by Alison Pick
“Not yet.”
“Mr. Bauer is still here?” Sophie touched her heart as she said Pavel’s name.
“Yes.”
“But he’s leaving?”
“We’re just . . .”
Marta pointed to the suitcases open in the hall. She saw Pavel’s boar-bristle shaving brush and the elastic of his underthings. White cotton peeked out; it looked like the strips of cloth Anneliese used during menstruation. Marta had a sudden urge to zip the suitcase shut, to shield the Bauers’ personal belongings from Sophie’s gaze.
“You’re going with them?” Sophie asked, eyes widening.
“You think they wouldn’t take me?” Marta clutched her robe to her chest.
Sophie scoffed. “I think you shouldn’t take them,” she said. “It’s very . . . you could get . . .” Her voice trailed off and she seemed at a loss for words. Then: “You shouldn’t go,” she said. “I heard there’s a man, a very important man, who is very angry because he was fired by Mr. Bauer’s brother-in-law, and because Mr. Bauer—Pavel—has been hired in his place.”
Sophie touched her lip unconsciously with her tongue.
Marta said, “I don’t see why that—”
But Sophie cut her off. “Sie sind dumm.” She raised her voice, and Marta brought her finger to her lips a second time, but Sophie continued to speak loudly, disgusted. “Do what you want, Marta,” she said, and turned on her heel. “I’ll be seeing you. Or maybe,” she added, looking back over her shoulder meaningfully, “I won’t be.”
Marta saw that Sophie had a large empty sack over her shoulder, like a collapsed lung. She descended the stairs the way she’d come, the sack hanging loosely down her back. Marta waited until she heard the back door close. She went back into her room and hung up her robe. She cupped the candle flame with her hand and extinguished it with a short huff. Her bedsheets were cool, and she rubbed her feet together to warm them. She turned on her side and pulled the pillow over her head.
Only after she had been lying there for several minutes, her breath becoming more shallow, did it occur to her to wonder what Sophie had really been doing in the house. What exactly she had come back to retrieve.
Anneliese heard a rumour.
Or perhaps, she said, it was the truth. There was a young British stockbroker who was helping Czech children leave the country. On trains referred to as Kindertransports. “What do you say?” she asked her husband. “Could we consider sending Pepik?” On December 2 the Führer had spoken on the radio, announcing his intent to take Prague. But Pavel was firm. He had a job in Prague, and he wanted his son with him. Hitler or no Hitler, he said.
The departure for the capital was delayed, though, by a last-minute call from Herrick, the German in charge at Pavel’s factory. Pavel was summoned; he had no choice under Nazi rule but to go down and answer the man’s questions. When he returned home, Pavel said he could guess, based on the machinery that had been removed and on the industrial-size grey metal tubes stacked in the foyer, that the place was being converted into a munitions factory. Perhaps to supply the Skoda works. They had wanted to ask him about the bookkeeping, which was a complex system he had started in order to accommodate the jute cartel. His presence was required over the course of several days. The sixth of December, Saint Nicholas Day, found the Bauers eating their last supper in the house before their move.
They were in the middle of the varenyky, Marta’s first attempt at dumplings stuffed with beef and herbs—they had turned out rather poorly, she thought—when the doorbell rang. Pavel put down his silver cutlery. He cleared his throat and said, “Pepik, why don’t you get that?”
Pepik looked to Marta for confirmation. She nodded to show he should go.
He went into the hall and they could hear him struggling with the heavy handle. Pavel and Anneliese were looking at each other, little smiles of anticipation on their faces.
“Do you need some help?” Marta called. But the door was pushed in from the outside and Pepik gave a little squeal.
“Who is it?” Anneliese called out innocently.
A booming voice: “It’s Saint Nicholas!”
Pepik leapt into the dining room. He made a face like Henry in the comic book his great-uncle had sent from America: mouth wide open, hands on his cheeks but no sound. Then he stuck his head back out into the hall to make sure Saint Nick had not disappeared.
There was more rustling and Pavel Bauer shouted, “No need to take your boots off! Just come around here so we can get a good look at you.”
It was Ernst Anselm who came around the corner. He was dressed in a bishop’s tall hat, a fake beard, and his wife Hella’s foxtail fur coat. Marta flushed and averted her eyes. She was having trouble catching her breath, her heart was beating so fast. She braced herself, waiting for him to address her, but he only said to everyone, “I’ve brought the Devil with me.” There was a slur in his voice—he’d been drinking. He looked around the table at each of them in turn and then tugged on a chain. Sure enough, a little man in a red suit came around the corner.
“See? The Devil.” Anneliese pointed to show Pepik.
Pavel threw his head back and hooted. “Look at you both!” he said. “A regular Pat and Patachon.”
“What a clever comparison,” Saint Nicholas said.
Pavel raised an eyebrow at his friend.
“You’re lucky I showed up,” Ernst said. “I mean, you’re lucky Saint Nick came.”
“But Saint Nick, you come every year. Why should this year be different?” Pavel was cheerful for the benefit of his son, but Marta could see he was confused by Ernst’s comment.
“Saint Nicholas,” Anneliese said, “would you like a drink?”
“He seems to have had enough to—” Pavel started, but the Devil interrupted. “Yes, he surely would.” He leaned back on his heels.
Marta recognized the Devil but she wasn’t sure from where.
Saint Nicholas tried to elbow Pavel, but missed and stumbled before regaining his balance. “Mr. Bauer, I’ll trade the drink for your Parker investment,” he said. Then he looked at Marta; his face registered surprise, as though he was just now remembering their last conversation, when she’d left him standing in the hall. He opened his mouth to speak. “And who do we—” he started, but Pavel grasped his shoulder. “Don’t you have some business to attend to?”
Ernst belched quietly into the back of his hand. “Ah, yes,” he agreed sagely. “I have some very important business.” He motioned for Pepik to come over, forehead furrowed, focused all at once on the task at hand. He had played the role of Saint Nicholas for Pepik since the boy was born. Every year the same charade. He was good at it, Marta had to admit.
He was good at all sorts of charades.
“Are you . . .” Ernst consulted a piece of paper in front of him, “Angus Bengali?”
Pepik was eyeing the Devil warily and clinging to Marta’s skirt. He shook his head no.
Ernst feigned confusion, crumpling his forehead again. “Oh,” he said, “I thought . . .”
He peered more closely at his list, which Marta could see was a newspaper article clipped out of Lidové noviny. “Herman von Winkledom?”
“No,” said Pepik, a smile starting to show.
“Ludwig von Twicky-Twacky?”
“No!”
“It says here . . .” Ernst said, bringing the paper close to his face. “I left my spectacles with Krampusse.” He ran his forefinger down the fake list. “You’re not . . . I don’t suppose you’re . . . Pepik Bauer?”
“I am!” shouted Pepik, who had now completely forgotten about the Devil. “I’ve been good!”
“Have you?”
Pepik nodded enthusiastically and then, unable to contain himself, he made a lunge for the sack of gifts. Ernst held it above his head. He paused, his eyes far away. “Have you really been good?” he asked.
A shadow crossed Pepik’s face. He drew back and crossed his small arms in front of his chest. He said, “No.”
<
br /> “No?”
“I’ve been bad.”
The Devil gave a little laugh. “Finally I get some action!”
Ernst laughed too, but Marta could see he was unprepared for this. He was struggling just to keep his balance, swaying unsteadily on his heels. “Well,” he said, eyeing Marta slyly, “everybody is naughty sometimes. It’s never too late to correct one’s mistakes.”
She felt the heat rise straight to her face.
“Hear, hear.” Pavel raised his glass, unaware of what he was toasting.
“What I meant to ask,” Ernst continued, “is have you been good most of the time?”
But it was too late. Pepik shook his head gravely. “Ne.”
The whole thing had taken on the air of some kind of religious ritual, something akin to the confessions Marta remembered from her youth, and so she was not surprised when Pepik said, “I was bad. I let the water man put his water on my forehead.” He looked up at the Saint. “To make me not Jewish,” he clarified.
The room fell silent. The Devil and Saint Nicholas looked at each other. Anneliese lowered her head. It was Pavel who spoke first. “You were—” he glanced at his wife, whose face was in her hands, and back to his son. “You were baptized?”
Marta heard Ernst mutter something that sounded a little like amen.
“Miláčku? The priest put water on your forehead?”
Pepik nodded, hesitant, his eyes moving between his parents.
Pavel stood up. “I can’t . . . I don’t . . .” He looked at Anneliese, who would not meet his gaze. He opened his mouth and closed it again. He looked at his son and at the Devil and the Saint, and said, without expression, “If you’ll excuse me.”
The parlour fell silent. Only the teenaged Lucifer seemed oblivious to the implications of what had just taken place. “Who baptized you?” he asked Pepik. Marta saw that the Devil’s face was thin and there were two large boils on the side of his neck. It was Ernst’s nephew, she remembered—Armin? Irwin?
Pepik was fighting back tears. “Father Wilhelm,” he said.
Marta was astonished that Pepik had remembered the priest’s name—he could barely remember the letters she was teaching him. Then again, perhaps he knew what the important things were, where to place his attention. Perhaps he remembered more than they gave him credit for.
There was more strained silence, the remaining adults looking nervously at each other. Saint Nicholas inserted his fingers under his fake beard and scratched vigorously at his face, suddenly desperate to get the whole thing over with. “Pepik,” he said. “I see here now, on my list”—he peered at it again “—it says you’ve been good. So I’ve brought you a present.”
He shoved the box at Pepik, who held it uncertainly, as if it were a bomb about to go off.
“Go on, open it,” Saint Nicholas said. “I’ve got lots of other children left on my list.” He lifted his sack, which was clearly empty.
Pepik set his gift on the table. He sat down in front of it. He peeled back a piece of tape carefully.
“Go on!” Saint Nicholas repeated.
It was a terrible present in light of what had happened. Pavel had given his son his own grandfather’s prayer shawl. The tallit was nestled between two pieces of ivory tissue paper. Pepik unfolded it and held it in his hands, out from his body as though it was an offering. The adults looked at each other; nobody knew what to do.
Pepik too had clearly been expecting a new caboose, or a toy helmet with the insignia of the Masaryk government. A tallit was inappropriate for a boy his age. But he seemed to understand instinctually the symbolic weight of the gift. He unfolded his great-grandfather’s prayer shawl and draped it over his shoulders. The edges hung down, the tzitziot touching the floor.
“I don’t know if—” the Devil started, but Ernst jerked his chain to silence him.
Pepik looked up at the adults, one by one, defiant.
This is who I am, his look said.
The Bauer family left for Prague the following morning. The automobile was loaded up to the roof with trunks, boxes, Pepik’s Botanisierbuchse and butterfly net. The old town fell behind them like discarded skin.
There was stony silence in the front seat. Pavel’s jaw was clenched tight and his eyes glued to the windshield. His knuckles were white on the steering wheel. As they pulled out into the lane that ran around the perimeter of the town square, Marta saw that there was a rally going on, a pack of Hitlerjugend crowded together wearing armbands and lace-up boots. There were maybe forty of them. A man in front of the crowd yelled something into a megaphone. The crowd responded, shouting “Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil!” and shaking their fists in the air.
She had a flash of Mr. Goldstein lying dead on the cobblestones.
“Goodbye, old town,” Pepik said morosely.
Anneliese was dealing with her husband’s rage about the baptism by pretending he wasn’t there. She chatted brightly to Pepik and Marta about where they were headed. “Wait until you see Václavské náměstí. And all the spires, and Charles Bridge with the statues of the saints all along it.” She looked over her shoulder at her son in the back seat. “In the summer we can go on a steamboat and go to Kampě Island and have an ice cream and go swimming in the river! Wouldn’t you like that?”
“I forgot my pennywhistle,” Pepik said, forlorn.
But his mother persisted. “As soon as we’ve arrived we’ll go and see the astronomical clock. Every hour a trapdoor opens and Christ marches out with his Apostles. The skeleton of death tolls his bell as the hour turns.”
Pavel said wryly, “As though we need to be reminded.”
But Marta suspected he was relieved to be going as well, to be fleeing the German-occupied territory. Part of him too, even if he would not admit it, was afraid of what was happening all around them, a part of him that was eager to retreat into the fantasy of a picnic on the island with cold chicken wings and lemonade, and Hitler just a bad dream.
They had circumnavigated the area and were now pulling out onto the cobbled road. Marta turned back for one last look at her home. The crowd of Jugend looked larger from this angle, filling half of the town square. Boys, mostly, in thin winter jackets, Nazi insignia sewn onto their sleeves. They chanted along with the man at the megaphone. Marta saw one girl, a girl with frizzy hair: it took her a minute to realize it was Sophie. Her curls were tied back from her face and her mouth was wide open, screaming. There was a thin boy pushed up next to her. Marta knew him too.
It was Ernst Anselm’s nephew. Armin? Irwin?
The last thing Marta saw, her last memory of the old town, was Sophie holding the Devil’s hand.
Part Two
Prague
19 January 1939
Dear Pavel and Anneliese,
I am sorry to have been out of contact for so long. All is well. Business continues apace.
I trust you enjoy your books as usual. The one before The Castle is excellent.
Please give my love to Alžběta if you see her. And to the little girls.
Best regards,
Max
(FILE UNDER: Stein, Max. Died Auschwitz, 1943)
I’VE LIVED A LONG TIME.
“May I ask your age?” you said when we first met.
“You may not!” I smiled, feigning offence. It was the kind of teasing that usually passes between people who have known each other all their lives. Which I felt, in a particular way, I had.
I’d been looking for you for years, Joseph. Even when I didn’t know I was looking.
In Hitler’s Czechoslovakia, degrees of Judaism didn’t matter. There were families in Eastern Europe who were completely assimilated—ugly word, but that’s what they called it—families who’d had their children baptized, who celebrated Christmas. Even they had very little hope. All that mattered was whether there had been a single Jewish grandparent. People who were estranged from their families, who’d never known their parents . . . all it took was a little detective work on the part of the au
thorities and they were condemned. And, of course, the practising Jews, the ones rooted deeply in the richness and beauty of tradition, who lit the Sabbath candles and awaited the coming of the Messiah—I don’t have to tell you what happened to them.
They tried so hard, but it was almost always too little, too late. After the Anschluss in Austria they emigrated, but only as far as Amsterdam, say, or Prague. After Hitler made clear his designs on Czechoslovakia, they emigrated again, but this time perhaps only as far as France. In some cases people had exit visas but chose not to use them. While the bulk of European Jewry were begging and bribing, there were those who clung to their homes and their futures, even as those things were disappearing out from under them.
When I was working on my second book, I interviewed the granddaughter of a survivor whose own parents were murdered in Birkenau. “They had exit visas,” this woman kept repeating, as though trying to make it make sense. “Why didn’t they use them?” I tried to explain how her great-grandparents could not have anticipated the death camps, how the Czech Jews especially had enjoyed decades of peace and prosperity, how they thought they were doing what was best for their families and for the country they loved. I could see she didn’t understand, was thinking only of her mother’s suffering and her own terrible childhood as a result.
They can come off as selfish, the survivors and their children. As closed and cramped, dark knots of grievance. That too is Hitler’s legacy: the poison never fully flushed out.
After the war, nobody wanted to talk about what had happened. Things were still difficult by the time I did my doctorate: I remember how hard it was to find willing interview subjects. It wasn’t until much later that the stories started to come out. The survivors were ageing, and it was suddenly understood that if we didn’t hear from them now there would be nothing left to hear. A few of the Kindertransport children started talking then as well, but they were still considered the lucky ones, the ones who had escaped. In comparison to the others, the thinking went, they had nothing worth talking about.
Not that anyone said that directly to my face.
