Far to Go - By Alison Pick Page 0,72
kids room to breathe.
Still, it’s flesh and blood I wonder about. It’s hard for most people to imagine what it’s like to have absolutely nobody. No flesh of my flesh, no blood of my blood. For a while there was a glimmer of hope about my father, but that turned out to be a pipe dream. I go weeks, months, without anyone knowing where I am. Without anyone checking up on me, I mean.
I know what you’re thinking. I wonder, of course I do.
Is there a childless woman who doesn’t?
But I think it’s for the best. No, let me rephrase that. I’m sure it’s for the best. To have a child is to open yourself up to the greatest loss. All you have to do is think for two seconds about the camps, about the mothers in line for selection who had their children torn from their arms. About the children who were lured into trucks with the promise of chocolate. Herded like baby lambs into holding pens. Stripped and shorn. That’s all there was to it. They were gassed to death and burned. They drifted west, a thin scrap of cloud, from the mouths of the godlike chimneys.
And you too are gone from me now, Joseph. I wonder what would have happened if we had found each other earlier. If things might somehow have been different. If you might have lived a life less full of pain. I wonder if there was something more I could have done to make things better for you in the end.
Chapter Six
PAVEL DID IT WITH A BRIBE.
Nobody said as much, but Marta knew there was no other explanation for the sudden retraction of the secretary’s firm decision. Winton could use Pavel’s money to further finance his altruism; Pepik was on the list and some other child was off. The Bauers didn’t speak of this, or of the finite number of futures that could be secured, or about who might be lost because Pepik had been found. Marta’s fate was not mentioned either. There was no time for existential questions; the whole thing was so last-minute that they had to leap immediately into preparations.
A list arrived detailing the harsh British weather conditions, and Marta was sent to the tailor to have some new travelling trousers and an anorak made for Pepik. The sole of her left boot was wearing thin and she had to stop several times along the way to adjust her stocking inside it. When she got back to the flat, Anneliese was bent over her Czech-English dictionary. Marta looked around for Pavel or Pepik, but neither was anywhere to be seen. This was the first time the two women had been alone in quite some time—was Anneliese avoiding her? Anneliese lifted her head but kept her eyes on her dictionary. “I’ll have a cup of coffee,” she said. She was feigning disinterest, but Marta could tell from her voice that she too was nervous about the two of them being alone together.
Marta took off her boots and rubbed the round blister that had risen under the ill-fitting heel. She put the package from the tailor, wrapped in brown paper, on top of the breakfront and went into the kitchen; then she ground the coffee beans extra fine and cut an apple into thin slices the way she knew Anneliese liked it. Grateful to be able to do something—anything—for her. There was a mass of guilt churning around in Marta’s stomach all the time now. She’d prevented the Bauers from leaving; she’d sheltered Ernst’s agenda; and now she had this closeness with Pavel. She loved Anneliese. Adored her. Marta had always thought of herself as the passive victim, as the one ruled by the will of a foreign body, but she saw now, all at once, that Anneliese felt threatened. Pavel was a country Marta had occupied. And Anneliese was like the native Czechs. Forsaken.
Marta came back into the parlour and set the coffee down gingerly on the table.
“Do you think it’s good that Pepik is going?” she asked. Trying to make conversation. And Anneliese looked unsure how to answer. Whether to address Marta as her help or as her equal.
“It’s just for a while,” she finally said. “Just until all of this blows over.”
“Do you think the Allies might still come to our rescue?”
“Just until all this Jewish business blows over.” Anneliese ran a finger around the rim of her china cup.
“He’s such a little boy,” Marta said. But then she