My Enemy's Cradle (3 page)

"
Ja,
I know," I would always agree. What I never admitted, though, was how much I loved this about Anneke. Just a week before the invasion, she and I had seen
Ninotchka.
When I was with her, it was possible to believe that any day now we would be able to go to Greta Garbo's next film, or enjoy the feel of silk on our legs, or drink coffee in the middle of the day and gossip about fashion. We could think about entering the university again. And Isaak might allow himself to fall in love.
His
luxury.

"
Verdamt!
" Isaak swore softly. He ran his long fingers through his curls, in the way that always made me want to reach out and do the same. "That German soldier? This is bad. Has she told him?"

I stared at him, not understanding.

"Cyrla, it's going to come out, who you really are."

"Anneke would never do that."

"You can't walk around blind just because you don't want to see. Anneke won't care. She'll do whatever suits her."

"Why are you always so hard on her?"

"Because she's too easy on herself!"

Isaak said it as though he knew Anneke, but he didn't. Not the way I did. It was an old argument.

He sat beside me again. I tried to wrap my arms around him, but he held me away. "You're not safe anymore. It's time for you to leave. I'll start the arrangements."

"Don't. Nothing's changed."

"Everything will change. You heard about the restrictions yesterday."

"They don't affect me. And Anneke won't ... Isaak, all these years—how many times have you told me I'm not even Jewish because of my mother? Now, suddenly you're deciding I am?"

"To the Germans you are."

"I have papers. I'm perfectly safe. And I can't leave—this is where my father wants me to be."

Isaak looked away. "Don't. You know where this leads."

I did. I hadn't heard from my father in nearly five months. In his last letter, he reported that the Lodz ghetto was to be sealed. A few months before, he said, girls my age were forced to clean latrines with their blouses. When they were finished, the German overseers wrapped the filthy blouses around their heads. I'd gone to school with some of these girls.
I am grateful you are not here,
my father wrote.

If my family was in Lodz when they sealed the ghetto, Isaak said, then they couldn't have left afterward. Unless they had been relocated. "Relocated" meant something too terrible to be possible. His logic was harsh. He read me transcripts from his intelligence.

"Not my family," I would remind him. "They're working in a factory. That will keep them safe, my father told me."

Isaak shook his head. "Not for long. We think they're emptying the ghetto. They're taking them to the camps." He didn't stop even when I wept. I had to accept it, to know that my family might be lost; I had to know the danger. Most of all, I had to learn to be strong.

I hated Isaak when he did this, but I forgave him, because it was just his nature to see the worst, to see demons where none existed. He relied too much on logic, but I knew logic was not always the clearest lens. He should have understood; after all, he told me often enough that drawings told more truth than photographs—it took a human being to find the essence in things. But he'd been orphaned at birth, without a family. He couldn't know what I knew.

I knew how much life was in my father. I knew his passion for music and how much he loved his children; I had seen him dance with my mother. People with that much life couldn't disappear. My family's spirit was strong. Not hearing from my father only meant it was dangerous for him to write. His silence was keeping my brothers safe. Isaak and I had stopped arguing about this months ago.

"Last week we got two families out on a fishing boat from Noordwijk. They made it to England. There are still ways. You have papers; it won't be that difficult."

"I'm not leaving," I replied calmly.

"You have to. Anneke's marriage puts you at greater risk."

I was glad I hadn't mentioned Mrs. Bakker's words, or what I had overheard my uncle say. I got out of the bed and stepped into my shoes without looking at Isaak. If I looked at him, I would see the way his hair curled behind his ears, or the gold flecks in his brown eyes, or the crease in his cheek where he wore his rare smile, and I wouldn't be able to walk out of his room. If I didn't walk out of his room, I knew what I would say next: that I couldn't leave because I loved him, and because I had done enough leaving and he had had enough leaving done to him. And I couldn't bear to hear his answer. I crossed to the door.

Isaak followed and reached out to hold the door shut. His sudden nearness made my breath catch. "You can't go now. Wait until it's dark. Phone your aunt if you need to." He opened the door. "There's a telephone in the hall. I'll take you."

"I can find it," I told him coolly. How could he even think of sending me away? If you send people away, they can be lost forever. But it didn't matter. I was nineteen; no one could make me do anything I didn't want to do.

I called my aunt, suddenly hungry for her voice. From her tone, I could tell she hadn't heard Anneke's news yet—she wouldn't be able to keep this from me. I asked to speak to her.

"She's not here," Tante Mies said. "I thought she might be with you. She was to work until three, so I thought you had met. I suppose she's with that man. And where are you, Cyrla? You're not with ... your uncle says that now with the new restrictions..."

"I'll be home soon." I hung up and walked back to Isaak's room. Inside, the space between us loomed huge, silent. Isaak took a thick book from the shelf,
Birds of Europe,
and placed it on his desk. From the window sash he drew out a fine wire I hadn't noticed before. I watched over his shoulder as he opened the book. Inside, fitted into a hollowed-out rectangle, was a radio. The
Birds of Europe
were songbirds.

He fitted the wires together and made adjustments, and in a moment I heard the radio crackle. The broadcast was from the BBC, and as my English was poor and there was a lot of static, I could catch only a few words.

"The news is bad today," Isaak said, after he had disassembled the radio. "Eighteen thousand Jews murdered in the Ukraine, at Berdichev. Nearly twenty-five thousand in Kamenets-Podolski last week. Hitler is stepping things up there. But Churchill didn't address it. He talked only of the
Einsatzgruppen
in Russia, as if the killings were a military defense instead of murders."

"Then maybe it's not true," I tried.

"It's true. I think he can't say it publicly because then the Nazis would know he's getting this information. I hope that's it. But he knows. And Roosevelt knows. What we heard from Berdichev was confirmed by the London underground. Also that the numbers are high in Lithuania. It's getting very bad in the east, especially in the Baltic countries."

"But not in Lodz."

"Not in Lodz."

"And not here." I regretted it immediately.

"What does it matter? Eighteen thousand, twenty-five thousand!" Isaak frowned and rubbed his forehead. "No, not here. Yet. But it's only a matter of time. After the restrictions, we'll be forced to wear the stars. After the stars, the ghettos; and after the ghettos, the deportations. It's the same pattern in every country. There are 140,000 Jews in the Netherlands. Maybe not enough to make us a priority right now. But soon, I think. If Anneke is marrying a German soldier, you have to leave."

"Anneke loves me."

"She'll be careless. She doesn't understand the danger ... she doesn't need to. You need to, and you won't understand. That's worse. Sometimes, Cyrla.... "

"This isn't your decision to make," I said quietly, and gathered my things to go home.

My aunt was sitting on the window seat in the kitchen. An issue of
Libelle
and a cup of tea were beside her, untouched. I put the ration coupons back. She didn't notice.

"You know how she is," I said, unbuttoning my cardigan. "It's not even eight o'clock." I moved to take my aunt's cup, to put fresh tea in it if it were cold. "She's fine," I added, irritated with Anneke. It was just like her to forget about everyone else if she were having a good time.

My aunt caught my wrist. "There were soldiers everywhere today ... new checkpoints.... "

I put her cup down and pulled away. "What would they want with Anneke?"
What about me?
I wanted to ask.
I'm the one you should worry about with those new checkpoints.

Then I froze.

The scent of baked sugar.

"Wait here." I ran up the stairs to the attic and threw open the door to the bedroom there, unused since Anneke's grandmother had died. She lay on the bed on her side, facing the wall. The light from the hall curved along the silhouette of her hip. She looked diminished and vulnerable. I knelt beside her, my arm around her shoulder.

"Tell me."

Anneke turned her face to me.

"He's stupid," I whispered. I peeled a little moonstone earring from her jaw; a lacy pattern was pressed into her wet skin from the gold filigree. She had been weeping for hours. "He doesn't deserve you." Suddenly I felt guilty, as if my not wanting her to leave had caused this. I was sorry for everything I had wanted to steal from my cousin. "You don't have to keep the baby. Or you can, and I'll help you."

Anneke found my hand. New tears pooled, but she still didn't speak.

"Your mother's worried. You need to tell her. Can you...? Never mind." I kissed her cheek. "I won't be long."

My aunt's face crumpled when I told her about Anneke's pregnancy. She pressed her hands over her mouth and looked as if I were striking her. It had never occurred to me that she had held secret dreams for her daughter, but now they lay exposed in her eyes, and it was terrible to watch them shatter and die. She didn't say anything to blame Anneke, or even Karl, but I could see her tighten her lips against the words.

We brought Anneke down to her own bed and for an hour we simply cared for her. We brushed her hair and put on a fresh nightgown. I put a clean bandage on her finger—the wound was not healing well. Anneke allowed us to do these things, but she stared past us to the window as if she could see through the blackout paper. I made her cocoa and toast with the last of the gooseberry jam, her favorite, then brought up the blue-and-white Delft vase of yellow tea roses from the kitchen windowsill. My aunt asked no questions, only murmured, "
Lieveling, lieveling.
" I wondered how much it cost her to swallow every "How could you?" and "If only." The branching nature of consequences was so easy to see when it was too late.

At last Anneke sat up and began to talk. It wasn't that Karl didn't love her. But he had to leave. He was being sent back to Germany. Worse, he had a fiancée in Hamburg; they would marry when he got there. Anneke broke down again. "She doesn't mean anything to him," she managed. "But he has no choice. He's promised her."

I was filled with indignation—at Anneke, for defending this man, and at Karl, too: How foolish, to marry someone he didn't love, and leave Anneke alone with his child. Keeping his promise had nothing to do with real honor. I would find him in the morning and make him see.

Anneke suddenly remembered her father. "He's in Amsterdam," Tante Mies told her. "He went this afternoon for a shipment of wool. It was held up and he's spending the night." Anneke slumped in relief. "But he'll be home tomorrow on the evening train," Tante Mies warned her. "And you know we can't keep this from him."

Anneke's eyes pleaded for more time. "It will be all right," my aunt assured her, stroking her forehead. "I'll tell him, and it will be all right."

My aunt gave Anneke a sleeping pill and asked me to stay and read to her until it took effect. I looked around the room for the right book. A new collection by Verwey was by my bed. Also Rilke's
Poems from the Book of Hours,
its pages thickened from my constant fingering. I loved Rilke. It seemed to me he had fired his poems through time like arrows directly into my heart. But those poems would wound Anneke tonight.

I asked my aunt to bring up the copy of
Libelle
I had seen in the kitchen. It was a women's magazine, full of foolish articles that Anneke and I swore we were too worldly for, but devoured every month. It was a good choice, and soon Anneke fell asleep.

I couldn't, though. I went back up to the attic room and pushed the bed under the skylight, climbed up, and opened it to look out. Before the Germans attacked, Anneke and I used to love to do this; from this vantage point we could see the whole skyline of Rotterdam and the harbor at the mouth of the River Maas. No matter the time, the city was always bright with life. The night of May 14, the whole family had stared in disbelief at the charred silhouette of our lost city, black against the flames, until we could not breathe the sooty proof any longer. A snowstorm of ash covered our town for days as Rotterdam burned—the Germans shot anyone who tried to put out a fire as a warning to the rest of us. We hadn't looked out again after that night.

Now I needed to look. Light from a waning quarter moon—since the blackout restrictions, we had all become experts in the phases of the moon—spilled over the dark city, which still looked ragged and scorched after a year and a half. There were a few dull lights to the east, where the docks were; probably the Germans working their sleek gray boats. I planned the things I would say to Karl in the morning. Whatever it took, I would say.

Then I closed the skylight and sat on the bed—I had things to say to Isaak as well. I went over the conversations we had had earlier. He wanted me to leave because he loved me. Isaak would never tell me this; it wasn't his nature to talk about how he felt. It was for me to wring the softer meaning from his hard words.

But I was safe now. There would be no German husband for Anneke to tell, and as long as no one knew I was half-Jewish, the new decrees had no effect on me. Besides, they were only decrees. Insulting and inconvenient, but not threatening. Isaak worried too much about things that might never happen. If it ever came that he was in danger, then we would leave. We would leave together. I would make him see this.