The Last Flight of Poxl West by Daniel Torday Read Free Book Online Page B

father’s invisible hand retook control of the throttle from me, and he again maintained control of us in the sky.
    â€œAce flying, my boy,” my father said. By the time we returned to the hangar, my mother was again with us. A new pair of larger amber earrings were in her ears.
    â€œDo you like them?” she said. She did not look at my father. I told her I did, sure. “I met up with Grandma Traute,” she said. “We shopped down in Wenceslas Var.”
    She and my father didn’t speak again until we arrived in Leitmeritz. I nodded off on the ride and in my head I was back up in the clouds—my body had maintained that altitude, and the clouds that passed through us or we through them were all around us again, and I was untethered. When I came back from my reverie, Radobyl was to our northeast up in the distance, and we were driving past the fortress walls of Terezin, which then held none of the meaning it later would, just the remnants of another, more belligerent time in the town to our south, walls I’d seen a thousand times before.
    Presently Françoise woke again and broke me from my memory. She sat up, so that we were next to each other on the sofa.
    â€œThere is one more part of this story I’ve been telling you,” Françoise said. “Where was I? Right. Of course I did not go with my parents on their new junket in the Congo. I was going to keep the baby. My mother was furious at my decision, and she and my father left me.
    â€œI might have been in real trouble had it not been that around that time I had just begun seeing the Brauns. At first I worked for only Frau Braun, but she began to take me home to her husband as well. They were paying for it, but they were gentle and generous with me, nonetheless, and I came to trust them both. I don’t think I sought them out for the sake of the baby at first—honestly, I didn’t know what I’d do. But Frau Braun had wanted me, and here was this wealthy couple who had no children of their own. I began to see that it was providence, their having come back into my life.
    â€œWhen the dentist noticed my swollen belly, he erupted at first, thinking I was claiming it was his, that I wanted money from him. Strange as it might sound, when he came to understand that the baby wasn’t his and that was not what I was asking, he calmed. And at that same time, a preternatural peace seemed to come over Frau Braun.
    â€œI have learned from my work how to read people. I saw something in Frau Braun’s face—something I’d come there looking for. So I stopped pleading. I made my proposal overtly.” And so I came to understand that this was what had taken her back to the Brauns that night. There was some safety in her knowing her baby would have a comfortable home with them, and that she could go to see her if she wished.
    She stopped talking and looked at me.
    â€œSo, you see,” she said. “Heidi Braun, the Brauns’ little girl—she’s mine.”
    And with her story complete, Françoise said she was tired. There was nothing more to say. It occurred to me, among other things, that Françoise was a good bit older than I’d assumed her to be. But surely I wouldn’t remark on such a fact—now, or ever. We crawled off to her bed and went to sleep.
    7.
    Inside my door one afternoon weeks later I found a travel-worn envelope. My father’s rendering of my address there on Scheepstimmermanslaan was barely legible. The first part was dated August 8. It had long been delayed in its arrival.
    â€œDear Leopold,” the letter began.
    Thank you for your letter no matter how brief or belated. Your mother is fine and I am fine and little Pitzky the dog is fine. We have all been wondering about you. We are each fine. In spring Hitler slept the night in Hradcany to spit in our faces. The German soldiers took over Prague with tanks and guns, but not Leitmeritz. I have