Far To Go by Alison Pick Read Free Book Online

an
Ariernachweis
.”
    “To get a what?”
    “Here.” Sophie passed Marta the peeled apple.
    “What’s a—”
    “Here.” She passed Marta the knife.
    “Ouch!
Careful
.”
    “Sorry,” Sophie said.
    Marta put her finger in her mouth. “Soph, to get a what?”
    “
Ariernachweis
. An Aryan certificate.”
    Marta spoke Czech. The only German she knew came from
Der Struwwelpeter
; Pepik could recite its stories by heart, about a boy who sucked his thumb and had it cut off by a tailor with big shears, a boy who refused to eat his soup and died of starvation, et cetera. An ominous book, to be certain.
    “If you don’t have an
Ariernachweis
, you’ll need one,” Sophie said. “Soon.” She spread her fingers and began to lick the juice from them, one by one.
    Marta moved the bowl of peeled fruit aside, covering it first with a chipped porcelain plate. She had never known her mother, let alone her mother’s parents. There could be any number of secrets in that part of her past.
    Her father she remembered, despite the desire not to—but the Bauers were her family now. They had never said so, not in so many words, but she felt they had an understanding.
    “Chamberlain says there will be peace in our time,” Marta said.
    Sophie dumped the apple peels in the bin under the sink. She filled the empty mixing bowl with water and scrubbed.
    “Peace in our time,” she said. “We’ll see about that.” She leaned out the window to pour the dirty contents down the outdoor drain.
    “We’ll see about that? What do you—”
    But there was the sound of Pavel entering the house, the clinking as he hung his factory keys on the hook by the door. Through the archway between the rooms Marta saw his business suit and cufflinks. She thought of him just that morning in his thin nightshirt, and of the moment of closeness they’d shared. But he was changing guises so frequently these days. Now he seemed a different person entirely.
    Marta heard Pavel shout upstairs for his wife, and then she heard Anneliese’s footsteps descending the stairs. There was no small talk, no kiss hello. “I want to leave for Prague,” Anneliese said.
    There was a silence, and Marta looked up from the
chlebíčky
she was making. Pavel was lighting his pipe, teasing out the strands of tobacco, holding a match to the bowl and sucking on the stem to make it catch. His cheeks working like bellows.
    “I am buying new bobbins,” he said.
    “New what?” Anneliese asked.
    “New bobbins. For the flax-spinning frames.”
    “Pavel. Did you hear what I said?” Anneliese was unused to her wishes being challenged. There was the click of her own lighter; from where Marta stood in the kitchen she could see the parlour filling up with smoke, the grey of Anneliese’s cigarette rising to meet the sweeter blue of Pavel’s pipe.
    “Two types of bobbins are possible,” Pavel said. “Ernst recommended the more expensive type.”
    “What an ass,” Anneliese said, forcefully. “To be thinking of bobbins at a time like this.”
    Marta wondered if she meant that Ernst was an ass, or her own husband, standing in front of her.
    There was another silence and Marta turned back to her task, laying slices of cheese against the dark, dense bread. Pepik liked onions too, and she cut him a sliver—the smell was sour and made her eyes water. When Anneliese finally spoke again there was a waver in her voice. “Hitler has arrived, Pavel,” she said. “Don’t you see what is happening all around us?”
    Beyond the window a stream of people was moving towards the train station. They were carrying baskets and hat boxes and birdcages, their winter coats pulled on top of sweaters despite the fact that it was a gorgeous fall day. But Pavel did not indulge his young wife. “We have invested in our country, and we shall continue to do so,” he said, testing out his new-found certainty. “The only way to function here is to base our actions on a belief in