Dr. Tauber had his back to Magda as he held his wire-rimmed spectacles in the air, pinching his nose. His shoulders shook. Frau Tauber, opposite her husband, grinned widely at Mayor Brauer to her left. She gazed at him in anticipation as she absentmindedly stroked the diamond pendant around her neck, her wavy ginger hair done half-up, half-down. Frau Brauer, meanwhile, peered over at a small book the mayor held. Across from the Brauers, the Dvoráks, who had arrived from Prague earlier that day, glowed from their afternoon at the Taubers’ pool. Their smiles had been plastered on since their arrival.
Magda had not seen the Taubers—or their friends—enjoying themselves like this in months. She found herself grinning as well.
“Just a moment.” Mayor Brauer lifted the book in his hand and raised a finger in the air. “I’m not finished yet. I’ve got at least ten more to go.”
The next wave of tittering did not deter the mayor.
“In Danish,” he read loudly, “it’s lort. In Swedish, it’s Skit—”
“And in Yiddish?” the mayor’s wife called.
“Drek.” Frau Tauber beamed.
“That is the word for dirt in German,” the mayor said, looking over his glasses.
“Such prudes,” Mrs. Dvorákova said. “Do the Nazis even realize they speak Yiddish?”
“Gabriel,” Frau Tauber called to Mr. Dvorák, “can you imagine if we wrote music for a cabaret?”
“Straight to the piano with you.” He flung an arm toward the piano. “Excellent idea. Crappy music for crappy words.”
There was another round of delighted laughter.
The tray in Magda’s hands tipped dangerously.
“My goodness!” Frau Tauber clapped a hand over her mouth, but the next moment she uncovered it, still smiling. “Our soup is here. Look at us. This is what happens when your friends mix cocktails for you all afternoon. Magdalena, I’m so sorry for our behavior. Please do excuse us.”
She waved Magda in, and the people around the table settled down, whether sobered by the soup or Magda’s presence, Magda did not know.
She began with Frau Tauber and kept the left side of her face tilted down even if it looked as if she had a crick in her neck. How else was she to hide the enormous birthmark on her cheek? As she reached the mayor’s bowl, she glanced down at the small book he had set aside. It was a pamphlet really, innocent looking enough, until she read the title: How to Say Shit in 20 Different Languages and Other Obscenities Likely Unfamiliar to Members of the NSDAP.
Magda choked back her surprise.
Frau Tauber’s eyes were bright with mischief. “I’m sorry, Magdalena. It’s truly inappropriate of us, and at the dinner table—”
“That may be,” Dr. Tauber said, “but in comparison to other improprieties these days, utterly harmless.”
Magda served him last. He jerked his chin upward and winked at her. She straightened her head. He was always doing that—always encouraging her to hold her head high.
Back in the kitchen, she thought of the four guests in the dining room, sharing the day with the Taubers. The mayor of the town. The film producer. The singer. It was because of them that the family was still here, still safe. And if the Taubers were safe, she might be as well.
She stopped and looked out the lead panes of the service door and out to the gate, remembering how she had come here—the circumstances.
When the German military rolled past Voštiny, on the road opposite the Elbe River, Magda and her mother were singing “Meadows Green” and threshing the wheat. Their song dissipated like smoke into the air. Magda’s mother straightened, one hand on her headscarf, like a gesture of disbelief. No tanks. No marching soldiers. Only those gray-green trucks and black automobiles on the horizon.
They moved on south, growing smaller in size but larger in meaning. When she looked toward the fields, Magda saw her father and her two brothers also pausing, one at a time, to witness the Germans chalking off the Sudetenland boundary with their exhaust fumes. The Nováks’ farm lay within it.
Magda’s father had faced the cottage, and an entire exchange silently took place between her parents.
Then the rumors are true, her father said with a simple lift of his head.
What now? her mother asked via a glance toward the river and the pursing of lips.
Her father lowered his head. We finish the wheat.
And with that, Magda, her two brothers, and her parents stuck their heads in the sand and went back to work.
Later, at midday, urgent knocking rattled their door. Everyone froze except Magda. She looked around the room, as if this was to be the last scene she should remember. Her father held the edge of the table. Her mother stood. She was straight and proud and beautiful with an open face, the kindest light-brown eyes, and full lips. Magda’s brothers sat rigid in their chairs. Each of their wives held a child. And her grandparents sat so close to each other on the bench against the oven that they might as well have been in each other’s laps.
The knocking came more insistently, and this time they stirred into action. Magda’s father pushed himself from the table and left the room. The rest were in various stages of trying to look normal. A moment later, her father returned with the village heads. With baffling lightness, he offered them Becherovka, as if it were Christmas, and shared a joke about a cow and a farmer—Magda could never remember the story or the punch line that had made them laugh so.
The Sudetenland, the village wisemen announced, was now part of the Third Reich. Hitler was protecting his people. And that was why none of the other countries called foul on breaching the treaty.
“But we will not go to war,” one village elder had said, “as we may have feared.”
“Imagine that,” Magda’s father had said abruptly, in the tone he used when angry.
Her brothers, however, had visibly relaxed. They should not have.
That night, before she went
