be a series of meetings about the matter I told you about earlier. You’ll have to go for three days.”
Marta watched Hans pop an entire donut into his mouth. He wiped the powdered sugar from his moustache. “Why don’t you take Mrs. Bauer and Pepik with you?” he said to Pavel, chewing, his mouth full. “Let them have a holiday. Marienbad is almost on the way. Perhaps you can join Mrs. Bauer at the spa.”
Pavel snorted. “And get covered in mud.”
Hans swallowed. “And then hosed down. That’s the good part, my friend. To be hosed down by a bunch of little milkmaids . . .”
“It’s supposed to be a medieval cure.”
“It’s some kind of cure! I’m not sure I’d say medieval . . .”
The men moved over to the big wooden chairs with hunting scenes carved into their backs, the same kind the Bauers had left behind at the old house. They filled the bowls of their pipes again and began discussing politics. There had been an urgent appeal for people to buy defence bonds to protect the republic, and the Bauers had invested in them heavily. “A lot of good it did,” Pavel said.
“I suppose it’s too late,” Hans agreed.
“If only Masaryk were alive.”
Hans said that in Masaryk they had briefly realized Plato’s philosopher-king.
Marta rolled her service trolley back into the kitchen. The name of the dead president brought back the pleasure of Lány, of Pavel’s kiss. She wanted to know the details of the Bauers’ trip, when exactly they would leave and where they would stay. They would be gone for three days.
Pepik.
Pavel.
She wasn’t sure, suddenly, if she could bear it.
That night Marta roasted a goose for dinner. She cooked red cabbage with apples and raisins and put a bottle of plum brandy from Max and Alžběta’s wine cellar on the table. Nobody asked what the occasion was. Marta kept thinking about the kiss, the unexpected heat of it. This was something other than what had happened with Ernst—the terrible push/pull of power—and something other than the violence she had suffered from her father. It was the same action, the same motion, but it sprang from a different place altogether. How was it that two entirely opposing emotions could take shape in an identical act?
There was something new here, something newly lit that she had not experienced before. A single bright candle on a birthday cake. She felt guilty about Anneliese but she tried not to think of it; she focused instead on feeling so alive.
At the table the Bauers were digging into their roast goose. “Is it true Hitler will invade?” Marta ventured. It seemed suddenly important to understand exactly what was happening around her.
She reached over and tucked a linen napkin into the neck of Pepik’s shirt. Red cabbage stained terribly.
Anneliese put down her monogrammed silver cutlery. “Yes, it’s true,” she said finally, shooting her husband a look.
Pavel said, “I told you, Liesel, we’re staying. Your brother-in-law needs me.”
Anneliese touched her napkin to her lips. “Keep your voice down,” she said. “Nobody has accused you of anything.”
Pavel cleared his throat. “Marta,” he said, “I almost forgot to tell you. I have to go to Zürich, on factory business. Mrs. Bauer and the Crown Prince will join me. So you’ll have tomorrow off and Wednesday as well.”
Marta nodded. He seemed nervous, she thought. She watched him move the knot of his tie below his Adam’s apple, and was suddenly hyper-aware of Anneliese there at the table between them. All it would take would be a little slip, a glance that lingered a moment too long, and everything would come crashing down like so much glass on Kristallnacht. But Marta was not afraid of giving anything away. Her job as hired help was to hide her emotions. She was paid for it; she was experienced. And Anneliese seemed oblivious anyway, her thin face bent over her cabbage.
“Are we going in the automobile?” Pepik asked.
“On a train.”
“On a train! Can Nanny come?”
Nobody answered.
After the Bauers were finished eating and had placed their knives and forks parallel on their plates, they sat smoking for several minutes beneath the oil portraits of Alžběta and Max. Pepik was excused and ran off to attend to his empire. In the kitchen Marta dreamily scraped congealed goose fat into the metal tin under the sink. She filled a big hrnec with water and added two whole onions, two whole heads of peeled garlic, and the heel of the red cabbage. All the while she