by Alison Pick
Anneliese was now gone from home almost all the time. She reappeared at odd hours, wearing shoes Marta didn’t recognize. Once she came home with a big bouquet of roses—difficult to get under the ruling Nazis—and Marta found a card torn up past legibility in the wastebasket. Not that she was snooping, of course. It was her job to take out the garbage.
She went into Max’s study to empty the bin there and found Pavel sitting behind the desk. The room smelled musty, like dust and ink. Darkness had fallen; Marta crossed the room and switched on the lamp. The little pool of light lit up Pavel’s face from below; he was wearing an expression of perfect sadness, his mouth turned down at the corners.
Pepik’s Sad face.
“Are you busy?” Marta asked.
There was a piece of paper in front of Pavel, a sheet of Bauer and Sons stationery. He was holding a fountain pen in his hand. “No, not busy,” he said. But he was casually trying to cover the letter with his elbow.
“I can just . . .” she said, nodding at the door. “If you’re in the middle of something.”
“No,” Pavel said. “Please.” He motioned to the straight-backed chair across from him. She wished he would come out from behind the desk and sit with her, as he sometimes did, in the velvet armchairs by the window—she felt like a client in a law office with the huge expanse of wood between them. But he stayed where he was and Marta made herself as comfortable as she could. Pavel, she saw, had pushed his paper under an atlas.
“I had a hopeful letter yesterday, from the embassy in Argentina,” he said. “When I followed up today, though, they told me my contact had been terminated.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Marta said. Truthfully, though, it was to be expected. Nobody was able to get out anymore. She was a little surprised that Pavel kept trying.
“Where’s the bin?” she asked, remembering what she’d come to do. She bent and looked under the desk.
Pavel ignored the question. “Slivovitz?” he asked. There was a silver tray with a bottle on the desk, and two little shot glasses.
She straightened and nodded. “Thank you,” she said. “Then let’s write to Pepik.”
Pavel uncorked the decanter; it made a loud pop. He cleared his throat. “I was just doing that.”
“Of course,” Marta said; she tried to keep her voice steady. But she lowered her eyes and looked at her hands. She’d thought writing to Pepik was something they shared, a common activity that drew them together. They’d been writing to him for days now: it was like reading to someone in a coma—there was no way to know how much was getting through. Pavel wrote in big block letters, as though his son might be able to read them himself, and Marta didn’t remind him otherwise. She felt it excused her own childlike hand. She addressed each envelope, added an AIRMAIL sticker, and affixed the Nazi postage. She sent each letter separately, so there would be more for Pepik to open.
The days went by and they waited. No reply.
“I was writing to the Millings, in fact,” Pavel said now, filling their glasses. Marta knew that he wrote frequently to his son’s temporary parents, thanking them for the safekeeping of his son. He never forgot to ask after Arthur, he’d told her, and send his best wishes for their son’s speedy recovery. He even went so far as to send his prayers.
He stoppered the bottle and looked up at her. “I was asking if the Millings need any work done. You know,” he said, speaking quickly, “if they need a handyman. Or someone to drive their car.”
Marta squinted, not comprehending.
“If they need me to do any work,” Pavel said. He looked at her fiercely, ashamed but defiant, and she saw all at once: he would be a butler, or a chauffeur. Anything to get them out. It was much easier to get the exit papers, she knew, if you had a letter of employment.
Still, this was wrong. It was not the way the world was meant to be. There was an order to things, and Marta did not want to think of Pavel, so kind and upstanding, as a servant in someone else’s home. She did not want to imagine him humbled that way. If this could happen to him then nobody was safe; there was no way of protecting oneself after all. A bit of blackness began to creep into her body. It was instantly recognizable, a grey haze at the edge of her vision that made her see things as other than they were. And the weight in her chest, the sense she was drowning . . .
She tried to change the subject. “Who is this Adolf Eichmann exactly?” She’d heard someone in line at the butcher’s say that the high-ranking Nazi had arrived in Prague.
Pavel’s voice was brisk. “The SS Jewish expert. So-called.” He drained his glass in the manner of the Russians: politely, but completely. He raised his hand. “Another?”
But Marta’s drink was untouched.
“Eichmann heads the Zentralstelle für jüdische Auswanderung,” Pavel said. “The SS department in charge of robbing and expelling the Jews. They set up shop in Vienna last year.” He paused, and she knew he was thinking of his brother Misha, forced to scrub the streets and then drink his pail of dirty water. Where was he now? And his son, Tomáš, and his young wife, Lore?
Pavel tipped his head back and swallowed again: two short bobs of his Adam’s apple. The room had gone from dusky to dark. The light from the lamp barely touched it. Marta expected this would be the end of the conversation, but Pavel said, “I saw him last week. Eichmann. Passing in the street. He looked . . .” He gave a half-smile. “He looked like a dog.”
“Eichmann? You saw him?”
Pavel nodded and she tried to imagine the man: small black eyes like messengers of death. Just then the doorbell rang. Marta put down her glass and ran a hand over her curls, stood up and straightened her skirt. She went into the front hall, Pavel following, both of them expecting a boy with a telegram. But it was as if Pavel’s description had conjured Eichmann out of thin air, and there he was in front of them.
“Guten tag,” he said. “I’m sorry to bother you.” His jaw was vaguely canine, it was true, but he was cleanly shaven, his hair cut very short, and so polite that Marta felt the Nazi uniform must be a mistake: he must be heading out to some sort of costume party or masquerade.
Behind her she felt Pavel freeze. He was taking in the stylized swastika, the military decorations. She could tell his instinct was to turn and run, but faced with this man, this paragon of good behaviour, the gentleman in Pavel rose to the surface to meet him. “Please come in,” he said, his German perfect. One man of the world recognizing another.
The man introduced himself: “Ich bin? Werner Axmann.”
So, not Adolf Eichmann after all. But a Nazi on your doorstep could mean only one thing.
And yet, Marta thought, the man was behaving strangely. He did not seem about to drag them off and throw them in prison. He hesitated, like a shy boy summoned to the front of the classroom to give a speech. Like Pepik, she thought for a moment, but the comparison was unseemly and she pushed it quickly from her mind. In front of her the officer stood waiting for inspiration, waiting for something to materialize from within the flat to guide him. A moment of silence passed. He looked down into his folded hands as though trying to read crib notes hidden there. “I’m sorry to disturb you, Mr. Bauer,” he said again, “but is your wife at home?”
The question was met by Pavel’s blank stare. “Sicherlich,” he said, but he made no move to fetch Anneliese.
The officer’s square jaw was set. He had green eyes, Marta saw, that looked almost like chips of emerald. He cleared his throat and shifted from one foot to the other. Somebody had to do something, Marta thought. She turned to get Anneliese and saw that Mrs. Bauer had already come into the room behind them. Her red lipstick was fresh, her eyes wide with fear. Marta said, “Mrs. Bauer, there’s somebody here to—” And then she looked at Anneliese again and saw surprise of a different kind on her face. Mrs. Bauer already knew this young officer. All at once it was clear to Marta that Anneliese was not about to be hauled off to Dachau. That the German was paying her a different kind of visit.
&nbs
p; Anneliese stared at the man. “What are you doing here?” She closed her eyes and shook her head almost imperceptibly. “You promised me you wouldn’t . . .”
Marta looked over at Pavel. His cheeks were burning red. He too was starting to understand.
“I told you never to—” Anneliese said, but she couldn’t finish. Her eyes were full of tears. She looked from the young man to Pavel and back, two parts of her life colliding. The officer took a step into the hallway. His boots squeaked on the floorboards. He was younger than Pavel, bashful but emboldened. There was nothing Pavel could do to hurt him.
It was Pavel who spoke first. “If you have business to attend to with my wife,” he said stiffly, “I would ask that you attend to it elsewhere.” He did not look at Anneliese.
The younger man acquiesced, apologetic. “It will take only a moment.” He said to Anneliese, “I’m very sorry to disturb you, Mrs. Bauer.” He spoke formally, Marta thought, but his expression betrayed a close familiarity. He raised his eyebrows at her: Let’s get out of here.
Anneliese had no choice. She crossed the floor and took her hat with the blue ribbon from the stand. She followed her young officer out the door.
It occurred to Marta then that life was inherently unstable. That things were always changing, and just when you thought you’d reached some sort of balance, some kind of understanding, everything would change again. That this, ultimately, was the only thing to count on. She’d thought she knew Anneliese—she did, she supposed, in many ways—but here was the wild card, the blind spot made suddenly clear. And though it was easy to judge what she now saw, she realized also that it wasn’t that simple.
The officer, for example: he must actually care deeply for Anneliese. Whatever was going on between them exactly, he was willing to risk his position—and maybe his life—to spend time in her company.
They looked good together, Marta thought. An attractive German couple.
You’d never guess. If you didn’t already know.
That evening Marta followed Pavel into the study. They stayed in there with the door closed for quite some time.
They did not speak of what had happened earlier, of the German or the various repercussions of what had been revealed. Instead they wrote Pepik, and then sat in quietness drinking their tea.
“I received an odd telegram from Ernst today,” Pavel said. “I wonder about him sometimes.”
“You wonder?”
“I just get the feeling—I can’t really believe—”
Marta stopped with her teacup halfway between the saucer and her lips. The linden-scented steam. “You can’t believe what?”
But Pavel only shook his head. He was too loyal, Marta thought. An optimist. Even with what he’d just learned about his wife, it was still in his nature to give people the benefit of the doubt. Marta admired this, as she admired so much about him.
“I met a man who was in Dachau,” Pavel said instead. “The rumours are true.”
Marta set her cup down on her saucer. The china made a small tinkling sound.
“Dachau. The camp,” Pavel said.
“There’s sugar,” Marta said, for she’d heard enough about camps in the past weeks to last her a lifetime. Nobody seemed to know exactly what went on in them, and she couldn’t help but picture the row of little fishing cabins she’d once seen in a sporting magazine. But she knew that the truth was something more ominous. She wanted to speak about something else, but Pavel wouldn’t be dissuaded. “The man I know who was in Dachau. He’s a Sudeten Jew.” He looked at her. “Like us,” he said. He paused. “Like me,” he corrected, and looked away.
“What did he say?” Marta asked. “About the camp.”
“He wouldn’t say anything. Nothing of substance.” Pavel scratched his forehead and looked up at the chandelier. “He was released under oath.”
“But they let him out?”
“Business reasons, probably. His children are still in there. They know he won’t talk. They’ve got hostages.”
“So he wouldn’t say anything?”
“Only that he’s seen the worst.”
They were quiet then. Marta wondered what exactly the worst might mean.
Pavel cracked his knuckles. “I was wrong?” he asked. “About all of this? Getting out, being Jewish? Anneliese was right and I was wrong?” He was looking at Marta, wide-eyed. “My life’s fallen apart. Should I have seen it coming?” he asked.
Something rose up then in Marta, a fierce desire to protect, not unlike what she’d felt at the train station months earlier, when the Ackerman boy had hit Pepik with the stone.
“You were brave,” she said gently. “You did what you thought was best.”
Pavel laid his hand palm down on the desk.
“I did,” he said forcefully. “I did do what I thought was best. I simply could not have imagined . . .” His words were loud, and then quiet again. “I miss my son,” he whispered, his voice hoarse.
Marta looked up at Pavel. She covered his hand with her own.
A rumour was going around that Adolf Hitler was compiling a list of all the Jews. Strange as it was, the image had weight to it in Marta’s imagination: a long piece of paper stuck in an Underwood typewriter, unscrolling down the back of a card table, across a polished office floor, and out into the reaches of eternity.
Pavel in the end had registered his assets, so if such a list existed he was on it.
“But what would the Nazis do with that list?” Marta ventured.
Pavel looked up. He didn’t answer.
It was August 1939. The only thing anyone talked about was what would happen when the Germans invaded Poland. Marta remembered Anneliese’s words: Just wait a bit longer. Something will happen. But nothing did. Marta waited for Mrs. Bauer to explain, to reveal the exact way in which officer Axmann would come to the rescue. Anneliese had been promised that her officer would help. If Axmann had been sincere, though, he had obviously come up short. No visas materialized, no affidavits—her man had failed her. There was nothing Anneliese could say, so she didn’t defend herself; it was useless. Pavel would never believe her.
Marta understood that Anneliese really had been trying to save them, that a beautiful woman had very few options. She’d been trying in the best way she knew how. But still the Bauers’ empire crumbled under Marta’s eyes. There would never be peace in their time.
Pavel was cordial with his wife, as though she were a houseguest. In another era, Marta thought, they might have kept up more of a pretense, fooling those around them into thinking that their marriage was still solid. But now, with the country falling to pieces and their only son lost to them, there was no point. The stakes of their life together had been torn up. Anneliese stayed in the bedroom smoking cigarettes and painting her face. Pavel moved his things into the guest room: his cotton nightshirts, his robe. His shirts loose and empty on their hangers like the shirts of men gone to their execution.
One evening he took Marta for a stroll.
“What about the curfew?”
“What about it?” Pavel said.
They avoided Vinohradská Square, sticking to the side streets, the leafy avenues and parks. Marta saw that Pavel had been holding back for the sake of appearances. But now that he knew his wife had strayed, he would permit himself the same.
“It’s not as though I’ve behaved perfectly,” Marta said. But Pavel only laughed. “You couldn’t be more perfect if you tried.”
Pavel still didn’t know about the grave mistakes she’d made with Ernst, and Marta pretended that his love equalled forgiveness. She pushed back her unease about Anneliese at home alone, with nobody. Here, finally, was the acceptance Marta had longed for all her life. The love she’d so craved. She let Pavel guide her through the breezy evening under the full moon and told herself she had no choice, told herself she wasn’t responsible for whatever had gone on between the Bauers. She knew this wasn’t entirely right, but the truth was that something had been torn open inside her and
something even more powerful released. Something swift and warm between herself and Pavel that she was helpless to resist.
Marta wanted to lay herself down in it. She had a very strong urge to submerge, to submit. Were there words for this feeling?
“I’m happy,” she said.
It seemed improbable in the face of her guilt, in the face of what was happening all around them, but Pavel just squeezed her arm. “I’m glad.”
He leaned over and touched her dimple with his nose.
“I’m ready,” she said.
He eyed her.
“I’m sure.”
He said, “Follow me.”
Max and Alžběta’s flat was on the top floor of the building. Pavel led Marta up the staircase to the roof. She stepped on the heel of his shoe and he winced but didn’t let go of her hand. When they got to the top there was a little door, like in a fairy tale: you could squeeze through it and come out in another world entirely.
They stood up on the top of the building; the air smelled like rubber, or asphalt, and the perfume from the magnolia blossoms was almost oppressive. Darkness had fallen; the flowers were huge and pink, like planets orbiting the blackness. From far away came the sound of a siren. The lights of Prague were spread out beneath them, and above them, the sky’s fireflies. This was what they had been waiting for, this particular night, this place. Pavel took off his coat and Marta lay down on it without speaking.
There was no talk, no foreplay, and yet he was so gentle. He kneeled down and pulled up her dress; he pulled her stockings down as if he was unwrapping a most precious package. He looked at her lying there, exposed, with a kind of longing on his face that scared her. Then he undid his fly. She saw him for the first time, fully erect, above her. He knelt down with his pants still on and spread her legs and entered her.
It didn’t hurt—not like it had with other men—or rather, the brief pain was more like unbearable pleasure. He covered her face in kisses. There had been so much waiting, so much building; he could not move swiftly enough now. He thrust into her again and again, as though he too was trying to absolve himself of something, or push himself into a future he couldn’t imagine.
