Far to Go - By Alison Pick Page 0,69

you should try to put Pepik on one of those trains.”

Pavel turned the crank; there was the terrible grinding. “Yes,” he said, without looking up. “I think you’re right.”

She lifted her eyebrows. “You do?”

“On a Winton transport.” He raised his gaze then, evaluating her. He blew some pencil shavings off the pointed tip and placed it in the beer mug next to the others. “It’s already done,” he said finally. “I just heard from Winton’s secretary. Pepik is on the list. It’s not safe for him here.”

Marta blinked, taking this in. It seemed like too much of a coincidence. All the fighting with Anneliese, all Pavel’s resisting—was this all that had been required? For someone to ask him pleasantly?

For her to ask him?

But that was wishful thinking. Pavel had come up with the idea on his own.

She cleared her throat. It was real, then? It seemed impossible, suddenly, and she almost wished she’d never broached the subject. She told herself Pepik was too young to travel, but in truth she was also worried about what it would mean for her.

“When does the train leave, Mr. Bauer?”

“Call me Pavel!” he snapped. But he repented immediately. “I’m sorry, Marta, I didn’t mean to raise my voice. It’s just that it makes me feel so . . . old.” He tapped the side of the beer mug with his finger. “June 5. Soon.”

Marta nodded.

“So you think it’s the right thing to do?” he asked, suddenly uncertain.

She was still unused to having her opinion solicited and felt caught out, as if a roving white searchlight had zeroed in on her and revealed her to have an inner life after all. But she thought of Mr. Goldstein and the Kristallnacht beatings, and of little Pepik forced to sit in the back of the class in their old town. She thought of his big, bewildered eyes. What kind of person was she to be worrying so much about herself? She did want to protect Pepik. Above all else. “It’s the right thing,” she said confidently. And then: “Does Mrs. Bauer agree?”

Pavel nodded tersely and then changed the subject. He too couldn’t stand the thought of Pepik leaving. “Did you see the parade?”

Marta told him about the woman crying while giving the Nazi salute.

“Were they tears of joy?”

“Sadness.”

“Yes,” Pavel said.

“But she could have stayed home!”

Pavel shrugged. “People are driven by things they don’t understand.”

“I suppose that’s true . . .”

“It’s true,” Pavel said. “Do you know your own motives? Why you act the way you do?”

Marta was silent.

“There’s something else I want to tell you,” Pavel said.

Spring arrived like a peddler selling flowers. The last of the snow melted and the lilacs came out, defiant. Tulips and daffodils were laid on various monuments, gracing first one side of the political spectrum and then the other. On Hitler’s fiftieth birthday the citizens of Prague mourned their lost sovereignty by laying lilies on the Jan Hus statue in Old Town Square, alongside a wreath emblazoned with the Czech motto: Pravda vítězí—truth shall prevail. And on the fifth of May several bouquets were laid on the monument to Woodrow Wilson outside the train station. The former U.S. president, Pavel told Marta, had helped to create Czechoslovakia after the Great War.

Now that Pavel was home all day he had become a tutor of sorts for Marta. He filled her in on bits of history and geography, on facts she was ashamed to think most children learned in their first years of school. He also told her about the new things he was learning about his religion: the famous rabbi Rashi, born of a pearl thrown into the Seine, and the symbolism of the long beards and sideburns like those of Mr. Goldstein. He told her about the bar mitzvah ritual—which she already knew—and that Pepik would have one even though he himself hadn’t. In exchange Marta shared the minutiae of her days, telling him about the zelná polévka she planned to cook the following evening, or a joke about von Neurath she’d heard from the boy who delivered the coal. It was hard to believe Pavel could be interested, but Marta saw it distracted him. “They give me pleasure,” he said. “Your details.”

She was flattered, but beneath that she never stopped feeling anxious: there was only a little time left before Pepik was to be sent away. Before Marta would be sent away from the Bauers as well. What good was a governess without a child? She tried not to think