Far to Go - By Alison Pick Page 0,32

he was going to give him a surprise for his birthday.

He dipped his fingers in the font and touched Pepik’s forehead and mumbled some words that Marta could not catch. Pepik’s eyes were clenched shut as though he were steeling himself against a terrible vision. Father Wilhelm had to give him a little shake. “It’s okay. It’s all over!”

Pepik opened his eyes and wiped the drops of water from his forehead with the back of his sleeve. He looked around tentatively, as though expecting to see something marvellous—his mother turned into Saint Nicholas, or the priest turned into a frog. Pepik lifted his arm and looked at it closely, inspecting the sleeve of his shirt. The priest laughed. “You’re just the same, mein Kind,” he said. “You’re just as before.” And he shook his head—in satisfaction or in regret, it was hard to say.

Father Wilhelm brought his hands to his chest and folded them, his long, bony fingers interlaced. Marta thought he was about to start praying, but instead he said to Anneliese, “I’ll see you out now, Mrs. Bauer.” He paused, as though he might have forgotten something, and looked at the font slantwise. “Unless you’d like . . .” He made a sound in the back of his throat.

“I’m sorry?”

“Unless you’d like the same for yourself.”

Anneliese opened her mouth and then closed it again. Did she want to be baptized as well? It was obvious to Marta that the thought hadn’t occurred to her. “I see we’re not the only ones . . . ,” Anneliese started, but her words trailed off. She looked at the font intently, as though an answer might somehow bubble to the surface, like a dumpling in the hovězí polévka. Then she looked back at Marta. “Do you think . . . ?”

Marta paused; she wanted to help, but the situation was beyond her. She knew how Pavel felt. Then again, look at what was happening all around them. “I don’t—” she started. “I’m not—”

But her fumbling had settled it. “No thank you, Father,” Anneliese said, smiling briskly. And she turned away, looking anxiously for Pepik as though he might have been spirited away by some evil demon.

The day was bright as they stood outside on the church steps, blinking. “I can’t see!” Pepik giggled. “I’m blind!”

He took one of his mother’s hands and one of Marta’s, letting them guide him down the steep stone stairs. He walked between them as if he belonged to both, and Marta felt for a moment as though it was possible to share him after all.

Anneliese led them home the roundabout way, sticking to the edges of town. She’d put her dark glasses back on to shield her eyes from the sun, but from the side Marta could see her glancing back and forth nervously. Anneliese looked perplexed, as if she was wondering what to say about what had just happened. “It’s how my sister Alžběta and her daughters got out,” she said finally. “They managed to leave the country. With passports saying they’re Catholic. And the papers to back them up just in case.”

She glanced over at Marta.

“Even the baby?” Marta asked.

“Yes.” Anneliese pushed her dark glasses up on her forehead to look Marta in the face. “Even Eva.”

“How did they get their Uebertrittschein?”

“I don’t know. They must have bribed someone.”

Pepik had broken away from them, run ahead and climbed up onto the stone wall. He was balancing along it with his arms outstretched; he looked like he was about to take off into flight.

“You know something?” Anneliese said. “I feel better. I’m glad to have done it. If it doesn’t help—well, it hasn’t hurt him.” She paused and brought a cupped hand to her forehead. “You’re not to tell Mr. Bauer about this,” she said. There was a pained expression on her face, as though she wished she did not have to be so explicit but wasn’t sure if she could trust Marta otherwise. It was, Marta knew, an indirect reference to their earlier conversation about the suicide attempt, another topic she’d been instructed to ignore and that she’d stirred up nonetheless.

It had happened after the baby died. Not immediately, but several months later. It wasn’t that Anneliese’s hope had withered or that she felt a large of part of herself had died along with her child, although those things were certainly true, she’d told Marta. It was that someone had taken an axe and hacked a hole in the centre of Anneliese’s chest. Only