My Enemy's Cradle (11 page)

Anneke. A rush of tears besieged me—how much I wanted her! I wiped them away and walked to the edge of the roof and took a deep breath. The scent of windfall apples hung in the air. There was train smoke, as always, and faintly, the earthy smell of bricks baking in the sun. The noon sunlight sparkled on the canal and burnished the September landscape below—this world looked so peaceful. As if it weren't going to collapse on me in a week.

Then I took the poetry book from the basket and sat with it to wait, beside the bed, not on it. The bed would be for the two of us only. I searched for just the right poem, and found a title by Boutens I had never read: "Kissing."

After last night, but not before, I could have written that poem.

I wanted to kiss Isaak again. But I grew nervous thinking about what would happen after that. I wasn't ready. What had I been thinking? But Rilke's "Autumn Day" ran through my head, and wouldn't leave. "
He who is alone now, will remain alone.
" I had been alone long enough. Terrible things happened to people who were alone. So when Isaak knocked below I told myself I was ready enough.

I let him in and we climbed to the roof. We searched each other's eyes, and then looked away.

"Well," I said.

"Well."

We were the closest of friends, yet we stood beside each other awkwardly and gazed out at the roofs of our city, our closeness between us now. There was nothing to say, as if we were finished speaking through words. I took his hand and led him to the bed I had made, and then I lay down.

My heart beat so hard I thought Isaak would see it jump through my skin. I remembered my trick for being brave: Take only the first small step. I lifted my fingers to my throat and unbuttoned a single button.

Isaak fell to his knees beside me.

Carefully, deliberately, as he did everything, he unbuttoned my blouse. I took his hand and led it under my slip, onto the bare skin of my breast. I gasped at the touch and Isaak pulled away, as if he had hurt me. He pulled the velvet over us, and then he lay down beside me and worked my clothes off under my skirt. My skin chilled in the surprise of cool air, but burned where it met his. He spread my legs apart and rolled between them and began to push against me.

Anneke had been wrong, that our bodies would know what to do. Then I remembered. "Wait, wait..." I whispered. I found his mouth and kissed him. I could have done that forever. But he broke away and buried his face in my neck and began to press against me again.

I stopped him. I took off my slip and opened his shirt, ran my palms down his chest, then pulled him to me to feel our hearts beat together. But when I reached lower, he pushed my hand away and grunted. And then I felt him inside me and I cried out at the deep, sweet shock of it.

And then, finally, it was the way Anneke had promised. We pressed our bodies closer because we couldn't pull them apart. We moved in a rhythm that was the only one that had ever existed. It had always been inside us. But suddenly Isaak shuddered and cried out, then crumpled and fell beside me.

He rolled away and reached for his shirt. I tried to pull him back. "Stay."

He tensed and raised his head.

"Listen!"

It took me a moment, as if I were struggling to the surface after a deep dive. The blood rushing in my own head was all I heard at first. Isaak rose and crept along the wall. I took my blouse to cover myself, and followed. The words were German, and angry.

I crouched beside Isaak and peered over the edge down upon the shoulders of two men. Soldiers.

"The second day," I caught, and murmured curses.

And then: "Break it down."

I gathered my things.

"Stay calm," Isaak said. But he was dressing quickly also. "Maybe they won't look here."

But maybe they would. The door to the stairwell was in the back room, and I couldn't remember if I had closed it, or left anything out that might lead them up here.

Glass shattered on the pavement.

"I'm going down," I said.

Isaak held my arm. "No! We'll stay still up here until they leave."

I heard more glass—the splintering of wood. "You stay. I'll send them away." I twisted away from him, grabbed my blouse, and ran down the stairs, buttoning as I went.

They were inside already. I tried to sound angry as I walked out of the storeroom. "What do you want?"

They were SS, not
Wehrmacht,
and their uniforms told me they were a
Kapitan
and a trooper, an
Oberschütze.
They had smashed the window beside the door and the trooper was behind the counter, pulling papers from a drawer.

"We have business with Pieter Van der Berg. Where is he?" The officer tried to enter the storeroom, but I stepped in front of him. My uncle kept money back there, hidden in an empty sewing-machine housing.

"He's not here. He's away."

Too late I realized how I was dressed—my blouse half-undone, no slip, and no stockings. I crossed my arms over my chest, but the
Oberschütze
was staring. He was wide-shouldered and powerful looking, with bristly hair so short it looked almost shaved and a face flat and red as a cut of meat. His look frightened me, as if I were a prostitute sitting in a window in Amsterdam. I took a step away.

"When will he be back?" the captain asked.

"Oh, tomorrow," I lied.

And then the worst thing happened. I felt a wetness between my legs. Hot at first, then sliding down between my bare thighs and cooling. When I realized what it was tears sprang to my eyes, but I bit them back.

"Come back tomorrow," I urged him.

"We have an order here for six hundred blankets. Are they ready?"

The wetness slid farther down my legs. How much did a man leave inside a woman? Enough to give Isaak away? "He's gone to get a part for the machine. For your order. I'll tell him you were here."

The officer pushed past me and the trooper followed. I didn't try to stop them now. They suspected my uncle had taken their fabric to sell on the black market, and I thought if they saw it was still here, they would be satisfied.

The officer came back into the doorway carrying a bolt of wool. "Take the rest of it and pack it onto the truck," he ordered the other one as he left.

I was worrying whether they would notice two bolts were missing, and planning what I would say to explain it, and so wasn't prepared for what happened next.

The
Oberschütze
stood beside me and let the officer pass out of the shop. Then he dropped the wool he was holding and shoved his hand against my back, pinning me over the cutting table. His other hand pushed my skirt up and grabbed at my hip. He laughed when he found I had nothing on underneath, and began to grind himself against me.

I tried to twist away, terrified he would find the evidence I had just been with a man, and struggled to climb over the table—a pair of shears hung from a hook in the cupboard below. His hand dug into my neck and I smelled motor oil. I heard the clink of his belt buckle, the rip of his buttons.

I bit my lips so I wouldn't make a sound that might bring Isaak down and I dug harder and found the shears. I wrenched backward and jammed the open blade as hard as I could toward his throat.

"Bitch!" He knocked the shears away, drew back, and raised his hand over me.

Suddenly the officer was back. "Off her!" he yelled, pulling the trooper from me. "Animal! This one's pregnant. She's going to the Lebensborn."

The trooper released his grip and glared at me, his face sweating, red as a ham, pulling his uniform together. Then he picked up the bolts of wool he had dropped.

I backed up against the counter, not sure my legs would hold me. The officer leaned over and reached for me. "Are you all right?"

I pushed his hand away. He looked as though he expected me to thank him. He had told his soldier to respect me because I was carrying a German child, as if that were the only reason I shouldn't be raped. I would not thank him for that.

"Tell your father we'll be back tomorrow. He had better have that part." The officer straightened and motioned to the other one to leave.

"Wait," the trooper said. "Let's see her identification."

He reached for my neck. He saw me look down with disgust at his fingers, black with grease, and he smiled, then slowly wiped them down the front of my blouse, over my breast. I slapped his hand away and spat in his face. He reared back and raised his arm again, and again the officer stopped him, this time with his hand to his gun.

"
Nein,
" said the captain. "I know this one, I've seen her picture. She's Van der Berg's daughter."

They left, the trooper hesitating at the door long enough to throw me a look of pure hatred. As if everything in the world were my fault. I sank to the floor.

Isaak came down—he had watched the men go—and found me there. He crouched beside me. "What happened?"

I looked away so I could lie. "They took the wool."

He motioned to the mess of papers on the floor, the shears, everything that had been thrown to the floor in my struggle. "You fought them? For some material?"

His eyes fell to the streak of grease over my breast and I turned away again, trying not to cry.

"That was stupid, Cyrla!" He shook his head. "You have no idea what they're capable of. They make up their own rules, and there's no one to stop them. Think of what could have happened here."

"Nothing happened, Isaak. They're gone. They wanted their blankets; they wanted my uncle."

Isaak looked out the window, thinking. "They'll come back here tomorrow, and if your uncle isn't here, they'll go to your home. And your uncle ... it would be better if you weren't there. When it's dark, you'd better come home with me. I'll tell your aunt."

I nodded, grateful for his calm and his logic and that he had stopped questioning me. He wrapped his coat around me and helped me back to the roof where we sat down on the bed of velvet again to wait for dark. Every time the memory of what the trooper had tried to do forced its way in, I pushed it away. But once I wasn't quick enough, and I thought about what might have happened: What if I had gotten pregnant with his child? I cried out. Isaak asked what was wrong. "Nothing," I said, and felt foolish allowing something I only imagined to wound me. Somehow I would have to erase his attack from my memory of this day. Isaak and I made love today ... that's what happened today, I told myself.

Later, we watched the sun set over the Schiedam gate and ate the meal my aunt had packed. I read Isaak the poem about kissing, and as I read it I was suddenly struck with the certain knowledge that today had not been Isaak's first time. I didn't know how I knew, but I did: He had been with a woman before. I'd been his closest friend since he was sixteen, and I'd never guessed. I tried to keep my voice steady as I finished the poem, but my throat hurt, as if it had been cut. I'd have to erase this from the memory of the day, too.

Before we left, I bit two notches into the corner of the velvet we had lain upon and ripped off a square to save. I tucked it into the bottom of my basket, and then pulled out my legitimization card and hung it around my neck, my back to Isaak. I realized joy was not something that fell randomly, something to hope for. Joy was something to steal.

I felt calm and safe in Isaak's room. It was Wednesday evening, and I wouldn't leave until the next Friday morning. I thought that here the world would stop for nine days.

I was wrong.

I sat on the bed and watched Isaak while he worked.
This is how it will be when we are married. And there will be a child asleep in the next room.

I realized with pleasure that from now on, when I thought of my life, it would fall cleanly into two parts—before and after this day. I went up to Isaak and put my hand on his neck, thrilled that this gesture was now mine to make. "What shall we name him?"

"Who?"

"Our child. What shall we name him? Or her?"

He turned in his chair to face me. I could tell he didn't like my question.

"This isn't ... You shouldn't count on anything..."

"You're right," I said, eager to erase his frown. "First I have to be pregnant."

While I unbuttoned his shirt and kissed his chest, he watched my face in that careful way he had, as if he were considering what to do. This time I tried to think about making a baby because I knew that was what Isaak was thinking about. But my arms around his shoulders looked like someone else's, and I couldn't help seeing the way those shoulders were ridged with neat, hard muscles that lifted in a cadence as he worked his way into me. I couldn't help stroking these muscles down to the small of his back and, although I was sore, kneading him to bring him deeper into me, trying to fill the new place that was so hungry. When I cried his name, he hushed me. I had to bite my lip to keep from crying it out louder. And when he made the sound, stifled into my neck, that meant he was spent, when I should have been satisfied because he had given me what I asked for, I wasn't.

I couldn't help it. I wanted something more.

I squeezed my legs around him, to show him I wanted him to stay. "Say my name," I asked.

He raised his head to look into my eyes. "No. When you go to Nijmegen, your life might depend on responding to Anneke's name. I won't call you by yours again."

Nijmegen. I had forgotten. "Please, Isaak. Just once more."

"No."

He lifted himself away from me then. He got up and lay down on the mattress he had put on the floor. His bed was too narrow for us both to sleep in, I understood. Still, I felt abandoned. When I could tell from his breathing he was asleep, I slipped down to the floor beside him.

I lifted his arm and curled myself up against his side. I laid my head on his chest and matched my breathing to his. Careful with my movements so as not to wake him, I unbound my hair and spread it up over his shoulder and twisted my curls into his. Then I pulled his arm across his chest, and wound his fingers through my own. When he awoke, I hoped he would understand this circle, the one I dreamed of so often. I fell asleep glowing, as if I had swallowed peace.