My Enemy's Cradle

by Sara Young

  But I could hardly hope to convince a town of this. Anneke was right. She could not stay here. So we would move.

  EIGHT

  That night I dreamed of my parents, the same image I'd seen often in my sleep. They were lying in their bed; my father on his back, my mother on her side, folded against him with her head over his heart, tucked under his left arm. My mother's hair was loose and it cascaded in an arc of rippling amber up over my father's shoulder and into his beard and hair, where it gleamed gold against the black. My father's other arm crossed his chest just below his ribs, and his fingers rested entwined with my mother's at the small of her waist. A composition of perfect peace. The linking arc of hair and the linking arc of arms formed a circle, beautiful in its completion, terrible in its exclusion.

  For this was the dream: I approach my parents, desperate to be inside their circle, but they don't break open for me. They can't; their hands are melded together—they show me by lifting their arms helplessly—and their hair is woven into one rope. Sorry, sorry.

  I awoke with it fresh in my mind, sore as a bruise, and found Anneke gone.

  It was just for the day, I reminded myself. Just this one appointment and she would be home tomorrow. And then I would tell her the new plan, the one I'd made before I fell asleep.

  At breakfast, my aunt didn't want to talk about what had happened last night. We talked instead about the work we would do that morning, and as it was not much, we lingered at the kitchen table with coffee and sunlight warming us.

  I plucked a dead leaf from a geranium. "Tante Mies," I said. "Tell me about my parents."

  My aunt looked up sharply. I didn't ask about them often. "What do you want to know?"

  "Well, how they were when they met. How they were before I remember them."

  My aunt leaned over and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. "How do you remember them, Cyrla?"

  "Close together." I hadn't known I would say this. "I always remember them standing or sitting very close to each other, touching. When I think of them, I always think of them together." I rested my chin on my fists and considered this. "Except, I remember my mother alone with me in the kitchen. She spoke Dutch then. I thought people spoke Dutch when they cooked." For a second I was lost in that kitchen, my mother's arms white up to the elbows with flour, her face bright with reflecting me.

  "Ja, from the beginning, it was as though they had always been together. And as though they were two parts of some whole. Although they were so different! You're a lot like your mother, you know that? Sometimes I see so much of her in you; so much of her spirit. She loved your father very much. And you're right, they were always close together, always touching."

  I realized that I never saw my aunt and uncle touching. I never saw my uncle touch anyone, in fact. I knew by her face that my aunt was thinking this also.

  "Your uncle loves us," she said. "His way is just different. He likes rules. And what Anneke did ... well..."

  What did Anneke do? I wondered. Were there rules for love? I was sure if I were ever lucky enough to be part of a whole with someone, that would be enough. I would never ask love to follow rules.

  "And with that paper last night ... he's only worried."

  I lifted my palms to her. It didn't matter anymore. But she wanted to explain.

  "It's complicated. He's not a sympathizer—you know that. Cyrla, listen to me. Try to understand. Your uncle's family was rich. But they'd invested in czarist bonds; a lot of Dutch had. When the Bolsheviks canceled all their foreign debts, they lost much of their wealth. Your uncle had to leave the university and learn a trade. I don't think he ever got over it."

  I thought of my uncle, putting up new drapes in our parlor each spring. Only in the parlor—the one room which overlooked the street. The first spring I was there, I remember my aunt scolding him for lining them with the same russet satin as the drapes themselves. "Who are these for, Pieter?" she'd asked. "Us? Or the people passing by?"

  "It's good for business," he'd answered.

  But I could tell from his face that my aunt's words had opened an old wound. And when she made things from the still-usable fabric of the drapes he took down—coverlets for our bed from the gray-striped damask; capes for Anneke and me from the bottle-green velvet—he scowled.

  "So in the beginning," my aunt was saying, "before you arrived, Hitler's anti-Bolshevism appealed to him. But not now."

  "Then what is he telling me?" I crossed my arms and braced myself.

  My aunt pushed her coffee away and steepled her hands to her lips. "Jews are supposed to register. It's a terrible rule. We don't want any of the Germans' rules. But he's worried about that one. About breaking it. And now with the new restrictions ... I can talk to him, though."

  "No, don't," I said.

  ***

  As soon as the housework was done, I telephoned Isaak at work. "Meet me. I need to talk with you."

  "Cyrla, I can't. Where would we meet?"

  "The park on Burgemeester Knappertlaan," I suggested. It was a beautiful day; we would walk.

  I heard Isaak sigh and then I remembered: There was no place Isaak could go without breaking the new restrictions, except within the Jewish quarter. And he didn't want me to go there. But he couldn't keep me away.

  "I'll come to the Council now," I told him.

  "No, that's not good, you know it. We can talk on the telephone."

  "Isaak, wait. My uncle's shop is closed today. Meet me there in an hour."

  "Cyrla, no. I put a lot of people in danger if I get caught...."

  "The back door," I said. "Just this once."

  As I dropped the receiver into the cradle, I was struck by something: I always needed a reason to see Isaak, a problem for him to solve. I presented my problems to him like coins to pay for my admittance to him.

  Isaak was irritated, I could tell when I opened the door for him. He walked in, and just as he did I realized what he would see: counters covered with bolts of brown wool. It would be so easy for him to ask what such a big order was for.

  "The roof. It's safer." I took his hand and led him to the stairs, and for an instant I felt him stiffen. Isaak didn't understand touch. How much having no family had cost him. He'd been raised by good men, he told me; he'd spent the first few years of his life in an orphanage, but then the elders in the synagogue of his town had seen to him. No one had held him at night, though, to explain to him through his skin how he was loved. Isaak never pulled away when I touched him. But he never returned the touch.

  He relaxed on the roof. We walked to the edge and gazed out. The brick houses with their stepped roofs glowed ocher in the afternoon sun, the canal was a cool ivy green, and the trees were turning gold as far as we could see. It was quiet and peaceful above the sounds of the street, and when I looked at Isaak, I could tell he was wishing he had brought his sketch pad.

  "Listen, Cyrla," Isaak said. He crossed to the other side of the roof. "An oriole. I think he must be in those pear trees. But that's his mating song. I've never heard it so late in the season."

  "He has no mate yet?" I thought of Rilke's poem about the coming of autumn, the one that haunted me. I recited the lines to Isaak.

  He who has no house now, will no longer build.

  He who is alone now, will remain alone.

  "Like your oriole." I said. Like us.

  "Well, not exactly. It's more likely he had a mate and she died. And if she died their babies most likely didn't live. If she even had a chance to lay eggs."

  I saw Isaak's face close, and knew we had stopped talking about birds. We settled ourselves on the sun-warmed gravel, our backs against the short wall.

  I told him about my uncle's threat and what Mrs. Bakker had said. That Anneke had told Karl about me. There was no point in hiding it anymore. "You're right," I said. "It's time to leave." I stole a secret glance at his face, to see if he felt pain at the thought of my leaving. But of course he was careful to hide his feelings.

  "I'll start maki
ng arrangements. The Verzet are good at this. I trust them."

  "No. I'm going to move, but not too far. Not out of the Netherlands. There's no need."

  I told him my plan, about how I would move to Amsterdam or Rotterdam and take a new identity. He could help me with that, I said. He only listened, nodded. Until I mentioned that An-neke would be moving with me. He lifted an eyebrow. I told him where she was and what my uncle had done.

  "I've heard of those places," he said, gathering a handful of gravel and shaking it in his palm. "Lebensborns. You know what they are, don't you?"

  "Places for girls to have their babies safely and not be ostracized."

  "Not exactly." Isaak sieved the gravel though his fingers. "Not exactly a humanitarian service. Do you know why they do it?"

  "She's pregnant by one of them. They're taking responsibility; they want her to be healthy and safe."

  "Yes, but why? Think of what the word 'lebensborn' means. Wellspring of life. Source of life."

  I felt Isaak studying me, waiting. He always said I should question things to their end. I wanted to please him now, so I thought about it through his mind. And there was the answer: "No."

  "Yes," Isaak insisted. "Those are dark cradles. 'Have one baby for the Führer' is the slogan. All German women, whether they're married or not, are expected to have children. Every place they take over, they will want to fill with their own. And they'll always want troops. Do you know what really frightens me about them? How far ahead they think. Babies aren't babies to the Nazis, Cyrla. They're resources. And now they're taking them from occupied countries."

  I pictured the child Anneke was carrying. A little boy, a little girl. The Germans wanted to take Dutch babies the same way they were taking our fuel, our food, and our textiles. A blessing ran through my head, one we had spoken at the naming of my youngest brother, Benjamin: May you live to see your world fulfilled, may your destiny be for worlds still to come, and may you trust in generations past and yet to be.

  I could almost smell Benjamin's soaped neck, could almost feel his rich damp weight on my hip, sleeping with his fingers twined through a loop of my braid so with every step I took, I felt the smallest of tugs. "I'll make her understand," I told Isaak. "She'll come with me."

  "She'll do what she wants to do," Isaak said. Bitterly, I thought. "But wait and see. She probably won't be accepted. Most girls aren't. Do you know about the tests?"

  I nodded yes, then shook my head.

  "They have to prove their lineage. Have to have acceptable hair color, eye color. Aryans, they call them. Desirables."

  Somewhere—I didn't know where—they were doing this to my cousin now. Could they measure her sweetness? Would the light she spilled over our family be acceptable? There was nothing more to be said. I was suddenly exhausted, as if I had been holding myself rigid for days. I leaned my head against Isaak's shoulder and felt him tense.

  Anneke had said that once two people began to touch each other, they would know how to make love. But Isaak needed to learn the language of touch first. And it would be up to me to teach him. Who else did he have?

  I lifted my hand to the base of his neck, where his shirt collar opened, and very gently stroked my fingertips against his throat, warm and smooth and summer-brown over the corded muscle. In an instant the world narrowed, and then poured into this deliberate questioning of skin. I held my breath for his answer.

  He took my hand and held it tight, and then pushed it away.

  "Cyrla, no. It isn't ... I have to get back." He got to his feet and looked away.

  I wanted to reach out and pull his eyes back onto me. I understood, though. He needed time to become comfortable with this new language. But we didn't have time.

  That night, when I washed the dishes after supper, I pulled a teaspoon from the hot suds and slipped it into my pocket.

  NINE

  The person who came home Sunday evening was not my cousin.

  When I came up to her, she flinched. She went straight to our room although it wasn't even nine o'clock, and when my aunt and I followed, at first she wouldn't answer our questions, wouldn't look at us with her wounded eyes. Or couldn't.

  "All right," my aunt said. She kissed Anneke. "We'll talk tomorrow." She left and I knew she was going to go find out from my uncle what had happened.

  Anneke stepped out of her dress and hung it up, something I had never seen her do. Thin crescents of white tipped her fingernails where the polish had worn off—I had never seen that, either. She put on her nightgown and pulled the blankets over her, all of her motions small and careful.

  I suddenly felt guilty, as if I had let her down. "I've thought this through. If you left, I'd leave, too. I don't want to be here without you—even if your father let me stay. So why don't you and I move away together? We'll get a place in Amsterdam, and jobs, and no one will know us. We'll tell people whatever you want."

  "I'm so tired, Cyrla" was all she said.

  "No, wait," I said. "Isaak told me about the Lebensborn. Where did you go? Tell me what happened."

  Anneke cringed, inched deeper under her blankets.

  I got up and sat on her bed and put my hand on her shoulder. She was cold under her nightgown, but she wasn't shivering. "No," I said again. "Please talk with me. I'm not going to sleep until you do. You're not going into that place, and they're not going to take the baby. Are you all right?"

  Anneke sighed and looked at me. "You don't understand." Her eyes were still far away, older and slow; something at her core had vanished. "I'm fine. It was nothing. I saw some doctors ... at the headquarters ... just some tests. They measured ... they measured everything. They asked about our family. That's all. I want to go to sleep now."

  "Anneke, do you hear me? You don't have to go." I suddenly had a wonderful idea. "Your mother's to go to Amsterdam tomorrow, to pick up that part your father needs for the order. Let's go with her. We'll see Frannie and Leisje. We'll ask them to help us find a place to live. We'll have fun."

  Anneke slipped farther away. "Leave me alone, Cyrla." She rolled over. I grew angry with her for a moment, that she had gotten herself into this situation, and now wouldn't let me show her a way out. Later, when I heard her crying, I was ashamed.

  The next morning, she was up when I awoke.

  "Well," I said immediately, "Amsterdam?"

  "I'm going back to work today. But you go with Mama, Cyrla. It's a good idea. See what you can learn." She put on a gray woolen skirt and a wine sweater, and I thought she seemed better, stronger. "Will you go today?" she asked me a few minutes later, and she waited until I promised. I was pleased—my idea had given her hope.

  She talked with me while I dressed, and asked questions about Isaak and me. How did I feel when I was with him? How did he act? Was I sure? A hundred questions.

  "Is anyone ever sure?" I asked her. And then she gave me more advice, about how I'd know if he were the right one, what I might feel. I stopped listening. Isaak had been the one for me since the day I'd met him, the day I'd arrived in Holland. There was no question. What mattered was that Anneke seemed to be herself again. But she didn't check herself in the mirror before she went downstairs, and she didn't fix her nail polish.

  I should never have let her out of my sight.

  The train was crowded—they were always crowded now. The Germans had requisitioned our modern electric engines and left us with only older coal-burning ones, which broke down all the time, and the worst of the carriages. By the time we reached Amsterdam, there were hundreds of people on board, crushed shoulder to shoulder in the aisles so that if anyone fainted, he probably wouldn't hit the floor, while the last two carriages were empty—NUR FUR WEHRMACHT, the signs said, although there were no soldiers in them that day. I thought it was a good omen—all these people traveling to Amsterdam must mean there was work.

  The air was sooty and stale, but as Schiedam was early on the route, we had seats, so we felt lucky. On the way, my aunt told me what she'd learned last night. T
here was a home in Nijmegen, barely a hundred kilometers away, called the Gelderland. Anneke had passed all the tests and she was welcome to have her baby there. Most girls waited until they began to show to enter, but my uncle had pressed for her to go in right away. She was due there next Friday.

  "They have food. Fresh vegetables and fruits every day. Plenty of milk. All the finest quality. And it's not that far away—"

  "Tante Mies!" I interrupted her. "You're not thinking of letting her go?" But of course she was. I'd heard the words that swayed her—plenty of food, the best quality—words as nourishing to my aunt as the meals she could no longer make for us. Anneke and I had lost weight in the past year. Since meeting Karl, Anneke had grown even thinner, as if she had been burning hotter and faster at her core. Sometimes my aunt would reach out to pull at the loose waist of a skirt, visibly pained by the accusing fabric.

  "Ja, I am. We can't provide this for her here. I can't even feed her properly. They have doctors and nurses, she'll get the best medical attention—"

  "No!" I cried. Several people standing near glanced down at us, but I didn't care. "It's not what you think at all. Isaak told me: It's a Lebensborn. Do you know what that means? Did you ask what the tests were? Did you ask Oom Pieter what will happen to the baby? Where he'll go?"

  I told my aunt everything I had learned; then I told her what I wanted to do. There was no reason not to. We were at the end of all choices.

  My aunt listened carefully, listened to me for the first time as an adult. She didn't disagree with anything; even when I said Oom Pieter couldn't be told, she only turned toward the smudged window to look at the countryside rolling by and nodded.