?
“Who?” Anneliese asked, a weariness in her voice. She didn’t really want to know, Marta saw, but she had no choice now but to pursue the conversation. “Hella Anselm,” she said.
Anneliese looked up sharply. “Ernst’s wife? When?”
“A long time ago.”
“She didn’t succeed?” Anneliese laughed at her own question. “Obviously not!”
“I don’t think she wanted to.”
“Most people don’t.”
“She’s not the most stable person,” Marta said, cautious.
“I won’t ask how you know that.”
The silences lined up between them, a row of children with blank faces.
“How did she—” Anneliese started, but she stopped herself mid-sentence. “No, don’t tell me.”
Marta exhaled, relieved. They could finally drop it. “Here, Mrs. Bauer,” she said eagerly. “Let me help you unpack this.” She reached out to lift the sack of potatoes, but Anneliese blocked her path. “I’ll do it,” she said. “I need to be doing something.” She hoisted the burlap bag onto the shelf, clearly as relieved as Marta to have something else to focus on.
“I apologize again,” Marta said under her breath. But Anne-liese didn’t hear her or else chose to ignore the comment. “I’m going crazy inside all day,” she said instead. “Like a little scared rabbit in its hole.”
She looked up and saw Marta smiling. “What?”
“Nothing. I understand what you mean.”
Anneliese held her cigarette away from her face in her left hand and swabbed at her eyes with her right. “Do you?” she asked. She touched her eye again. “I simply can’t keep living like this. And I don’t know why Pavel can’t see it. It’s dangerous to stay, because you get used to it. You accommodate. You think, well, it isn’t so bad if the Herrings don’t want to associate with us. And it isn’t so bad if the Reichstag Company won’t sell to us. It isn’t so bad if—” Here she looked up at Marta. “But it is bad, isn’t it. We should leave, don’t you think?”
