My Enemy's Cradle (25 page)

"Nutrition. Sanitation. What is it ever? Who cares?"

It was seven-thirty. "I have a headache," I told her, my fingertips to my forehead. "I just need to go to bed early."

Neve studied me for a moment. "Do you want some aspirin?"

I forced a smile. "Really, I'm just going to bed."

"All right then, if you're sure," she said at last. Then she left.

The hour passed more slowly than any other. At last it was time. My hands shook. I pulled a run in my first pair of hose and fumbled with the buttons of my cardigan, then hung the velvet bag around my neck and tucked it inside my sweater. I looked bulkier than usual, but not obviously so. When I picked up my coat I realized the problem: I couldn't go downstairs wearing it, or even carrying it. Most of the girls were settled in the dayroom watching the film, but there could always be staff in the hallways.

I folded my coat into the bottom of my laundry basket, then covered it with the slip and shift I'd just taken off. I took a final look at my room, my home for five months, and then I walked out.

I met no one on the stairs, no one in the main hall. Sister Solvig passed in the east corridor and my heart jumped, but she merely nodded. At the end, the corridor split: To the right was the door for deliveries and to the left was the laundry. And if I continued past the laundry ... I looked down the hall and willed Leona's son to understand somehow. To not feel the poison of abandonment that withers hearts.

I stepped quickly to the right, pulled my coat from the basket, and tucked it under the stairway in the corner. I brought my basket to the laundry room so it wouldn't cause suspicion, then ran back and put on my coat.

The lights in the hall suddenly grew so bright they stung my eyes and left a shower of sparks on my eyelids. I placed my hands on the bolt, but I couldn't make my arms move to slide it open. Once more, I called upon my trick for bravery. All I had to do, I told myself, was walk to the clump of three fir trees about halfway down the walk. The Ladies Tideman, everyone called them. An earlier resident had christened them after her neighbors, three tall elderly spinsters who were always huddled together in their long dark dresses, whispering, sighing. I would just walk to The Ladies Tideman for some air—it wouldn't be so unusual—and then if I wanted, I could return.

But the trick didn't work. To what could I return? Karl was coming back. I pressed my father's letter to my chest for a second, slid the bolt, and stepped into the night.

The air was frigid and so clear it seemed to have sharpened the stars. A good sign: There'd be no more snow tonight. I ran to the stand of firs and angled myself into them. Even in the cold, the fragrance of the boughs was strong. It steadied me.

One guard. I could see when he lit his cigarette that he was alone. After a few moments, he lifted his wrist to the glowing butt to check his watch, then stubbed it out and walked. My heart raced, but I didn't move. Not yet. In less than ten minutes, he was back at his post.

My calves began to ache from my new weight; still I didn't move, only breathed the cold air in and out of my lungs steadily. Becoming part of the night. The guard left his post again, and still I didn't move—only shifted my position a little. He returned. If this was his routine, he was gone no more than six minutes, maybe seven. He was probably walking the length of the east boundary and back.

He was at his post longer this time—fifteen minutes passed at least. I felt myself coiling. He lit another cigarette, and when he bent into its glow I gasped, he seemed so close. He looked up sharply then, as if he had heard me, and stared into the trees for so long the match singed his fingers. He shook it away and then raised his head slightly, studying the building, smoking. At last he tossed his cigarette into the snow and walked back through the gate.

I took a deep breath and followed, staying on the snow for silence. I pressed myself into the wall, into the cold stones, to slow my heart. Beyond the entrance, the road lay in near-darkness except for two pools of thin yellow light below the main tower, forty meters away. I would run in the opposite direction, shadowing the wall, until I could cross to the other side where a hedge of evergreens offered some protection. The guard was nowhere in sight and I could hear nothing. I stepped out.

"Where do you think you're going?" He grabbed my forearm and spun me around. I tried to struggle out of his grasp, but his fingers were like steel. "Your soldier, the one you were out here with earlier? He's still in town?" The guard's laugh was knowing. "One visit from her tom, and the little cat needs to go find him at night. I've heard that about girls in your condition."

"No!" I spat. But then I shrugged and acted chastened.

He opened his coat and slid his gun back into his holster, the leather and steel creaking loudly in the frigid air. "What are you thinking? It's freezing out here."

"Please let me go," I tried. "I'll be careful. I'm warm enough."

"You're not allowed off the premises alone—you know that. Besides, he can come to your room. The father has privileges. Talk to Frau Klaus, she'll arrange it. Now let's get you back inside."

"I can make it myself," I assured him, cold.

But he walked me back—to the main gate this time—where he handed me off to the guard inside, a sergeant, and shared his insulting joke with him.

"This little cat's in heat. Thought she'd take a stroll into town to visit her soldier. Maybe I'll have to help her out when my shift is over." He thrust his hips back and forth at me, as if I might not have known what he meant.

The sergeant laughed and pushed away a plate of chicken legs and red cabbage salad to stand. In the bright lights of the entry hall, his lips gleamed with chicken fat. He reached for my chin, trying to lift my face to his; his greasy finger pressed into the triangle of flesh bruised by the
Oberschütze
and found the mark which would always wait there.

I turned on my heel without looking at them and stormed up to my room.

I peeled off the layers of clothing and dressed for bed, swamped with despair—I had gotten nowhere. Worse, I had alerted people, made them wary. From this moment on, I would make no mistakes. I would be the protection my baby needed—the wall, the fire, the bones. I owed him that.

When Neve came in, I lay still in the dark, pretending to be asleep. She was up all night—using the bathroom, tossing in her bed trying to get comfortable, groaning. I was up all night, too—my throat tight, my body rigid to the roots of my hair trying to hold back sobs.

In the morning, Neve looked bad, with old-woman eyes. She groaned when she got up, and balled her fists into her back.

I rolled over to watch her. She dressed in silence, as if speaking were too great an effort. Then she turned, waiting for me. I told her I didn't feel well and didn't want breakfast. As soon as I was sure she was gone, I buried my face in my pillow and let out the wail that had been building all night. Only one—even muffled, the sound frightened me too much. I got up then and rolled up the blinds. Things always seemed worse at night.

The day was clear, and whorls of fine frozen snow glittered in the air where gusts of wind blew through the fir boughs. But it didn't help. I had told Karl to come back today, and now I would have to face him, and worse, to face whatever he was going to do. I was still at the window when Neve came back. She handed me a napkin: Wrapped inside was a piece of bread folded over thick red jam.

"I couldn't eat," she said, as if she had to excuse her thought-fulness.

"Leona couldn't eat the day hers was born," I reminded her.

She nodded, then stepped beside me to look out the window. "I'm afraid."

I hugged her. "I'm afraid, too."

When she left, I washed up and dressed, but didn't leave the room. It was too late for both Neve and me. Now all we could do was open our eyes and cope with what we had set in motion when we were blind. I sat down on the bed again with Rilke's
Letters.

The book fell open to a passage on fate, on the joy of understanding that all incidents are woven together with a tender hand. How dare he advise anyone to be hopeful and trusting? But of course how could he have predicted this world? I closed the book and picked up Neve's biography of Amelia Earhart and began to read—soon enough there would come a knock at the door with the message that I was to go downstairs, that I had a visitor.

Soon enough, the knock came.

"
Ja,
" I replied, not looking up. Stealing the last second.

Suddenly I was aware of a presence—too large, too male. I jumped up. "What are you doing here? Get out!"

Karl looked bewildered. "They told me you'd asked for me to visit here. As a privilege."

The guard. "Well, I didn't." I put on my shoes. "You have no business coming into my room."

"Fine," he said. "Let's go down to the parlor." He picked up Neve's book. "Amelia Earhart..."

I grabbed the book from him. "She flew!" I said. I took my cardigan from the end of the bed and started toward the door, but then I dropped it again. "Never mind. We might as well talk here. It's private."

He unbuttoned his coat and looked at me as if I should offer to take it. I shook my head. "This won't take long."

He nodded and hung the coat over his arm. "What happened to her?"

And so I told him. What did it matter now? I stood and I made him stand; I hadn't earned any comfort yet, and Karl would never deserve it.

"All right. My uncle arranged for this, for her to come here. She couldn't face it, though. She—"

"Wait. She was pregnant?"

I glared my scorn at him. "You know she was. And she was devastated when you wouldn't stand by her. She lost everything, all her spirit, all her—"

"Mine? It was mine?"

"Stop it!" I hissed. "She told me everything. That she went to see you and you said you were engaged to someone else."

Part of me wanted him to tell the truth then. If he had just said,
Yes, I let her down, I was a coward and I left her alone with this,
I might have lowered my guard a little. It surprised me that I wanted to. But he didn't.

"I don't know what you're talking about; I'm not engaged to anyone!"

"I know that, too, now. I went to see you, but you'd left. Your friends told me the truth. Look, do you want to hear this or not?"

"Yes. Yes. But I swear I didn't know. She never told me that."

I waved my hand, cutting him off. "You lied to her. But she never knew it, and I'm glad for that. She died thinking you loved her, but just weren't free."

Karl turned away to look out the window, resting his forehead on the glass. At last he asked the hardest question. "Cyrla, tell me. How did she die?"

Suddenly there were rocks in my lungs and I couldn't catch any air. It was hearing my name the way Anneke had always said it—with the hint of a third syllable in the middle, as if it were lingering on her tongue, safe and loved. My name, sounding safe and loved in this man's mouth, was too much.

"How did she die? You killed her, Karl. You murdered her. You broke her heart and left her alone, so she tried to carve your baby from her body and she bled to death. That's how you murdered her."

"Cyrla!" He took a step toward me.

"Don't call me that," I warned him, backing away. "Call me Anneke."

Don't call me that, Isaak. Don't call me Anneke.

"She gave herself an abortion? She died from it? I don't understand this. Why didn't she tell me?"

I almost believed him, he looked so sincere. I could imagine him telling Anneke he loved her, his lie about a fiancée.

"Are you sure she even knew before I left? Because the last time we met, we talked about ... other things."

"You got her pregnant! She needed you! What other things could there possibly have been to talk about?"

Karl was silent a moment and I could see him thinking. Trying to come up with a lie I would believe.

At last he said, "If she didn't tell you, then she didn't want you to know. If she didn't tell you, then I won't, either."

The most cowardly lie. I reminded myself I already knew this, that he had no courage.

He came closer. "Cyrla. When did it happen? Were you with her? I'm so sorry—I know how much you loved her." He reached out, but I stepped away before he could touch me.

I shook my head at him, unable to speak for a moment. I could not reopen this wound, not in front of the man who had caused it.

I turned to my dresser and removed the layette my aunt had packed from the bottom drawer. Tucked into the yellow outfit that Anneke herself had worn, rolled into the tiny mittens, were my mother's ruby earrings, her barrette, her wedding band, which I had put there in the morning. I held them out to Karl.

He looked at the jewelry but made no move.

"Take it. It's all I have right now, but if you don't turn me in, I can get you more. I can get money."

He pushed my hand away. "You think you need to bribe me?"

I let my silence tell him what I thought of him.

He glanced back at the closed door, then spoke quietly. "This is not my war. Didn't Anneke tell you that? You can trust me."

I couldn't help myself. "Anneke trusted you."

His face closed. "That's enough. I don't know what would have happened if Anneke had told me. But I wouldn't have walked away."

"It is enough. I told you how she died. Now all I want to know is what it will take to get you to leave here. Not turn me in." I wrapped my arms around my belly, my child. So little protection. "If you cared about Anneke at all, please leave me alone. She would ask you to leave me alone."

"Cyrla, I have no intention of hurting you."

"You won't tell anyone?"

"Of course not."

"And you'll leave now?"

"Yes, all right. But wait—did you change the forms?"

"What? No, I'm sorry, not yet. I will. Today."

"Don't," Karl said. "Don't do it yet."

I waited. There was a new danger here; I could sense it, but I couldn't see its shape.

"I thought about it. If you do it now, you'll draw attention to yourself. And this way I can come to see you. I can make sure you're all right. I can bring you things."