Far To Go (9 page)

“You’re bigger,” she said.

“How much?”

He was drawing himself up to his full height, chin tucked in, cheeks puffed out.

“A little more than a centimeter.”

She made a mark with the lead pencil and showed him. “Time for bed,
miláčku
.” She patted his bottom.

He pouted for a moment. “My cut hurts,” he said, pointing to the gauze on his elbow.

Marta raised her eyebrows to show that she meant it.

“Okay,” he said, relenting. “Time for bed.” And he nuzzled his face into her arm.

Marta tucked Pepik in and went downstairs. Anneliese had abandoned the unpacking of the potatoes. There was a note in her deep blue fountain pen ink that said
I’ve gone up to bed, would you mind unpacking the rest of the food?
It was signed with a large flourish of an A. Marta was slightly insulted. Of course she would unpack the food; she had expected to.

The thick of the heat had gone out of the day and left a cool that was both pleasurable and ominous. A little taste of the colder evenings to come. The window had been left open an inch and Marta could hear the clip-clop of a horse’s hoofs over cobblestones. Somewhere far away a young girl laughed. Marta’s arms were bare in her short-sleeved dress and she shivered. She was so seldom alone, and she was suddenly aware of herself in a different way, as though the self she thought of as solid was instead a million little fragments. As though all of the pieces could fall off their string at any moment and scatter across the pantry floor.

It was odd, really, the way humans went about their days so boldly, ordering coffee, weighing out exactly a quarter kilo of potatoes on the greengrocer’s scale, as though their lives were something that could be controlled, portioned out as desired. When really, all it took was one little upset to reveal the . . . imbalance of things. Marta thought of how unnerved Anneliese had become earlier, and she wondered about other people’s inner lives; if, despite their polished exteriors, people’s insides were as full of holes as a piece of Swiss cheese. She shivered again—she didn’t like to think of it. If the politicians, the councilmen, Ernst, even the Bauers were as uncertain as she herself was—

She had a sudden sensation of being watched and she turned around to see Pavel. His necktie was undone and his shirtsleeves pushed up. His arms crossed in front of him. Marta flushed, ashamed to have been caught daydreaming. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m almost finished.” She gestured at Anneliese’s stockpile, the potatoes and the soup cubes she was arranging on top of the preserves.

Pavel took a step into the pantry. He was close enough that she could see a spot on his chin he had missed shaving. “There’s nothing to apologize for, Marta.”

He said her name as though testing the water at the edge of a lake, dipping his big toe in to get a feel for the temperature.

“I wanted to tell you myself,” Pavel said.

“Mr. Bauer?”

He hesitated, as if he wished to protect her from what it was he had to say.

“It’s President Beneš.”

Marta held her breath, her uncertainty rushing back. Had the president been shot? But Pavel said instead, “He’s resigned.”

Marta exhaled. This was better by far than an assassination. Still, her face fell along with her breath. She knew what this would mean to the Bauers: their last hopes to save their homeland swept away like flax dust from the factory floor. Pavel saw her dismay and mistook it for something different. He reached over and touched her bare wrist.

Marta looked down at Pavel’s hand. His fingernails were neatly clipped and clean. Fine dark hair on the back of the knuckles. It was hair that must also travel, she thought, up the backs of his forearms and onto his chest. She flushed more intensely. She tried to focus on something else—the pile of potatoes, dirt still caked on their skins—but she couldn’t make herself stop; she must look as if she were standing next to a bonfire at the Burning of the Witches.

“I’m so sorry to hear it,” she managed finally.

“On the Day of Atonement,” Pavel said.

So he knew about the High Holidays after all. “What’s he repenting for?” she asked.

“He’s gone into exile.”

“He’s repenting for what the Allies have done to
him
.”

Pavel smiled at the irony. He circled her forearm with his hand and gave it a little squeeze, and when he backed away he seemed reluctant, or defeated, as though he, not Beneš, was the one who’d been forced to step down.

Through the kitchen doorway she saw him pause in front of the large window. She heard the swish of the curtains being opened; Pavel stayed there for a moment, looking down at the town square, before he turned to climb the stairs to his wife.

It took Marta several minutes to move from the pantry. She was exhausted, suddenly, every last ounce of energy wrung out of her, as though she were a bedsheet that had just emerged from the communal mangle.

She stood there, leaning against the pantry door, looking down at her arm. She half expected to see a mark where he’d touched her, a blister or a burn. Some kind of scar. Pavel’s squeeze had left its opposite: an emptiness, an intensely felt absence. She felt cavernous and echoey. There was a great
whoosh
in the middle of her chest; it was the sound of the curtains being pulled open, revealing a town square in the centre of herself that was completely unpopulated. The wind blew through it, pushing the dry fallen leaves.

date?

My dear Pavel,

I do not know where you are. I am sending this to your mother’s house in the hopes that it might reach you. In truth, however, it has been months since your mother’s disappearance, and so I am writing into a void. Of absence. Of so many kinds.

I want only to tell you I am sorry. Sorry for our misunderstandings, for my actions that have come between us, sorry for Axmann, for everything. I cannot help but feel that if I had acted differently we would still be together right now. I hope you are safe, wherever you are. Protected. I hope you feel my love.

The way things transpired might lead you to doubt me. You must believe this: I was trying to save us. You can’t imagine how I miss you now. You have known me since I was a child. You have fathered my children. Come back to me, darling. From wherever you are.

Anneliese

(
FILE
UNDER: Bauer, Anneliese. See Bauer, Pavel, for details.)

I
HAVE
LOVED
,
SURE
.

It was years ago—years—but contrary to common wisdom, time does not diminish loss.

I myself would say that the opposite is true.

But goodness, my hip is sore today.

What was I saying? Something about hope. For a while it existed, that’s all. In the face of everything: the pogroms, Kristallnacht, the acts of violence and betrayal both small and enormous. The Jews kept planning, trying to get out. What is it they say? That hope dies hard? True enough. If I think of her orange sweater.

I have had a good career: publication, promotion. Things I know other people long for. I’m almost inclined to say my success has come easily, although that would be discrediting much time and effort. As I said, I lived at my desk, cluttered as it was with old Chinese take-out cartons and memos I ignored. Still, there were years when I felt myself swept along, when study came as naturally for me as love seems to come for others. It was hard to be alone.

Of course, I’d never complain.

You’d think I could forget, though, since so much time has passed. Memory bleeds out, or gets covered in snow. We have databases—who escaped and who wasn’t so lucky—lists of the dates they were moved to the ghettos or sent from Theresienstadt to Auschwitz. There are whole libraries full of books on the subject. It is even possible to construct little narratives, to attempt to give the whole thing order. But it’s all just memory’s attempt to make order from chaos. It is a trick of the mind, to keep it from boggling. The enormity of the loss can be too much to handle.

I never travelled with my lover. We never slept in an Irish country inn in a single bed under the eaves. We never walked down a gravel road holding hands as the crickets started singing. And all the things we didn’t do come back now as though they really happened. This is the nature of longing. I wish to wake to the sound of her shovel, to hear the door open and to pull back the covers. To watch her peel off her snowy clothes and crawl in beside me. And stay.

People disappear. Despite all the information available to us, there are cases that are never solved. We can guess what happened but we cannot say for certain. And there is nothing to be done about it now anyway, so late in time. Even in the instances where there are surviving cables and telegrams, they tell only a fraction of the story. For my part, among all the letters I have read, there is one that I always keep with me. “Your
mamenka
and I send you a hug and a snuggle . . .” I could probably recite that letter by heart. And yet, I’m aware of its failure, of all the white space surrounding its words.

Sometimes I have the sense, when I’m meeting somebody to record their testimony, that I’m opening a worn paperback three-quarters of the way through and trying to piece together a very complex plot. To glean even a fraction of what came before. People’s lives, their infinitely tangled histories, are almost impenetrable—to themselves, let alone to an outsider. My students, of course, would cringe to hear me say this, so full of optimism are they about the historical method. Some still believe in the idea of truth; some, even, that they will find it.

I’ll admit there is something shared between the stories I hear, though, something common to those who survived. The gnawing longing, the desire to keep searching, even when your rational mind knows everyone involved is gone. That particular ache at the core of human memory. I have to say I am familiar with it myself.

The vows we never took have their own particular bittersweetness. I can only imagine her coming in from the snow, slipping a cold hand under my sweater. I imagine that pain, the opposite of pleasure. The other side of being alive.

Precisely because my lover went, there is something to wait for. And this is the history of the people I study as well. The presence of loss makes a longing for arrival. The other side of leaving is return.

The last time I heard her was on my machine. When she said my name, there was a catch in her voice. It was winter; she had a cold. She was clearing her throat. It was probably nothing.

Still, I lay in bed by the flashing red light and listened.

To my name. To my pain. To that breaking.

It seems so long ago it might never have happened. It could be that I made it up, the orange sweater, a fragment to keep me warm. It’s possible, I guess, that my lover never existed.

It’s possible I’ve spent my whole life alone.

MARTA’S
FACE
WAS
PRESSED
INTO
the cold concrete wall, her underpants down around her ankles. Ernst fumbled with the buckle on his belt; she wasn’t ready, but he didn’t seem to notice. He spat on his fingers and touched her briefly, then grunted, pushing himself inside her. She inhaled sharply, surprised by the pain. “Wait—” she started, but her back was to him and she knew he couldn’t hear, or was choosing not to. With each thrust her cheekbone dug into the rough wall; she braced herself with her palms, pushing back against his weight, but Ernst was stronger.

“Stay still,” he panted.

She felt a dribble on the inside of her leg. He was already close, she could tell. The head of his penis swelling. For a moment she thought of Pavel—a brief flash of his hand gripping her wrist—Ernst gave a final shove and moaned, emptying himself inside her.

He pulled out right away. Tucked in his shirttails and zipped up his fly, taking his time to adjust himself inside his pants. She turned to face him, leaning weakly back against the wall. Her knees were shaking. Ernst glanced at her, then looked again. “You’re bleeding,” he said.

She brought a hand to her face. He was right.

“You’d better watch it,” he said.

“The bleeding?”

“You’d better watch yourself.”

Marta’s underpants were still around her ankles; she bent to pull them up, followed by her stockings. Her body felt numb, as if it were made of rubber. She was suddenly shivering with cold.

“What do you mean, watch myself?” she asked, but she knew exactly what he meant. It was dangerous for her to be aligned with the Bauers—Ernst had been saying it for days now. That uncertainty she’d noticed in him, the need to be reassured, was gone. All at once it was like he’d never had any doubts, like he’d been dedicated to National Socialism all along.

Ernst was pulling on his jacket. He looked at his reflection in the shine of the flax-spinning mill and smoothed back his hair with the palms of his hands.

“Jews have taken over everything,” he said, gesturing around at the other machines on the floor, the industry Pavel and his father had worked so hard to build. “It’s time for it to stop.”

But Marta could hardly hear what he was saying; his voice seemed to come from very far away. Ernst was buttoning his jacket. He leaned in towards her, suddenly an inch from her face. “Clean yourself up,” he said, then turned to leave.

She touched her cheek again. Her fingers came away stained with blood.

The next night Marta lay in her single bed, breathing. Her palm on her stomach, the slight rise and fall under her ribs. Like the surface of the sea, she thought. She had never seen the sea, but she imagined its shimmer in late afternoon, the way the light would sparkle over the waves.

Cold black shapes slipped through her depths.

She shifted in her sheets, let her eyes slowly close. She tried to forget what had happened with Ernst the night before. His fingers digging into her flesh, the little row of bruises he’d left along her forearm. She tried to forget altogether that he existed. It had seemed so simple at first; not love, of course, but attention, something to relieve the monotony of her day-to-day. And for a time it had worked. But now the bubble had popped and the darkness was rushing back in. She should have known it would happen like this. The weight of Ernst’s body on hers was suddenly the same as her father’s; his hands were not a distraction but a terrible reminder. She worked always to forget what her father had done to her, the nights he would slink into her room, get in beside her, put a hand over her mouth. Her sister frozen with fear on the other side of the bed, the heat on her own face the following morning, not being able to look her sister in the eye. And now the old shame came back, newly disguised.