Far to Go - By Alison Pick Page 0,17

battling tensions about its own role in the conflict brewing across the Channel. The children arrived in homes where money was scarce, to foster parents who had been shamed into taking them. At what we would now call a “critical developmental stage,” everything solid was pulled out from under them. Children do not forget that. It stays with them, a wall that goes up at the first hint of intimacy.

We academics are told to frame the world in objective terms, but I am speaking now, as you’ve guessed, from my particular experience.

There are things I remember about my mother.

The growling of her stomach late at night.

Her fingers combing gently through my hair.

The first notes of—what?—a lullaby? No. Something less certain, less solid.

I remember a dim street, late fall, and my mother at the end of it, a kerchief knotted under her chin. She was looking back at me already then, as though across a great gulf of time. I tried to move towards her but the street was so long, and there were people blocking my path. When I caught another glimpse, she had taken off her scarf. It was crumpled in a ball in her hand, which she held against her chest. A bit of wind played with the hair around her face. She held my gaze—there was something she was telling me, something she needed me to know. The whole history of our family was contained in that look. Then she turned a corner and was gone.

I’ve spent years going back to this memory. It is so clear, so real. And yet. What was she doing leaving such a very young child alone in the street? The first flakes were already falling.

Time is a snow globe; you shake it and everything changes. A thin coat of white and the world disappears. This memory I have of the look on her face: it must be something I made up.

The mind plays tricks, inventing what wasn’t there.

Of my father, I remember absolutely nothing.

Chapter Two

PAVEL BAUER WAS ON HIS WAY OUT when the telegram arrived. He read it. He read it a second time. He slipped it inside his coat pocket.

“I’m off.”

“Where to?” Anneliese asked.

“Where do you think?”

He spoke as though the answer should be obvious to his wife, but Marta had no idea where he might be going either. He was now forbidden by the Nazis to set foot in his own factory. Although she did not want to admit it, this unnerved Marta. That someone else had this authority over Pavel—Pavel, whom she had only ever seen as being in charge. She found herself uncertain about exactly how to speak to him now. She couldn’t help but feel that some sort of imposter had snuck in and taken his place.

Anneliese was acting oddly too, Marta thought, although perhaps this was more to be expected. The town square was overrun with Hitlerjugend and Wehrmacht, after all; with rifles and polished boots and tanks. The Goldstein Tailor Shop was still closed. There was no question of Pepik’s going outside to play. All the good citizens were cooped up like rabbits in holes, Anneliese told Marta, and all the hooligans were parading about like they owned the town. Still, this didn’t stop Anneliese from leaving in the middle of the morning—once she was sure Pavel was gone—with her large Greta Garbo sunglasses and fresh red lipstick. She whispered to Marta that she was going to look in on the Hoffmans. She said she’d be gone several hours, but she returned twenty minutes later. The unpasteurized milk was boiling over on the stove; Sophie was on the patio playing with her Ouija board. The pointer made sweeping sounds, whooshing across the cardboard.

“Sophie!” Marta called. “Mrs. Bauer is back.”

“And?”

Marta winced at the teenager’s insolence; she was finding Sophie harder to bear these days. In light of everything that was going on, though, in light of the occupation, Marta’s earlier grudge against Anneliese was forgotten. It was like that with Anneliese—one minute Marta resented her, the next she adored her. Well, that’s the way it went with family, she supposed. It was the way a daughter might feel about her mother, or a mother about her child. And it was true, she felt almost protective now as she watched Anneliese trying to undo the knot on her kerchief. Anneliese’s fingers were trembling, and it took her several attempts. Finally she succeeded, smoothing down the triangle of bright silk, only to crumple it up again and