Far to Go - By Alison Pick Page 0,35

the Goldstein Tailor Shop. Night was falling but Marta could make out the armbands, the tall lace-up boots. The boys were shoving each other, a knot of pent-up anger, or perhaps, she thought, they were just drunk. One of them, the tallest, had a bat in his hands. He pushed the others aside and stood in front of the storefront, the bat held straight above his head as if reaching up to strike a piñata.

Pavel was transfixed. “Liesel,” he said, without moving his eyes from the scene. Anneliese crossed the room to her husband in time to watch the young man bring the bat down, just once, into the window.

Marta could not see this—the distance across the square was too great—but she imagined lines spreading out across the glass of Mr. Goldstein’s storefront like a map of Adolf Hitler’s ever expanding Lebensraum.

A chunk of glass fell to the cobblestones. Then a second chunk. The boy with the bat kicked at what was left with his steel-toed boot, and it too fell out of the frame. Where before there had been a surface that looked like nothing, now nothing itself took its place. Anneliese gasped. “What—?” she said. “What are they—?”

She leaned her chest into Pavel’s back for protection, resting her chin on his shoulder.

The Hitlerjugend entered Mr. Goldstein’s shop via the now windowless storefront. Six or eight of them, eighteen or nineteen years old. The last of the light was draining from the day like dirty water down a drain. Marta squinted hard but the young men had all disappeared into the shop. Several minutes passed before they emerged again, their facial features now completely blurred by the November night. The Bauers stood at the window together, not speaking. There was a lick of flame. Perhaps Mr. Goldstein had seen what was coming and kindled a small fire in his hearth. A small blot of light against the darkness.

Except the flame was getting higher in the night.

The storefront was again crowded with the gang of Jugend; there was more pushing and shoving amongst them. The light from the fire reflecting across the shards of broken glass made it easier to see now. The tallest boy appeared dragging Mr. Goldstein by his ear. Until now it had seemed to Marta that she was watching some kind of macabre spectacle put on as entertainment, but now, seeing the old man, it was suddenly real. She panicked, wanting to protect Mr. Goldstein and knowing there was nothing she could do, that to attempt to intervene would be to risk her own life. The tailor looked small in his nightshirt, his beard reaching almost down to his waist. He was doing a kind of sideways crab-walk, leading with the earlobe that was pinched firmly between the gang leader’s fingers. If it hadn’t been so terrifying there might have been something comical about the sight, the old man’s eyes darting in confusion, his nightcap slipping off the side of his head. The next thing Marta saw was Mr. Goldstein on his knees surrounded by the ring of young people. The fire was roaring now, eating up the store, making long shadows of the scene.

She was caught behind her own pane of glass; it was like watching a film, she imagined, with the volume turned all the way down.

For the second time Marta saw the bat rising and falling.

She put a hand over one eye, as if she were reading an eye chart.

She covered both eyes, disbelieving.

When she looked again, the street was clear. Except for a single person—a body—crumpled on the cobblestones.

The following night at supper, nobody spoke. Pepik was free to mass his knedlíky into mountain ranges as he desired. He seemed to think he had done something to provoke the silence at the table and began guessing what he was supposed to apologize for. “I’m sorry for playing with my food like a baby?”

The Bauers kept eating.

“I’m sorry I wet my bed last night?”

Anneliese looked at Marta with raised eyebrows, and Marta nodded to show this was true. Pavel got up and kissed the crown of his wife’s head. He turned on the Telefunken. They heard static, and then a voice flared like a struck match. Pavel lowered the volume. He fiddled with the dial until a different voice, with a British accent, came through. “I don’t doubt that the orders came from above,” it said.

“How can you be so certain?” another man asked. Marta didn’t understand the words but his voice was