My Enemy's Cradle (30 page)

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 edge 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?"

"Then you can't go until the weather breaks. I won't even consider you out there, pregnant, at night when it's still like this."

"Next month?"

Karl shook his head. "May."

"May first, then." I couldn't keep the smile from my face.

"Mid-May." Karl was not smiling.

"Two months." We both said the words at once, but from Karl's lips they were a dirge, from mine they were a hymn of hope. We heard that and we laughed, and a small brick fell away from the wall between us.

"Karl, why do you want to do all this? Why do you even want to be involved?"

"I have a lot of reasons."

"Anneke?"

He nodded slowly. "Anneke, of course." He looked across the fields for a moment. "There's a symmetry that makes it feel right. I build boats. That appeals to me."

"What do you mean?"

"Anneke and her baby—my baby—are gone, and I'm here. Isaak is gone and you and your baby are here. The pieces fit. There's a balance when you align all the pieces." He held his hands up, the fingertips touching but at right angles to each other. Then he rotated them and laced them together. "Do you know what I mean?"

I raised my hands, turned them and laced them together like his, and smiled. Yes.

"And do you remember what I told you about my sister and my niece? About how caring for them gives me something to hold on to? I think there's some of that, too."

"I understand."

"But that's not the main reason." Karl looked into my eyes for a long moment, as if he thought the words he needed were there. Then he turned away, as if they weren't. He stood up. "Never mind. We should go. It looks like it might rain."

We walked back without talking any more, but now the quiet was peaceful. As he put the key to the ignition, I stopped him. "Wait. You said there were three choices. What's the third one?"

He pulled the key out and looked down at it in his palm. "You could marry me."

His response stunned me so much that I laughed. Karl tightened his eyes and stared straight ahead, his forearms resting on the steering wheel.

"Karl—you're not serious."

"Actually, I am. It's one of your options. I asked Dr. Ebers about that, too."

Now I was too shocked to form words.

Karl turned to face me. He flushed. "Here it is: If you and I got married, I could take you out right now. It would be optional for you to stay. You'd have to become a German citizen, but they've set up paperwork to do that easily for these situations." I could tell he had practiced this speech, and I was surprised to find that it touched me.

"Karl." I laid my hand on his arm. "Karl, no. That's really not one of my options."

"Because of Isaak?"

"Isaak, Anneke, me, you. Everything."

He nodded as if he'd expected this.

"I want you to know how much I appreciate everything. But you have to understand—I loved Anneke."