Far to Go - By Alison Pick Page 0,73

thought this might seem unworldly and provincial. “Did you travel as a child, Mrs. Bauer?”

“Certainly I travelled,” Anneliese said. “With my parents, as a family. As a five-year-old? Alone? Of course not!” She spoke harshly but Marta knew it was out of worry and she chose not to correct Anneliese, not to remind her that her son had recently turned six. “How will you tell him?” she asked instead.

Anneliese leaned her head on her hand and then lifted it again: she had been to the salon and was trying not to ruin her finger wave. She looked up at Marta, an odd mixture of vulnerability and defiance on her face. “I hadn’t thought about telling Pepik,” she said. She paused. “Perhaps you could do it.”

Marta should have expected as much. The difficult tasks were always left to her, and in a way it pleased her to be given the responsibility. Still, something about it seemed not quite right. She touched her dimple. “Of course, Mrs. Bauer,” she said. “I’d be happy to. But I wonder if he shouldn’t be told by . . .”

The words his mother hung in the air between the women.

Anneliese nodded yes. “But you introduce the idea. Warm him to it.” She blew on her coffee.

“Certainly, Mrs. Bauer.”

“But don’t actually tell him. Leave that part to me.”

“To his mother,” she added.

As though the idea had been hers in the first place.

Evening had fallen while the two women spoke, and Marta imagined how they would look from the street, silhouettes in a small pool of lamplight, sisters perhaps, confiding in each other. Twenty-three and maybe twenty-six years old, their whole lives ahead of them. She liked to think of her life as a story, of herself as the heroine: a bad start, some stumbling blocks, but she’d make good on her natural promise. She owed that much to Anneliese. She owed it to herself.

“There’s something else,” Mrs. Bauer said. Her cup rattled when she set it on the saucer. “Would you stay on as cook? Once Pepik is gone?”

“Of course!”

Marta spoke quickly and then hesitated, smoothed down the front of her dress.

“That is, if you’ll have me.”

How, she wondered, could Anneliese be so gracious? It was the perfect excuse for her to let Marta go, no explanation required, and yet she was choosing not to. Perhaps, Marta thought, it was because everything was topsy-turvy with the occupation. Things were shifting and dissolving, reconfiguring. Who did Anneliese have to lean on?

Marta got up to clear the coffee. “Would you like anything else, Mrs. Bauer?”

“I suppose there is one other thing . . .” Anneliese touched her dictionary with a perfectly shaped scarlet nail. “The English word for betrayal. I can’t find it in here.”

Marta flushed. “That one I can’t help you with.”

Anneliese shook her head sadly. “I didn’t think so,” she said.

Marta made her way down the long corridor. The hardwood floor smelled of wax. There was no sound from Pepik’s room, and when she opened the door, she saw he had fallen asleep in the middle of the carpet, the loop of his train track surrounding him. His suspenders had been pushed off and several lead soldiers lay scattered around his shoulders. Marta put the package from the tailor on the dresser and looked down at him. His head was thrown back and there was a slight film of perspiration on his brow. He looked as if he was following some epic battle, his eyes moving back and forth rapidly under his lids. She crouched down and tried to pick him up without waking him, but he stirred and opened his eyes.

“I’m sorry, miláčku,” she whispered.

Pepik squinted and rubbed his face; it was pink and creased with sleep. She pulled back the patchwork quilt on the bottom bunk, propped him up against the feather pillow, and bent down to unbuckle his shoes.

“I don’t want to,” Pepik said.

“I’m sorry, my darling, but it’s already past your bedtime.”

“No,” he mumbled; he was still half asleep. “I don’t want to go on the train.”

Marta looked up from his shoes. “You don’t want to play with it?”

“I don’t want to go on it.”

His eyes had fallen shut again, his lashes dark against his face. Marta shook his leg gently. “On this train?” she said, pointing to the Hornby cars stalled on their short loop of track. “That’s good, because you’re such a big boy you’d never fit in it!”

Pepik kicked his foot away from her. “I don’t want to go on