My Enemy's Cradle

by Sara Young

  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.

  FORTY-THREE

  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?"

  "Nutrition. Sanitation. What is it ever? Who cares?"

  It was seven-thirty. "I have a headache," I told her, my fingertips to my forehead. "I just need to go to bed early."

  Neve studied me for a moment. "Do you want some aspirin?"

  I forced a smile. "Really, I'm just going to bed."

  "All right then, if you're sure," she said at last. Then she left.

  The hour passed more slowly than any other. At last it was time. My hands shook. I pulled a run in my first pair of hose and fumbled with the buttons of my cardigan, then hung the velvet bag around my neck and tucked it inside my sweater. I looked bulkier than usual, but not obviously so. When I picked up my coat I realized the problem: I couldn't go downstairs wearing it, or even carrying it. Most of the girls were settled in the dayroom watching the film, but there could always be staff in the hallways.

  I folded my coat into the bottom of my laundry basket, then covered it with the slip and shift I'd just taken off. I took a final look at my room, my home for five months, and then I walked out.

  I met no one on the stairs, no one in the main hall. Sister Solvig passed in the east corridor and my heart jumped, but she merely nodded. At the end, the corridor split: To the right was the door for deliveries and to the left was the laundry. And if I continued past the laundry ... I looked down the hall and willed Leona's son to understand somehow. To not feel the poison of abandonment that withers hearts.

  I stepped quickly to the right, pulled my coat from the basket, and tucked it under the stairway in the corner. I brought my basket to the laundry room so it wouldn't cause suspicion, then ran back and put on my coat.

  The lights in the hall suddenly grew so bright they stung my eyes and left a shower of sparks on my eyelids. I placed my hands on the bolt, but I couldn't make my arms move to slide it open. Once more, I called upon my trick for bravery. All I had to do, I told myself, was walk to the clump of three fir trees about halfway down the walk. The Ladies Tideman, everyone called them. An earlier resident had christened them after her neighbors, three tall elderly spinsters who were always huddled together in their long dark dresses, whispering, sighing. I would just walk to The Ladies Tideman for some air—it wouldn't be so unusual—and then if I wanted, I could return.

  But the trick didn't work. To what could I return? Karl was coming back. I pressed my father's letter to my chest for a second, slid the bolt, and stepped into the night.

  The air was frigid and so clear it seemed to have sharpened the stars. A good sign: There'd be no more snow tonight. I ran to the stand of firs and angled myself into them. Even in the cold, the fragrance of the boughs was strong. It steadied me.

  One guard. I could see when he lit his cigarette that he was alone. After a few moments, he lifted his wrist to the glowing butt to check his watch, then stubbed it out and walked. My heart raced, but I didn't move. Not yet. In less than ten minutes, he was back at his post.

  My calves began to ache from my new weight; still I didn't move, only breathed the cold air in and out of my lungs steadily. Becoming part of the night. The guard left his post again, and still I didn't move—only shifted my position a little. He returned. If this was his routine, he was gone no more than six minutes, maybe seven. He was probably walking the length of the east boundary and back.

  He was at his post longer this time—fifteen minutes passed at least. I felt myself coiling. He lit another cigarette, and when he bent into its glow I gasped, he seemed so close. He looked up sharply then, as if he had heard me, and stared into the trees for so long the match singed his fingers. He shook it away and then raised his head slightly, studying the building, smoking. At last he tossed his cigarette into the snow and walked back through the gate.

  I took a deep breath and followed, staying on the snow for silence. I pressed myself into the wall, into the cold stones, to slow my heart. Beyond the entrance, the road lay in near-darkness except for two pools of thin yellow light below the main tower, forty meters away. I would run in the opposite direction, shadowing the wall, until I could cross to the other side where a hedge of evergreens offered some protection. The guard was nowhere in sight and I could hear nothing. I stepped out.

  "Where do you think you're going?" He grabbed my forearm and spun me around. I tried to struggle out of his grasp, but his fingers were like steel. "Your soldier, the one you were out here with earlier? He's still in town?" The guard's laugh was knowing. "One visit from her tom, and the little cat needs to go find him at night. I've heard that about girls in your condition."

  "No!" I spat. But then I shrugged and acted chastened.

  He opened his coat and slid his gun back into his holster, the leather and steel creaking loudly in the frigid air. "What are you thinking? It's freezing out here."

  "Please let me go," I tried. "I'll be careful. I'm warm enough."

  "You're not allowed off the premises alone—you know that. Besides, he can come to your room. The father has privileges. Talk to Frau Klaus, she'll arrange it. Now let's get you back inside."

  "I can make it myself," I assured him, cold.

  But he walked me back—to the main gate this time—where he handed me off to the guard inside, a sergeant, and shared his insulting joke with him.

  "This little cat's in heat. Thought she'd take a stroll into town to visit her soldier. Maybe I'll have to help her out when my shift is over." He thrust his hips back and forth at me, as if I might not have known what he meant.

  The sergeant laughed and pushed away a plate of chicken legs and red cabbage salad to stand. In the bright lights of the entry hall, his lips gleamed with chicken fat. He reached for my chin, trying to lift my face to his; his greasy finger pressed into the triangle of flesh bruised by the Oberschütze and found the mark which would always wait there.

  I turned on my heel without looking at them and stormed up to my room.

  FORTY-FOUR

  I peeled off the layers of clothing and dressed for bed, swamped with despair—I had gotten nowhere. Worse, I had alerted people, made them wary. From this moment on, I would make no mistakes. I would be the protection my baby needed—the wall, the fire, the bones. I owed him that.

  When Neve came in, I lay still in the dark, pretending to be asleep. She was up all night—using the bathroom, tossing in her bed trying to get comfortable, groaning. I was up all night, too—my throat tight, my body rigid to the roots of my hair trying to hold back sobs.

  In the morning, Neve looked bad, with old-woman eyes. She groaned when she got up, and balled her fists into her back.

  I rolled over to watch her. She dressed in silence, as if speaking were too great an effort. Then she turned, waiting for me. I told her I didn't feel well and didn't want breakfast. As soon as I was sure she was gone, I buried my face in my pillow and let out the wail that had been building all night. Only one—even muffled, the sound frightened me too much. I got up then and rolled up the blinds. Things always seemed worse at night.

  The day was clear, and whorls of fine frozen snow glittered in the air where gusts of wind blew through the fir boughs. But it didn't help. I had told Karl
to come back today, and now I would have to face him, and worse, to face whatever he was going to do. I was still at the window when Neve came back. She handed me a napkin: Wrapped inside was a piece of bread folded over thick red jam.

  "I couldn't eat," she said, as if she had to excuse her thought-fulness.

  "Leona couldn't eat the day hers was born," I reminded her.

  She nodded, then stepped beside me to look out the window. "I'm afraid."

  I hugged her. "I'm afraid, too."

  When she left, I washed up and dressed, but didn't leave the room. It was too late for both Neve and me. Now all we could do was open our eyes and cope with what we had set in motion when we were blind. I sat down on the bed again with Rilke's Letters.

  The book fell open to a passage on fate, on the joy of understanding that all incidents are woven together with a tender hand. How dare he advise anyone to be hopeful and trusting? But of course how could he have predicted this world? I closed the book and picked up Neve's biography of Amelia Earhart and began to read—soon enough there would come a knock at the door with the message that I was to go downstairs, that I had a visitor.

  Soon enough, the knock came.

  "Ja," I replied, not looking up. Stealing the last second.

  Suddenly I was aware of a presence—too large, too male. I jumped up. "What are you doing here? Get out!"

  Karl looked bewildered. "They told me you'd asked for me to visit here. As a privilege."

  The guard. "Well, I didn't." I put on my shoes. "You have no business coming into my room."

  "Fine," he said. "Let's go down to the parlor." He picked up Neve's book. "Amelia Earhart..."

  I grabbed the book from him. "She flew!" I said. I took my cardigan from the end of the bed and started toward the door, but then I dropped it again. "Never mind. We might as well talk here. It's private."

  He unbuttoned his coat and looked at me as if I should offer to take it. I shook my head. "This won't take long."

  He nodded and hung the coat over his arm. "What happened to her?"