“I’ve been underestimated all my life,” Magda said slowly. “And yet here I am.” In German, she said, “I’m taking the child with me.”
Frau Koenig looked up in anguish. “He’s my son! Don’t you dare hurt him.”
Magda dropped her hand. “You still don’t understand,” she said. “I’m the one who protected him. I protected him from your husband because you were too weak to. I saved him!”
Frau Koenig dropped her head. “Kill me,” she sobbed. “You may as well kill me.”
“What is she saying?” The second rifleman asked.
“She wants us to kill her,” Dutch Cap said.
The crowd jeered, surged forward.
Magda raised her pistol into the air and shot, then swung it at the crowd, turning with Robert. Her arms were beginning to shake, and her legs were unsteady. Beyond the gate, two vehicles—Renata’s and Aleš’s group—pulled up alongside the road. Magda could not do both. She could not protect the boy and the woman. Magda tossed the pistol to the side. It bounced across the lawn and landed under a bush.
Robert buried his face into Magda’s neck. She lifted the child higher into her arms, turned, and walked down the sloping lawn. The tops of the cedars waved in the spring breeze.
Aleš jumped out of the first vehicle and threw open the back door. Renata bent forward inside.
“Magda, let us take you to where you need to go,” he said.
Magda walked past him and stepped onto the road. To her right, the white clock tower of Litoměřice. To her left, the road that would take her back to Voštiny. She pulled Robert away from her, his legs wrapped around her waist. She brushed the snot and the tears away from his face with her hand. She kissed his cheeks and spoke soothingly in Czech.
She faced Aleš. Renata was getting out of the car.
“Do something about this,” Magda ordered. “Nobody wins like this.”
At the top of the road, Magda lowered Robert to the ground. She heaved once more, the nausea causing sweat to break across her brow. At the look of fright on Robert’s face, she clutched the poor boy’s hand. She pointed. Below, the Ohre and Elbe rivers entwined into one another, the lake glimmered in the afternoon sun. A cuckoo sang in the field behind them. The red-tiled roof and the highest yellow limestone tower of the villa peeked above the tree line. She waited with him.
Not a minute later, a shot rang from the yard below. Magda turned her back on Litoměřice and Villa Liška.
18
September 1945
At the sight of the truck kicking up dust clouds and her side of the Elbe, Magda dropped the damp white coverlet back into the laundry basket and walked to the front of the cottage. She looked to the horizon. The truck was heading north toward the border. Or so she thought. It slowed at the crossing, then turned east, heading for Voštiny.
Robert squealed behind Magda, chasing after the geese. The dog ran on its chain, barking playfully. Against the glare of the morning sun, Magda raised her hand and waited as the truck neared the farm. She cursed beneath her breath.
It was probably another deportation truck filled with Germans who had been turned away at the border. It was madness. Utter chaos. There was no system in place, but the deportations had begun immediately. German families were rounded up, or—irony of all ironies!—sent a letter to pack a maximum of fifty kilograms of their belongings, to report to immigration headquarters, and to hand over a list of their personal items and the keys to the properties once requisitioned from Czech families. But Germany did not want the families, either, and all the border towns got in return were fleeing, stateless refugees pilfering, stealing, and even murdering along the way for food and shelter.
The families that had returned to Voštiny had been sometimes forced to take the law into their own hands. It was not pretty. It was the reason Magda had requisitioned the German family’s dog before they were thrown off her property. Still, she wished she had not tossed that revolver back at Villa Liška.
The dog’s bark changed as soon as the truck veered into their long drive. Robert ran over to her, sober now, and reached for her hand. Magda held it.
The policing units were rubbing the wounds of this country raw. The scars were already deep. As black and deep as the branding of the Hackenkreuz on their souls. Magda braced herself for an altercation. The prisoners could pick some apples from her tree, but that was it. Maybe it would teach the country a lesson, make the politicians collect themselves enough to finally put a system into place.
The truck pulled into the yard and stopped a few feet from Magda and Robert. Magda dropped Robert’s hand. She knew those silhouettes. She knew those figures, that odd pair.
“Go into the house,” Magda ordered Robert. He did not budge. Neither did she.
The truck doors opened. Magda pedaled back. She wanted her revolver. She should release the dog from his leash. Anything to prevent these unwanted intruders.
Aleš stepped down. He was dressed in a police uniform. Magda waited until Renata came to the front of the truck. Magda wanted to see her face, just one more time. Face her just one more time.
“You can both get back in and go to where you came from,” Magda said.
Aleš and Renata exchanged a look.
“Did you hear me?” Magda demanded. “Get back in the truck and go.”
“Magda,” Aleš started. “We’re not here to cause any trouble.”
“Then why did you come?”
Renata, at least, had the sense to stay put. She leaned against the hood and crossed her arms. Her mouth twisted.
The dog barked anew near the back of the truck.
Aleš looked over his shoulder. He fished something out of his shirt pocket. A packet of cigarettes.
