Far to Go - By Alison Pick Page 0,95

villa on the Seine or to various bank accounts he might or might not have opened in other countries. Ernst had got his hands on some of Pavel’s money but had been unsuccessful, Marta surmised, at accessing the bulk of his estate. So at least there was that small consolation.

The onions stung her eyes; she wiped away a tear with the back of her arm. Through the open kitchen arch she saw Pavel jab at the paper in front of him with the tip of his pencil. “How do they define a Jewish company?” he asked Anneliese. “What does it mean, ‘under the decisive influence of Jews’?” He made quotes in the air with his fingers. “It means nothing. You can’t prove that anything is ‘under the decisive influence’ of anyone at all!”

Anneliese put her newspaper down and crossed the room. She stood with her back to her husband, staring out the window. “They’re going to take it all now. Turn everything over to the Treuhänder. No exceptions.” She lifted a foot, balancing on one ruby heel.

“How are you such an expert all of a sudden?”

“It doesn’t take a genius,” Anneliese said.

Marta thought Anneliese sounded a little defensive. She wiped her hands on her apron and dumped the onion peels in the bin. She came into the parlour.

“My father,” Pavel was saying, “fought for the Germans in the Great War.”

“Really?” Marta asked.

“Yes,” he said. Surprised she didn’t already know. He picked up the paperclip and dug the point into the pad of his thumb. “So they’ll come and take the flat. And send us where? On vacation?”

“Just wait a little longer.” Anneliese’s voice was firm. “Something will happen.”

But Pavel loosened his blue silk tie, pulled it off, and threw it down on the table. “What do you mean, ‘something will happen’? Something like God sending down an Egyptian plague? Or something more along the lines of our child being sent out into the wild blue yonder never to be heard from again?”

Because this was the heart of it, Marta knew, the thing nobody was saying. It had been almost a month, and still no word from the Millings. Mathilde Baeck had received several letters, two from the foster parents, and a drawing by her Clara of the Hook of Holland, the sun rising over the bow of a big ship on which a herd of stick children were grinning. Marta tried to feel happy for the Baecks, happy that at least some people knew the whereabouts of their child, but despite herself she felt the unfairness of it, and a bitter jealousy. It was not that she begrudged Mrs. Baeck her knowledge of her daughter but that she so wished for something comparable from Pepik. Her longing for news of him was physical; her arms hurt for wanting to hold him. Already she was beginning to forget his voice, the little suckling sounds he made as he was falling asleep. His train was abandoned; the track was dismantled and pushed to the back of the closet. The lead soldiers were buried like casualties in a shoebox beneath the bottom bunk. There was no train under the parlour table now, but a ghost train had replaced the real one, and this at least was vivid in Marta’s imagination. She could see it flashing around the silver loop of its track, could hear the little bell singing its departure.

Anneliese was now gone from home almost all the time. She reappeared at odd hours, wearing shoes Marta didn’t recognize. Once she came home with a big bouquet of roses—difficult to get under the ruling Nazis—and Marta found a card torn up past legibility in the wastebasket. Not that she was snooping, of course. It was her job to take out the garbage.

She went into Max’s study to empty the bin there and found Pavel sitting behind the desk. The room smelled musty, like dust and ink. Darkness had fallen; Marta crossed the room and switched on the lamp. The little pool of light lit up Pavel’s face from below; he was wearing an expression of perfect sadness, his mouth turned down at the corners.

Pepik’s Sad face.

“Are you busy?” Marta asked.

There was a piece of paper in front of Pavel, a sheet of Bauer and Sons stationery. He was holding a fountain pen in his hand. “No, not busy,” he said. But he was casually trying to cover the letter with his elbow.

“I can just . . .” she said, nodding at the door.