My Enemy's Cradle

  I smiled back and took a step toward him, then opened my mouth to say something. But the words didn't come.

  "What is it?"

  "There's something ... I've been thinking—" I hesitated. Some things were still difficult to express in German. This would be difficult to express in any lauguage. "Anneke lives inside me, Karl. I've stolen her life. I can't change that, and it affects how things are between us."

  "You didn't steal her life. She lost it. And you're only using her name."

  I walked over and stood beside him. "No, it's more than her name. I was always so jealous of her, of how easy everything was for her. And now in this place, I'm trying to be her. She was supposed to be here. I didn't come here to keep my baby safe—nothing as heroic as that. I got pregnant so I could step into her life, to keep myself safe. No, to do something even more selfish. And I really am using more than her name."

  "How do you mean?"

  "Well, in here, I try to become her. I'm quiet. Anneke was chatty. In here, I let her speak for me. And even in that, I'm a fraud. Anneke never had to choose her words carefully, the way I do—she was so pure, she could just say whatever she was thinking. She never had anything to hide. And she was carrying a German baby. I'm not, and that feels too dangerous to even let myself remember. I act like her and I try to think like her. So it feels like she's still here. Like there are two of us living in my skin."

  Just then the baby bumped me, as if he'd been listening and didn't like the slight. I laughed, relieved, and pressed my hand over his heel. "All right, there are three of us in here."

  Karl looked down. His eyes asked if he could touch me. I took his hand and placed it over the baby's foot, still kicking.

  "So ... do you think of him as mine?" Karl asked softly.

  "Well, in theory, yes. When I'm downstairs or talking to the other girls, I try to think of myself as carrying a German soldier's baby. But when I'm alone, no. It's so complicated. And when you ask if we can be friends, well, that's really complicated with her here with me so strongly. Do you understand?"

  Karl took his hand off my belly—reluctantly, I thought. His face looked pained, but for me or for him, I didn't know. "We had a dog at the boatyard once, when I was young. She had puppies and when one of them died, I took it out of the litter. I thought that was a good thing to do. But the dog got upset—she circled the nest, she was frantic, looking for that puppy. My father told me to bring the puppy's body back, so she could understand. I did and she picked it up, carried it outside, and left it under some bushes. Then she came back and she was calm. So he was right."

  "I didn't see her buried, Karl, that's true. But I saw her dead." I pressed my hands over my heart and waited while the image washed over me. Karl put his arm around me and pulled me to his side. "I know she's dead," I told him. "I can say it; I cry over it. But still, I keep her alive."

  "Maybe you need to bury her."

  "Maybe I do. But I don't know how."

  "Cyrla, don't you think she'd want us to be friends?"

  "Yes, I do. You're right. I know that. She told me that once, in fact—she said I'd like you and trust you. But when I'm trying so hard to be Anneke here, and I see you, sometimes I'm so angry at you. You hurt her, and if she..."

  Karl released me and I felt strangely shapeless all of a sudden. As if my own skin was no longer enough to hold me together.

  "I think about that all the time," he said. "The thing is, I told her what I did to save her from hurt. We weren't suited for each other. Given some time, I think she would have seen that."

  "So do I. I think I just needed to tell you all this. I need you to understand what it feels like to me."

  "I'm glad you did. And I'm sorry for how hard it must be for you here." He hugged me again and kept his arm around me. In the quiet we heard singing from below. "Deutschland über Alles." "This all must be so hard."

  "That's the song they end on," I said. "You should go now."

  He nodded and picked up his coat from the bed. He didn't leave, though. "You know, I think we should celebrate. We've just declared peace, and that's always something to celebrate."

  "It is," I agreed. A knot that had been tightening in my chest for a long time was finally loosening. "It certainly is."

  "I can come this weekend. They're setting up some new equipment so I only have paperwork to do. Let me take you out, maybe a film or a meal."

  Karl was right—it was peace we had made. But it was more: I had been granted forgiveness. I felt washed in grace. By Saturday morning, when I got ready, it really did feel as though I was getting ready for a celebration. I bathed and dressed in the prettiest things from Erika's gifts. I checked the clock constantly. Finally it was time. I went downstairs and found Karl already there, leaning over the front desk, saying something to the nurse on duty. She smiled at him, rolled her eyes as though he were an exasperating child, then waved him off.

  He came over and helped me put my sweater on. "We have eight hours today. It's eleven now, so I don't have to bring you back until dinnertime."

  "How did you do that?"

  "I charmed her. I told her I didn't come last weekend, so I want to make up for it. I convinced her to look at it as two outings at once. I told her it was a special occasion and I had a surprise for you."

  "And do you?"

  "I do. But you'll have to wait until we get there. But before we go, I want you to go get something of Anneke's."

  "Why?"

  "Trust me. Remember, you're going to trust me now."

  I went back to my room and looked around. Almost everything I had here was Anneke's. Suddenly I knew what Karl wanted. I picked up the bottle of nail polish and one of her handkerchiefs and slipped them into my pocket.

  In the backseat of the car there was a bouquet of red roses and a spade. I showed Karl what I had brought.

  "Are you ready?" he asked.

  "I am ready," I answered.

  We drove out to the sheep farm again and walked in silence along the path we had taken the last time. When we came to the overlook, we stopped. Karl looked to me and I nodded.

  "She's really buried in Apeldoorn," I told him. "I'm going to visit when I can."

  "Apeldoorn. I'll go there, too, someday."

  He dropped the spade into the earth and dug a small hole. I wrapped the bottle of blood-red polish in its lacy shroud, bent down, and placed it in the hole. Then Karl filled it in and laid the roses on top.

  "No." I picked them up. "Not with the thorns." One by one, I plucked the petals off and dropped them over the fresh dirt. They fell like little slices of my heart. This should hurt more, I thought. I told Anneke the things I would have said to her if I'd known and squeezed the rose stems until I felt the tiny thorns pierce my palm. Karl looked down and pried the stems from my hand and threw them away.

  "I was wrong about something," I said. "When you first came here, I told you Anneke wasn't something we shared. But she is."

  He took my hand and pressed our palms together, our fingers laced. We walked back, quiet, until we reached the car.

  "I brought a picnic," Karl said. "It's supposed to be beautiful this afternoon. We can do something else, though, if you want. Go into Munich.... "

  "No. I haven't been on a picnic for so long. It sounds so normal!"

  He tossed the spade into the trunk and pulled out a large basket and a blanket and a bag. We walked to the far end of the field, behind the barn, and set them under a huge elm. Apple trees surrounded the field, their blossoms forming soft pink halos around them.

  "I'm starving. I have to eat every ten minutes these days." I bent over the picnic basket. "What did you bring?"

  There was a distant rumble and I jumped a little. Even after almost two years, I jumped. Karl read my worry. "It's only thunder."

  We looked to the sky. Purple thunderheads were piling up, bruising the sky above the mountains. "It'll pass quickly," Karl said. "But let's bring everything inside."

  The barn was dark, even wi
th the door open partway, and sweet with the scent of hay and sheep. I smiled in wonder.

  "What?"

  "I don't know, exactly. I feel so safe here, hidden. I think it's just been a long time since I stood somewhere and thought: Nobody knows where I am."

  "I know where you are." Karl took a step toward me, then stopped and looked down at his hands. "I know what you mean, though."

  Then he climbed the ladder to the loft and pushed two bales of hay over the edge. He climbed down, took out his pocketknife, and slit them open. "We can pretend we're outside," he said, spreading the hay. He shook the blanket out.

  "You said you had a surprise," I reminded him.

  "I do. And now's a good time. Turn around."

  "You think I'll turn my back on you?" I was feeling playful—another sensation I hadn't had in a very long time.

  "Suit yourself." Karl took off his tie and then began to undo the buttons of his uniform tunic. He tossed it aside and bent over the basket. From it he withdrew a navy sweater, bulky with cable stitches; the muscles of his back bunched as he pulled it over his head. Then he turned and spread his arms, looking pleased with himself.

  "What? That's your surprise? A sweater?"

  "I could be court-martialed for putting on civilian clothes, and that's the reception I get?" Karl sighed and grew serious. "This is the other thing between us. I've seen how you look at me. Or how you don't look at me—how you look at my uniform instead. That's all you see, Cyrla. You never see me."

  "I see you, Karl. And you wear that uniform."

  "Not by choice. So can't you see past it for one day? That's what I want from you: just one day when you're a woman and I'm a man. When you don't have to worry about what Anneke might feel and you don't have to protect yourself from an enemy. Will you do that for just one day?"

  "I don't think I can." My throat tightened with a dangerous ache.

  "You're leaving in three weeks. We have three weeks. What could it harm?"

  "It's wrong."

  "Why?"

  "I don't know! Because what if—" I wrapped my arms around my belly and looked up at him—"I can't let this go. And I don't want to. This baby is Jewish. His father is Jewish, and I owe him something. And you're German."

  "Do you really think I'd harm a baby?"

  I clasped my hands more firmly around the baby. "This is all I have now. It's everything. I've done a terrible job of it so far—look at where I am, Karl! I'm trying to make it up to him, to do the best I can right now."

  I turned away then. There was another clap of thunder, closer. After a minute I felt him come up behind me, his presence too close to me, and yet I didn't shrink away. The air between us seemed to throb with invisible vibrations. I heard the rain begin, just a hushed rustling.

  And then he touched me. Not on the arm, not on the shoulder, not on the back of the neck as I had been expecting. Wanting. Instead he eased his body against my back and placed his hands on my waist. I didn't turn toward him, but I didn't pull away, either. I waited, my breath caught in my throat.

  Very slowly, as if giving me time to understand his motions, he stroked his hands down the sides of my hipbones, his fingers following the arc where my body met the rising moon of my child. He bent forward, his face beside mine now, his cheek to my cheek. Gently, he laced his fingers beneath my baby's swell and he lifted. He lifted my burden from me and took it for himself.

  I came undone. Sobs of relief shook me. Karl moved to pull his arms away, as if he was afraid he had upset me, but I held them firm. We stood like that for a long time—me crying and him cradling my burden—and then I turned inside the circle of his arms and found his mouth.

  FIFTY-SIX

  We kissed. I could not get enough of his hot mouth, his hot tongue. Our mouths were sealed together, sealed, and I had only one clear thought: If this were a choice, it would be wrong. But this is not a choice. It was a need, as undeniable as breath, and it grew until I was nothing more than hollowness and shivers, and Karl only muscle and heat.

  "Lie down," he said.

  And I lay down.

  Karl curled himself behind me and leaned over my shoulder to find my hungry mouth. We kissed and he pressed into me and we kissed and he pulled off our clothes and we kissed. He stopped to ask if it was all right to do this—all right for the baby—and I pulled his mouth back to mine and arched back until I found what I needed. We kissed and when he came into me, I cried tears of joy into our completed circle.

  And Corrie was wrong: The other one was not there. Not then.

  Afterward, I lay still in the curve of Karl's arm, so still I could feel his pulse against my cheek, listening to the perfect rain. Karl stroked my skin and I felt I had never known touch before, the exquisite miracle of it. He ran his hand down my spine and then over my belly. He found a bump and cupped it, propped himself up to examine it. "An elbow."

  "Or a knee. Or a heel. My little gymnast."

  "Are you sure that was all right to do? Not dangerous?"

  "It's fine. Right up until the last month."

  "How do you know?"

  "We have a whole library full of books. Prenatal care, birth, child raising. And I have a lot of time on my hands."

  He leaned over and kissed my belly. "All right, then. All right."

  When the rain had passed, Karl went to the barn door and pushed it open all the way. Sun shafts streamed in; beyond, the meadow gleamed green, washed. Birds had begun to sing again, pouring out their joy after the rain, as if the afternoon was a miracle. I lay back, smiling, and thought they were right.

  Karl turned back to me. "Are you hungry?"

  "No."

  "Do you want to leave? Go somewhere else?"

  "No."

  "Do you want to take a walk?"

  "All right."

  We walked slowly and only Karl talked, pointing out trees and wildflowers along the way. I held his hand. It was solid, warm, and sure, and it felt like my only connection to the world. When he dropped it to shake the rain off a branch of apple blossoms for me to smell, I felt suddenly anxious, as though I might burn away like the mist. When we walked back, I held it even tighter.

  The ground was still wet, so Karl went back to the car for a canvas to spread under the blanket. Then he set out the picnic: cheese and bread and a tin of anchovies, green olives, dried apricots, walnuts, and something that rattled in a box, which he wouldn't let me open.

  "Where did you get all this?"

  "I have connections."

  He took out two glasses and uncorked a bottle of red wine.

  I looked at the label in wonder. "Chianti?"

  "I told you—I have connections. And I'm half Italian, you know—what good is a meal without wine?"

  "You're half Italian? I didn't know that."

  Karl shrugged as if it hadn't been worth mentioning. As if having parents from two different worlds didn't leave a person split down the middle, through the heart. "My mother was from Tuscany. My father met her on a trip to buy olive wood—a special order for a customer. Love at first sight."

  "Karl, doesn't it make you feel torn in half? As if you don't belong anywhere?"

  He poured the wine. "No. Not at all. Except for being grateful because it means I could never be recruited by the Nazis—I've never even thought about it. Is that how you feel?"

  I nodded and sipped my wine, feeling its comforting heat rise through me like a blush. "It's different. Imagine if your mother died and your father sent you to Italy to live with her relatives."

  "I'd feel terrible. He would never have done that."

  I turned away, drank more wine. "Some people are easier to send away, I guess."

  Karl put down his glass and took my face in his hands. "That's not what happened. Anneke said you came in '36. When did your mother die?"

  "In 1930."

  "Well, see? It wasn't because of that. Pilsudski had just died, and there was the new regime. The Nuremberg Laws here ... well, obviously your father was worried about
what was coming. He was right. But think of how hard it must have been."

  "Maybe not. Maybe it made things easier for him."

  "Easier? To lose his daughter?"

  "He never spoke of my mother after she died. He got rid of everything that reminded him of her. Maybe ... well, I'll never know."

  Karl leaned back on his elbows and smiled as if he held a secret. "I think you will know. I think when the baby's born, you'll understand a lot. That's how it's been with my sister and me, after Lina was born. I feel a little like her father, you know. Having Lina has made Erika and me understand our parents."

  I looked at him doubtfully, but wanting to believe.

  "Really. Wait until the baby is born; think about it then. Right now, you should eat." He rose to his knees and began to set food out for us. He had forgotten silverware, so he tore off chunks of bread and used his pocketknife to open the tins and slice cheese.

  "This is one place I did feel it, having an Italian mother," Karl said. He shook out olives, glistening in their oil, onto a piece of bread and handed it to me. "When I was young, all my friends wanted to eat with us. Once a year—the last week in August—she made a trip to Italy to the markets. Erika and I always begged to go with her—it was our favorite week of the year. We'd help her buy sardines and great tins of olive oil, braids of garlic, boxes of pine nuts, big jugs of wine. Pancetta—do you know what that is? A cured meat, smoky. Figs and prunes; cheeses. There was a certain flour she needed to make her pasta and an almond paste for her baking. Erika and I would wander through the stalls sampling everything, then my mother would let us get gelato. On the last day, she'd buy four or five crates of plum tomatoes—she couldn't get those at home—and one of lemons, and a huge sack of coffee beans. Then we'd ride home with everything on the train. I can still remember how wonderful our compartment smelled—she insisted that everything had to ride with us."

  I eased down on my side, my head propped up by one elbow to eat and listen to Karl. Sometimes when people talked about their mothers, I felt pinched with jealousy, as if they'd stolen their memories at my expense. But not now.