In The Presence of mine Enemies

VII

Heinrich Gimpel had tried the greasy spoon before, and hadn't been much impressed. No matter how trendy the American place was, he didn't like the food all that much. But if Richard and Maria Klein wanted to go there to celebrate, he and Lise weren't about to tell them no. The Kleins had reason to celebrate. The Security Police didn't call off an investigation every day, not when they were trying to find out if you were a Jew.

"I wish we could throw a proper party at home," Maria said. She'd been thin and pale to begin with, and the troubles of the past few months had only made her thinner and paler. She had a very nice smile, though, even when she shrugged and said, "You know how things are liable to be."

"Oh, yes." Heinrich nodded. So did Lise. If the authorities were still looking for evidence, what better way to get it than to fill the Kleins' house with microphones and listen to everything they said-and, if they did throw a party, to everything their friends said, too?

Richard took a big bite out of his cheeseburger. He had a musician's hands, all right: long, clever fingers, the tips slightly spatulate from endless hours of practice. He said, "I don't have any idea what finally made them quit. They just said, 'All right, we're done. Go on about your business. Doesn't look like you are what we thought you were.'" He had too much sense to say Jew where anyone who wasn't might hear. Grinning with relief, he sipped from a mug of beer.

"Was it your lawyer?" Lise asked. "From what Susanna says, he's a tiger."

The Kleins shrugged in unison. "He made a lot of noise, I'll say that for him," Maria answered. "I don't know how much real good he did, though."

A girl in what was supposed to be an American waitress's outfit from before the Third World War came up to the table. "Hi!" she said-the standard server's greeting at the Greasy Spoon. She returned to German to ask, "Would you like some dessert? Cherry pie, maybe, or brownies?"

"We're not quite ready yet," Heinrich said.

"Okay," she said brightly, doing her best to project old-time American enthusiasm. "I'll come back later, then." Away she went. Heinrich wondered whether waitresses in the United States had really worn clothes like that. Wouldn't the customers have been too distracted to order?

"I think maybe the lawyer helped," Richard said. "It helped that we had the nerve to hire one. That told them that we really hadn't done what they said we had."

"Good," Heinrich said. "Danken Gott dafur." He still wondered what the authorities had been thinking. A lot of times, they arrested people just because they felt like arresting them, not because the people had actually done something. Things did seem looser under Buckliger than they had under Kurt Haldweim, but were they loose enough for the powers that be to let Jews slip through their fingers? Heinrich had his doubts.

But the Kleins were here. Maria nodded. "Thank God for that is right," she said softly. And if she thought about God in a way different from that of most citizens of the Reich — well, who could know by the way she looked or what she said when strangers might hear? Nobody. Nobody at all.

Lise also spoke quietly: "How is Paul?"

"He's no better. He's not going to get better." Richard Klein spoke through clenched teeth. "They brought in specialists who know a lot more about this disease than Dr. Dambach does. They all say the same thing. When he gets worse, the Mercy Center will be a-a kindness."

"He's still happy, though," Maria said. "He's not too bad, and he's too little to know something's wrong with him."

"That's the one mercy we have," Richard agreed. "He doesn't know anything is wrong. But we do." He lifted the seidel of beer, drained it, and waved for a refill. The waitress brought it to him, then swayed off to get something for someone else.

Heinrich watched her. He would have needed to be blind not to watch her. Lise watched him watching her. "Come here often for lunch?" she asked.

"Me? No. It's not close enough to where I work." Heinrich enjoyed sounding virtuous. "As a matter of fact, Walther Stutzman told me about this place."

But Lise and Maria Klein stared at him. "Walther?" his wife said in astonishment. He and Lise were happily married. By all appearances, Richard and Maria got on well, too. But the Stutzmans were like two sides of one coin. Lise plainly had trouble imagining Walther coming to a restaurant where the waitresses were as big a part of the attraction as the food.

Taking pity on her, Heinrich said, "His boss has brought him here. Sometimes you can't say no." He ate some french fries. They were hot and salty, and certainly lived up to the name of the place.

"He says that's how he got here, anyway," Richard Klein said, his voice sly. "I bet he was just kicking and screaming when his boss dragged him in." He was waitress-watching, too.

Maria looked at Lise. "What are we going to do with them?"

"Well, we've had them for a while by now," Lise answered. "I don't suppose they'd bring much if we traded them in on new models."

"Mm-maybe not." By the way Maria said it, it was one of those unfortunate, inconvenient facts you just couldn't get around.

Heinrich finished his burger and fries. "If Americans eat like this all the time, why don't they all weigh two hundred kilos?" he said. "I feel like I swallowed a boulder."

Richard nodded. "Me, too," he said. But when the waitress came back and asked about dessert again, they both ordered cherry pie with a scoop of vanilla ice cream slapped on top. So did their wives. Away went the waitress, cheerful as could be.

"Now I get it," Lise said. "They wear what they're almost wearing to get the men to order more." Heinrich wouldn't have been surprised if she was right, no matter what he'd thought a little while earlier about distractions. He hadn't been too distracted to lay out some extra Reichsmarks, had he?

He found the only defense he could: "You wanted dessert, too, sweetheart, and I don't suppose the girl's clothes had anything to do with that."

Richard Klein clapped his hands. "That's good. I wish I could come up with snappy comebacks like that."

"Don't," Heinrich told him. "They usually just get you in trouble."

"Listen to him," Maria said. "This is a man who's been married longer than you have. He knows what's what."

The waitress came back with a tray heavy with desserts. The two couples dug in. Sure enough, Heinrich made his pie disappear. Nor was he the only one facing an empty dessert plate with an expression of disbelief. "You don't need to put me on the train tonight," he said. "You can just roll me home."

"Me, too," Lise said. "Did I really do that? Tell me I didn't."

"If you didn't, then we didn't, either," Richard said. "Let's pretend the whole thing never happened."

Everybody laughed. Heinrich put money on the table, including an extra Reichsmark or two in appreciation of the waitress's outfit. As he walked out of the Greasy Spoon, he said, "I'm glad everything turned out all right," from the bottom of his heart. Then, because he was who and what he was, he added, "I wonder why it did."

Lise sent him the sort of look she always did when he came out with something like that, the look that said she wished he had better sense than to open his big mouth that way. But Richard Klein only laughed and clapped him on the back. "Hell, Heinrich," he said, "so do I."

Alicia Gimpel repeated the nonsense-sounding syllables that her father had had her memorize: "Sh'ma yisroayl adonoi elohaynu adonoi ekhod."

"That's right. That's just right." Her father nodded. "You've got the Sh'ma down very well. And do you remember what the words mean?"

"'Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one,'" Alicia said.

"That's right, too," her father said. "That's the most important prayer we have. It should be the last thing you ever say if, God forbid, there's a time when you have to say a last thing. We few are all that's left of Israel these days. We have to keep it going."

"I know." Alicia liked learning things in the secret language, the nearly dead language. It strengthened the feeling of belonging to a special club. "Show me the other thing again," she urged.

Her father frowned, which made him look even more serious than he usually did. "All right," he said, "but you've got to be especially careful with this. You can't let your sisters see it, not ever, and you've always got to scratch over it or tear it up into little pieces before you throw it out. That's because it says just what we are if anybody recognizes it."

"I understand. I promise." Alicia started to cross her heart, but then checked herself with the motion only half done. If she was a Jew, the cross didn't count for anything, did it? So many things to think about…

With careful attention, her father drew-wrote-four curious characters on a piece of paper: "This says adonoi — it's the name of God. Now you do it." He handed her the pen. She started to: He set his hand on hers, stopping her. "No, that's not right. Remember what I told you?"

"What do you mean? They look just like the ones you made." But then Alicia did remember. "Oh. I'm sorry. I started from the wrong end again, didn't I?" Her father lifted up his hand. She began again, writing a, a, a, and then another. "Why does it go from right to left instead of from left to right, Daddy?"

"I don't know why Hebrew does that," he answered unhappily. "I just knowthat it does. My father knew more about being a Jew than I do, andhis father knew much more than he did, because his father had grown up in the days when Jews in Germany were free to be what they were. I'll teach you as much as I can, and you need to remember it so you can teach it to your children."

"If we keep learning less and less every time, will a time come when we don't know enough?" Alicia asked.

Her father looked more unhappy still. "I don't know that, either, sweetheart. All I know is that I hope not. We have to try to pass it along, and that's what I'm doing."

Alicia looked down at the curious set of characters she'd written. "Which letter says what? Which one saysah and which one saysdo and which one saysnoi? "

"It's not that simple," her father said.

"Why not? What do you mean? This is confusing!" Alicia said.

"Because it doesn't really sayadonoi. It says Jahweh, more or less-it's the word Jehovah comes from. But that's the name of God, and Jews aren't supposed to speak the name of God, so we sayadonoi instead. That means Lord."

"Oh." Alicia eyed those four formidable letters once more. "Thisis confusing. Are there books where I can find out more about it?"

"Yes, there are, and you can't have any of them," her father answered. Alicia stared at him in something close to shock. Their family loved books. The shelves in the front room and in her parents' bedroom held everything from mystery novels to books about the theater to bird-watching guides to studies of ancient

Greece. But there were, she realized, no books about Jews except the Streicher children's classics in her own room. Her father went on, "You won't find those books in any Jew's house. It's not safe for us to have them. People might wonder why we do. And the last thing we want is people wondering about us. Not having those books is part of the disguise we wear. Do you see?"

"I suppose so," Alicia said unwillingly. "But it seems a shame that we can't learn more if the books are there."

"One of the things we could learn is what gives the Security Police an excuse to arrest us," her father said. "When you're a grownup, you can decide for yourself what you think is safe. For now, we're not going to take any chances."

He didn't use that tone of voice very often. When he did, it meant his mind was made up and he wouldn't change it no matter what. Alicia sighed. It didn't seem fair. He usually pushed her toward learning as hard as he could. Here, he was pushing her away instead. But when he sounded like this, she would only waste her breath arguing with him.

He picked up the paper where they'd written the name of God, the name too holy to be spoken, and methodically began tearing it into little pieces. "Most of what we know, we have to pass on by word of mouth," he said. "That's not so dangerous. It's there, and then it's gone. Paper, now, paper lasts. Paper is what gets you into trouble, because it stays there. Even if you've forgotten about it, it stays. That's what got the Kleins into trouble-a piece of paper that stayed in a file."

"The Kleins-are Jews?" Alicia asked. Excitement flared in her when her father nodded. The more people she knew who shared this burden with her, the less heavy it seemed and the less alone she felt.

Her father said, "Because of this paper, the Reichs Genealogical Office thought they were, too. But nobody could prove anything, and they had to let them go. And one of the reasons nobody could prove anything is that the Kleins are careful about what they keep at home. They didn't have anything where people could point and say, 'Ha! They have that, so they must be Jews!'"

From everything Alicia had heard, people didn't need to be sure to settle with Jews. She said as much to her father, finishing, "Why didn't they take them away and do things to them anyhow?"

That made her father frown. "I don't quite know," he admitted. He sounded grumpy; like her, he was someone with a restless, relentless itch to find things out. "There has to be a reason. I just hope it's not a bad one."

"What do you mean?" Alicia asked.

"Well, they could have let them go so they could help catch other Jews," he said. Her mouth fell open. That hadn't occurred to her. He nodded grimly. "Yes, they do things like that."

"They may, but would the Kleins?" Alicia asked.

Her father let out a long, sad sigh. "Sweetheart, I just don't know. How can you tell what anybody will do when someone says to him, 'Do this or else we'll kill you'? You can't know that about anyone else ahead of time. You can't even know about yourself ahead of time."

"I would never do anything like that," Alicia declared. Her father only sighed again.He doesn't believe me, she realized. She started to get angry. Then she wondered what would happen if the Security Police told her they would do something horrible to him or to her mother or to one of her sisters if she didn't do what they told her. Wouldn't she do anything to keep them from hurting people she loved? Maybe she would.

Her thought must have shown on her face, for her father reached out and tousled her hair. "You see?" he asked gently.

Alicia gave back a reluctant nod. "I guess I do." Then a really nasty thought occurred to her, one that made her gasp with fright. "What if the Kleinsare doing that now? What if they're helping to catchus?"

"It's possible," her father admitted. All the terror Alicia had felt when she first found out she was a Jew, terror that had eased a little with the passage of time, came flooding back. But he went on, "It's possible, but I don't think it's true. If they were only pretending everything was all right last night, they could have been movie actors, they were doing such a good job. And besides, if the Security Police squeezed our names out of them, they wouldn't need to play games. They'd just break down the door in the middle of the night and take us away."

"Ja,"Alicia said, more than a little relieved. That was what the Security Police did, all right. Everybody knew it. Her heart stopped thumping quite so hard.

Her father laughed. "Funny, isn't it, that they're always such bastards that knowing they haven't been mean shows they really did let the Kleins go free?"

"That's just what I was thinking!" Alicia exclaimed. "How did you know?"

"Because I was thinking the same thing," he answered, "and I'm just as happy about it as you are, believe me." Alicia did.

Esther Stutzman was trying to juggle three phone calls, two mothers who needed to make return appointments, and another mother who was arguing about her bill when the door to Dr. Dambach's waiting room opened. Instantly, all the women with squalling children in the waiting room tried to shush them. The sight of a stern-faced man in a uniform did that to people, even if the dark brown outfit wasn't one most men and women in the Reich recognized at sight. Who wanted to take a chance?

Maximilian Ebert strode up to the receptionist's station. Ignoring mothers and children, the man from the Reichs Genealogical Office clicked his heels, as he had the first time he visited the pediatrician's office. " Guten Tag, Frau Stutzman," he said. "I need to see Dr. Dambach right away."

Esther wished he hadn't remembered her name. There were several reasons he might have, and she liked none of them. She took what revenge she could by answering, "I'm very sorry, but he's with a patient at the moment. If you care to sit down and wait, I'm sure it won't be too long." By the way she said it, she might have been sure he'd wait for weeks.

But Ebert wasn't about to inconvenience himself like an ordinary person. "Please tell him I am here," he said. "I'm sure he will see me immediately."

"The nerve!" said a woman from behind his back. He stiffened, but did not turn.

"One moment, please," Esther told him; the request was too reasonable for her to refuse outright. When she went back to talk to Dr. Dambach, she found him poised with a hypodermic needle above a baby's round bare bottom. She waited till he gave the shot and the baby yowled. Then she said, "Excuse me, Doctor, but Herr Ebert is here. He needs to see you right away, he says."

"Herr Ebert?" Dambach looked blank.

"From the Reichs Genealogical Office," Esther said, wishing Ebert had never had any reason to visit the pediatrician.

"Oh. Him." Memory jogged, Dr. Dambach nodded. "What the devil does he want now?" Esther only shrugged. Dr. Dambach muttered. Before answering her, Dambach turned to the baby's mother. "Dora may be cranky and run a small fever for a day or two. Acetaminophen syrup should relieve most of the symptoms. If she's in more distress than that-which is very unlikely-bring her back in."

"Thank you, Doctor. I will," the woman said.

Still muttering, Dambach gave his attention back to Esther. "I suppose I'd better see him. Bring him to my private office, and I'll be there in a few minutes. I have another patient to see first."

"All right, Doctor." Esther went out and delivered the word to Maximilian Ebert.

"Thank you very much," he said, and then, once she'd taken him into the office, "Have you got a telephone number, my sweet?"

She'd thought he was unduly attentive the last time he came in. This…"What I have,Herr Ebert, are two children and a husband."

He stared at her in what looked like honest bewilderment and asked, "What's that got to do with anything?"

"I'm fond of all of them, thank you very much," she said. "And now, if you'll excuse me…" She went back out to the receptionist's station, where she announced, "Dr. Dambach has a visitor. He'll be with you as soon as he can, I promise." She nodded to the woman who'd questioned her bill. "I'm sorry for the delay,Frau Mommsen. What were you saying?"

Frau Mommsen poured out a history of her troubles, most of which had little to do with the twenty-five Reichsmarks she owed Dr. Dambach. Esther listened with half an ear. Most of her attention was on the pediatrician's private office. She hoped Dambach would tell Maximilian Ebert where to go and how to get there. She knew it was a forlorn hope, but she cherished it just the same.

Dr. Dambach didn't even get in there for another ten minutes. Esther could hear the functionary from the Genealogical Office drumming his fingers on Dambach's desk. "About time," Ebert said when the doctor finally did appear.

"You're the one who's interrupting my work," Dambach replied, his voice chilly. "What do you want?"

Before she could find out what he wanted, someone new to the practice-a woman with a squalling toddler in her arms-came up and had to be guided through Dr. Dambach's paperwork. Because the little boy cried all through the process, Esther caught only brief snatches of conversation from the doctor's office: "…got a lot of nerve blaming me for…" "…put all of us in hot…" "…my fault, when I was only trying to…" "…but this is how it turned…"

Dr. Dambach said something else in response to that. A moment later, Maximilian Ebert stormed out of his office and out of the waiting room, fury on his face. He tried to slam the door that led to the hall, but the shock-absorbing arm at the top of the door thwarted him. The slowly closing door cut off his curses when at last it did swing shut.

"Goodness!" said the woman with the toddler. "What got underhis skin?"

"I don't know," Esther answered. "Whatever it is, I hope it's nothing trivial." The woman gave her a strange look, then decided she couldn't have meant what she said and forgot about it.

But Esther had meant every word. She stayed busy till noon dealing with mothers, children, and the occasional father. When the office closed for lunch, she went back to bring Dr. Dambach a fresh cup of coffee in the hopes that he might feel like talking. "Oh, thank you," he said around a mouthful of sandwich. "I was just going to get up and pour myself one."

When he said no more, Esther took the bull by the horns: "Why did that Ebert fellow storm out of here as though he had a Messerschmitt on his tail?"

"Him?" Dambach gave forth with a dismissive grunt. "I think we've seen the last of him, and I can't say I'm sorry, either. What he basically told me was that I had done my job too well. I'm sorry,Frau Stutzman, but the only way I know how to do it is as well as I can."

"Well, I should say so," Esther said, still wishing he'd been less conscientious. "What on earth was he talking about?"

"When the Kleins had the Tay-Sachs baby and the altered genealogical chart, they were suspected of being Jews," the pediatrician answered. "You know about that."

"Oh, yes." Esther nodded. "I know about that. What has it got to do with you doing your job too well?"

"Everyone in the Reichs Genealogical Office, and, for all I know, the Security Police, too, was all set to make an enormous hue and cry over it, and why not? It's been years since any Jews turned up in Berlin, for heaven's sake."

Esther nodded again. "That's true," she said casually, hiding her fear. "Why didn't they make their big hue and cry, then?"

"Because it turns out that Lothar Prutzmann's niece, poor woman, has a baby with Tay-Sachs who's three weeks older than Paul Klein," Dambach said. "If they accused the Kleins of being Jews on account of this, how could they keep from tarring the head of the SS with the same brush? They couldn't, and they knew it, and so they had to drop the charges against the Kleins."

"Good Lord!" Esther didn't care to think about what a narrow and dreadful escape that was. She also couldn't help sympathizing with the SS chief of the Greater German Reich, something she hadn't thought she would ever do. She said, "But how does Reichsfuhrer — SS Prutzmann's misfortune reflect on you?"

"It's simple, for someone with the sort of mind Herr Ebert has." Dr. Dambach scowled. "If I hadn't brought the one Tay-Sachs case to his notice, his office wouldn't have got in trouble with Prutzmann for pushing too hard. And what does Ebert do as a result of that? He blames me, of course."

"I see." And Esther did, too. "Well, the other choice would be blaming himself, and that's not likely, is it?"

The pediatrician grunted again. "Some miracles demand too much of God. But I gave him a piece of my mind before he left. You may be very sure of that."

"Good for you, Dr. Dambach," Esther said. He was a good doctor-and, within the limits of his education, a pretty good man.

"I'm sick and tired of getting pushed around by little tin gods in fancy uniforms justbecause they wear fancy uniforms," Dambach said. "I think everybody is, don't you? If the new Fuhrer is serious about calling some of those people to account, he'll have a lot of folks on his side, I think. How about you?"

"Me? I never worry about politics," Esther lied. She had trouble hiding her amazement. Her boss was solid, reliable, conservative. If he said things like that, a lot of people had to be thinking them.

"I try never to worry about politics, either," he said now. "Who with his head on straight needs to most of the time? But sometimes politics worry about me, the way they did here this morning. And I'll tell you, Frau Stutzman, I don't care for it. I don't care for it at all."

"Well, for heaven's sake, Dr. Dambach, who could blame you?" Esther said. Who needed to worry about politics most of the time? People like her, people whom politics constantly affected, did. And the very foundations of Nazi Party politics were built on worrying about Jews. Would Heinz Buckliger think about changing that? Could he think about changing that and hope to survive? Some of the things Walther said he'd talked about in Nuremburg were remarkable. But changing the way Nazis saw Jews would be more than remarkable. It would be miraculous. When Esther saw a miracle, she would believe in it. Till then, no.

"Why don't you go on home,Frau Stutzman?" Dambach said. "I don't mind answering the telephone till Irma gets here. It should be only a few more minutes, anyway."

"Thank you very much," Esther said. "Let me start a fresh pot of coffee before I leave, though. That should last the two of you most of the afternoon." If she didn't, he'd fiddle with the coffeemaker while he was in the office by himself. She wanted to do something nice for him in return for his letting her go early-and for the news he'd given her. Keeping him away from the coffeemaker was the nicest thing she could think of.

When Willi Dorsch got on the commuter bus, he wore his uniform as if he'd slept in it. He'd shaved erratically. His hair stuck out from under his cap in all directions, like the hay in a stack made by somebody who didn't know how to stack hay. "Good heavens!" Heinrich Gimpel exclaimed. "What happened to you?"

"Another lovely night on the sofa," Willi answered, plopping his posterior down beside Heinrich. His breath was high-octane. As if to explain that, he went on, "I took a bottle with me for company last night. It was more fun than Erika's been lately, that's for damn sure."

"Will you be able to think straight when we get to headquarters?" Heinrich asked. "Maybe you should have called in sick instead of letting people see you like this."

"Coffee and aspirins will make a new man of me," Willi assured him. "That wouldn't be so bad. I'd say the old one's worth about thirty pfennigs, tops. Besides, if I called in sick I'd have to spend more time with the blond bitch, and I'm not-quite up for that." He belched softly.

Heinrich wondered if he ought to leave it there. But he and Willi had been friends for a long time. He felt he had to ask the next question: "If you're so unhappy, why are you still there?"

"The kids," Willi answered simply. "Joseph and Magda mean everything to me. If I walk out, Erika will fill their heads full of lies about me. Things are bad enough as is." He glanced over at Heinrich. "You're a lucky bastard, you know that? Things go so smooth for you. As far as I can see, you haven't got a single worry in the whole goddamn world."

That would have been funny, if only it were funny. Instead of shrieking mad laughter, which was what he wanted to do, Heinrich answered, "Well, I would have said the same about you and Erika till a few months ago."

"Only goes to show you can't tell from the outside," Willi said. That was truer than he knew, but Heinrich didn't say so. His friend pointed ahead. "We're just about to the station."

"So we are." Heinrich got ready to hurry to the platform where they'd catch the train from Stahnsdorf up to Berlin's South Station.

Willi groaned when he had to get up. "My head's going to fall off," he said. "I almost wish it would."

"You can probably get aspirins in the station, if you need them that badly," Heinrich said.

"Well, so I can. And so I will. And I can get coffee, too, even if it's shitty coffee. I was going to wait till I made it to the office and buy them at the canteen, but to hell with that. I feel too lousy." Willi sounded as haggard as he looked.

When they got to the station, he made a beeline for the little concession stand at the back. Heinrich, meanwhile, bought a Volkischer Beobachter from a vending machine. Willi joined him on the platform a couple of minutes later. He too had a paper under his arm. He peeled two aspirin tablets from a foil packet and used a gulp of coffee to wash them down. Heinrich said, "That's got to be hell on your stomach, especially if you drank too much last night."

"Now ask me if I care," Willi answered. "The way my head's banging, I'm not going to worry about anything farther south."

He winced when the train came up, even though it was powered by electricity, and not nearly so noisy or smelly as a steam engine or a diesel locomotive would have been. He let Heinrich sit by the window, and pulled his cap down low on his forehead to keep as much light as he could out of his eyes. When the train got moving, he pretended to read the Volkischer Beobachter, but his yawns and his glazed expression said it was just pretense.

Heinrich, by contrast, went through the paper with his usual care. He tapped a story on page three. "The Fuhrer 's going to speak on the televisor tomorrow night."

"Be still, my beating heart." Willi was indifference personified. "I've heard a speech or two-thousand-in my time."

"I know, I know. Most of the time, I'd say the same thing." Heinrich tapped the Beobachter again. "But don't you think this particular speech might be interesting, after what he said in Nuremburg?"

"Nobody knows what he said in Nuremburg-nobody except the Bonzen, and they aren't talking much," Willi replied. But he'd heard the same rumors Heinrich had; he'd heard some of themfrom Heinrich. And maybe the aspirins and coffee were starting to work, for he did perk up a little. "All right, maybe it will be interesting," he admitted. "You never can tell."

"If he's serious about some of the things he said there-"

"The things people say he said there," Willi broke in.

"Yes, the things people say he said there." Heinrich nodded. "If he said them, and if he meant them-"

Willi interrupted again: "Half the people-more than half the people-will watch the football game anyhow, or the cooking show, or the one about the SS man where the American spy's always right on the edge of falling out of her dress. I swear she will one of these days."

Heinrich was damned if he'd let his friend outdo him for cynicism. "She won't when she's on opposite the Fuhrer 's speech," he answered. "The programming director's head would roll if she ended up stealing that much of the audience."

"Mm, you've got a point there," Willi said. "Too bad." He managed a bloodshot leer.

"South Station!" came the call as the train glided to a halt. "All out for South Station!" Heinrich hurried up the escalators to catch the bus to Oberkommando der Wehrmacht headquarters. Willi shambled along after him like something created in a mad scientist's experiment that hadn't quite worked.

As soon as they got to the office, Willi headed off to the canteen. He returned with a large foam cup of coffee in each hand, and poured them both down in record time. Not surprisingly, he went to the men's room shortly thereafter, and then again a few minutes later. "Vitamin P," he said sheepishly when he came back after the second trip. "And speaking of Vitamin P, why didn't you tell me my eyes looked like two pissholes in the snow?"

"What could you have done if I had?" Heinrich asked.

"Well, nothing, but even so…" Willi opened those vein-tracked eyes very wide now. "I'm awake. I may live. I may even decide I want to."

Ilse came up to set some papers on his desk. She started to turn away, then stopped and did one of the better double takes Heinrich had seen. "Good God! What happened to you?" she said, almost exactly echoing his words of an hour earlier.

"Erika and I had a small disagreement last night," Willi answered. "Yes, that's about right. Just a small disagreement."

"You poor dear!" Ilse was the very picture of sympathy, fussing over him, straightening his collar, and generally making him feel three meters tall. He lapped it up like a cat in front of a bowl of cream. Heinrich had to suppress a strong impulse to retch. On the other hand, he wondered how long it had been since Erika buttered Willi up like that. Such artful dodges weren't her style.

Later that morning, Willi said, "I'm going to lunch with Ilse today."

"Why am I not surprised?" The tart retort came out of Heinrich's mouth before he could stop it.

His friend turned red. "I don't know. Why aren't you? You've got things going good for you now, so you get all sanctimonious. If you were the one with troubles, I wouldn't look down my nose at you."

"You wouldn't? What's the fun in having a nose if you don't look down it?" Heinrich replied, even more deadpan than usual.

Willi looked at him, started to say something, and then started to laugh instead. "Dammit, how am I supposed to stay angry at you when you come back with things like that?"

"If you work at it, I expect you'll manage," Heinrich said, again with next to no inflection in his voice. He got another laugh from Willi, too, although he hadn't been joking.

Ilse snuggled up to Willi as they walked toward the door. Willi slipped his arm around her waist. Heinrich went back to his paperwork.Would I do something like that if I were having trouble with Lise? he wondered.Who knows? Maybe I would. But he had trouble imagining trouble with Lise.Maybe I don't understand how lucky I am.

The telephone on Willi's desk rang. Heinrich was going to let it keep ringing till whoever was on the other end got sick of it and hung up. But what if it turned out to be somebody with important business? He picked up his own phone and dialed Willi's extension to transfer the call. "Analysis-this is Heinrich Gimpel."

"Oh, hello, Heinrich-I wanted to talk to Willi." That was Erika Dorsch's voice. Heinrich winced. He wished he'd let the phone ring. When he didn't answer right away, she asked, "Where is he?" in a way he didn't like at all.

He responded with the exact and literal truth: "You missed him by two minutes-he just went to lunch."

"And he didn't go with you, obviously," Erika said. Heinrichreally wished he hadn't answered the telephone. Willi's wife went on, "Did he go with the lovely and talented Ilse instead?"

"I, ah, didn't see him leave," Heinrich said, which was true in the highly technical sense that he'd looked down at the papers on his desk before Willi actually opened the door.

"Now tell me another one, Heinrich. You aren't much of a liar, you know," Erika said. The way she meant it, that might have been true. In several ways she knew nothing about, it couldn't have been more wrong. That she knew nothing about those several ways proved how wrong it was.

He said, "Erika, I'm not his father. I'm not his watchdog, either. I don't keep an eye on him every minute."

"Somebody ought to," Erika Dorsch said bitterly. "Is something wrong with me, Heinrich? Am I ugly? Am I unattractive?"

"You ought to know better than that," he said, too surprised at the question not to give her an honest answer.

"Should I?" she said. "If something isn't wrong with me, why have we only made love six or seven times this year? Why is Willi going around with that round-heeled little chippie instead of me?"

"I don't know," Heinrich answered, which was also certainly true. If he'd had a choice between…But he didn't have choices like that, so what was the point of imagining he did? He said, "Don't you think you'd do better asking Willi? He might actually tell you."

"He'd tell me a load of garbage. That's what he's been telling me all along," Erika said. "What's he been telling you? That's probably more garbage."

Heinrich pretended not to hear her. Bad enough to have to listen to both sides in a dissolving marriage. To tell tales from one to the other…He shook his head. No. He didn't know much about such things, but he knew better than that.

"Can you get a little time off?" she asked. "If you come over here, I can tell you how things really are."

What was that supposed to mean? What it sounded like? If it did, would he kick himself for the rest of his days if he said no? Most red-blooded males would. He could arrange things so Lise never knew, and…

"Erika," he said gently, "I don't think that would be a good idea right now."

"No?" She sounded tragic. "You mean you don't want me, either?"

"I-" He stopped. One more question for which there was no safe answer. He did his best: "I'm married to Lise, remember? I like being married to Lise. I want to stay married to her." He looked around to make sure nobody in the big room was paying too much attention to him. He couldn't do anything about anyone who might monitor the call. It wouldn't land him in trouble, anyhow. He consoled himself with that.

A long, long silence followed. At last, Erika said, "I didn't know people talked that way any more. Well." Another silence. "She's luckier than she knows-or else you can't get it up, either." The line went dead.

Heinrich stared at the telephone, then slowly replaced the handset in the cradle. He'd been ready to sympathize with Erika-even if he wasn't ready to go to bed with her-and to think Willi was a louse and a fool for not giving her more of what she obviously wanted. But if she kept making cracks like that, he didn't see how he could sympathize with either one of them-except they were both his friends. He muttered something that didn't help and trudged off to the canteen.

Susanna Weiss loved good food. What she didn't love was cooking. She should have; learning to cook, and to be happy cooking, was drummed into girls in the Greater German Reich in school and in the Bund deutscher Madel. With Susanna, it hadn't taken. With Susanna, the more something was drummed into her, the less likely to take it was.

Frozen and freeze-dried food had come a long way since she was a girl. A lot of the advances had been military first; nothing was too good for the Reich 's soldiers and sailors. Little by little, things had trickled out to the civilian world as well. A faint stigma still clung to eating such food too often. It said you were lazy, or you didn't care enough about your family to take care of them yourself. Being a Jew, Susanna didn't worry about stigmas that were merely faint. And she was convinced she had better things to do with her time than stand in front of a stove. When she ate in her flat, she had frozen or freeze-dried food most of the time.

She was eating beef stroganoff that had started life in a plastic pouch when Heinz Buckliger came on the televisor screen. The Russians, those who were left alive, had been pushed east far past the Urals. Some of their recipes lingered on in the Germany they couldn't hope to threaten for generations.

Recorded, abridged versions of" Deutschland uber Alles" and the "Horst Wessel Song" prefaced the Fuhrer 's appearance. The screen cut to an image of the Germanic eagle with a swastika in its claws to the Fuhrer 's study. Like so much Nazi architecture, the room was on a heroic scale that did its best to dwarf the man who occupied it. The walls of red marble with ebony wainscoting rose nearly ten meters to the cofferwork ceiling of rosewood. The televisor camera panned slowly, lovingly, along those walls. Along with gilded Party symbols, they held portraits of Bismarck, Hitler, Himmler, and a new one-over which the camera lingered-of Kurt Haldweim looking Viennese and aristocratic and more than a little snooty.

The picture cut away to the Fuhrer 's desk. The cabinetmakers who'd created insanely ornate inlaid furniture for French noblemen during the Old Regime would have owned they'd met their match in the craftsmen who made that desk. On the wall behind it hung a genuine Gobelin tapestry from the seventeenth century. Next to the tapestry, a German flag hung limply from a pole. Another gilded swastika-bearing eagle topped that pole.

As the camera shot tightened to the tawny leather chair in which Heinz Buckliger sat, the flag remained at the edge of the picture. Susanna had seen that whenever she watched a speech from the Fuhrer. Tonight, she really noticed it, which was not the same thing. She gave a grudging nod of approval. Party propagandists didn't miss a trick. Of course they associated the head of state with the state itself. That they did it so shedidn't consciously notice most of the time was a testimony to their skill.

Then she noticed something else, and her eyes widened. Heinz Buckliger was wearing a plain gray suit, not a Party uniform. She couldn't remember the last time she'd seen any Fuhrer in civilian clothes. She wondered if she ever had. She didn't think so. Buckliger's necktie was of a red that perfectly matched the flag. After a moment, she saw it bore a pattern: small black swastikas. Any men's-wear store might have sold it.

What did that say? What did it mean? Anyone alert who watched the televisor looked for meanings behind meanings, for what was said without a word being spoken. What was Buckliger trying to get across here? All Susanna could think of was,I'm as patriotic as the next fellow, but I'm transposing the tune into a new key.

"Good evening, citizens of the Greater German Reich, " the Fuhrer said. "Not long ago, in Nuremberg, I spoke to officials of the National Socialist Party about some of the problems I see facing the Reich and the Germanic Empire. You also need to know some of the things I told them."

As who in the Reich had not, Susanna had seen films of Hitler. He'd dominated, whether screaming for war or vengeance, pleading for greater effort, or cajoling people into sacrifice. Himmler, who'd led Greater Germany and the Empire when she was a child, had dominated in a different way. His style was flatter than Hitler's, but you could sense the iron underneath. If you caused trouble, you would get it-in the neck. Kurt Haldweim had talked down to people, as if convinced he knew things no one else did. If he happened to be wrong, who was going to tell him? And if he happened to be wrong, would he ever admit it? Not likely.

Heinz Buckliger simply…spoke. "For a good many years now, we have been living off the great deeds of our ancestors," he said. "And our ancestorswere great men who did great things. But we are like a family that lives off an inheritance from Grandpa, doesn't take care of its money very well, and doesn't have enough people in it who have gone out and looked for work on their own. After a while, the inheritance runs dry, and they have to figure out what to do next.

"I want to try to figure out what to do nextbefore we run dry. We have plundered much of the world. But how long can that go on? Many of the folk of Western Europe and North America are as Aryan as we are. How long can we justify in racial terms their continued exploitation?"

Charlie Lynton had said things like that at the gathering of the British Union of Fascists. Susanna hadn't expected to hear them from him. Hearing them from the Fuhrer was like a thunderclap. Like Lynton, Buckliger was using fascist ideology to cloak doing things that would have appalled his predecessors.

"Further conquest is not an option for us, as it was for Hitler and Himmler," he continued. "Forty years ago, we were lucky the United States didn't do us more damage. We could bring the Empire of Japan to its knees tomorrow-but if we did, Japan would bring us to our knees, too. Both we and the Japanese have too many rockets to make war anything but mutual suicide.

"So what are we to do? Things aren't the way they were in our fathers' time, and they certainly aren't the way they were in our grandfathers' time. Do we go on looking at our troubles in the same old way? This, it seems to me, is foolishness. When Hitler saw the Reich with troubles that were new in his time, did he answer them the way his parents and grandparents had? Of course not! He changed with the times. We must always change with the times, or the times will change without us."

"He's doing it again!" Susanna exclaimed, too excited to keep quiet. Fascist ideology didn't lend itself to change. What was fascism, after all, but reaction on the march? But, like Charlie Lynton, Heinz Buckliger had seen that, if he appealed to well-established authority to justify the changes he was making, he might have a chance of getting away with them. The Party Bonzen — and the Party rank and file-were surely listening to him along with everybody else. What did they think? Did they understand what they were hearing?

Or am I the one who's wrong?Susanna wondered.Am I hearing what I want to hear, listening with my heart and not my head? The last time she'd done that was with the boyfriend who'd turned out to be a lush, the one Heinrich still teased her about every now and then.

She cursed softly. Lost in her own thoughts, she'd missed a few sentences of what Buckliger was saying. "…greater responsiveness to the needs and desires of the Volk as a whole," was where she started paying attention again. "Of course we cannot and will not challenge the primacy of the Party and of National Socialist ideals, but are we not all Aryans together?"

When he saidof course, he sometimes meant anything but. How many people would see that? Instead of going into detail, as she'd hoped he would, he continued, "This is a topic I will return to in times to come. Staying on old ground is always safe and certain. That is the reason so many of us like it so well. Finding a new way is harder. We may make mistakes. We probably will. But, if we keep going long enough, we will find ourselves in a place we never could have reached by sticking with the tried and true. Let us make the journey together. Good night." the Fuhrer 's study vanished from Susanna's televisor screen-from televisor screens all over the Reich. Horst Witzleben's familiar newsroom replaced it. The broadcaster said, "That was, of course, Heinz

Buckliger,Fuhrer of the Greater German Reich and the Germanic Empire." When Witzleben saidof course, he meant it. He blinked a couple of times before going on, "An extraordinary address. A memorable address. the Fuhrer set his mark on the Reich. As he leads us, as he guides us, so we shall go. That is our only proper-indeed, our only possible-course. A new era is upon us, and in times to come, as the Fuhrer said, we shall learn exactly what this means. For now, good night, and I return you to your regularly scheduled programming."

Regularly scheduled programming was a vacuous quiz show. To Susanna, the hardest question was why anyone would watch it. People did, though. She heard them talking about it.

Whatshe wanted to talk about was Buckliger's speech. She hurried to the telephone.The Gimpels or the Stutzmans? she wondered as she picked it up. After a moment's hesitation, though, she replaced the handset in the cradle without calling anyone. After a speech like that, weren't the phone lines too likely to be monitored? And wasn't she likely to be under some suspicion anyhow, as someone who knew the Kleins? Better safe than sorry. That wasn't heroic, but it was probably smart.

No one called her that night, either. Heinz Buckliger talked about abandoning old ground and striking out in new directions. The people living in the Greater German Reich were only too familiar with the old ground, and with its minefields. Buckliger might lead. After so long making such careful calculations, could the people follow?

At the bus stop, Emma Handrick sniffed. "I saw a little of the speech last night," she told Alicia Gimpel. "Only a little, though. He didn't look like a Fuhrer to me. How could he be a Fuhrer if he wasn't wearing a uniform?"

Seeing Heinz Buckliger in an ordinary suit had also startled Alicia. Still, she said, "He's the Fuhrer, all right. Who else could he be? He spoke from the Fuhrer 's study. We've seen it a million times. Who else could do that? What would they do to somebody who tried?" She didn't quite know whothey might be, but there was always athey for such things. She had no doubt of that.

Emma sniffed. "He didn't look like it." She had a one-track mind. "He looked like a businessman or a salesman." In the regimented Reich, there weren't too many groups that didn't wear uniforms of one sort or another.

"He does seem to be something different," Alicia said. Her parents had warned her not to talk too much about Buckliger's speech; people might pay unusual attention to what she said. Since she wasn't sure how much was too much, she changed the subject: "New school year coming up in a couple of weeks."

"Thank heavens!" Emma exclaimed. "I don't care who I get next time.Herr Kessler thinks he's a concentration-camp guard, not a teacher."

Emma didn't care what she said, or who heard it. Alicia envied her. "Some of the others are just as bad," she said.

"They're pretty bad, all right. I think you have to be mean to want to be a teacher-look at Beast Koch," Emma said. "I never had her, but still… Kessler's the worst I ever had."

"He's not very good," Alicia agreed. She hadn't had Frau Koch, either, and thanked heaven she hadn't. She pointed down the street. "Here comes the bus."

When they got to school, they played in the yard till it was time to line up in front of their classroom. Less than half a minute before the bell rang, Emma let out a gasp of horror. "I was going to ask you for your arithmetic homework," she said in stricken tones. "I couldn't do it last night."

"Too late now," Alicia said. The clang of the bell confirmed her words.

Herr Kessler opened the door. "Guten Morgen, Herr Kessler!" the children chorused. "He's going to skin me," Emma whimpered under that chorus. Alicia could only stand there. Her friend was all too likely to be right.

"Good morning, children," the teacher said. "Come in now, and no talking out of turn."

In they filed. If anybody talked, Alicia didn't hear it. Neither did Kessler. He led them in the salute to the flag. Their arms shot out. Alicia remembered how, up till this past spring, she'd been proud to be a German like everybody else. Part of her still was. The rest recoiled in horror from the very idea. There were times when she wondered if she'd been torn in two inside.

But she didn't have time to stay torn in two, not when Herr Kessler prowled to the front of the classroom. All of her had to pay attention to him. "How many of you saw the Fuhrer 's speech last night?" he asked. Most of the students' hands went up. Kessler pointed to a boy who hadn't raised his. "Hans Dirlewanger!"

"Jawohl, Herr Kessler!" Hans jumped from his seat and stood stiff and straight.

"Why didn't you watch that speech?" Menace lurked in the teacher's voice. His eyes went to the paddle on the wall.

"Sir, my father is a captain in the Wehrmacht, " Hans answered. "He came home on leave from occupation duty in the United States. We all went out to supper, and then to the cinema. We didn't get home till late."

"Oh."Herr Kessler considered. Reluctantly, he nodded. "This is acceptable. Be seated." As Hans sat down, Alicia wondered if the teacher would pick on somebody else so he could give out a swat. Not this morning, though. Kessler paused, then found a question: "What is the most important thing the Fuhrer said last night?"

Had he asked about arithmetic or history or grammar, Alicia's hand would have shot into the air. Had he asked about this before she knew what she was, she would also have been eager to answer. Now she hesitated. She couldn't help worrying that a mistake would endanger not only her but all the other Jews in Berlin, even the ones of whose existence she was ignorant.

Others weren't so shy-and had less to worry about. The teacher pointed to a girl. "Trudi Krebs!"

That's interesting,Alicia thought.She probably hasn't had less to worry about than I do. But now that new ways of doing things seemed important,Herr Kessler thought Trudi had the answers. Before, he'd wanted to see her and her family in trouble. Trudi said, "the Fuhrer told us the Reich needs to change so it can work better."

When she put it like that, it seemed safe enough. The teacher nodded."Sehr gut," he said. "Yes, that is exactly what the Fuhrer said. And so, as he leads us, we shall change, and we shall be better for it. Do you understand?"

"Ja, Herr Kessler!" the children sang out.

"Sehr gut,"Kessler said again. "Then let us go on with the day's lesson." He spoke with a certain amount of relief, or so it seemed to Alicia. Did he sometimes think, as she did, that too much talk of politics might be dangerous? If students got answers wrong, they got paddled. What happened to teachers who got answers about politics wrong? Maybe Herr Kessler didn't want to find out. He nodded. "Arithmetic, then. Pass in your homework. At once. No talking."

Behind Alicia, Emma Handrick let out a soft gasp of dismay. Kessler's head swung toward her. But he couldn't decide who had made the sound. Sometimes he punished everyone in the neighborhood if he didn't know just who had got out of line. Maybe he still felt on unsafe ground today, for he looked away.

But then he said, "We will do some of the problems at the blackboard." He called on Alicia and several children who sat near her. She knew what he was doing. If one of them had no idea what to do, he would decide that was the person who'd made a noise. It wasn't a bad ploy in the unending war between teachers and students-except that he didn't summon Emma to the board.

Alicia got her problem right. She stood in front of the blackboard till Kessler nodded and sent her back to her seat. One boy made a mistake, but it was a careless, obvious kind of mistake: he multiplied seven by four and got thirty-five early in the problem, which naturally made his answer wrong. Other than that, he knew what he was doing.Herr Kessler corrected him, but didn't haul out the paddle.

Balked, the teacher went on with the lesson. Alicia hated these problems. If the German fighter plane flew forty kilometers an hour faster than the American one, started from a base sixty kilometers behind it, and took off fifteen minutes later, how far would it have to go to catch up? You had to keep track of everything at once. She was good at that kind of thing, but even she found it hard. She wondered how poor Emma, who wasn't any too bright, was faring.

After arithmetic came grammar.Herr Kessler passed out worksheets where the student had to identify parts of speech and the cases of nouns and adjectives. While they slaved away on those, he graded their arithmetic papers.

Alicia was good at arithmetic, but she was very, very good at grammar. She zipped through the paper, and finished well ahead of anybody else. Of course, all that got her was the chance to sit quietly till the other children finished, too. She watched the teacher correcting papers. Every so often, he would look up to see if anyone was getting into mischief, and she would have to look away. But then he would go back to arithmetic, and she would go back to watching him.

She knew when he got to Emma's homework. She'd got a glimpse of it as they passed papers forward, and it was truly hopeless.Herr Kessler's head came up. He stared towards Emma. He might have been a cat spotting a juicy mouse.

"Emma Handrick!" he roared.

Emma squeaked in terror. She'd been intent on her worksheet, and hadn't paid attention to what the teacher was doing. "Jawohl, Herr Kessler!" she said, springing to her feet.

"What is the meaning of this-this Dreck you turned in?" Kessler waved the offending paper for everyone to see.

"I'm very sorry,Herr Kessler," Emma babbled. "I tried as hard as I could, but I really didn't understand. Please excuse me. Please."

"A Jew could have done better work than this. Jews were vile and wicked, but they were supposed to be clever. You, on the other hand…" The teacher let that hang in the air, then added two more words: "Come here."

He applied the paddle with vigor. Emma came back to her desk biting back the tears that would have landed her in more trouble. She sat down gingerly. No one said anything at all.

At lunchtime, Trudi Krebs sidled up to Alicia and whispered, "When the new Fuhrer changes things, do you think he'll change school, too?"

"Gott im Himmel,I hope so," Alicia exclaimed. "It's probably too much to ask for, though." She hoped Trudi would argue with her, but the other girl only nodded.

When the bus out of the Stahnsdorf train station pulled up to Willi Dorsch's stop, Heinrich Gimpel got off, too. "What are you doing?" Willi said. "You don't live here-or if you do, Erika hasn't told me."

"Heh." Heinrich smiled what he was sure was a sickly smile. "Lise wanted me to pick up some onions and a head of cabbage at Tinnacher's grocery." He pointed toward the store, which, fortunately, lay in the direction opposite Willi's house.

"A likely story," Willi said, but he didn't sound as if he meant anything by it. With a sour laugh, he went on, "Hell, the way things are, why would I care if you were living there instead of me?" He didn't wait for an answer, but headed up the sidewalk toward his house.

Shaking his head, Heinrich walked over to the corner grocery. He was glad Lise hadn't sent him after potatoes. She inspected every spud he bought, and didn't seem to like about half of them. Harder for him to go wrong with onions and cabbage.I'd never make a Hausfrau,not in a million years, he thought.

BEST VEGETABLES IN TOWN! boasted the sign in Tinnacher's window. "Guten Tag, Herr Gimpel," the grocer said as Heinrich came in. He did have the best vegetables for several kilometers around, and he gave unmatched personal service. Lower prices at bigger stores that sold more kinds of things made staying in business hard for him even so.

With a certain amount of relief, Heinrich skirted the bins of potatoes and headed for the onions. Lise had said she wanted the mild purple ones, not the stronger ones with the yellow-brown outer layer. Intent on the onions, Heinrich almost bumped into Erika Dorsch before he noticed she was there.

If he had noticed her, he might have tried to sneak out of the grocery and buy his vegetables somewhere else. Too late for that now. "Hello, Erika. I didn't mean to run over you there," he said, fearing his smile here was even sicklier than the one he'd given Willi.

Hers, on the other hand, dazzled. She had a stringbag full of mushrooms and garlic and scallions and potatoes and a couple of enormous turnips. "It's all right," she said. "Any attention is better than none."

"Er-yes," he said, feeling as if he were walking into a hornets' nest but unable to escape. He did his best: "Excuse me, please. I need some of those purple onions."

Erika didn't step aside. "Heinrich, why don't you like me?" she asked.

Hornets all around, sure as hell. "I like you fine," he said. "I still need onions, though."

"You don't act like you like me," Erika said.

She said it most pointedly-too pointedly for him to ignore. "I like you fine," he repeated. "I also like your husband. I also like my wife."

"I like your wife, too," Erika said. "So what? As for my husband, you're welcome to him. And if you like him the way you like me, the Security Police will sew a pink triangle on your camp uniform for you."

If he got a camp uniform, it would have a yellow Star of David, not a pink triangle. Would they bother? Or, if they found out what he was, would they just dispose of him like a crumpled-up tissue? He suspected the latter, but he didn't want to find out. He said, "I really do need those onions." He supposed he should have said something about not liking Erika that way, but she would have known he was lying.

"I've never chased a man in my life," Erika said, wonder in her voice. "Up till now, I never had to." Heinrich believed that. She eyed him with genuine curiosity. "What makes you so stubborn?"

I'm a Jew,he thought.Of course I'm stubborn. I have to be. If I weren't stubborn, would I have clung to this? He also had to be stubborn about not revealing what he was to anyone who could harm him with the knowledge. No matter how decorative Erika was, she fell into that group. She wanted him now, or thought she did. Odds were the challenge he represented interested her more than his skinny body did. But if she knew and she decided she didn't want him any more…In that case, he was one telephone call from disaster.

Since he couldn't tell her his first reason, he fell back on the second one: "I told you-I like Lise. We've been happy together for a long time. Why do I want to complicate my life? Life is complicated enough already."

"You make everything sound so sensible, so logical." Erika shook her head. "It isn't, not really."

Part of him knew she was right. But he clung to rationality anyhow-clung to it all the harder, perhaps, because it offered something of a shield against the horrors the German regime had perpetrated. "I try to make it that way for me, anyhow," he said.

She eyed him for a moment, then shook her head. "You'll find out," she said, and pushed past him to give her money to Herr Tinnacher.

Heinrich didn't like the sound of that. He also didn't like her going home with a stringbag full of vegetables. Willi was liable to think they'd arranged a meeting at the grocer's. Heinrich sighed. He couldn't do anything about that. He could get the onions and the cabbage. He took them up to Tinnacher.

The grocer weighed them, told him what they cost, took his five-Reichsmark note, and handed him change. Since Heinrich didn't have a sack of his own, Tinnacher grudgingly pulled one out from under the counter. "Fine-looking woman,Frau Dorsch," he remarked as he put the purple onions in on top of the cabbage.

"Can't argue with you there," Heinrich said.

"If she set her sights on me, I wouldn't complain."Herr Tinnacher chuckled rheumily. He was in his mid-sixties, and looked like a wizened frog. The chance that Erika would set her sights on him was better than the chance that he would win the state lottery, but it wasn't much better. Of course, without evidence to the contrary Heinrich would have said the same about the chance of her setting her sights on him. But he had that evidence, even if he didn't want it.

He also had to answer the grocer. "We're just friends," he said. Tinnacher chuckled again. That knowing little croak was one of the most obscene sounds Heinrich had ever heard. It said Tinnacher didn't believe a word of it. Heinrich got out of the grocery so fast, he almost left the sack with the cabbage and onions on the counter.

When he came home, he thrust the sack at Lise. "Here's your damned vegetables," he snarled.

"I'm sorry," she said in surprise. "If you'd told me it would be a problem, I would have gone and bought them myself."

"It's not the vegetables," he said. "I ran into Erika at the grocer's."

"Oh?" His wife packed a lot of meaning into one word. "And?" She packed a lot of meaning into two words, too.

"She's not happy with Willi. She's not happy with anything," Heinrich said.

"Would she be happy with you?" Lise asked.

"It doesn't matter. I wouldn't be happy with her," he answered.Not for more than half an hour, anyway. The animal part of him was harder to extinguish than he wished it were.

"Uh-huh." The look in Lise's eye said she knew all about that part. "And would you say the same thing if you were agoy?" She dropped her voice at the last word, which was one Jews could safely use only around other Jews.

Heinrich winced. It was a much better question than he wished it were. Instead of answering directly, he took two bottles of beer out of the refrigerator, opened them, and gave Lise one. "Here," he said, raising the bottle he still held. "Here's to us. I know when I'm well off."

"You'd better," she told him. She knew he hadn't really answered her. He could tell. She undoubtedly knew why, too. But she drank with him even so. If that wasn't love, he had no idea what to call it. She said, "I can't be too annoyed at you. Sheis pretty, and you do seem to have some idea where you belong. Some."

"I should hope so!" Heinrich said fervently.

Too fervently? So it seemed, because his wife started to laugh. "You also overact," she told him, and swigged from the beer.

"Who, me?" he said-overacting. Lise laughed louder. Changing the subject looked like a good idea, so he did: "How are the children?" He waited to see if Lise would let him get away with it.

She did, answering, "They're fine. Alicia isso glad she's getting out of Herr Kessler's class soon. I don't blame her a bit, either. I've talked with the man a few times. He wishes he belonged in the SS. Do you know what I mean?"

"Oh, yes." Heinrich nodded. "I had a couple like that myself. They're the lords of the classroom, and don't they know it?"

"Alicia asked if the new Fuhrer 's changes would have anything to do with schools," Lise said. "How do you answer a question like that?"

"'I don't know' usually works pretty well," he said. She made a face at him. He held up a hand. "I'm serious, sweetheart. Who can tell which way Buckliger's going to go with this stuff? He's already talked more about changing things than anybody who came before him. Will he do more than talk? Can he get away with more?"

His wife shrugged. "Who knows? We'll find out. And how are Erika's children?" She brought the question out casually, which only made it more dangerous.

"I don't know," Heinrich said, which was the truth. "She didn't talk about them."

"Uh-huh," Lise said again: not quite Mene, mene, tekel upharsin, but a judgment just the same.