Far to Go - By Alison Pick Page 0,63

though to verify its physical presence. She was sweating, but her hands were cold. It seemed still that this must be some sort of trick, a way to secure her loyalty again now that things had not gone as planned. But the ticket was very real in her palm, and it had been purchased, she saw, several weeks earlier. If she had not told Ernst what she had told him, would she now be with the Bauers, in Paris? She had never been to France. It made her think of expensive red wine and those delicious pains au chocolat.

If she had not told Ernst what she had told him, would the Bauers now be free?

“We thought it would seem suspicious,” Pavel said, “to be crossing with a maid . . .” He cleared his throat and said, “—with a Gentile governess in our employment. So I was going to send for you after.”

Marta met his eye finally. “Really?” she asked. Her voice sounded meek in her own ears, the voice of a scared child, but she did not look away. She needed to be certain. And Pavel jumped at the chance to reassure her. “Really,” he said. “I promise.”

The way he spoke made her remember, suddenly, the fullness of his mouth on hers, how he’d pulled her back into his arms one last time. The glimmer of tongue that had set her stomach quivering.

Pavel pushed a thumb into his forehead, between his eyes, and looked down at the unpunched ticket in her hand. Then he lifted his head and looked at her again, the same piercing expression on his face. “I’m sorry, Marta,” he repeated.

Marta could not tell exactly what he was sorry for—the lie, his failure to get his family out, or some combination of the two—but the sincerity of his look absolved him completely. She would have forgiven him, just then, for anything.

The events of the previous days came out slowly. The telling of the story had a ritual quality; the Bauers were telling her, ostensibly, but Marta could see that they needed to recount it for each other, for themselves, to try to make some sense of it. The conductor had taken their passports, squinted at them, and squinted down at a clipboard he was carrying against his gleaming buttons. “Ah,” he said. “Pavel Bauer. Off to buy some flax?”

“We knew right then,” Anneliese said, “that someone had betrayed us.”

Marta made a discreet gesture to show Mrs. Bauer where her eye makeup had smeared. Anneliese dabbed at her eye with the back of her hand.

“He hauled us off the train immediately,” Pavel was saying. “He didn’t even look at Pepik’s passport. We spent the night in prison.”

Anneliese started to cry again. Her cheeks were the bright pink of one of little Vera Stein’s china dolls.

“In prison? Why in prison?”

Anneliese looked at Marta, exasperated. “Because they were forged documents. They saw we were trying to get out of the country.” She wiped her eyes again. “There was an announcement . . . A man called out as we were leaving that this train would be the last allowed through.” She blew her nose on her sister’s handkerchief. It was monogrammed with a swirly blue A, Alžběta’s first initial, as well as Anneliese’s own. “The borders have closed,” she said. “We’re officially stuck. The country will be occupied.”

“The borders have closed? Really?” Marta paused, taking this in. Then, because she could not quite fathom the terrible implications, she asked again, “You spent the night in prison?”

Marta waited for Pavel to say “Not in prison exactly,” but he only nodded. His simple gesture suggested just the opposite, that the word prison was woefully inadequate to conjure the night they had suffered.

“Even Pepik?”

“They took Pepik somewhere else. He won’t say where.”

“The borders are being patrolled. We’re stuck,” said Anneliese. But Marta was trying hard not to hear this. She thought instead of her young charge, held against his will. “Why did they keep Pepik? He’s just a baby!”

“Things are changing. The world we live in is not fair anymore,” said Anneliese.

“All of the Sudeten Jews have been sent to a camp,” Pavel added.

“A camp? What do you mean?” asked Marta.

But Pavel knew nothing about the camps beyond the rumours. “I do know that we’re lucky to have gotten off so easily,” he said. “They could have kept us.”

“And they did keep our things. The passports, our money, my jewellery.”

Marta wanted to ask about the watch sewn into Mrs. Bauer’s coat, but