Far to Go - By Alison Pick Page 0,19

hall and saw the small flash of the swastika Ernst was pinning to Pavel’s breast. He looked up as he did it, catching and holding Marta’s eye. He winked. She felt, for a brief moment, like she was going to be sick.

“It can’t hurt,” Ernst said to Pavel.

“Are you sure?” Pavel asked.

“Just don’t forget to take it off if you cross into France!”

Pavel clapped Ernst on the back. “Good man,” he said. “Thank you.”

Marta turned back to give Pepik another bite. She heard the sound of the door opening and closing, of Pavel turning the lock.

Pavel Bauer was a thin man; Marta would even use the word small. And now as he sat at the table, he seemed, she thought, like a lost little boy. His shoulders were narrow and the skin at the back of his neck where the barber had shaved looked as pink and exposed as a newborn’s. She could barely stand to look at him, so vulnerable, so unaware of his friend Ernst’s shifting allegiances.

Pavel Bauer sat for along time with his hands folded in front of him.

He slowly lowered his head into his hands.

Now that the factory had been occupied, there was nowhere for Pavel to go during the days. He took Pepik across town to visit his Baba and brought him back home in time for dinner.

“I feel all cooped up,” Anneliese said at the table. “Like a rabbit in a hole.” She held her silver cutlery to her head like long ears. It was an analogy she had grown fond of in the past several days, an analogy she thought was particularly apt. But Pavel said, “Things will change. I just need to make myself indispensable.”

He tucked his linen napkin into his shirt. “Pepik,” he said. “Stop that.”

Pepik had massed his mashed potatoes like mountain ranges and was—with his fingers—placing individual peas in a row behind them. The peas were soldiers taking refuge behind the potato peaks. “Those are the bad guys,” Marta whispered in his ear. “You’d better eat them all up!”

Sophie had left the house earlier that afternoon and was still not home by five o’clock, so Marta had taken it upon herself to braise a small red cabbage from the root cellar. Cooking was not her job, nor her strength, but she was willing, these days, to help in whatever way possible. Pavel was distracted and Anneliese kept repeating that her nerves were shot; Marta felt that it fell to her to preserve some semblance of normalcy. Along with the cabbage she’d prepared chicken with butter and seasoning salt, the way she knew Mrs. Bauer liked it. It was now 7:05 and there was still no sign of the young cook. Marta hoped there was still some strudel left over from last night that she could serve for dessert. She leaned over and moved Pepik’s hands away from his plate, showing him again how to properly hold his cutlery.

“But darling,” Anneliese was saying to her husband, “there’s no way for you to be indispensable.” She cleared her throat. “To the Germans,” she clarified. “Of course you’re indispensable—to me!” She laughed. “But there’s no way they will see that.”

“You’re right,” Pavel said. “Why can’t they see it? They need flax. They need cloth. If they convert the factory . . . Think of the area we supply. Think of all the smaller factories that will grind to a halt. Lipna and Trebelice and Marsponova and . . .”

He stabbed at a piece of chicken with his fork. “Pepik, I said stop.”

“Not to mention Krumlov,” added Anneliese.

“But what should I do? Am I supposed to just walk away? From what it took my father fifty years to build?”

Anneliese nodded her chin at her son. “There are more important things to worry about now than money.”

Pavel Bauer sighed. “I didn’t say it was about money.” He paused. “Well,” he said, “of course it’s about money. You have no idea—thank God Ernst suggested—” Then he said, forcefully, “It isn’t about money. It’s about family.”

The implication was that Pavel would teach his son about the business in the same way his own father had done with him, that to give it up would be to forsake not only the factory but Pepik’s own future.

“Pepik is a child,” Anneliese said.

“Children grow up.”

Marta considered how hard it was, at the moment, to imagine. She had resorted to spoon-feeding Pepik his peas, a hand cupped under his chin as if he were an infant. She agreed with Anneliese.