Far to Go - By Alison Pick Page 0,26

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