Midnight Train to Prague - Carol Windley Page 0,92

In any case, Max Nagy had to travel incognito, hidden under burlap sacks in the back of the truck. By now, he would be in Budapest. He would be safe. Had this act of mercy condemned Franz? Had the Gestapo found out, and was that why they’d arrested Franz?

Reina said Natalia couldn’t go back to Zlatá Ulička, But, Natalia protested, she was another mouth to feed, and Reina said, So what? Natalia tried to help in the kitchen, but soon realized that she and Sora were like two crows with one nest between them. She would start filling the kettle and Sora would take it from her and put it on the stove. When she tried to slice bread, Sora would remove the bread knife from her hand, saying Anna liked it cut thinner. “Show me how thin,” she said. Sora’s eyes were brown, her lashes thick and black, and her chin sharp. In her dark hair, there was a dramatic strand of white. Natalia saw how good she was with Anna. She chatted away to her about ordinary things without looking at Anna and without expecting her to respond. She promised Anna she was going to get honey for her, from a man who kept bees. “You know who I mean, Anna? He has that little Pekingese dog you can hear snuffling all the way down the street. His beehives are out in the country, where there are lots of wildflowers.”

The days passed, and Dr. Schaefferová and her husband were still being held in detention. But at least there was hope. Anna kept watch, sitting on the stairs where she could see the front door. Then one morning, when Natalia and Sora were in the kitchen, trying to keep out of each other’s way, they heard a commotion from the hall downstairs. Sora went to the kitchen door and listened. Then they heard Anna cry out, and Natalia followed Sora down to the entrance hall. Elli was there; she had her arm around Anna’s shoulders. Anna was crying and trembling. Two Gestapo agents had delivered envelopes to Anna. Before Elli could take them from her, she’d ripped one open. It had contained her parents’ weddings rings and wristwatches and her mother’s gold crucifix on a chain.

“Anna, let me put them somewhere safe,” Elli said.

“My mother would never remove her wedding band,” Anna said. She ran upstairs. Elli, Natalia, and Sora followed her. Anna was crying and calling for her parents. Natalia went to the kitchen. She put her hands over her ears and kept saying, in her head, not this, please, not this.

Elli brought Anna in and got her to sit down, and then she went down to the doctor’s surgery and returned with a vial of powdered medicine; she measured a few grains into a glass of water and held the glass to Anna’s lips. Anna drank but fought the drug’s effects, until at last she had to lie down on the sofa in the living room. Sora sat beside her. Elli opened the second envelope and took out the documents, death certificates for Julius Schaeffer and Magdalena Schaeffer, who were executed on the fifteenth day of August, 1942, at the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria.

* * *

A colleague of Dr. Schaefferová’s came to see Anna. He sat with her in the living room. He took her pulse and said she must rest and most importantly she must eat, even if it was only a piece of toast. He looked at the bottle of Veronal and said to Elli she could give Anna five grains, no more than twice in twenty-four hours, for no longer than necessary.

Not long after the doctor left, Anna’s uncles, Emil Svetla and Maximilian Svetla, arrived. Maximilian said he wanted Anna to go home with him or Emil. Emil said he believed Anna would be happier with him and his wife, because she was fond of her young cousins, and then, too, there was the matter of his brother’s atheism. What did religion matter? Maximilian interrupted. His wife, Teresa, loved Anna. Moreover, his house had the advantage of being secluded, set back from the street behind a hedge. Did Maximilian believe a hedge would deter the Gestapo? Emil asked. No, Maximilian said; he merely thought that Anna would benefit from a sense of privacy, and she could walk in the garden and feel safe.

“Listen to us. Are we quarreling? We must not quarrel,” Emil said. He wiped his eyes. “Should we let Anna decide