Far to Go - By Alison Pick Page 0,30

I were the last Jew on earth. The very last Jew on earth!”

“That’s fine. Because nobody is asking you to convert.”

There was a note of desperation in Anneliese’s voice that had not been there before. Perhaps, Marta thought, she knew something that the rest of them didn’t.

“It’s the opposite of what you think, Pavel. I’m thinking of the big picture. Please,” Anneliese said. She was begging now. On the verge of tears. “Just in case. He’s my only child . . .”

The cloaked reference to the dead baby worked in Anne-liese’s favour. The voices from downstairs quieted. “I know,” Pavel said softly. “I know he is.”

What would Pavel have been like if the other child had lived? As the father of a little girl.

Pavel’s voice was now just a murmur, the sharp edges of his words smoothed out. Marta rolled over and put the pillow over her head. The fights always ended this way, she thought, in a kind of mutual stalemate. They weren’t willing to give in, nor were they willing to go to bed angry. They needed each other too much. They would be moving towards each other now, she knew, reconciling, Pavel wrapping his arms around his wife.

Marta loathed them for this with a ferocity she did not understand.

It wasn’t that she was jealous because she had nobody to hold her after a quarrel; she had nobody to quarrel with in the first place. What she resented was the Bauers’ softness. She needed them to be strong, to be above mortal failings. Instead they were human, after all.

The boy with the wine-stain birthmark showed up to deliver the coal. He was wearing the national colours in his buttonhole, and a peaked cap of the kind popularized by Pavel’s hero Tomáš Masaryk. Only on seeing the delivery boy did it occur to Marta to wonder about the date. Was it? Yes, it must be. October 28, Czechoslovak National Day. Pavel had been acting remote and preoccupied, and she wondered if the boy’s blatant show of nationalism would buoy his spirits. He seemed not to notice though, and when Ernst arrived at the house after lunch, Pavel didn’t mention the holiday at all. “Shall we go?” was all he said.

“Ready when you are,” Ernst answered, without catching Marta’s eye.

They rushed off without saying goodbye.

Marta gathered up the soup bowls and wrapped the cheese in its cloth. In the parlour Anneliese was holding her compact in front of her face, her lips pursed, putting on lipstick. “Don’t worry about cleaning up right now,” she called in to Marta.

Marta paused, confused. “Pardon me, Mrs. Bauer?”

“You can do it when we’re back. We’re going out.”

Marta hesitated, a ladle in her hand. “Are you sure? I could just . . .”

But Anneliese wasn’t listening; she was looking out the window to make sure her husband was gone. Then she called to Pepik, “Come here and put your sweater on.” He was big enough to do this himself—it had taken Marta some weeks to teach him how—but Anneliese didn’t have the patience. She guided his arms briskly into the little sleeves. The zipper nicked his chin: “Ouch!” Pepik said.

“I’m sorry, miláčku.”

But Anneliese didn’t seem sorry—she seemed distracted, preoccupied, her eyes moving repeatedly towards the window. Marta wondered why she was putting Pepik in a sweater at all when the afternoon was so warm, the sun shining. It had continued to be a striking fall, the colours more vivid than she remembered from previous years: the dazzling golds, and the red leaves like so many bloodied hands.

“Where are you off to?”

“I told you, you’re coming with us.”

Marta knew better than to ask any more questions.

They went down into the street, the three of them, Pepik sullen but his mother determined. She led them out through the gate and along the path by the river, towards the edge of town. She was wearing an Elsa Schiaparelli tailored suit, with big shoulder pads like Marlene Dietrich’s. Large dark glasses shielded her eyes, as if she were a movie star trying to conceal her identity.

They walked for several minutes in silence, passing the milkman’s cart, the containers on the back of the wagon empty.

“Can I pat the horsies?” Pepik asked.

But Anneliese ignored her son, hurrying them past Sanger and Sons, where a Victrola was displayed prominently in the window, and Mr. Goldstein’s shop, which had a CLOSED sign on the door. Even Marta had to work to keep up. Down a cobblestone alley they went and across the