When It's Over
Page 4
Otto chose a tiny restaurant off Loreta Square, where they drank beer and ordered bowls of goulash. He asked her about her family.
“How old is your brother?”
“Ernst is fifteen.”
Otto nodded. “That’s good. Too young to be called up. Is he involved in politics?”
“No.” Lena rolled her eyes. “All he cares about are his stupid games or sneaking off to smoke with his friends. What about you? Where is your family?”
Otto shook his head, as if he wanted to dismiss the subject, but Lena insisted: “Tell me.”
“My mother died when I was five. I hardly remember her. And my father died when I was twenty. Shortly after that, my brother joined the Hitler Youth. He was only fifteen, the same age as your brother now. He was so keen to be a little fascist. I have not seen him in years.”
“So you have no one,” Lena said. She sat across from him at a small table by the window. She dipped her spoon into the steaming bowl of stew.
“I have my comrades,” he said. He reached for her hand. “And you. I’m very glad I have you with me here.”
Lena felt her face flush, but she did not look away. He interlaced his fingers with hers and then caressed the inside of her arm with soft strokes of his fingertips, and she felt something melting below her belly button. And when they finished their meal and he said, “Come back to my place,” she could not resist.
He led her to his apartment, just a room, really, on the top floor of a narrow building tucked behind the main railway station. He kissed her on the lips, softly at first but then urgently, pulling her close, steering her toward his bed under the eaves. He was sweet and gentle when she confessed she had never been with a man before, and afterward he cradled her in his arms. She watched his chest rise and fall as he snoozed. She yearned to stay all night, but she could not defy her father’s curfew again. Not yet. He had relented a little, but he still expected her back by midnight.
The following morning when Lena walked to work, she saw the headline Beneš Orders 35 Divisions to German Border. She grabbed the newspaper and read the article, standing on the street corner. The Czech president was ordering a large-scale military mobilization, the report stated, “acting on information provided by an unidentified foreign embassy in Prague.”
On Sunday there was to be a large demonstration in Wenceslas Square. The Popular Front called for a show of strength; socialists, communists, and Trotskyists would unite with the social democrats to urge the Beneš government to stand firm against Hitler. Battalions of armored vehicles drove through the city on their way to the northern border, cheered by people on the streets. Czech flags suddenly appeared in corner shops, and when Lena brought one home, Sasha paraded around the apartment, waving it high above her head.
Lena told no one about Otto’s role in leaking the information about the German troop movements. The secret bubbled inside her and enhanced the excitement she felt about participating in the demonstration.
But on Saturday morning, Father said, “I forbid you to go.”
“But you always talk of being a Czech patriot,” Lena said. “This is a time to show our strength as a country.”
“It is too dangerous. The Reds are blowing the whole situation out of proportion. I don’t want you out on the streets.”
Lena appealed to Máma, but she was no use. “Your father knows best,” she said.
At the Café Slavia that evening, all discussion focused on the demonstration. The anarchists were going to join in. A journalist from an American newspaper was in town. Peter had talked to someone who said a British Labour Member of Parliament would be there. The world would see that Czechoslovakia was not like Austria, would not be wiped off the map without a fight.
Otto sat with his arm around Lena, making it clear to everyone that she was now his girlfriend. Lotti smiled in approval; Eva grinned. She was with the new man in her life, a fellow named Heinz. He had recently arrived in Prague from Budapest.
“What exactly is this little march going to achieve?” he said in a booming voice. He had a thick Hungarian accent. “Your president has already ordered the troops to the frontier, no?” He finished one cigarette and used it to light the next.
“This is not a little march,” Peter said. “It’s going to be huge.”
“It’s important for the masses to keep the pressure on the government,” Otto said. “To show Beneš that he must not back down.”
“I can’t believe my father won’t let me go,” Lena said.
“Come anyway,” Otto said. “How’s he going to stop you?”
“You don’t know my father. He’ll lock me in my room, if necessary.”
“So don’t go home tonight,” Otto said. “Come stay with me.”
Lena blushed, and everyone laughed and raised their glasses to toast that suggestion.
Lena woke up in Otto’s bed and made love with him again in the dawn light; she watched as he made coffee at the tiny stove in the corner, and then walked across the river with him hand-in-hand to join a massive demonstration of unity; she saw friends from school, from the café, even two women from the textile office. She thought this had to be the most exhilarating day of her life. By early evening, she was jubilant but exhausted, her feet sore and her cheeks sunburned. She wanted to relax, take a hot bath, maybe curl up and read to Sasha, then have an early night.
But the thought of home made her realize the repercussions she was sure to face. She hesitated after crossing the Bridge of Legions, her flat in sight, wincing at what might lie ahead. Perhaps Father would not be home. Perhaps, she tried to convince herself, he would be preoccupied and forget she had not returned last night. Perhaps Máma would have covered for her in some way, or perhaps . . . but she ran out of other possibilities, of ways to imagine this marvelous day not ending badly. She pressed her thumbs together and entered the apartment on tiptoe.
Father cornered her on the way to the bathroom. “You deliberately disobeyed me,” he said through clenched teeth.
He took a swing at her. She tried to dodge, but not in time. He clipped her hard across the face. She dashed into the bathroom and locked the door. She saw her reflection in the glass: the left side of her face was inflamed, and blood dripped from her nostrils. She dabbed her nose with her handkerchief and gingerly touched her cheek and forehead. She was going to end up with a monstrous black eye.
Máma knocked on the bathroom door. “Are you all right?”
“What do you think?” Lena screamed. “I hate him. I’m never going to speak to him again.”
Two weeks later, Otto told her the Economic Information Bureau was moving to Paris. It was a Thursday morning, and she stood at her desk, had not even had a chance to sit down yet, when he sprang the news. She felt the wind knocked out of her.
“Why?” she gasped.
“Madrid thinks it’s no longer safe for us to stay in Prague,” Otto said. “Sooner or later, Hitler will be here.”
Lena collapsed into her chair. Her immediate thought was not her fear of Hitler arriving but that of Otto leaving—she would lose her job and her lover. Tears welled up; she turned her face away, unsure if she should let him see her cry. He came from behind and stooped to wrap his arms around her.
“Come with me to Paris,” he said, kissing her ear.
Now she could not stop the tears. “How can I do that?” she said. “My parents will never let me.”
“They may. You don’t know if you don’t ask.”
“I’m not speaking to my father,” Lena said.
“Ask your mother, then.”
CHAPTER 4
UPPER WOLMINGHAM, SUSSEX, ENGLAND, FEBRUARY 1940
Otto hunched over the typewriter at the table by the window, trying to nail down his analysis of the final months of the Republican resistance in Barcelona. The k and m keys jammed together again. He cursed and carefully disentangled them, getting ink on his fingers. He became aware of a repetitive whining noise and something rubbing against his leg. Mas
aryk emitted a piercing meow: breakfast was long overdue. Otto didn’t care for cats, but he had come to grudgingly accept the stray’s presence in the cottage. He had referred to him only as “the cat” until the Czechs had arrived at Oak Tree Cottage three months earlier, and someone, probably Peter, had decided to name the cat after a national hero: Masaryk, their first president.
Looking up from his work, Otto gazed out through the diamond-shaped lattice panes fringed with lead, as he struggled to summarize the role of the Soviet secret police in the defeat of the revolutionaries. The condensation from the morning dew was now clearing, and he saw the milkman making his way up the village street, his bottles clanking in their crates. Today was Wednesday: he would be expecting his weekly payment.
“Masaryk, if you behave yourself, I’ll give you the top of the milk,” Otto said, as he rose and stretched his long limbs.
He searched for the earthenware jar where they stored their cash. In the kitchen, the deep stone sink with its single tap, the sole source of water in the cottage, was piled high with unwashed plates and cups from the previous night. The jar on the window-sill contained only one 10-shilling note and a pile of change. The others would receive their allowance from the Czech Refugee Trust Fund tomorrow, to restock the piggy bank. Otto’s own funds were depleted, the small advance he’d received for his book long gone. The group shared their resources, paltry as they were. Luckily, they didn’t have to pay rent.
He scooped up a handful of coins from the bottom of the jar and met the milkman at the front door.
“Morning, guv,” the milkman chortled, clearly in a good mood. “What will it be today?”
“Two pints, please.”
“Coming right up, sir. That’ll make it three and ninepence ha’penny for the week.”
When Otto had arrived in England, he’d been completely baffled by the ridiculous currency. But he could now distinguish the half crowns, the florins, the sixpenny and threepenny pieces, and the tiny farthings. He sifted through the coins in his hand. There was some satisfaction in giving the exact change, as if this constituted a refusal to be defeated by the system.
Back in the kitchen, he reached for a saucer and poured off the rich cream topping for the cat at his feet. Upstairs, floorboards creaked. Otto braced himself for the onslaught; he knew he would get no more writing accomplished until the morning chaos had subsided. He heard the higher-pitched female tone that meant that Lotti and Peter were awake. The men allowed the couple the privilege of sleeping in the front bedroom upstairs, while they squeezed together in the tiny back room—but the thin walls offered little privacy.
Emil bounded into the living room, filling it with his adolescent energy. Barely eighteen, he was the youngest of the group and still inhabited his body as if it were on short-term rental, loaned for some special occasion but, unfortunately, three sizes too large.
“Mein Gott, Otto, it’s freezing down here. Why didn’t you light a fire?”
“I’m trying to save coal.”
Emil scooped yesterday’s ashes into the bucket and carried them outside. The back door led to a small garden, the outside toilet, and the coal shed. A blast of wind whipped the shed door back on its hinges, slamming it into the wall of the cottage with a loud thud. Emil returned with wood kindling and crouched in front of the fireplace.
“I’ll do it,” Otto said, edging him out of the way.
Otto prided himself on having acquired, through patient trial and error, the ability to create a perfect coal fire. It was quite different, he had discovered, from woodstoves. Besides, this fireplace had its own little quirks. Otto had lived here for five months before the others arrived, and felt he was the only one who understood this. He tore strips from yesterday’s Times and interlaced them with the twiglets of oak to construct a pyramid, an infrastructure of support for a few strategically placed lumps of coal.
Emil was at his side with two cups and offered one to Otto. Otto wasn’t fond of the ritual English cup of tea, but good coffee was impossible to find.
“Anything in this morning’s post?” Emil asked.
“Nothing. But the second delivery should be here soon.” Otto lit a match to the base of the fire.
“I can’t believe how long it takes for letters to get here,” Emil said.
Otto opened his mouth to say something but stopped himself. The boy eagerly anticipated the postman every day, waiting to hear from his older brother, Josef. Josef had been traveling with Peter, Emil, and Lotti the previous summer as they’d made the dangerous crossing from Czechoslovakia into Poland, but they had separated in Katowice. Josef had wanted to wait for his girlfriend to join him and had urged Emil to go ahead with the others; he had not been heard from since. Emil was still under the illusion that Josef would make it to England. Otto thought his chances slim and feared the worst, but Lotti made him promise not to voice these thoughts in front of Emil.
“Ja, alles ist unterbrochen. Everything’s disrupted.” A vague, fatuous statement—but a promise was a promise.
Otto didn’t like to admit it, but he himself experienced an odd fluttering in his chest every time the postman approached. He was expecting a letter from Lena. She should have obtained her visa by now. He liked to pride himself on his objectivity. Being alone in the world allowed him to be free of illusions, with no need to gloss over danger. But he had to get Lena here. Yes, it would be nice to have the warmth of another body in the bed at night. He remembered her smooth, wide cheeks and bright blue eyes, her lithe tenderness. But it wasn’t that. He was the one who had brought her to Paris; he had to get her out. He was convinced that Hitler was just waiting for warmer weather before launching his next attack, and he did not believe France would be safe.
Lotti came downstairs, heading for the fire with hands outstretched. Otto watched as she picked up Masaryk and held the cat between her breasts, nuzzling her chin against its neck. He followed the curves of her figure under her tight green pullover and wool skirt. She had a pretty face from this angle, with smooth skin and a slightly pointed chin. She closed her eyes and rocked the cat gently back and forth. Otto felt a stirring in his groin and forced himself to look away. Although they were a self-declared commune and shared just about everything else, there was no suggestion that Peter would share his girlfriend.
She went to the kitchen. “Anything come in the post?”
“Nothing yet.”
He ran his fingers over the coarse stubble on his jaw. He should have shaved before anyone else was up; now he would have to wait for a chance to use the sink. He could hear Lotti running water and banging pots and realized he should have made a start on cleaning up, but she seemed to be doing it now.
“You should hear back from Lena soon, don’t you think?” Lotti raised her voice over the noise.
“Yes. We’ll have to see if she had any luck with the letter from Muriel’s aunt.”
Emil looked up from The Times. “Her word worked for you, didn’t it?”
“It did, but she was there in person at the port in Newhaven— that’s the thing.”
Pure chance. Muriel was the one who had sponsored him, but she was sick that day, came down with a bad cold, couldn’t make the journey. So she asked her aunt to meet Otto in her place. He still chuckled at the memory. Mrs. Courtney-Smithers: his first introduction to the realities of the English social-class system. All Otto knew was that some eccentric left-wing woman was going to be there to vouch for him. When he arrived at the immigration counter, he saw a regal-looking white-haired lady with a uniformed chauffeur at her side—not at all what he was expecting.
“Ma’am, how do you know this, er, this Mr. Eisenberg?” asked the officer, shuffling through Otto’s papers.
“It’s my niece who is sponsoring him.”
“How does she know him?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea.”
The woman spoke as if that were an absurd question. She held her head erect and wore a jacket rimmed with fur. She must have been short
er than the officer, but in Otto’s recollection she seemed to tower above him.
The officer hesitated. “Well, ma’am. Er . . . hmm. Do you know anyone who could provide a reference for him?”
She gave him a long, cold stare and said in what was clearly, even to Otto’s untrained ear, the haughtiest upper-class accent “Young man, surely my word is good enough.”
Of course, that was before the start of the war. The latest plan to get Lena here had been Peter’s idea: a letter from Mrs. Courtney-Smithers would have some influence, a visitor visa easier to come by.
“Can I get some help in here?” Lotti said.
Otto hauled himself up from the sofa. In the kitchen, Lotti handed him a dish towel and pointed at the clean plates draining on the counter. Sleeves rolled up to her elbows, she immersed her hands in the sink full of suds.
“Did you hear the weather forecast?” she said, handing a clean saucepan directly to Otto, as the counter was full. She leaned forward to peer at the sky above the garden hedge. For an instant, her breast brushed against his forearm.
“It’s supposed to snow again later.”
“I should wake Peter. Muriel asked him to fix her fence. The dog keeps getting out. Peter should get over there before the snow starts.”
“I’ll do it.”
The prospect of getting out of the house was appealing. It would be nice to see Muriel, and he could take a bath there. And surely he could patch up a fence. Why should Peter do it and get all the credit?
Lotti regarded him with a look of amusement. “Take Emil with you, then, if you’re going to work on the fence.”
“I can do it.”
“Take him anyway. He needs something to do.”
“Who needs something to do?” Emil stooped in the doorway, with a mischievous lopsided grin.