My Enemy's Cradle (33 page)

"Here? Isaak was here that day?"

"For several days, probably." Karl's voice was so cold and hard—a low hiss—I almost didn't recognize it. "My friend—the one who's stationed near Schiedam—I went to school with him and I trust him. I asked a favor from him, an enormous favor. You have no idea the risk we both took....Never mind that. His sister is married to a clerk at Westerbork. She knows I come here to see you. She told Werner that you'd be getting a new playground—her husband mentioned he'd seen a work order for this Lebensborn. When I heard that, I had Werner pressure his brother-in-law to alter the work-crew list, to add Isaak's name to it. And to get a message to Isaak, to tell him to find a way to get into the shed. I told Werner that Isaak had been helpful to me when I was in Schiedam, and I wanted to see that he was all right. Do you have any idea how dangerous all of that was? And you didn't go."

I was crying now. "I thought ... I thought...."

"You thought ... what? What
did
you think? That I have nothing better to do than set up traps for you? God! The people who risked so much for this."

"I'm sorry," I sobbed. "I didn't know."

"All the times I've come here, have I ever hurt you? Have I ever lied to you, put you at risk?"

"Did he know I was here? Did he expect me?"

"I assume he figured that out, yes. Cyrla, have I ever once done anything except help you?"

"Please stop," I begged. "Please just tell me where he is now. Please bring him here again."

Karl stared at me in disbelief. "Never. Even if I wanted to. For one thing, Werner's brother-in-law was transferred. Three days ago, he suddenly was sent to Amsterdam. There's no way to know if it's just a coincidence or whether someone got suspicious, and it's too dangerous to try to find out. No matter, there's no way I can have any contact at Westerbork ever again. I wouldn't bother, anyway. You had your chance. You got what you deserve."

Karl turned from me and was at the door before I could get up.

"Wait."

He stood with his hand on the knob. But he waited. I hurried to his side and touched his arm.

"One thing. Please."

He hesitated, opening a small door to me. His arm relaxed under my hand.

"Isaak. Is he all right?"

Karl's face darkened and he bit back whatever he had been about to say. Then he stormed out, slamming the door, leaving me alone with a monstrous guilt.

Day after day, my remorse grew, as if it were a living thing. I imagined Isaak in the shed, waiting for me, waiting. Learning I would not come. I had been so close to him; to touching him. Where was he now? But I was stunned to find that when I closed my eyes, it was Karl's face that haunted me—the look he wore when he'd said, "And you weren't worth it."

Finally, after a week, I called him. "I need to talk with you." I held my breath and pictured him standing there with the receiver pressed to his ear, his head bent, rubbing the space between his eyebrows with his middle finger.

After a minute, he said, "All right. Go ahead," and I breathed again.

"No, I need to
see
you. Can you get away?"

Silence.

"Please."

It felt like an hour before he answered. "All right, tonight. Eight o'clock."

"Good. Karl, I'm sorry—"

But he had hung up.

I waited for him in the front hall. When he walked in, I searched his face but couldn't tell anything. "Do you want to take a drive?" he asked. There was nothing in his voice, either. The guard at the front desk looked up.

"I can't leave. It's too late."

Karl looked down the hall toward the parlor.

"No," I said. "It's Tuesday." Before he could ask what that meant, I walked over to the desk. "This is the father. We have some things to talk about, but all the rooms are being used. Could I bring him upstairs?"

The guard looked at his watch and nodded. "Be out by nine," he warned Karl.

In my room, the air tightened to glass. When I spoke, I almost expected it to shatter. "On Tuesday nights, the League of German Maidens holds a session in the dayroom." I was stalling. "Homemaking and patriotism. All the German girls have to attend. The rest of us spend the evening in the parlor—it's our favorite night of the week, so peaceful without them. Except when they're singing."

"I can imagine," Karl said.

I wondered if he could. If he could know how chilling it was to hear those voices singing songs about their superiority, their destiny. But I let it go. I shut the door and leaned back against it. "Karl, I need to apologize. I didn't trust you and I should have. I'm ashamed of myself."

Karl's face still didn't show anything. But he listened.

"You've been nothing but honest and generous to me. More than that—what you did last week, bringing Isaak here ... oh, God. And such a risk! I ruined it—I don't blame you if you can't forgive me. I just needed to try to apologize."

Karl crossed to the window and lifted the wooden slats. "I was angry," he said after a moment. "But if you're telling me that you trust me now, maybe we can put everything behind us." He turned from the window to look at me, and his face was warmer. "I'd really like it if we could start over. If we could be friends."

I smiled back and took a step toward him, then opened my mouth to say something. But the words didn't come.

"What is it?"

"There's something ... I've been thinking—" I hesitated. Some things were still difficult to express in German. This would be difficult to express in any lauguage. "Anneke lives inside me, Karl. I've stolen her life. I can't change that, and it affects how things are between us."

"You didn't steal her life. She lost it. And you're only using her name."

I walked over and stood beside him. "No, it's more than her name. I was always so jealous of her, of how easy everything was for her. And now in this place, I'm trying to be her. She was supposed to be here. I didn't come here to keep my baby safe—nothing as heroic as that. I got pregnant so I could step into her life, to keep myself safe. No, to do something even more selfish. And I really am using more than her name."

"How do you mean?"

"Well, in here, I try to become her. I'm quiet. Anneke was chatty. In here, I let her speak for me. And even in that, I'm a fraud. Anneke never had to choose her words carefully, the way I do—she was so pure, she could just say whatever she was thinking. She never had anything to hide. And she was carrying a German baby. I'm not, and that feels too dangerous to even let myself remember. I act like her and I try to think like her. So it feels like she's still here. Like there are two of us living in my skin."

Just then the baby bumped me, as if he'd been listening and didn't like the slight. I laughed, relieved, and pressed my hand over his heel. "All right, there are
three
of us in here."

Karl looked down. His eyes asked if he could touch me. I took his hand and placed it over the baby's foot, still kicking.

"So ... do you think of him as mine?" Karl asked softly.

"Well, in theory, yes. When I'm downstairs or talking to the other girls, I try to think of myself as carrying a German soldier's baby. But when I'm alone, no. It's so complicated. And when you ask if we can be friends, well, that's
really
complicated with her here with me so strongly. Do you understand?"

Karl took his hand off my belly—reluctantly, I thought. His face looked pained, but for me or for him, I didn't know. "We had a dog at the boatyard once, when I was young. She had puppies and when one of them died, I took it out of the litter. I thought that was a good thing to do. But the dog got upset—she circled the nest, she was frantic, looking for that puppy. My father told me to bring the puppy's body back, so she could understand. I did and she picked it up, carried it outside, and left it under some bushes. Then she came back and she was calm. So he was right."

"I didn't see her buried, Karl, that's true. But I saw her dead." I pressed my hands over my heart and waited while the image washed over me. Karl put his arm around me and pulled me to his side. "I know she's dead," I told him. "I can say it; I cry over it. But still, I keep her alive."

"Maybe you need to bury her."

"Maybe I do. But I don't know how."

"Cyrla, don't you think she'd want us to be friends?"

"Yes, I do. You're right. I know that. She told me that once, in fact—she said I'd like you and trust you. But when I'm trying so hard to be Anneke here, and I see you, sometimes I'm so angry at you. You hurt her, and if she..."

Karl released me and I felt strangely shapeless all of a sudden. As if my own skin was no longer enough to hold me together.

"I think about that all the time," he said. "The thing is, I told her what I did to save her from hurt. We weren't suited for each other. Given some time, I think she would have seen that."

"So do I. I think I just needed to tell you all this. I need you to understand what it feels like to me."

"I'm glad you did. And I'm sorry for how hard it must be for you here." He hugged me again and kept his arm around me. In the quiet we heard singing from below. "
Deutschland über Alles.
" "This all must be so hard."

"That's the song they end on," I said. "You should go now."

He nodded and picked up his coat from the bed. He didn't leave, though. "You know, I think we should celebrate. We've just declared peace, and that's always something to celebrate."

"It is," I agreed. A knot that had been tightening in my chest for a long time was finally loosening. "It certainly is."

"I can come this weekend. They're setting up some new equipment so I only have paperwork to do. Let me take you out, maybe a film or a meal."

Karl was right—it was peace we had made. But it was more: I had been granted forgiveness. I felt washed in grace. By Saturday morning, when I got ready, it really did feel as though I was getting ready for a celebration. I bathed and dressed in the prettiest things from Erika's gifts. I checked the clock constantly. Finally it was time. I went downstairs and found Karl already there, leaning over the front desk, saying something to the nurse on duty. She smiled at him, rolled her eyes as though he were an exasperating child, then waved him off.

He came over and helped me put my sweater on. "We have eight hours today. It's eleven now, so I don't have to bring you back until dinnertime."

"How did you do that?"

"I charmed her. I told her I didn't come last weekend, so I want to make up for it. I convinced her to look at it as two outings at once. I told her it was a special occasion and I had a surprise for you."

"And do you?"

"I do. But you'll have to wait until we get there. But before we go, I want you to go get something of Anneke's."

"Why?"

"Trust me. Remember, you're going to trust me now."

I went back to my room and looked around. Almost everything I had here was Anneke's. Suddenly I knew what Karl wanted. I picked up the bottle of nail polish and one of her handkerchiefs and slipped them into my pocket.

In the backseat of the car there was a bouquet of red roses and a spade. I showed Karl what I had brought.

"Are you ready?" he asked.

"I am ready," I answered.

We drove out to the sheep farm again and walked in silence along the path we had taken the last time. When we came to the overlook, we stopped. Karl looked to me and I nodded.

"She's really buried in Apeldoorn," I told him. "I'm going to visit when I can."

"Apeldoorn. I'll go there, too, someday."

He dropped the spade into the earth and dug a small hole. I wrapped the bottle of blood-red polish in its lacy shroud, bent down, and placed it in the hole. Then Karl filled it in and laid the roses on top.

"No." I picked them up. "Not with the thorns." One by one, I plucked the petals off and dropped them over the fresh dirt. They fell like little slices of my heart.
This should hurt more,
I thought. I told Anneke the things I would have said to her if I'd known and squeezed the rose stems until I felt the tiny thorns pierce my palm. Karl looked down and pried the stems from my hand and threw them away.

"I was wrong about something," I said. "When you first came here, I told you Anneke wasn't something we shared. But she is."

He took my hand and pressed our palms together, our fingers laced. We walked back, quiet, until we reached the car.

"I brought a picnic," Karl said. "It's supposed to be beautiful this afternoon. We can do something else, though, if you want. Go into Munich.... "

"No. I haven't been on a picnic for so long. It sounds so normal!"

He tossed the spade into the trunk and pulled out a large basket and a blanket and a bag. We walked to the far end of the field, behind the barn, and set them under a huge elm. Apple trees surrounded the field, their blossoms forming soft pink halos around them.

"I'm starving. I have to eat every ten minutes these days." I bent over the picnic basket. "What did you bring?"

There was a distant rumble and I jumped a little. Even after almost two years, I jumped. Karl read my worry. "It's only thunder."

We looked to the sky. Purple thunderheads were piling up, bruising the sky above the mountains. "It'll pass quickly," Karl said. "But let's bring everything inside."

The barn was dark, even with the door open partway, and sweet with the scent of hay and sheep. I smiled in wonder.

"What?"

"I don't know, exactly. I feel so safe here, hidden. I think it's just been a long time since I stood somewhere and thought: Nobody knows where I am."

"I know where you are." Karl took a step toward me, then stopped and looked down at his hands. "I know what you mean, though."

Then he climbed the ladder to the loft and pushed two bales of hay over the edge. He climbed down, took out his pocketknife, and slit them open. "We can pretend we're outside," he said, spreading the hay. He shook the blanket out.

"You said you had a surprise," I reminded him.

"I do. And now's a good time. Turn around."

"You think I'll turn my back on you?" I was feeling playful—another sensation I hadn't had in a very long time.