The Diplomat's Wife(68)

Jake. I stare at the child, remembering. Emma’s pregnancy was the reason we had to get her out of Kraków so quickly. The Kommandant found out and wanted to send Emma away to raise his child in Austria. His child. That had been the question, though no one had talked about it at the time: had Jacob fathered Emma’s baby during their lone reunion before the resistance bombed the café, or had her pregnancy resulted from her affair with the Kommandant? Looking now at the boy, I have no doubt—his steely gray eyes are almost identical to those that stared lifelessly back at me on the bridge the night I killed the Kommandant.

“Jake,” I repeat aloud. At least the child has Jacob’s name. Suddenly, my breath catches. Jews name children after those who have died. “After Jacob…?”

“He didn’t make it, Marta,” Emma says, her voice cracking.

Pain rips through my chest. “No…”

“When I left you on the bridge, I found the Kowalczyk farm and Jacob was waiting there for me, just like you said.” I can barely hear her over the buzzing in my ears. Suddenly I want to reach out and slap her or shake her, anything to stop her words. “He was still terribly weak, but we knew we had to leave then because the police would be looking for me. The snow in the mountains was so much worse than we expected. Jacob developed a high fever and collapsed, right after we crossed the border into Slovakia.”

I fight the urge to scream. “Jacob,” I say instead, seeing his face in my mind.

“I stayed with him, Marta.” I can hear the guilt in Emma’s voice, her desperate need to explain. “I stayed with him right until the very end, until he was gone.”

I swallow, struggling to find words. “And then?”

“I covered his body as well as I could, with rocks and branches. The ground was frozen; it was the best I could do. I didn’t want to leave him there, but I had no other choice. I couldn’t carry him and we couldn’t stay there. We had no food. Lukasz would have died, and the baby inside me, too.” The baby. Resentment fills me. If it was not for the baby, Emma would not have had to flee Kraków and Jacob would still be alive. Emma continues, “It was like you told me, Marta, the night on the bridge. Those who can go on must.” In my mind I hear myself, insisting that Emma flee and leave me behind wounded for the Nazis. Would things have ended differently if I had gone instead, saving myself? Could I have saved Jacob, too? “So I finished crossing the mountains and came down into Slovakia. I’d heard rumors that some of those who had survived from the resistance were in Prague. I made my way here and found Marek.”

Emma is here. Jacob is dead. I swallow, trying to process it all. “Were there others who made it?”

Emma shakes her head. “No one from Kraków. Everyone was arrested or killed, except for Marek and me. And you, of course, though we had no idea. But there were others who wound up here, from Lodz and Lublin, and from some other countries, too. A lot of people, like Marek and I, who resisted the Nazis, are fighting the communists now.”

“So you’re helping Marek with his work?”

“Yes, but…” Emma looks away, staring across the park. “There’s something else you should know. I’m not just working with Marek.” She hesitates, then raises her hand to reveal a small gold band. “He is also my husband.” I sink back, feeling as though someone kicked me in the stomach. “Marta, say something,” Emma pleads.

“Your husband?” I repeat, disbelieving.

“It didn’t happen right away.” Emma’s tone is defensive. “But when I came to Prague, I was all alone. I had nothing. Marek took us in, provided for me and the children. We grew closer and then he proposed.”

I pause, trying to understand. In the distance, a crow cries out. “Do you love him?” I ask at last.

“I don’t even know what that is anymore,” she replies, her voice hollow.

“But Jacob…”

“Jacob is gone, Marta.” Her expression is hard, unfamiliar. “I had to be practical, do what is best for my children.”

I follow Emma’s gaze to the swings where Lukasz plays. I think of Rachel. I went to work for Simon already suspecting that I was pregnant with her. And in spite of that fact, or maybe because of it, I let him court me. Would I have married Simon if Rachel had not been on the way? It is a question I have avoided asking myself for years.

I remember suddenly a fight Emma and I had when I confronted her on the street the night of the café bombing. How could she be involved with the Kommandant, I demanded, when she claimed to love Jacob? Emma begged me to understand then, too: she was doing what she had to do to help the resistance. At the time, I saw only that it was wrong. If Emma really loved Jacob, she would not be sleeping with the Kommandant. Things were so much simpler then, when the only love I had known was my crush on Jacob. Now I know that it is more complicated than that. I judged Emma once; I will not do it again.

“I understand,” I say at last, reaching out and squeezing Emma’s hand. Her fingers close quickly around mine. We are two girls back in the ghetto, confiding in each other.

She looks at me. “You do?”

Hearing the relief in Emma’s voice, I nod. “Yes. I have a child, too.”

“Oh, Marta, that’s wonderful! Boy or girl?”

“Girl. She’s one-and-a-half. Her name is Rachel.”