Far To Go (17 page)

“Liesel—” Pavel started, tenderly, but Anneliese interrupted him. “I’m not going. We’re on the brink of war and all you can think about is Masaryk. News flash! Tomáš Masaryk is dead!” She was refusing to meet her husband’s eye. Furious with him for broaching the subject without asking her first. Or furious about some other transgression Marta wasn’t aware of.

She knew that in another lifetime Pavel would have tried to convince his wife, but in the wake of Pepik’s baptism and everything else that had happened he seemed unable to summon the energy. “Nobody wants to go without you,” he said half-heartedly. He turned to Pepik. “It won’t be any fun without Mamenka, right, buster?” But Pepik’s nod was uncertain; he couldn’t make sense of what was going on between his parents.

“The automobile,” he said.

“I’m not going,” Anneliese repeated.

Marta groped around for a way to extract herself as well. “Why don’t you two gentlemen go together? The King and the Crown Prince.” But it was too late. Pavel had given Anneliese a chance and now he hardened against her. It had become a contest of wills. “Nonsense,” Pavel said. “There’s no reason for you to miss out, Marta. Go and pack those sandwiches. And a Thermos of cocoa for Pepik.”

She had no choice but to do what she was told.

Marta was relieved when they finally got in the car and left Anneliese’s fuming behind. She felt bad about Anneliese—she felt she should feel bad—but she couldn’t deny her excitement at the chance to ride in the front seat. Pavel was freshly shaven and had combed pomade through his hair. He was wearing field corduroys and a pair of cowhide gloves. He turned left at Belcredi Street, left again at Patočkova, and slowly made his way out to the main stretch of road. He was telling her about the Nuremberg Laws—the moment the occupation was a
fait accompli
the Germans had started drafting similar legislation for the Sudetenland—but he seemed for the moment to be discussing a problem he knew himself capable of solving. Pavel believed in himself, Marta thought. He weighed his options, made a decision, and then acted. What else did she know about him? Ordinary things, she thought, but the kinds of things that counted, that made people themselves. She began to list them in her head: He read the business articles first. His drink of choice was slivovitz. He’d begun to carry his Star of David in his pocket . . .

When they drove up the long gravel road to Lány, Marta saw they weren’t the only ones with the idea of honouring Masaryk on his birthday. There must have been a thousand people who had shown up at the dead president’s country residence to pay their respects. She hoped she would not be called upon to give any political opinions, but the atmosphere outside the estate was more conducive to a carnival than a debate. There were children on their fathers’ shoulders, boys in suspenders tossing a bright red ball between them, elderly men leaning on wooden canes. Pavel looked at her across the gearshift; seeing the outpouring of nationalism had bolstered his mood further. “Remarkable,” he said to Marta, “isn’t it?” His eyes shining.

Marta nodded:
Yes, remarkable.

They got out of the car and were met with a wall of sound. Everyone was talking excitedly, it seemed, in families, in little groups of three and four. Marta heard a man in a general’s uniform—the Czech colours in his buttonhole—quoting Hitler: “The Czechs are a miserable little race of pygmies.”

“He said that?” another man asked.

“Prague will be occupied. There’s no getting out of it.”

“It’s a done deal in his mind,” the general answered. “He’s already moved on to Danzig.”

“Do you know what else he says about us Czechs? That we’re like bicycle racers: we bow from the waist but down below we never stop kicking.”

“That’s true,” said a man with skin like crumpled tissue paper. “It was true in the Great War.”

“The Brits modelled their Bren guns on our
ZGB
33. The ones made in Brno.”

“Really?”

“Sure. Bren—
Br
no and
En
field,” the general said proudly.

“If only we’d had the chance to use them!”

The men were like little boys with their hands tied behind their backs, Marta thought, denied the chance to stand up to the schoolyard bully. They longed to fight the Germans, longed desperately, and she knew Pavel thought it still might happen. He believed there was still a chance, however remote, that France and England would come to their senses.

Pepik’s face was pressed into Marta’s hip. He tugged at her arm and she lifted him up, then thought better of it and put him back down. He couldn’t depend on her forever. “Why don’t you go play with those children?” she said, pointing to a group of boys racing around the perimeter of the field. But Pepik just whimpered and pulled at her arm again.

“You’re too big,” she said. But she let him rest against her and kept a hand lightly on the top of his head.

They waited in line for their turn to pay respects at the grave. Then they ate the ham-and-swiss
chlebíčky
. Pepik fell asleep in the car on the way home, a line of cocoa dried above his lip. Marta thought that he looked a little like the Führer himself—the small moustache, the thin shoulders—but she figured it was best not to point this out to Pavel. The automobile sped through the countryside. A short gust of snow turned to sleet—later she would think it had been a sign of things to come—and Pavel turned on the car’s single wiper. They rode for a while in silence with the steady
thwack
of it like a heartbeat, just there in front of them. Marta leaned her head back, letting her eyes close, luxuriating in the time with nothing to do but be carried along. The road whizzed past beneath them, the tires making a rhythmic thumping. She had almost dozed off when Pavel looked over at her and said, “I know very little about you.”

Marta’s eyes snapped open. There was a slight tone of accusation in his voice: how could she have worked for him for so long and managed to stay opaque?

“There’s nothing to tell,” she said. For some reason she felt herself flushing.

Pavel was looking at her, smiling. “A woman of mystery,” he said.

She looked back at him, at both his hands on the wheel.

“No, it’s just . . .” She faltered. Why
did
she want to keep quiet? It was not quite true that she had nothing to hide, but suddenly she felt that she might tell him anything at all. “What do you want to know?” she asked.

Pavel nodded, satisfied she’d acquiesced. “What do I want to know. Let’s see. You were born in Moravia?”

“Ostrava.”

“A textile town. Did your father work at the factory?”

She shook her head. “Farm.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Your father owned a farm?”

“No. He was the farmhand.”

He nodded, understanding.

“We slept in the . . . there was a loft over the stable.”

Pavel made a face as if he’d just bitten down on something distasteful, or maybe, she thought, he did not want to think of her there.

“Sisters? Brothers?” he asked.

“One sister.” Marta paused. “She died.”

Pavel cocked his head to one side. “Oh?” he said. “I’m sorry.” He seemed to be considering. “So you and Pepik have something in common,” he said finally.

Marta hadn’t thought of it in this way before. “We also both love trains,” she said, and was surprised by the confession, by the fact that she kept confessing. It was true. She took Pepik to the train station for her own pleasure as well as his. A train meant escape. The possibility of leaving. That forlorn sound that the whistle unspooled, as it drifted out across the dark countryside, seemed so lonesome, and yet so right. It was the exact sound of the emptiness in the centre of her being, like waking up and crying out in the middle of the night and hearing another sadness call back.

“Close family?” Pavel asked. He looked to her for confirmation and she shook her head almost imperceptibly:
No
. Something in the gesture must have told him not to push any further. “What about boyfriends? A pretty girl like you.” There was a sly look on his face, the start of a grin, and she saw he was teasing her, that she could get away without answering. But instead she said, “No. I’ve never . . .”

“
Never.
Really,” Pavel said mildly. He squinted, his eyes on the road.

They were quiet for a while, Marta reassuring herself: certainly Ernst didn’t count as a
boyfriend
. So it wasn’t a lie she’d told. Not exactly.

The countryside receded and buildings reappeared, first just a few and then many. The city was coated in a soft blanket of snow. When they got to the flat Pavel hopped out and opened the gate. He got back in and rode the clutch into the garage. He pulled the hand brake and punched the button that turned the lights off. But he made no move to get out of the car.

In the back little Pepik was still soundly asleep, his head bent back at an odd angle against the seat.

Pavel turned to Marta. He gave her a piercing look, his brow furrowed. “I’m sorry about Mrs. Bauer,” he said.

“Sir?”

“The way she behaved this morning.”

Something inside Marta tightened, like the lid on a Mason jar. It had been such a lovely day; why did he have to go and tarnish it like this? She was enjoying the chance to talk with Pavel—one on one, two adults—but the only way she could allow herself the intimacy was to put Anneliese out of her mind entirely. “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” she said.

He looked at her tenderly, or at least with an expression she took for tenderness. “And that,” he said, “is why we adore you.”

Marta’s breath quickened; she could not force herself to meet his eyes. But Pavel continued, as though he were speaking not to her but to himself. “You’re loyal,” he said. “Which is—” He paused, nodding. “—not something to be taken for granted.”

“Thank you, Mr. Bauer,” she said, but she was confused by the remark. She had the sense that he was referring not to her character but some other event she wasn’t aware of.

“I don’t take your loyalty for granted,” he said again, meeting her eye. “I appreciate . . . many things about you.”

The space in the car seemed to have shrunk; Marta was aware of the proximity of her body to Pavel’s, of the musky smell of the leather blanket in the back seat, and of Pavel’s hand resting lightly on the gearshift just an inch or two away. She looked down at it, and his gaze followed hers. They were still for a moment, both of them looking at the hand. Then she watched—it really was like something from a dream—she watched him lift it and place it, ever so lightly, on her leg.

Marta couldn’t speak; then she realized she wouldn’t need to. Pavel had opened his mouth first. “I wanted—” he said. But he stopped, and she saw he was looking at her face—she could see his eyes circling her forehead, studying her nose, her dimple—and then he leaned forward and kissed her.

She was so taken aback that it was a moment before her body registered the sensation. His mouth was warm and his lips felt full and hot. The slight taste of cocoa. There was a glimmer of his tongue and she felt a pang low in her belly, a sharp tug like nothing she had felt there before. She waited to feel herself stiffen and pull back, but she felt a different sensation instead—she wanted, she realized, for him to continue.

But Pavel drew away. He looked at her again with that same tenderness and tucked a strand of hair back behind her ear. Then he leaned in one more time. A short, firm finish to the kiss. It was as if he had come to a decision, she thought, and this was his way to seal it.

After that, Marta would think later, everything was ruined.

The following morning Max’s foreman, Hans, arrived at the flat. Together he and Pavel were running the show in Max’s absence. Marta took his overcoat and said, “Welcome, Mr. Novak.”

He
tsk
ed. “Call me Hans.”

“Yes, Mr. Novak,” she said.

He was a man with a large stomach, and jowls that made her think of a hound-dog. The sort of man, Marta thought, about whom women would say
He’s got such a nice smile
, or
He’s got beautiful eyes
, but only because they liked him and it did not seem fair that someone so kind should be so unpleasant to look at.

Marta showed him into the parlour, where Pavel had lit a fire in the hearth. The men took off their leather shoes and stretched their legs towards the heat, Hans with his hands folded over his enormous belly. Marta served café au lait from the silver service while they sucked on their pipes. Her trolley was covered with a white linen cloth. “A whore’s breakfast,” Hans joked. “Coffee and tobacco.”

Pavel smiled.

“There are pastries too,” Marta said, smiling. She had bought tiny plum donuts, dusted with confectioner’s sugar, and two little Linzer tortes from the beautiful patisserie in the Vinohrady. Pavel liked Czech pastries, but served in the French way. He liked to peruse them with the silver tongs in hand.

Marta moved towards Pavel to let him have his pick but found she could not look him in the face. The memory of their kiss was like an ailment spreading throughout her body, making its presence known in her chest, then on her cheeks, then in that unfamiliar tug low in her belly. It had been so unexpected, so out of the blue. And yet she felt, somehow, that she’d loved him all along. The mess with Ernst lifted from her mind like a ribbon of grey cigarette smoke. This is what it was like to be kissed by a decent man, a man who respected you. And she realized it was true—Pavel did respect her, without a doubt. The situation was complicated, compromised, but his feelings about her were pure.

For his part, Pavel acted breezy, at ease. As if nothing unusual had happened. He selected a pastry without looking at Marta. “Intermarium,” he said to Hans. “What do you make of it?” He set the donut on his plate and held the tongs out in front of him.

“A pact between Poland, Romania, and the Hungarians.”

“But what about us?” The tongs snapped closed.

“We’re lost already.”

“I went down to the Swiss embassy to try to get entry permits,” Pavel said. “I put a small envelope on the edge of the diplomat’s desk. He waited until the end of my appeal and then he threw it back in my face.”