My Enemy's Cradle

by Sara Young

  "You worry me, I guess," he said. "And I don't think you have anyone else."

  We sat in silence for a minute. Then Karl reached over and touched my chin, carefully turned my face to him. "I think you're in trouble. And I think you're alone."

  It was the truth of the words that undid me. All the sorrow I'd held back for so long was about this—I was alone. I curled over, my face in my hands, and began to cry.

  Karl pulled me to him and held me. "Start at the beginning."

  And so I told him. I told him what had happened the night of Anneke's death and what my aunt had done about it. I didn't tell him I hadn't already been pregnant—I was ashamed of that now. I told him the plan, and that Isaak hadn't come for me and that I had just learned why. "He's at Westerbork. He's strong," I said, as if Karl needed the reassurance. "And he volunteered, so maybe he can leave..."

  Karl let me go then. "Do you love him?"

  I was surprised by his question, but I nodded.

  "Does he love you?"

  I wiped my eyes and looked out the window at the snow before answering. It was falling in heavy swirls now and glowing in the warm light that spilled from the inn's windows. "It's getting deep," I said. "Maybe we should get back."

  But Karl just watched me.

  "Isaak won't allow it. He says caring about someone is a liability with the world the way it is—that he might make mistakes if he loved someone."

  "He's right." Karl surprised me again. "I feel that way about my sister and my niece. I probably do make mistakes because I love them, because I'm afraid of what might happen to them. But they give me something to hold on to. I don't know what would happen if I didn't have that. I don't know if I would survive."

  I looked into his eyes and saw that he was serious. Sister Ilse had used that word, too. Then I saw his next thought. "Isaak won't do anything stupid. He'll be fine!"

  Karl spread his hands. "I only mean ... he's not coming for you. That's the point. What are you going to do now?" He didn't wait for an answer. "Look, I can help you."

  "How? Can you find out if he's all right? Can you get a message to him?"

  "Well, maybe. I still have that friend stationed in Schiedam. But what I was thinking of was ... Idon't think your plan was very good in the first place. I think that a Jew coming to rescue you in Germany would be incredibly difficult and dangerous. I could help you with that. You really just need to get out of here safely before your baby is born—is that right?"

  I nodded. He might get a message to Isaak.

  "I'll ask some questions. When I learn something, I'll let you know." He pulled out a pen and wrote down some numbers on the bakery box between us on the seat. "Meanwhile, if you need anything, call me. The first number will reach me during the day. Use the second number at night."

  Relief and gratitude melted through me. I smiled at him and for the first time, it wasn't a lie. "Look. I've soaked your coat." I pulled out a handkerchief and began to dab at the stains I'd left on his chest—so many tears. There would be no more. "Do you really think it's possible to get a message to him?"

  "I'll try. Tell me his last name."

  I wiped off a button and I saw it—the German eagle pressed into the brass. I recoiled as if I'd been clawed by those talons.

  "Cyrla?"

  "Take me back."

  FIFTY

  Corrie was sitting on my bed when I got back. "Does he know?"

  I hung up my new coat slowly, then took off my wet shoes.

  "I saw him with you today. Doesn't he know?"

  "No, he doesn't."

  Corrie nodded as if she'd expected this. She got up. "You're lucky. My whole town knew. I didn't have the choice of telling my boyfriend or not. He wouldn't speak to me after. As if I'm the one who's dirty." She went to the door and stopped. "Whose is it?"

  "I don't know. I think it's ... Karl's. But I don't know."

  "You're lucky, then," she said again. She opened the door and then stopped one more time. "How was it afterward? How is it now, when he sleeps with you?"

  I shook my head. "We haven't ... it happened right after he left."

  "Well, I'll tell you how it will be. You will never be free of it. When any man touches you, you will feel the other one's hands. He'll always be with you. The two who did it to me will always be there. Forever." Then she left.

  I worried after that day. About everything, all the time. About Isaak, how being raped would change how he felt about me. But mostly about how I was going to get out of this place and what I would do after. About all the things I had told Karl. My hands no longer looked like Anneke's, I had bitten the nails so ragged. The baby seemed to sense my agitation—he moved restlessly now, as if pacing the dark waters of my womb. When I held Klaas, he fussed and squirmed in my unquiet arms. I lost weight at both of the next two weigh-ins and spent all my time sitting on my bed and staring out at the cold mountains.

  I got a second blue notice in my mailbox and of course I worried about that: Two weeks would be obvious to an obstetrician—how could I have been so foolish? I practiced looking surprised, perplexed, then shrugging it off. Mistakes happen, I might say. Then I worried my practiced response would give me away.

  But nothing did. The exam was unpleasant—in a cold room with harsh lights, and even there, photographs of Hitler frowned down from the walls. But the doctor didn't act as if he were surprised at anything he found, and soon enough it was over. I could dress.

  "All is fine, young lady," the doctor said when he came back. "The heartbeat is strong, and I don't see any signs that the birth will be difficult. You seem a little small for twenty-six weeks, but it's nothing to be alarmed about. I don't want to see another weight loss, though. You're taking the vitamins, of course?"

  I assured him I was and got up to leave.

  "Babies grow at their own rate," he said. "There's nothing any of us can do to change that."

  The next morning, I was told I had a visitor.

  "We're going to take a walk. I've already signed you out."

  I didn't bother arguing. In the car, I asked Karl what he had come for.

  "I have some things to talk over with you."

  I turned to face him, waiting.

  "Not yet. I know a good place for a walk. It's like spring today."

  We drove in silence for about fifteen minutes, then turned off to a narrow rutted road. We stopped in front of a barn beside a broad meadow.

  "A friend of mine grew up here," Karl said. "His family used to raise sheep. Until the sheep were 'liberated.'"

  He opened my door to help me out and I stepped away from his hand. "All right," I said. "What do you want to talk about?"

  "Not yet. Let's walk a while first."

  I shrugged and started down the path along the edge of the meadow. Karl walked beside me, matching my slow pace—at six months, the baby nudged my lungs, making me short of breath easily. After a while he broke the quiet. "It's nice out. Warm for March."

  It was more than nice out—it was glorious, with the mist rising from the fields carrying the scent of softening earth, and spring chasing winter away with such confidence—but I didn't answer him. The eagerness in his voice, the whole business of taking me away on an outing as if we were friends, angered me. I had spent the past two weeks arming myself—reminding myself of all the things I'd almost forgotten about Karl. About what he had done to my cousin. And what his uniform had done to people I loved. About what someone in his uniform had done to me. I didn't want to allow him to give me the smallest of pleasures, even a walk on a warm, sunny day. If I enjoyed it, I would enjoy it in secret.

  We stopped by a tree, still winter-bare but somehow the first haze of bloom shimmered in the air around it. "That's an apple; a Bietigheimer, I think," Karl said. "They don't keep well, but they make good wine. Do you have them in Holland, or is the ground too low? They like their roots dry." He snapped off a twig, the tiniest pale green buds bursting miraculously from the gray wood, and handed it to me. "The wood is
wonderful to carve. You can smell the apple in it."

  I nodded and put the twig into my pocket, fingering the satin buds slyly. "It looks like a regular apple tree. We have apple trees in Holland."

  Karl kicked at some weeds by the side of the path. "Lamb's-quarter? Goldenrod? You have those in Holland, too?"

  I narrowed my eyes and looked straight ahead.

  "Come on. I only want to talk. Why won't you talk with me?"

  "We're talking."

  "You know what I mean. I want to help you. Anneke would have asked me to do that. But the truth is, I want to, anyway. So you might as well get used to me. I can be extremely charming, you know. You haven't seen anything yet."

  For a second I almost smiled in spite of myself. But I walked away from him.

  Karl sighed and followed. The crunch of the winter grasses beneath our steps grew louder in the quiet. Then he stopped and turned me to him with a hand on my shoulder. I looked at his hand and thought unexpectedly, Bullets to the back of the neck.

  "Cyrla, listen to me. I didn't walk out on Anneke. I swear to you I didn't know she was going to have a baby. Until you believe me, things are going to stay like this. And I don't want them to."

  Two hawks circled over the far end of the meadow, near the tree line. I watched them, waiting.

  "I didn't want to tell you this if Anneke hadn't. But now I think I should. That last night we met, Anneke didn't tell me she was pregnant. She didn't get a chance to. I knew she had news, but I couldn't wait for it. I'd been working up the courage to tell her something all week, and I had to do it while I could. Cyrla, I told her I was leaving for Germany and that I wanted to end things because I wasn't in love with her. It just didn't feel right anymore, not to tell her the truth."

  My cheeks flushed at this blow to Anneke's pride, at how unfair it felt with her not here. Well, what if what Karl was saying was true? But it wasn't. How could any man not have loved An-neke? No, he was just trying to shift the blame.

  "Cyrla, did you hear me? I'm ashamed of myself for that night because when I saw how much I had hurt her, how devastated she was, I thought it was just because she couldn't bear to lose me. I was so stupid and so arrogant."

  "You were worse than that, Karl. Look what happened."

  "A hundred times since you told me what happened, I've wished things had been different. If only I'd let her speak first. I don't know for sure what I would have done if I'd known about the baby, but I know I wouldn't have left her alone with it. I might have married her. Or maybe she would have ended up here, where you are. But she wouldn't have been alone."

  I let my expression tell him—That's easy to say now.

  "In any case, I think she would be alive now. So you're right: I'm to blame for her death. But not the way you think. And it's important to me that you know this."

  I studied his face, trying to find where he was hiding his lie. I couldn't. But still...

  "Cyrla, do you believe me?"

  I looked away. In the distance were deep forests, the kind of forests that sheltered wolves. Holland had no such forests. No wolves. "Anneke wouldn't lie." But I wondered. I started to walk again, but Karl caught my hand.

  "Cyrla, is this always going to be between us?"

  I pulled my hand away.

  "Fine, then. I give up. But whatever you feel about me, I'm going to try to help you." He motioned to a sunny spot on the stone wall along the path. "Let's sit down. I'll tell you what I've learned."

  I sat and when he sat beside me, I almost shifted away. But I didn't—I realized with surprise that my irritation with him was spent the instant he had said he had given up. And now it seemed childish.

  "I did some research. I've thought about everything. I'd really like you to listen."

  "Go ahead."

  Karl took a deep breath and began. "Here's how I see it. You have three choices. First, you could run away before the baby is born and try to make it back to Holland. I guess that's what you're planning to do?"

  I hesitated, but then I said yes.

  "Well, I think that's a pretty bad idea—your worst choice, in fact—but if that's what you end up deciding to do, at least I can help."

  I edged forward and stared back at him. "How?"

  "Well, I could get you out of the home, of course. That part would be easy. But then I could take you closer to the border. We have four hours on an outing, so I could drive you four hours closer before anyone would count you missing."

  He had my full attention now. "You would really do that?"

  "Yes. And then I'd say we'd gone in the opposite direction, though—to Salzburg, for example—and you'd run away from me there. That would buy you a little time."

  "That's good," I agreed carefully. It was better than good, though. If I could trust him to do all that.

  "No, it's really not," Karl said. "You still have all the problems. Once you're declared missing, Anneke's papers will be useless. A four-hour drive might get you halfway. That leaves a lot of distance to cover with people looking for you. You couldn't get through a checkpoint, and you certainly wouldn't be able to cross the border."

  "Do you have a better idea?"

  "I do. Much better. You stay here until the baby is born—"

  My hands flew up. "No!"

  "Just hear me out."

  I pressed my lips together and then nodded.

  "All right. Don't say anything until I'm finished. Here's what I've learned: I am the first choice for the adoptive father of your baby. I wanted to find out if I could take the baby without being married if my sister agreed to raise him. The main offices are right in Munich, in the Herzog-Max-Strasse, so instead of writing the petition, I made an appointment to see Dr. Ebner."

  "You didn't! He's going to be watching me now."

  Karl put his hand over mine and squeezed it. "I did you a favor. He's met me and I've claimed paternity in person. Now listen to me. You need to hear this, Cyrla. What you do is your choice, but you need to know the options."

  "Fine, Karl. I'll hear you out. But I'm not going to stay here."

  "Dr. Ebner gave permission. And Erika agreed. So that's where it stands now—I'm going to adopt him officially."

  "What? You had no right. I would never allow that!"

  "Well, remember—you don't have any say in it. If your baby is born here, he will be adopted. And if I want him, I can have him."

  "But he won't be born here. That's why I'm leaving."

  "If you're leaving, what difference does it make what the adoption papers say? Now calm down. I'm almost finished. Let's just say you did stay and have your baby here and I've arranged to take him. You could go home safely the next day if you want. Have you thought about that?"

  "No. Because I'm not going to be here."

  "Well, think about that part. You'd be escorted back to Holland. Because you wouldn't have run away, Anneke's papers would be fine, and there would be no reason you couldn't keep using them. You could live anywhere."

  For a moment, I tried to imagine so many of my problems simply disappearing. I couldn't take it in, except piece by piece. I could leave Steinhöring. They would drive me to the border. I could walk down the clean, wide streets of Holland again, without fear. I'd look up Leona, maybe share a flat with her. Or Neve. I could search for my family, find out about Isaak. Each one of these would be a miracle.

  Karl watched me patiently until I came back to the most important thing.

  "It would only be temporary," he rushed to assure me. "We'd care for the baby only until you were settled and we could find a way to get him to you. He'd be safe with us, Cyrla."

  I just sat there for a few moments, completely overwhelmed. The very appeal of the idea felt dangerous.

  "I promise you he'd be safe."

  I thought about what Karl was promising; then I thought about what he couldn't. I shook my head.

  "Why? Do you really think I'm going to steal your child?"

  "No, it's not that." I ran my fingers over the ed
ge of the stone I was sitting on, picked at a patch of lichen, then patted it back in place. Lichen could grow for a hundred years, I'd once read, before a human being would notice the growth. "Isaak is Jewish. He has black hair. All the babies born at the home are blond, Karl. What if—"

  "We'll plan to take him away immediately, then. I don't think that's anything to worry about. Erika can say that Lina had black hair when she was born, too. I could arrange to be there and say it's a family trait."

  "You don't understand. You don't know what the Lebensborns are really about."

  He also didn't know what my family was about—its history of abandoning children under the pretense of keeping them safe running like poison through its veins.

  "I do know. This baby you're carrying is supposed to grow up in a German home. They're pleased I'm going to take him. And Cyrla, you're talking about a day-old baby."

  I thought about what had happened to Neve's day-old baby and shuddered. "I won't take that chance. I don't even want to talk about it anymore."

  Karl raised his hands in surrender. "Fine. You don't have to decide today. But think about it."

  "I don't have to think about it. I've made my decision, and it's final."

  "You want to try running?"

  "If you'll help me, I could do it. But Karl ... how fast are the trains? If you put me on a train in Munich instead, could I reach the border in four hours?"

  Karl snapped off a switch of dried weed; last year's shriveled seed pods still clung to the tips. He stripped them and tossed them away, frowning. "Maybe. Probably five or six. But it's a help. I could still say you got away from me in Salzburg, and then they shouldn't be looking for you anywhere else. That's better. But you'd still be alone, and your papers would be no good. I don't like it, Cyrla."

  "What if someone were waiting for me at the border. My aunt?"

  "Well..."

  "That's it, then. I have to find her. And then I can go! When, do you think?"

  "I suppose as soon as you're sure you've got someone waiting for you. With new papers."

  "And if I don't have that? If I don't reach her?"