My Enemy's Cradle (37 page)

"Prisoners. From the camp there. Hundreds. They all looked the same, with their gray skin, their shaved skulls, their gray uniforms. I couldn't tell one from another; I didn't even know if they were men or women. They were skeletons."

He took another moment. "I was walking along an assembly line, being given the tour. A corporal was telling me about a new paint they were trying that would resist higher temperatures. Then he shot a man."

Karl folded over, his fists pressed to the sides of his head, as if he heard the gunshot again. I waited, my dread building.

At last he straightened.

"He hardly even looked. The man was so close, he didn't have to aim. He was talking to me, he was explaining about the paint—how it had to be applied—and then he glanced over at this skeleton working beside us and a look came over his face. It said,
oh, what an irritation,
and then he pulled out a pistol and—"

"Don't," I whispered.

Karl raised his hands as if to keep me back. They were shaking. "No. I have to tell this." He drew a ragged breath and this time the words poured out. "He pulled out a pistol and he didn't look, he just shot a hole through this man's head. Then he turned. He looked at the man next to the fallen one—he had stopped working. He was covered in blood. Brains, bone. And he shot him, too. Through the chest. Then he went on talking to me as if nothing had happened. 'Of course, it's a lot more expensive than the old paint.' That's what he said."

"What did you do?" I asked, even as I felt my heart shrink back, numb, as if my ribs were sticks of ice.

"Nothing. I did nothing. A cart drew up with bodies piled on it. They heaved the two dead men onto it and took them away. The corporal raised his hand and stuck two fingers into the air. He was calling for two replacements. I looked away. The corporal handed me off to the man at the next station. I let him shake my hand." Karl raised his hand and looked at it as if it had betrayed him.

I saw Isaak's face. I saw him standing in a prisoner's uniform. I saw him fall. "Where were they from? The prisoners?"

Karl ignored me. But then I realized I hadn't asked it aloud.

"There must have been a hundred people who saw what happened. None of them raised an eyebrow. So now I know it's all true. All of it."

There was so much despair in his eyes. My arms tried to reach for him again, but it was only half a gesture; I couldn't touch him. He pushed them down anyway, as if he didn't deserve the comfort I couldn't give him. He began to talk again, his voice flat.

"When I was still at the boatyard, in '39, there were rumors. About the camps, about things that might happen there. But nothing ... well, it was difficult to get information, and no one knew anything. Then in '40, when I went into the service, it all stopped."

"What?"

"Everything. Rumors, information, talking. We had war news, but it was only what they wanted us to know. I was relieved. It was so much easier. I had nothing to struggle with except the ship I was repairing—broken metal and wood. We had no consciences to struggle with. We all felt that way, I think. Do you understand that? How it could be easier to not see?"

I knew that too well.
You can't walk around blind just because you don't want to see.

"And do you know how much of a coward that makes me? All of us? We were all like that—cowards." He swallowed and looked at me, asking me for something. But I had nothing to give him.

"It was uncomfortable being in another country, seeing the people's faces when I'd walk around in my uniform. I knew they hated us for being there. But that was all. And with Anneke—well, if she could see past my uniform, then I could pretend it wasn't very important. And you know how Anneke was."

I knew that, too—how Anneke's brightness could burn away any clouds. How appealing that was.

"And then when I came to Munich—the new job—it was even easier. I hardly ever have to face anything here."

"Karl, what is it you do?"

"Mostly I build models. Of rockets. I'm part of a team: We're given designs and we make models of rockets out of wood. You should hear us talk: about how it will revolutionize travel someday, the good we're doing. But I can't pretend anymore. We're helping to build weapons that will kill thousands of people. And I knew it all along. The only thing I didn't know was how we're murdering people just to make those weapons."

Karl stopped and looked at me for the first time. And he saw. "Oh, God. Cyrla, I'm sorry. Isaak ... I'm sorry, I didn't think."

As soon as I saw it written on his face, I couldn't bear it. "No. No. He's at Westerbork. Remember? That's where he is now. He's all right. And my father is in Lodz. My family is safe in Lodz."

Karl took me and held me hard to him against the rough rock. I let him. I needed him to. We clung together in the sound and the cold of the water.

At last he pulled away. "I don't know what to do." His face was filled with anguish. "If I ever speak about this, I'll be shot immediately. But we are making God angry. We are making God so angry, Cyrla. What's the point in staying alive?"

"They won't shoot you. You're valuable."

"Everyone's more valuable as a warning. They'd gladly shoot me to keep a hundred others in line. All the time now, I think: I should refuse to serve. At least my conscience would be clear. But even if I were heroic enough, I couldn't risk what they'd do to Erika and the baby, and my mother. For something like that, they'd be sent to a camp. Maybe worse. And I can't desert for the same reason."

Karl read my mind. "No. I gave Erika my word, and now I'm giving it to you."

"There's a woman who works at the home," I said. And then I told Karl about Sister Ilse, how she'd found something she could do, a way to live with her compromise.

"Does she think it makes everything all right? Does she sleep at night?"

"It's the best she can do."

Karl leaned over and cupped a hand in the stream and watched the water flow around his fingers. "She's lying to herself. She's telling herself it's some sort of atonement ... well, I wish I could do that. It won't work, though. At night, in the dark, it doesn't work."

I thought of Ilse running out to the walk, her hatred so naked, and I realized something terrible. At night, in the dark, it didn't work for her. And she didn't care anymore what happened to her.

"Karl, promise me," I said. I pulled him around to face me. And then I didn't know what I could ask him to promise. "What you're doing, taking my baby ... it's such a good thing."

Karl looked out over the clearing beside us. He didn't believe me.

"
I'm
the coward, Karl—running home to be safe. Leaving him."

"No. What you're doing takes courage."

I sat on the mossy rock beside him and pulled my feet up. But I leaned back, away from him. It was my turn to avoid the mirror of his face. "Maybe not. Maybe it's a family trait—abandoning children."

I needed to tell him then. The list of people who had sent me away under the ruse of keeping me safe: my mother, when she knew she was dying..."Go to school! Go now." My father, my aunt and uncle. Anneke and Isaak. Everyone I'd ever tried to love. "And it's further back than that. It's all through my family, on both sides."

I told him about my grandmother, how she cut my mother out of her life for marrying my father, how she pretended I didn't exist. "And my father's family, too. They were polite to me, but I didn't pass through the birth canal of a Jewish woman. I wasn't part of their family." A memory of walking to school. My grandparents lived on the way; I'd imagine them behind the windows, watching me walk by, scowling at my blond hair, angry at my father for having chosen wrong.

I sat up again and rested my head against Karl's shoulder, and pulled his arm around my belly. "This isn't what I want. I want to give my baby a big family that welcomes him from all sides. I want him to feel that they'll never let him go. But I can't even give him a mother."

"You could," Karl said.

I pulled back to search his face.

"Marry me. I can keep you safe, too, then."

I looked away. It took an eternity to form the right word. It was an anvil, the heaviest I'd ever pulled from my throat. "No," I finally said.
Because I can't keep you safe. And because I can't bear to imagine your skull smashed by the dark wood of a rifle butt. I can't bear to imagine Erika's face split open from jaw to mouth in a spray of blood. Or your mother's body dragged and tossed into the back of a wagon.

"Don't ask me why," I told him. "Just keep him safe for me. Give him a family until I can."

Karl sighed and looked out over the stream. Then he pulled me to him and kissed the top of my head. "All right.
You're
his family, though. We'll keep him for a little while, but you'll raise him."

I tried to picture it—raising a child. Not just caring for him, but making decisions about his upbringing.

Karl must have been reading my thoughts. "Would you raise him as a Jew?"

"Yes. If I could. I'd like to study, too. That seems right."

"Because it would balance things out?"

"Yes. I've been hiding and lying too long. But also because ... Karl, Isaak will want that. You know he will want to raise this child, too."

Karl straightened and pulled his arm from me. He lit a cigarette and leaned forward, kicking at the water. "You're right," he said, after a moment. "Isaak. Of course." His face was wreathed in smoke so I couldn't see his expression. "I don't want to talk anymore." He slid off the rock and offered his hand to me. "What I want to do is take your picture. I want something good to remember."

I didn't want to talk anymore, either. Karl took pictures of me—sitting in the meadow, standing beside a tree, and back by the river. He seemed better, but the haunted look never left his face completely. I wondered if it ever would.

"Karl," I reminded him at last. "You said you didn't have much time today."

He looked at his watch. "I was due back an hour ago."

"Then let's go."

"Let's not. Maybe this is my solution. Maybe being late is exactly the right infraction—not so bad they'll hang me, but serious enough that they'll throw me in prison for the rest of the war."

"I don't think that's funny. Let's go back."

"In a while. I'm not in a hurry."

He packed up the camera, and we began to walk back. We stopped several times—to investigate a fox den, to look for some peach trees his friend had told him about, to listen to some blackbirds. To kiss. It seemed he wanted to forget the things we had talked about.

"Will you recite one of your poems to me?" Karl asked as we were walking by the barn to the car.

I suddenly wanted to. But not here, not now. "Not today," I said at last.

"All right. But will you at least tell me how you write them?"

I thought for a moment. I had never asked myself that question. "Sometimes the first line just comes to me. It's such a wild thing—almost dangerous—that I need to write the rest of it to control it. It feels like something's running away from me, and I have to write it down to corral it. That probably sounds crazy."

"No. Wanting to control something sounds like the most sensible thing in the world." He stepped off the path to pick up his tunic. He threw it over his shoulder without even brushing it off—this new carelessness frightened me. We walked to the car, to the end of our time together, and I realized something else. I loved him. That frightened me more.

At the car, we held each other tight. Then he pulled away. I was afraid he was going to say it was our last time. I didn't want to hear that again. But he surprised me. "I hate that face you make."

"What face?"

"The one you always make after I kiss you or hold you. As if you regret it. As if you feel guilty about it."

I touched Karl's cheek. "I can't help it. Sometimes I feel as if I'm stealing something from Anneke."

"What ... me? You can't steal something she never had."

"No, but she wanted you. I guess that's what makes me feel bad. If she were alive, we wouldn't be here. And besides, she'd never have done anything like this to me."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, if she were alive, I don't think she'd ever have been with Isaak. Even if Isaak and I weren't together."

Something flickered across Karl's face for an instant. He covered it, but I'd seen surprise, worry. Something.

"What is it?" I asked him. "What's the matter?"

"Nothing. We should go."

And then I knew. "Anneke and Isaak?" I fell back against the car. Every fiber of my body resisted the thought, and yet everything I knew about Anneke and Isaak told me it was true. It explained so much. "Karl, look at me. Anneke and Isaak?"

Karl winced as if it caused him physical pain to answer.

"And you knew?"

"She told me. When it happened, she started to tell you about it. She said you were so close, she thought you'd be happy. She started to tell you she was seeing Isaak, but something you said made her realize you had a crush on him."

"A crush?"

"I think you were about sixteen. They were young, too. She said it had been silly and hadn't meant anything, and she ended it."

It had meant something to Isaak, though.

"Are you all right, Cyrla?"

I felt as if I'd been kicked. But also somehow as if I'd been waiting to know this. I couldn't find the words. I held up my hands the way Karl had done once, turning them to interlock my fingers.

"The pieces fit?"

I nodded again. There was a symmetry to it that felt right. Cruel but right.

"Anneke loved you so much. She said she always felt terrible about it."

An ache to see her closed like a fist around my chest. I'd tell her not to feel terrible. She didn't take anything from me, and she was right about Isaak. He always reminded me of my father, and I saw now that I'd gotten that confused with love. I felt a lump constrict my throat. I raised my palms to Karl and then got into the car. I needed to go back. To be alone.

When we pulled into the drive, Karl put his hand over mine. "I'm sorry."