Far to Go - By Alison Pick Page 0,79

eyes were fixed on his son’s face as though he were trying to read the future from a cup of muddy tea leaves. “Miláčku,” he said, “tell me. Do you want to go? Or do you want to stay here with Mamenka and Tata?”

Pepik looked bewildered: the train was shiny and alluring; he was hot and wet with fever.

“Stop it,” Anneliese said again, her voice rising. She grasped her husband’s shoulder but he shook her off roughly. “I want to know,” Pavel said. “I want to do the right thing, the thing that he wants.”

“Pavel, he’s a child. He has no idea what he wants.”

Pepik’s eyes were darting, panicked. There was shoving behind the Bauers and several people pushed ahead. They were holding things up: the line began to flow past them. Suitcases banged against each other and children hopped back and forth in excitement. But Pepik would not be going: Pavel had changed his mind.

There was a loud hiss from the train, the release of a long-held breath.

Marta had been silent throughout the conversation, a slow wall of unease rising inside her. Now she snapped into action. “Pavel,” she said. It was the first time she had called him by his first name out loud, but nobody seemed to notice. “Mrs. Bauer is right. We’ve told Pepik he’s going. We should put him on the train.”

She was thinking now of her earlier transgression: she had prevented Pavel and Anneliese from getting out of the country. But could redeem herself still, with their child.

Anneliese folded her arms across her chest. “Exactly,” she said.

Pavel looked not at his wife but at Marta. He was still uncertain, but her confidence settled it.

“If you’re sure,” he said. He looked down at his son, whose chin had fallen down on his chest. “You’ll go, miláčku?”

Marta could see Pepik was not following what was being said, but he nodded weakly, and that was enough.

The Bauers re-entered the line and were pushed quickly forward. Everyone was crying; the organizers had assigned a woman whose job it was to physically remove each child from the parents’ arms. It was like asking them to chop off their own limb: you couldn’t expect them to do it themselves. Pepik was gone from them before they realized what was happening. His little back was swallowed up by the train. Marta and the Bauers shoved their way down the platform, through the dense crowd of bodies, trying to follow from outside his progress through the cars. Marta could smell the rank body odour of an elderly man behind her; he shifted and she was elbowed in the ribs. She angled her body away, trying to see Pepik, but there were so many parents with their faces pushed up against the window that she couldn’t get close to him. “Where is he?” Anneliese asked, desperate. “You’ll see him soon,” Marta consoled her. “He’ll be back before we know it.”

The train gave a low moan; it began to move slowly down the tracks. The crowd shuffled along next to it; the air filled suddenly with a hundred white handkerchiefs.

It was Marta who spotted Pepik finally—he’d made his way quite far down the train and was hanging out the window, calling to them. His little cheeks pink with effort, or with fever. She suddenly remembered what it was they had forgotten: the blessing from the rabbi, for safe travels.

Pepik looked as if he’d just realized the same thing. Someone must have jostled him or pushed him from behind, because his expression changed, as if he had looked into the future, as if he had suddenly remembered something that he desperately needed to tell them.

This was the last thing—the thing Marta would remember: his little mouth wide open, that O of surprise.

Part Four

Kindertransport

Chapter Seven

THE TRAIN WAS LONG AND BLACK, and entering it was like being swallowed by a snake. The snake had dislocated its jaw to take Pepik in, and now he was being worked down into its body, deep, to the tip of its tail. Pepik made a little slithering motion; he put his hands on his stomach and imagined the way the snake felt, all the little bodies tumbling down inside it. There were so many children. His eyelashes were wet but he blinked and swallowed, swallowing himself, letting himself be swallowed.

The snake was getting full. Soon it would slither off through the grass.

The last car of the train was crammed full of children. Two sisters clung to each other, crying. The older