My Enemy's Cradle (34 page)

"Suit yourself." Karl took off his tie and then began to undo the buttons of his uniform tunic. He tossed it aside and bent over the basket. From it he withdrew a navy sweater, bulky with cable stitches; the muscles of his back bunched as he pulled it over his head. Then he turned and spread his arms, looking pleased with himself.

"What? That's your surprise? A sweater?"

"I could be court-martialed for putting on civilian clothes, and that's the reception I get?" Karl sighed and grew serious. "This is the other thing between us. I've seen how you look at me. Or how you
don't
look at me—how you look at my uniform instead. That's all you see, Cyrla. You never see me."

"I see you, Karl. And you wear that uniform."

"Not by choice. So can't you see past it for one day? That's what I want from you: just one day when you're a woman and I'm a man. When you don't have to worry about what Anneke might feel and you don't have to protect yourself from an enemy. Will you do that for just one day?"

"I don't think I can." My throat tightened with a dangerous ache.

"You're leaving in three weeks. We have three weeks. What could it harm?"

"It's wrong."

"Why?"

"I don't know! Because what if—" I wrapped my arms around my belly and looked up at him—"I can't let
this
go. And I don't want to. This baby is Jewish. His father is Jewish, and I owe him something. And you're German."

"Do you really think I'd harm a baby?"

I clasped my hands more firmly around the baby. "This is all I have now. It's everything. I've done a terrible job of it so far—look at where I am, Karl! I'm trying to make it up to him, to do the best I can right now."

I turned away then. There was another clap of thunder, closer. After a minute I felt him come up behind me, his presence too close to me, and yet I didn't shrink away. The air between us seemed to throb with invisible vibrations. I heard the rain begin, just a hushed rustling.

And then he touched me. Not on the arm, not on the shoulder, not on the back of the neck as I had been expecting. Wanting. Instead he eased his body against my back and placed his hands on my waist. I didn't turn toward him, but I didn't pull away, either. I waited, my breath caught in my throat.

Very slowly, as if giving me time to understand his motions, he stroked his hands down the sides of my hipbones, his fingers following the arc where my body met the rising moon of my child. He bent forward, his face beside mine now, his cheek to my cheek. Gently, he laced his fingers beneath my baby's swell and he lifted. He lifted my burden from me and took it for himself.

I came undone. Sobs of relief shook me. Karl moved to pull his arms away, as if he was afraid he had upset me, but I held them firm. We stood like that for a long time—me crying and him cradling my burden—and then I turned inside the circle of his arms and found his mouth.

We kissed. I could not get enough of his hot mouth, his hot tongue. Our mouths were sealed together, sealed, and I had only one clear thought:
If this were a choice, it would be wrong. But this is not a choice.
It was a need, as undeniable as breath, and it grew until I was nothing more than hollowness and shivers, and Karl only muscle and heat.

"Lie down," he said.

And I lay down.

Karl curled himself behind me and leaned over my shoulder to find my hungry mouth. We kissed and he pressed into me and we kissed and he pulled off our clothes and we kissed. He stopped to ask if it was all right to do this—all right for the baby—and I pulled his mouth back to mine and arched back until I found what I needed. We kissed and when he came into me, I cried tears of joy into our completed circle.

And Corrie was wrong: The other one was not there. Not then.

Afterward, I lay still in the curve of Karl's arm, so still I could feel his pulse against my cheek, listening to the perfect rain. Karl stroked my skin and I felt I had never known touch before, the exquisite miracle of it. He ran his hand down my spine and then over my belly. He found a bump and cupped it, propped himself up to examine it. "An elbow."

"Or a knee. Or a heel. My little gymnast."

"Are you sure that was all right to do? Not dangerous?"

"It's fine. Right up until the last month."

"How do you know?"

"We have a whole library full of books. Prenatal care, birth, child raising. And I have a lot of time on my hands."

He leaned over and kissed my belly. "All right, then. All right."

When the rain had passed, Karl went to the barn door and pushed it open all the way. Sun shafts streamed in; beyond, the meadow gleamed green, washed. Birds had begun to sing again, pouring out their joy after the rain, as if the afternoon was a miracle. I lay back, smiling, and thought they were right.

Karl turned back to me. "Are you hungry?"

"No."

"Do you want to leave? Go somewhere else?"

"No."

"Do you want to take a walk?"

"All right."

We walked slowly and only Karl talked, pointing out trees and wildflowers along the way. I held his hand. It was solid, warm, and sure, and it felt like my only connection to the world. When he dropped it to shake the rain off a branch of apple blossoms for me to smell, I felt suddenly anxious, as though I might burn away like the mist. When we walked back, I held it even tighter.

The ground was still wet, so Karl went back to the car for a canvas to spread under the blanket. Then he set out the picnic: cheese and bread and a tin of anchovies, green olives, dried apricots, walnuts, and something that rattled in a box, which he wouldn't let me open.

"Where did you get all this?"

"I have connections."

He took out two glasses and uncorked a bottle of red wine.

I looked at the label in wonder. "Chianti?"

"I told you—I have connections. And I'm half Italian, you know—what good is a meal without wine?"

"You're half Italian? I didn't know that."

Karl shrugged as if it hadn't been worth mentioning. As if having parents from two different worlds didn't leave a person split down the middle, through the heart. "My mother was from Tuscany. My father met her on a trip to buy olive wood—a special order for a customer. Love at first sight."

"Karl, doesn't it make you feel torn in half? As if you don't belong anywhere?"

He poured the wine. "No. Not at all. Except for being grateful because it means I could never be recruited by the Nazis—I've never even thought about it. Is that how
you
feel?"

I nodded and sipped my wine, feeling its comforting heat rise through me like a blush. "It's different. Imagine if your mother died and your father sent you to Italy to live with her relatives."

"I'd feel terrible. He would never have done that."

I turned away, drank more wine. "Some people are easier to send away, I guess."

Karl put down his glass and took my face in his hands. "That's not what happened. Anneke said you came in '36. When did your mother die?"

"In 1930."

"Well, see? It wasn't because of that. Pilsudski had just died, and there was the new regime. The Nuremberg Laws here ... well, obviously your father was worried about what was coming. He was right. But think of how hard it must have been."

"Maybe not. Maybe it made things easier for him."

"Easier? To lose his daughter?"

"He never spoke of my mother after she died. He got rid of everything that reminded him of her. Maybe ... well, I'll never know."

Karl leaned back on his elbows and smiled as if he held a secret. "I think you will know. I think when the baby's born, you'll understand a lot. That's how it's been with my sister and me, after Lina was born. I feel a little like her father, you know. Having Lina has made Erika and me understand our parents."

I looked at him doubtfully, but wanting to believe.

"Really. Wait until the baby is born; think about it then. Right now, you should eat." He rose to his knees and began to set food out for us. He had forgotten silverware, so he tore off chunks of bread and used his pocketknife to open the tins and slice cheese.

"This is one place I
did
feel it, having an Italian mother," Karl said. He shook out olives, glistening in their oil, onto a piece of bread and handed it to me. "When I was young, all my friends wanted to eat with us. Once a year—the last week in August—she made a trip to Italy to the markets. Erika and I always begged to go with her—it was our favorite week of the year. We'd help her buy sardines and great tins of olive oil, braids of garlic, boxes of pine nuts, big jugs of wine. Pancetta—do you know what that is? A cured meat, smoky. Figs and prunes; cheeses. There was a certain flour she needed to make her pasta and an almond paste for her baking. Erika and I would wander through the stalls sampling everything, then my mother would let us get gelato. On the last day, she'd buy four or five crates of plum tomatoes—she couldn't get those at home—and one of lemons, and a huge sack of coffee beans. Then we'd ride home with everything on the train. I can still remember how wonderful our compartment smelled—she insisted that everything had to ride with us."

I eased down on my side, my head propped up by one elbow to eat and listen to Karl. Sometimes when people talked about their mothers, I felt pinched with jealousy, as if they'd stolen their memories at my expense. But not now.

"I think the last time she went was six or seven years ago. You'd be surprised, though, at what she still manages to cook. Like these"—he reached for the box he'd kept away from me and opened it—"amaretti. Almond macaroons."

I took one. It was small and pale gold, like Anneke's favorite
spekulaas.
I put it back in the box. "Maybe later," I said.

I helped Karl put away the food. We broke the rest of the loaf of bread into crumbs and sprinkled them along the stone wall for the birds, then cleaned our fingers in the little pools of rainwater that had collected in the cupped stones. We wandered back to the blanket, drowsy with food and wine and the sudden warmth of the afternoon.

Karl poured the last of the wine into our glasses, then peeled off his sweater and undershirt and stretched out on his stomach. I lay back with my wine, looking up at the drifting clouds. The sun felt wonderful on my face and arms, prickling my skin at first and then melting into the wine's warm flush. I sat up and took off my stockings and then unbuttoned my blouse and untied the little satin ribbons wrapping my slip around me to let the sun fall on the top of my belly. It glowed, the heat of the sun reaching down to meet my baby's heat, the hot engine of his growth. I slid the elastic of my skirt down a little. A little more.

Karl rolled over and looked at me. He smiled and eased the elastic down until my whole belly was basking in the sunshine.

"Do you think she can feel the sun?" he asked.

I lay back with my eyes closed, his fingers caressing my belly lightly. I laid my hand over his, sealing it to me. The sunlight glowed through my lids, dappled red and yellow. "Yes," I decided. "Yes,
he
can."

Karl laid his head lightly over my belly, pretended to listen to something. Then he raised his head to look at me, his face grave. "She says to tell you she's a girl. And you'd better get used to that."

Then he placed his hand back on the top of my belly, warm from the sun, warmer under his hand. He traced the tautness of my swell with gentle fingers, and I kept my eyes closed to feel it better, the loveliness of it. "You look like you've swallowed the moon," he said. "And it's rising inside you."

"I'm as big as the moon." I wove my fingers into his hair. Mine to touch.

"You're as beautiful as the moon." Karl leaned in to me and began to kiss me, his fingertips drifting lower. I felt myself flooded with something hot and bright, like a tide of molten gold. I melted into it. Then he rose and I felt his lips on my skin—he kissed my belly, kissed my baby. I stretched back and offered him more. I was ripe.

He rose to his knees and stroked me with both hands now, slowly and grave with concentration, and my skin was newly born. For the first time I understood that touch was a language, too, and that the things he was saying I had been waiting all my life to hear. He freed my breasts from the satin slip and in the cool air I felt a heat rise between my legs. When he lowered himself to lie over me, his mouth on my mouth, his hands caressing my breasts so softly, I was lost in yearning, I thought I could never want more than this.

And then I did want even more. I began to moan. He lifted my skirt and moved to kneel between my legs. I kept my eyes closed, but I could feel him watching me as he caressed me, asking me something. "Yes," I breathed—whatever it was, the answer was yes. He bent over to lift me and put his lips to me, and I told him things with my secret mouth that I had not known I knew. Then he eased my hips up his thighs until our bodies met, and this time I was softened and I took his hardness like a kiss.
I know you, I know you,
we said with every movement, and the joy of that shook us at the same time.

Karl fell gently beside me, our limbs tangled and loose. He smiled into my dazed eyes. "It's supposed to be like that." He reached over me to brush the torn grass from my fingers and kiss my dry lips closed. "It's supposed to be like that." Then he closed his eyes and rested his head on my shoulder, his hand cupped over my breast in a way that brought me excitement and peace at once.

I turned my head to look through the apple blossoms at the clouds swimming through the impossibly blue sky. I could almost see the green leaves unfurling, they were so eager to burst. And bees! Drifting lines of them, clustering and breaking apart in the pink shell blossoms; drunk on pollen, mad with abundance. My eyes closed and just before I fell asleep, I saw the image of the beekeeper again, covered in bees. How could I ever have thought them dangerous?

I woke up with a dream crouching over me, a cold shadow just out of sight. In the dream there was something I had forgotten, and Isaak had been angry with me about that. As my mind cleared, I recognized his face as the one he'd worn that last night. When he'd found out what had happened to me.