In the Presence of Mine Enemies (10 page)

“How awful! Of course I will,” Esther said. Dr. Dambach was a skilled and knowledgeable physician, but when he tangled with the percolator he turned out either hot water faintly tinged with brown or unpalatable mud. As she got the coffee started, she asked, “Was anyone badly hurt?”

“Not the drunk,” he said sourly. “He was so limp and relaxed, you could have dropped him from the top of the
Great Hall and he wouldn't have got hurt when he hit the ground. A woman in the other car broke her leg, and I'm afraid the man with her had internal injuries. They took him away in an ambulance.”

“What will they do to the drunk?” Esther asked.

Dr. Dambach looked less happy still. “That I cannot tell you. He kept blithering on about what an important fellow he was in the Party. If he was lying, he'll be sorry. But if he was telling the truth…You know how these things go.”

Being an Aryan, the pediatrician could afford to grumble about the way the world worked. Esther Stutzman nodded, but she never would have complained herself. Even nodding made her feel as if she was taking a chance.

“What appointments do we have this morning?” Dambach asked.

“Let me look.” She went to the register. “There are…three immunizations, and the Fischers will be bringing in their seven-year-old for you to check his scoliosis, and—” The telephone rang, interrupting her. She picked it up. “Dr. Dambach's office. How may I help you?…Yes…Can you bring her in at ten-thirty?…All right. Thank you.” She turned back to the doctor. “And Lotte Friedl has a sore throat.”

“Probably the first of several,” Dambach said, in which he was probably right. “Anything else?”

“Yes, Doctor. The Kleins are bringing in their little boy for another checkup,” Esther answered. She tried not to change her tone of voice. Richard and Maria Klein and their son, Paul, were Jews—though Paul, who was only eight months old, had no idea that he was.

Dr. Dambach frowned. “Paul Klein,
ja
. That baby is not thriving as he should, and I do not know why.” He sounded personally affronted at not knowing, too. He was a good doctor; he had that relentless itch to find out.

“Maybe you'll see something this time that you didn't notice before,” Esther said. She paused and sniffed. “And the coffee's just about ready.”

“Good,” Dambach said. “Pour me a big cup, please. I have to get my brains from somewhere today.”

The outer door to the waiting room opened. In came the
first patient and her mother. Esther started to say hello, then got interrupted when the telephone rang again. Sure enough, it was a woman whose son had a sore throat. Feeling harried, Esther made an appointment for her. As if by magic, a cup of coffee appeared at her elbow. Dr. Dambach had not only poured one for himself, he'd poured one for her, too, and laced it with cream and sugar.

“
I'm
supposed to do that,” she said indignantly.

He shrugged. “You were busier than I was just then. I suspect it will even out as the day goes along.”

Esther had her doubts about that, though she kept quiet about them. Dr. Dambach's work was more specialized than hers; she knew that. But the phones, the patients and parents in the waiting room, the billing, and the medical records often made her feel like a juggler with a stream of plates and knives and balls in the air. If she didn't pay attention every moment, everything would come crashing down.

On the other hand, she'd felt that way ever since she found out what she was. At worst, an office disaster could get her fired. A disaster of a different sort…She resolutely declined to think about that. Staying busy helped drive worry away. Busy she was.

But she was reminded of her heritage when the Kleins brought in little Paul.
Something
was wrong with him; she could see as much. He seemed listless and unhappy and somehow less well assembled than he should have been. He didn't hold his head up the way a baby his age should have, nor did he act fascinated with his hands and feet like most eight-month-olds. His parents, especially his mother, looked drawn and worried.

They were the last appointment before lunch. Dr. Dambach stayed in the examining room with them for a long time. Paul cried once. He didn't sound quite right, either, though Esther had trouble putting her finger on why. It wasn't a
strong
cry; that was as close as she could come. Working here, she'd heard plenty of unhappy babies. Paul Klein should have raised a bigger fuss.

At last, the Kleins came out of the examining room, the baby in Maria's arms. “Thank you, Doctor,” Richard Klein said. “Maybe this means something important.”

“I will have to do more investigating myself before I can say for certain,” Dr. Dambach replied. “Make an appointment with
Frau
Stutzman, please—I'll want to see him again in another two weeks.” He sounded brisk and businesslike. The Kleins probably wouldn't know he used that demeanor to mask alarm.

Having worked with him for two years, Esther did. After she'd made the appointment, after the Kleins had left, she turned to the doctor and asked, “What's wrong with him?”

“His muscular development is not as it should be,” Dambach said. “He seemed normal up until a couple of months ago, but since then….” He shook his head. “If anything, he has gone backwards, when he should be moving ahead. And I saw something peculiar when I looked in his eyes: a red spot on each retina.”

“What does that mean?” Esther asked.

“I'm not sure. I don't believe I've ever seen anything like it before,” the pediatrician said. “I don't know if it is connected to the other problem, either. Can you order some food brought here, please? I was going to go out for lunch, but I believe I will stay here and go through my books instead.”

“Of course, Doctor,” Esther Stutzman said. “Will one of those Italian cheese pies do? The shop is close, and they deliver.”

Dambach nodded. “That will be fine. I know the place you mean. They promise to get it where it should go in under half an hour, which is all to the good today.”

“I'll take care of it.” Esther made the call. The cheese pie arrived twenty-seven minutes later. She'd heard the owner had fired delivery boys for being late, so she was glad this one showed up on time. She paid for it from the cash drawer, then brought it in to Dr. Dambach.

“Just set it on the desk, please,” he said without looking up from the medical book he was going through. Only his left hand and his mouth gave the food any notice; the rest of his attention was riveted on the book. Esther thought she could have substituted a coffee cake or plain bread without his knowing the difference.

She was eating her own lunch, ready to go home as soon
as the afternoon receptionist came in, when Dambach exclaimed in what might as easily have been dismay as triumph. “What is it, Doctor?” she called.

“I know what Paul Klein has,” Dr. Dambach said.

Esther still couldn't tell how he felt about knowing. She asked, “Well, what is it, then?”

He came out of the office, a half forgotten slice of the cheese pie still in his left hand. His face said more than his voice had; he looked thoroughly grim. “It's an obscure syndrome called Tay-Sachs disease, I'm afraid,” he answered. “Along with the rest of his condition, the red spots on his retinas nail down the diagnosis.”

“I never heard of it,” Esther said.

“I wish I hadn't.” Now the pediatrician sounded as unhappy as he looked.

“Why?” she asked. “What is it? What does it do?”

“There is an enzyme called Hexosaminidase A. Babies with Tay-Sachs disease are born without the ability to form it. Without it, lipids accumulate abnormally in the cells, and especially in the nerve cells of the brain. The disease destroys brain function a little at a time. I will not speak of symptoms, but eventually the child is blind, mentally retarded, paralyzed, and unresponsive to anything around it.”

“Oh, my God! How horrible!” Esther's stomach did a slow lurch. She wished she hadn't eaten. “What can you do? Is there a cure?”

“I can do nothing. No one can do anything.” Dr. Dambach's voice was hard and flat. “There is no cure. All children who have Tay-Sachs disease will die, usually before they turn five. I intend to recommend to the Kleins that they take the baby to a
Reichs
Mercy Center, to spare it this inevitable suffering. Then I intend to go out and get drunk.”

He couldn't bring himself to come right out and talk about killing a baby, though that was what he meant. The Germans who'd slaughtered Jews hadn't talked straight out about what they were doing, either, though people weren't so shy about it any more. Here, Esther had more sympathy. “How awful for you,” she said. “And how much
worse for the Kleins! What causes this horrible disease? Could they have done anything to keep the baby from getting it?”

Dr. Dambach shook his head. “No. Nothing. It's genetic. If both parents carry the recessive, and if the two recessives come together…” He spread his hands. Even that gesture didn't remind him of the cheese pie he was holding. Intent on his own thoughts, he went on, “We don't see the disease very often these days. I have never seen it before, thank heaven, and I hope I never see it again. The books say it used to be fairly common among the Jews, though, before we cleaned them out…. Are you all right,
Frau
Stutzman?”

“Yes, I think so. This is all just so—so dreadful.” Esther made herself nod. Dambach nodded back, accepting what she'd said. He couldn't know why her heart had skipped a beat. A good thing, too. He couldn't come out and talk about killing a baby, but he took the extermination of the Jews for granted. Why not? He hadn't even been born when it happened.

“Dreadful,
ja
. A very unfortunate coincidence. Even among the Jews it was not common, you understand, but it was up to a hundred times
more
common among them than it is among Aryans.” Dambach thoughtfully rubbed his chin. “Did you happen to see on the news a few days ago the story about the Jews found in that village in backwoods Serbia?”

How to answer? Esther saw only one way: casually. “I sure did. Who would have imagined such a thing, in this day and age?” What she wanted to do was get up and run from the doctor's office. That that would be the worst thing she could possibly do didn't matter. Reason held her in her chair, held a polite smile on her face. Behind the façade, instinct screamed.

Still thoughtful, Dr. Dambach went on, “Tay-Sachs disease is so rare among Aryans, it almost makes one wonder….”

Ice lived in Esther. “Don't be silly, Doctor,” she said, keeping up the casual front. “None of
them
left any more, not in a civilized country.” Pretending she wasn't a Jew was second nature to her; she'd done it almost automatically
ever since she learned what she was. But mocking, scorning her true heritage wasn't so easy. She didn't have to do that very often, simply because Jews were so nearly extinct.

“I suppose you're right,” the pediatrician said, and relief flowered like springtime in her. But then he added, “Still…”

The door to the waiting room opened. In came Irma Ritter, who would work in the afternoon. She was even rounder than Dr. Dambach. Pointing to the slice of cheese pie in his hand, she asked, “Any more of that left?”

He looked down in surprise. “I don't know,” he said, sounding foolish. “Let me go look.” While he did, Esther made her escape—and that was exactly what it felt like.

 

Alicia Gimpel and her sisters were playing an elaborate game with dolls. Part of it came from an adventure film they'd seen a few weeks before, but that was only the springboard; more came straight from their imaginations. “Here.” Roxane picked up one of the few male dolls they had. “He can be the nasty Jew who's trying to cheat the dragons out of their cave.”

“No!” Alicia exclaimed before remembering she wasn't supposed to say anything like that no matter what.

“Why not?” Roxane clouded up. “You never like any of my ideas. It's not fair.”

“I think Alicia's right this time,” Francesca said. “He's not ugly enough to be a Jew.”

That wasn't why Alicia had said no, of course. She seized on it gratefully all the same. “Yes, that is what I meant,” she said. She still didn't like lying to her sisters, but she didn't see what she could do about it, either. She couldn't tell the truth. She could see that.
They'll find out soon enough,
she thought from the height of her own ten years.

Roxane examined the doll, who was indeed plastic perfection. “Well, we can
pretend
he's ugly,” she declared, and made him advance on the cardboard box doing duty for a cave. In a high, squeaky, unnatural voice, she said, “Here, dragons, I'll give you these beans if you'll move away from here and never come back. They may be magic beans.” She laughed shrilly and whispered, “And they may not, too.”