Far to Go - By Alison Pick Page 0,9

her was lonely all the time, a young, hungry part, and it got the better of her. Something in her was starving to be noticed, truly seen.

Ernst looked down at her; he was taller than her by a head. “Not tonight,” he said. “Unfortunately.” He didn’t need to explain; it would be some kind of obligation with his wife. “Tomorrow?” he asked.

She smiled. “You have something . . .” She reached over and picked an eyelash off his cheek.

“Thank you,” he said. “I’ll try for tomorrow.”

“You’re busy?”

He shook his head, to show that, yes, he was busy but did not want to waste their time telling her about it. He leaned towards her, his lips an inch from hers. She wanted to push her own weight into the bulk of his, to fuse herself with the feeling he lit in her chest. Instead she tried to say something that she knew would please him.

“We just saw Mr. Goldstein. You were right. He did smell a little.”

Ernst pulled back, raised an eyebrow.

“Remember? You said—”

“I said what?”

“About the Jews.”

“What about them?”

“How they smell,” she said finally. But Ernst’s face registered nothing, and she swallowed, wishing she hadn’t brought it up. The slur tasted wrong in her mouth, like cookies made with salt instead of sugar.

“I said nothing of the sort,” Ernst said, a bemused expression on his face. “I might have thought it, but I certainly would never have voiced it. Nor should you. It doesn’t become you.”

Marta flushed. “It was just a joke.” How had he managed to make her seem the fool when it had been his idea in the first place?

She tried again. “Remember? You said . . . the other night . . . ?” But she could see he would admit to nothing. Which was to be expected. If their secret was discovered it would be, she knew, the same—he would save himself at her expense.

She wound a curl around her forefinger and tugged at it. A sliver of anger was rising within her, and she groped around for some way to correct the imbalance, for some way she could hurt him back. “Anneliese suspects,” she heard herself saying.

She had a flash of a bathtub full of blood.

Ernst’s expression immediately went slack. He took a large step back. “About us? How?”

There was the roar of the train arriving in the station. Marta didn’t answer his question; he deserved to sweat, to feel the same fear she felt. She looked away from him, nonchalant, and leaned for a moment out of the nook where they were hidden. She saw Pepik standing next to a group of boys: Hanka Guttman’s son Ralphie and one of those very blond Ackermans, with eyes like blue ice—what was his name? They all looked so identical, and so much like their father.

“Marta,” Ernst said urgently. “Are you sure? How does she know?” He was a married man, Pavel’s right hand at the factory, and close friends with both of the Bauers. It would not do to be caught sneaking around with their governess. But she still didn’t answer: her eyes were on Pepik now. He was standing with his back to her; she saw him hold out his chocolates to the Ackerman boy. The boy grabbed the sack out of Pepik’s hand. A fat man in a conductor’s uniform blocked her view, and the next thing she saw was Pepik’s shocked face and the bag of chocolates spilled across the pavement.

Ernst grasped her elbow. “Marta,” he said. But she jerked away and pushed past a woman carrying a violin case, a group of young girls who were playing marbles. Pepik was behind them, standing still. Bewildered. She could not get to him fast enough. A stone hit the side of his face. He brought his hand to the back of his head and rubbed it. Another stone hit his forehead and he flinched and covered his head with his hands.

Marta finally reached him and scooped him up and pulled him close to her. The relief at having him safe in her arms.

The Ackerman boy had stopped throwing stones and was now making a show of stepping on Pepik’s chocolate-covered cherries. They broke on the pavement, Marta thought, like blood vessels.

“Crybaby!” the boy said to Pepik. “Sehen Sie sich die Heulsuse an!”

Marta turned her back to the boys, Pepik in her arms. He’d been cut by one of the pebbles—the cut was small, but quite deep. She licked her thumb to rub the blood