Far to Go - By Alison Pick Page 0,96

“If you’re in the middle of something.”

“No,” Pavel said. “Please.” He motioned to the straight-backed chair across from him. She wished he would come out from behind the desk and sit with her, as he sometimes did, in the velvet armchairs by the window—she felt like a client in a law office with the huge expanse of wood between them. But he stayed where he was and Marta made herself as comfortable as she could. Pavel, she saw, had pushed his paper under an atlas.

“I had a hopeful letter yesterday, from the embassy in Argentina,” he said. “When I followed up today, though, they told me my contact had been terminated.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Marta said. Truthfully, though, it was to be expected. Nobody was able to get out anymore. She was a little surprised that Pavel kept trying.

“Where’s the bin?” she asked, remembering what she’d come to do. She bent and looked under the desk.

Pavel ignored the question. “Slivovitz?” he asked. There was a silver tray with a bottle on the desk, and two little shot glasses.

She straightened and nodded. “Thank you,” she said. “Then let’s write to Pepik.”

Pavel uncorked the decanter; it made a loud pop. He cleared his throat. “I was just doing that.”

“Of course,” Marta said; she tried to keep her voice steady. But she lowered her eyes and looked at her hands. She’d thought writing to Pepik was something they shared, a common activity that drew them together. They’d been writing to him for days now: it was like reading to someone in a coma—there was no way to know how much was getting through. Pavel wrote in big block letters, as though his son might be able to read them himself, and Marta didn’t remind him otherwise. She felt it excused her own childlike hand. She addressed each envelope, added an AIRMAIL sticker, and affixed the Nazi postage. She sent each letter separately, so there would be more for Pepik to open.

The days went by and they waited. No reply.

“I was writing to the Millings, in fact,” Pavel said now, filling their glasses. Marta knew that he wrote frequently to his son’s temporary parents, thanking them for the safekeeping of his son. He never forgot to ask after Arthur, he’d told her, and send his best wishes for their son’s speedy recovery. He even went so far as to send his prayers.

He stoppered the bottle and looked up at her. “I was asking if the Millings need any work done. You know,” he said, speaking quickly, “if they need a handyman. Or someone to drive their car.”

Marta squinted, not comprehending.

“If they need me to do any work,” Pavel said. He looked at her fiercely, ashamed but defiant, and she saw all at once: he would be a butler, or a chauffeur. Anything to get them out. It was much easier to get the exit papers, she knew, if you had a letter of employment.

Still, this was wrong. It was not the way the world was meant to be. There was an order to things, and Marta did not want to think of Pavel, so kind and upstanding, as a servant in someone else’s home. She did not want to imagine him humbled that way. If this could happen to him then nobody was safe; there was no way of protecting oneself after all. A bit of blackness began to creep into her body. It was instantly recognizable, a grey haze at the edge of her vision that made her see things as other than they were. And the weight in her chest, the sense she was drowning . . .

She tried to change the subject. “Who is this Adolf Eichmann exactly?” She’d heard someone in line at the butcher’s say that the high-ranking Nazi had arrived in Prague.

Pavel’s voice was brisk. “The SS Jewish expert. So-called.” He drained his glass in the manner of the Russians: politely, but completely. He raised his hand. “Another?”

But Marta’s drink was untouched.

“Eichmann heads the Zentralstelle für jüdische Auswanderung,” Pavel said. “The SS department in charge of robbing and expelling the Jews. They set up shop in Vienna last year.” He paused, and she knew he was thinking of his brother Misha, forced to scrub the streets and then drink his pail of dirty water. Where was he now? And his son, Tomáš, and his young wife, Lore?

Pavel tipped his head back and swallowed again: two short bobs of his Adam’s apple. The room had gone from dusky