In the Presence of Mine Enemies (28 page)

Despite that
immediately,
when Susanna got to the department chairman's office, she had to cool her heels for almost fifteen minutes before Rosa ushered her into the exalted presence: another way of putting her in her place. It didn't work. She'd expected nothing else. She'd brought an article with her, and took notes while she waited. Rosa couldn't even complain about that.

At last, Rosa said, “Professor Oppenhoff will see you now.”

How did she know? She hadn't gone in to ask. “Thank you so much—dear,” Susanna said, and scribbled a last deliberate note before entering the chairman's malodorous sanctum.

Franz Oppenhoff wasn't actually smoking a cigar when she came in, but sour smoke and the stubbed-out corpses of several in the ashtray served as all-too-vivid reminders of his habit. Unlike his secretary, he was scrupulously polite, saying, “And how are you today,
Fräulein Doktor
Professor?”

“Well enough, thank you,” Susanna answered. “What can I do for you today, sir?”

“Professor Lutze has had several…interesting things to say about the recent meeting of the Medieval English Association in London,” Oppenhoff said.

“Oh, yes—the meeting you were reluctant to let me attend.” Susanna didn't believe in letting anyone off the hook.

Professor Oppenhoff coughed and scratched at the bottom edge of his left muttonchop. The gesture and the flamboyant whiskers made Susanna think of Emperor Franz Joseph and the dying days of Austria-Hungary. “Hmm…ah…hmm,” Oppenhoff said. He needed to pause and gather himself before he could come out with actual words: “Be that as it may, were you not intimate with the British Union of Fascists during your stay in England?”

“Intimate? I should hope not!”

The department chairman went red. “With their deliberations, I should say.”

“Oh, with their deliberations?” Susanna sounded as if that were occurring to her for the first time. Franz Oppenhoff turned redder. She grudged him a nod. “Yes, I suppose so.”

“And they had something to do with…with matters pertaining to the first edition of
Mein Kampf?
” Professor Oppenhoff chose his words with uncommon care, which only made him more opaque than ever.

Susanna nodded again. “That's right, they did. Excuse me,
Herr Doktor
Professor, but what does this have to do with the Department of Germanic Languages?”

“Perhaps nothing. Perhaps very much indeed.” Oppenhoff, who was usually fussy and precise, was fussy and imprecise today. He scratched at his side-whiskers again. “You are not familiar with the
Führer
's recent remarks in Nuremberg?”

“I'm sorry, Professor, but
Herr
Buckliger is not in the habit of confiding in me.”

Oppenhoff stared at her. Irony was a weapon he seldom encountered, and he seemed to have no idea how to cope with it. “Er—yes,” he managed.

“What did the
Führer
say?” Susanna asked. “That's important for every German.”
And even more important for every Jew
.

“Well…” The chairman hesitated.
He doesn't know himself, or doesn't know much,
Susanna realized.
Isn't that interesting?
Oppenhoff as much as confirmed her thought when he broke out of his hesitation: “I do not have this at first hand, but I am given to understand that he addressed the principles underlying National Socialist rule in the
Reich
and the Germanic Empire.”

“Did he?” Susanna said—as neutral a remark as she could find. “I'm sorry, but I don't see what that's got to do with anything in the department.”

“No?” Professor Oppenhoff looked at her in surprise. “If National Socialist doctrine changes, why then naturally our presentation must also change in accordance with it.”

He worried more about what was ideologically appropriate than about what was true. Susanna had known that before, but hadn't had her nose rubbed in it like this up till now. She could add two and two, though. “Did the
Führer
talk about the first edition of
Mein Kampf?
”

“I believe so, and about other matters related to that topic,” Oppenhoff answered. “Since you saw developments in England, I thought you would be able to contribute some insight into what is likely to follow here in the
Reich
.”

What could
contribute some insight
mean but
tell me how to think?
As far as Susanna could remember, the last original idea Franz Oppenhoff had had was to use staples rather than paper clips to hold multipage documents together. Such things were his province; he made a better bureaucrat than he did an academic. She would have pitied him more if he hadn't been proud of that. “I'm sorry,
Herr Doktor
Professor, but I really couldn't tell you,” she said. “We'll have to wait and find out what the people think, won't we?”

“What…the people think.” By the way the department chairman brought out the phrase, Susanna might have said it in Gothic—it plainly meant nothing to him.

She nodded. “Yes, sir. That's how the British fascists interpret that passage of the first edition, anyhow.
Herr
Lynton put considerable weight on it. What else could our new
Führer
mean?”

“I don't know.” Oppenhoff made a production of taking a Havana from his gold-plated cigar case, getting it going, and blowing noxious fumes in Susanna's direction. “Things seemed satisfactory as they were,” he said plaintively. “This being so, what point to changing them?”

Had Susanna been only another German, she might have had more sympathy—perhaps even pity—for Franz Oppenhoff. Since she was what she was, though, she didn't think everything had been fine before. “Change comes,
Herr Doktor
Professor,” she said, trying to sound gentle and not scornful. “It comes, and we have to be ready for it.”

“This is true.” But the department chairman still looked like a large, white-haired, wrinkled, cigar-smoking little boy on the edge of a tantrum. “No matter how true it is, I don't like it!” he burst out.

“I'm sorry,” said, Susanna, who, if she'd ever prayed for anything in her life, prayed for change now.

 

The doorbell rang. “There they are,” Heinrich Gimpel said.

“Well, let them in,” Lise answered. “The house isn't as clean as it ought to be, but no house with children in it is ever as clean as it ought to be. They have two of their own. At least they'll understand.”

Heinrich opened the door. Willi Dorsch thrust a big jug of Rhine wine at him. “Here,” Willi said. “If I get you drunk enough, maybe you won't remember to count the cards while we're playing.”

“Thanks.” Heinrich took the wine. “You seem to be forgetting something, though.”

“What's that?”

“If we all get drunk—”

“If we all get drunk, who knows what will happen?” Erika Dorsch said from behind Willi. She looked at Heinrich.

Willi didn't see that. He laughed, saying, “If we all get drunk, we won't remember, so whatever happens, it won't count.”

Is that how you explained things to Ilse at lunch?
Heinrich wondered. One more question he couldn't ask. He hefted the jug, saying, “Come on in. We'll drink some of this, anyhow, and we'll see how bad the bridge gets.”

“Not to worry.” Willi laughed again. “We can play bad bridge drunk or sober.”

“Some of us certainly can,” Erika murmured. The smile fell off her husband's face. She pointed to Alicia, who was reading on the sofa. “My goodness, she's getting big, isn't she?”

“They do that,” Heinrich said. “Maybe if we stopped feeding her, she wouldn't. We've talked about it, but we haven't done it yet.”

Alicia looked up from her book. “I've heard that one before, Daddy.” Jab delivered, she went back to reading.

Willi Dorsch winced again. “They get dangerous awfully early, don't they?” He wasn't looking at Alicia, though. He was looking at Erika. This time, luckily, she was the one who didn't notice.

Lise came out to the front room. “Hello, hello,” she said, and then caught sight of the jug of wine. “
Gott im Himmel!
If we drink all that, we'll pass out under the table like a bunch of Russians.”

“I think that's part of Willi's evil plot,” Heinrich said, “except that he was going to pour all of the wine down
my
throat.”

“Oh, he was, was he?” Lise sent Willi a mock-ferocious glare. “He doesn't think he needs to get me drunk, too? I'm insulted.”

Alicia closed her book. “I'm going upstairs,” she announced. “How is a person supposed to hear herself think around here?” Except for the pronoun, she was quoting her father. The indignant flounce, however, was all her own.

“That one's going to be trouble.” Erika Dorsch's voice held nothing but admiration.

“That one's already trouble,” Heinrich replied. “Well, let's see how the cards go. And let's see what we've got
here.” He handed Lise the jug of Rhine wine. She made as if to stagger under the weight, but then took the wine back into the kitchen to use the corkscrew. When everybody was at the table with a glass of wine, Heinrich said, “I heard something interesting at lunch today,” and told of what the officers had to say about Heinz Buckliger's speech.

The longer he went on, the unhappier Willi looked. Heinrich wondered why. Willi's politics weren't nearly so reactionary as, say, those of the SS men in Admiral Yamamoto's. But then Erika turned to Willi and said, “You didn't tell me anything about this. You said you had lunch with Heinrich today, didn't you?”

“Well, yes,” Willi said.
Well, no,
Heinrich thought.
If you tell your wife lies, you can't expect me to know about them
. But Willi recovered brilliantly: “Old man Kallmeyer came over to the table and started bending my ear about depreciation. I couldn't pay any attention to the juicy stuff.”

Erika didn't buy that, or not right away. “Why wasn't he bending Heinrich's ear, too?”

“Don't be silly,” Willi said. “Heinrich already knows everything there is to know about depreciation.”

That wasn't true, but it was plausible. Erika eyed her husband, eyed Heinrich, and slowly nodded. “Well, maybe,” she admitted. “But I wish you'd been paying attention to what really matters.”

“I was,” Willi said. “If Kallmeyer gets mad at me, my job turns into hell on earth.”

Erika hardly paid any attention to him. She was thinking about what Heinrich had said. “If the government is going to admit it made mistakes and told lies…it's like the end of the world. Who knows where it will end?”

“Not at the bridge table,” Lise said. “Shall we play?” With some people, getting together to play bridge was just an excuse to sit around and talk and drink. For the Gimpels and the Dorsches, it was an excuse to sit around and talk and drink, but it wasn't
just
an excuse. They all took the cards seriously (Willi took them as seriously as he took anything, anyhow). The wine and the snacks and the chatter were all very well, but the evenings revolved around the bridge game.

As they cut the cards to see who would deal, Lise glanced at Heinrich for a split second. He answered just as quickly with an eyebrow raised and lowered. He'd already told her what he'd heard in the canteen, and he hadn't said a word about Willi's being there. The eyebrow said there were good reasons why he hadn't.

Willi won the cut and dealt like a machine—a machine that desperately needed repair and oiling. He tossed out cards seemingly at random. He would do that every once in a while, for comic effect. Sometimes he would misdeal doing it, too. When everyone ended up with thirteen cards, Heinrich breathed a silent sigh of relief. He arranged his hand. It was nothing special, but he could open up at one heart and see what Lise had.

“Four diamonds,” Willi announced, sounding proud of himself.

“Oh, dear,” Heinrich said. He knew what a preempt like that meant—Willi had a diamond suit as long as his arm, and not much else. Seeing that he had a singleton six of diamonds himself, that didn't much surprise Heinrich.
Do I want to jump in at the four level myself?
He looked at his hand again. He knew he couldn't. “Pass.”

Erika and Lise also passed. Willi went down two, but he had a hundred honors points in diamonds, so he broke even on the hand. And he'd kept Heinrich and Lise from finding out they could easily have made two hearts, which meant the preempt worked.

“If you'd made that hand, I would have figured you cooked the deal on purpose,” Heinrich said as he shuffled for the next one.