that she was barely decent herself, wearing only her thin robe and slippers, her curls still messy with sleep.
“He’s betrayed us,” Pavel said.
Marta pulled her robe tight around her. “Who has?”
She had a sudden sinking feeling that Pavel had found out about Ernst—what had she been thinking, taking his factory keys right out from under his nose?—but Pavel said instead, “Good old J’aime Berlin.”
“Pardon me?”
“J’aime Berlin,” he repeated. He waited, but Marta didn’t understand the French pun. “Cham-berlain,” he said finally. “Chamberlain. Britain. And France.”
She blinked. “I was just going to make your coffee,” she said.
“We had a pact. And now they have gone to meet with Hitler and have given us up to Germany. The entire Sudetenland. As if we were theirs to give up!” Pavel took a slow, deep breath. “They didn’t even ask us to the table,” he said. “They peeled us off Czechoslovakia like so much nothing.”
Marta pictured the thick peel of a Christmas orange.
The Bauers celebrated Christmas along with almost everyone else, as a kind of folk holiday, the chance to gather with family. She would have to remind Ernst of this.
Pavel was looking at her directly for the first time since she’d come into the room, and she saw now that this was serious—he had tears in his eyes. “Hitler convinced them. Daladier, Mussolini. Chamberlain is saying it will be ‘peace in our time.’”
He touched his face, as though to make sure he was still there.
Marta cast around, wondering what she should say. Perhaps Ernst could help? But that was a silly idea, considering his recent comments; she snorted. Pavel looked up sharply. “What?”
“Nothing,” Marta said. “I just can’t believe this has happened.”
And it was true, she couldn’t. There had been so much talk of Austria and the Anschluss; months and months of Hitler on the radio, singing the praises of his Nuremberg Laws. The thought that the Sudetenland would belong to him, that he would now come here, seemed impossible. Life happened in the big cities, in Frankfurt and Milan, in Prague, where the Bauers attended symphonies and business meetings. Nothing would ever happen here in their small town. Not now, not ever.
The radio was babbling on like a kettle on low boil. Pavel nodded in its direction. “It’s an actor from the National Theatre reading a script. President Beneš didn’t have the guts to tell us the news himself. Nobody from the government did.”
He was standing a foot away from her in his nightclothes. But Marta realized she could forget about what she was wearing, about what he was wearing; he was not going to notice.
“Cowards,” he said, and she could not tell if he was referring to their own Czech government or to the British and French who had betrayed them.
The room was slowly gathering light as a small child gathers cornflowers in a field. It would be another warm day. Marta and Pavel stood looking down at the square. Marta had never been to the cinema but she had heard about the big screen, and this was how she thought of the window looking over the town: as a screen on which the events of the world played out. A sound was moving towards them now, rumbling over the cobblestones. Pavel swore under his breath and held his face in his hands. He looked up again, then lowered his face quickly, as though to make what he had seen disappear.
Trucks were entering the square. Large trucks, with guns protruding from them, and tanks that bore the Wehrmacht insignia. The morning light crept up behind them, a rosy pink that was almost flattering to their shiny metal. Pavel squared his shoulders in defiance. He lifted a finger and put it on her elbow, as if he could not face this alone.
Marta shifted away automatically—it was not right to touch her employer. She had a flash again, of Ernst saying, “Dirty . . .” But Mr. Bauer smelled of soap or shaving lotion, and beneath that of warm blankets and skin. He smelled as she did: human. Besides, something dramatic was happening, something extraordinary, and extraordinary events called for extraordinary measures. It was the kind thing to do, to reassure someone in distress. She knew nothing about politics, but the Bauers were her family. What had she been thinking? They were the same as they’d always been, and she was on their side. On Mr. Bauer’s side. Ernst could believe what he wanted.
Marta shifted back towards Pavel and their two arms touched