Prologue
April 1942
Magda shoved open the service door and hurried across the snow-encrusted lawn. Out of habit, she glanced at the empty deer park across the road. A gust of wind bent the tops of the cedars lined up along the way. There, they urged, pointing down the mountain, is the way out. In that very stand of trees where she had once planted kisses on a traitor, she now hid secrets for retrieval.
At the iron gate, Magda looked back at Villa Liška. The high-curved windows of the dining room and salon were dark. The house might as well be empty inside. The yellow limestone facade had lost its cheeriness a year ago. It remained well maintained, but the spirit was so long gone that it was hard to believe she had once felt safe and loved in this mansion. Magda lifted the latch, pushed the gate open, and crossed the street to the granary. She was less likely to be seen if she took the back road. She passed the two mines and veered toward town. The gray flannel sky was blotchy and wet, and a smell like damp laundry came off the Elbe and Ohre rivers. In her wake, the wind stirred tiny, frozen pellets into whirlpools of ice. Not hail nor rain but snow. Again.
“April, April,” Walter had chanted to her, “der weiß nicht was er will.” April, April, it knows not what it wants. He had stroked the birthmark on her left cheek, the blemish to which she had always accredited her loneliness, and switched to Czech. “Do you know what you want, Magda?”
At the time, she had been certain the answer was Walter. She wanted Walter, with his novel attentions, but she had been too shy to utter the words. Instead she’d fled behind the service door only to peer back at him through the lead-glass window. He stood there for quite some time before turning away. Then he walked through the stand of cedars back to work, back to the deer.
Now, she wanted anything but Walter. In the fifth year since the occupation—since the terror—Magda yearned to wrap her arms around something entirely different.
It took her thirty minutes to get to the walls of old-town Litoměřice. She passed through the castle’s gate, where Swastika-stamped flags snapped salutes to the wind. Years ago, when she had arrived in Litoměřice to look for work, she’d had to swim against a current of fleeing Czechs and Slovaks. The dismal reminders of a displaced Bohemia now lay beneath a red-black-white sheen. Those ruby-red flags were everywhere in the main square too, draped along the entrance to the town hall, protruding beneath the clock tower, and stretched across the narrow streets. Triangular banners were stretched over passages, and in the middle was usually a portrait of the Führer or other reminders about how loyalty and obedience would get you far in this regime. The old things were still there: the gas lanterns—electric for decades—lined the cobblestoned roads or hung on a building’s turret. The pastry shop windows now featured a slice of apple strudel alongside a few traditional cylinders of cinnamon trdelnik and poppy-seed rolls. The flower-stitched aprons and bell-shaped kroje skirts in a dressmaker’s shop looked faded and unwanted.
The bus puttered to a stop near the baroque water fountain next to the oak tree, but military vehicles and trucks peppered the square. The signs on the buildings still had Czech names, but the government offices did not.
Magda ducked into the bakery and stood in line behind a policeman, her heart hammering. She automatically pressed the edge of her headscarf over the ruby map on her left cheek. It was the oldest of her disfigurements, one of three that made her not only identifiable but immediately suspicious. The two scars on her face were the marks of defiance.
As the policeman added his purchase to a bag, the woman behind the counter gave Magda a quick look. The less you try to hide yourself, the less they’ll notice you.
Magda forced her hand to drop. The woman waited until the policeman had left before taking Magda’s ration card, handing her the two extra loaves of rye bread in return.
“Will you be lighting a candle today?” she asked.
Magda nodded.
The woman put an extra roll into Magda’s bag.
Magda stepped out of the bakery, the bag of bread clutched in her fist. When she reached St. Stephen’s, she checked once more to make sure she had not been followed. She slipped her hand into her pocket and touched her talisman. Certain that nobody paid any attention to her in the streets, she made the sign of the cross and entered the church through the side. An older woman sobbed and prayed. A man Magda did not recognize lit a candle. She stepped into a pew, kneeled, and made the sign of the cross, her mind far too distracted to form the simplest of prayers beyond, “Dear God, save us.”
It was a long time before Magda went to the door leading to the back of the crypts below. She rapped in two quick successions, paused, and tapped three more times. On the other side, the iron bolt scraped across the heavy wooden door. As soon as it was opened wide enough, Magda slipped through.
I
June 1941–March 1942
1
June 1941
As she entered the Taubers’ dining room, Magda was met with laughter—the kind tinged by guilty pleasure or nervous dissent. Magda balanced the tray of soup bowls, then took a step back, hoping to blend into the jacquard wallpaper.
