again. They stood as a team, next to each other, as the German tanks filled their town square.
By mid-morning, when Marta came back downstairs, Pavel had taken the car to the factory. He could afford a chauffeur, like everyone who had an automobile, but he chose not to employ one. Why, he liked to ask, would he pay for someone else to have the pleasure of driving?
Marta spent the bulk of the day tidying Pepik’s room. She swept beneath the bed, where she found two lost lead soldiers and a pair of brown knickerbockers crushed up into a ball. She shook them out; there was a round hole in the fabric, the exact size of a ten-koruna coin, and she set to work darning it, all the while trying not to think about the arrival of the Germans. The occupation would be short-lived, she told herself; it had to be.
In the late afternoon she went down to the kitchen to make herself a cup of linden tea. Sophie was standing over a bowl of peeled apples, the peels’ perfect corkscrews like the ones on Sophie’s head. Of course, thought Marta, Sophie slept with strings tied in her hair.
Sophie was in her late teens, and would have been almost beautiful if not for her harelip. It was not a severe one—just a spot beneath her nose where the skin looked shiny and flat. Still, Marta found it hard to look past.
“You’re making strudel,” she said.
“What about it?”
“Isn’t it too . . . German? On today of all days?”
Sophie picked up an apple. “Pass me the knife.”
“Mr. Bauer’s mother is coming for dinner. It’s Friday.”
“What do you mean, too German?”
“With what’s going on.” Marta raised her eyebrows but Sophie only shrugged.
“Isn’t it wonderful?” She did not bother to lower her voice and Marta worried Anneliese would hear her, but from above came the sound of floorboards squeaking and then the scrape of the stove door being opened and the thud of a charcoal brick being tossed in.
“Is it?” Marta asked. “Wonderful?”
“Of course it is. He’s rooting them out.”
Sophie held the paring knife still, turning the fruit under the blade.
“The Jews?” Marta asked dumbly. Why did everyone care so much about Jews all of a sudden? First Ernst, and now Sophie. It was tiresome. And worrying.
Sophie nodded. “If you have one grandparent who is Juden,” she said, “then you are Juden too. You must have four pure grandparents to get an Ariernachweis.”
“To get a what?”
“Here.” Sophie passed Marta the peeled apple.
“What’s a—”
“Here.” She passed Marta the knife.
“Ouch! Careful.”
“Sorry,” Sophie said.
Marta put her finger in her mouth. “Soph, to get a what?”
“Ariernachweis. An Aryan certificate.”
Marta spoke Czech. The only German she knew came from Der Struwwelpeter; Pepik could recite its stories by heart, about a boy who sucked his thumb and had it cut off by a tailor with big shears, a boy who refused to eat his soup and died of starvation, et cetera. An ominous book, to be certain.
“If you don’t have an Ariernachweis, you’ll need one,” Sophie said. “Soon.” She spread her fingers and began to lick the juice from them, one by one.
Marta moved the bowl of peeled fruit aside, covering it first with a chipped porcelain plate. She had never known her mother, let alone her mother’s parents. There could be any number of secrets in that part of her past.
Her father she remembered, despite the desire not to—but the Bauers were her family now. They had never said so, not in so many words, but she felt they had an understanding.
“Chamberlain says there will be peace in our time,” Marta said.
Sophie dumped the apple peels in the bin under the sink. She filled the empty mixing bowl with water and scrubbed.
“Peace in our time,” she said. “We’ll see about that.” She leaned out the window to pour the dirty contents down the outdoor drain.
“We’ll see about that? What do you—”
But there was the sound of Pavel entering the house, the clinking as he hung his factory keys on the hook by the door. Through the archway between the rooms Marta saw his business suit and cufflinks. She thought of him just that morning in his thin nightshirt, and of the moment of closeness they’d shared. But he was changing guises so frequently these days. Now he seemed a different person entirely.
Marta heard Pavel shout upstairs for his wife, and then she heard Anneliese’s footsteps descending the stairs. There was no small talk, no kiss hello. “I want to