Far to Go - By Alison Pick Page 0,28

dangerous for her to be aligned with the Bauers—Ernst had been saying it for days now. That uncertainty she’d noticed in him, the need to be reassured, was gone. All at once it was like he’d never had any doubts, like he’d been dedicated to National Socialism all along.

Ernst was pulling on his jacket. He looked at his reflection in the shine of the flax-spinning mill and smoothed back his hair with the palms of his hands.

“Jews have taken over everything,” he said, gesturing around at the other machines on the floor, the industry Pavel and his father had worked so hard to build. “It’s time for it to stop.”

But Marta could hardly hear what he was saying; his voice seemed to come from very far away. Ernst was buttoning his jacket. He leaned in towards her, suddenly an inch from her face. “Clean yourself up,” he said, then turned to leave.

She touched her cheek again. Her fingers came away stained with blood.

The next night Marta lay in her single bed, breathing. Her palm on her stomach, the slight rise and fall under her ribs. Like the surface of the sea, she thought. She had never seen the sea, but she imagined its shimmer in late afternoon, the way the light would sparkle over the waves.

Cold black shapes slipped through her depths.

She shifted in her sheets, let her eyes slowly close. She tried to forget what had happened with Ernst the night before. His fingers digging into her flesh, the little row of bruises he’d left along her forearm. She tried to forget altogether that he existed. It had seemed so simple at first; not love, of course, but attention, something to relieve the monotony of her day-to-day. And for a time it had worked. But now the bubble had popped and the darkness was rushing back in. She should have known it would happen like this. The weight of Ernst’s body on hers was suddenly the same as her father’s; his hands were not a distraction but a terrible reminder. She worked always to forget what her father had done to her, the nights he would slink into her room, get in beside her, put a hand over her mouth. Her sister frozen with fear on the other side of the bed, the heat on her own face the following morning, not being able to look her sister in the eye. And now the old shame came back, newly disguised.

The Jews were dirty, Ernst had clearly said. But Jews were all that she had.

Ernst had explained his plan. The Bauers’ assets would be taken; it was unavoidable. If Pavel was going to loose his money anyway, Ernst could certainly use it. Pavel had always underpaid him, Ernst had told her. Marta knew this to be untrue, but Ernst seemed adamant. And now, he said, by keeping up the pretense of their friendship, he would get his due. He’d already convinced Pavel to transfer a portion of his investments into his name, “for safekeeping,” he’d told him. There was more, though. It would take time, and patience.

Marta wondered if Ernst’s motivations weren’t more complex; if, deep down, he didn’t still love his friend and feel more ambivalent than he realized. Regardless, she knew she needed to end their relationship—something had turned inside her. The filthy feeling, the repulsion, had come back stronger than ever. She could no more continue with him than she could willingly return to the country of her childhood. But Ernst would be angry. He could reveal their secret to Pavel, who would then have no choice but to fire her. Ernst was the one who was married, but she, the hired help, would be blamed. The same thing had happened with the Maršíkov maid, Helga: there’d been a brief affair with Mr. Maršíkov, and Helga was gone so quickly Marta had not even had a chance to say goodbye.

She pushed the sickness of her situation down into her stomach, but the images kept asserting themselves, rising to the surface like debris after a storm. A branch, a torn stocking. A silver key—to what? She reached out for it and it slipped through her fingers; she plugged her nose and dived down after it. There was the sound of the key turning in a lock; she sat up in bed with a start.

She must have been asleep.

She struck a match, touched it to the candle’s wick, and squinted at the clock on the wall: 12:15. She lay