In the Presence of Mine Enemies (36 page)

“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 a
goy
?” 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. She
is
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 is
so
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
Führer
'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.

L
IKE THE REST OF THE
J
EWS IN THE
G
REATER
G
ERMAN
Reich
, Lise Gimpel had never been to, never even seen, High Holy Days services. She'd heard about going to a synagogue to celebrate the New Year and the Day of Atonement from her grandfather. Being able to worship openly struck her as even more amazing than the holidays themselves.

She couldn't so much as fast on Yom Kippur.
Don't do anything to get yourself noticed
was a Jew's unbreakable rule. If, say, Roxane asked,
Why aren't you eating, Mommy?
—how could she answer? Whatever she said, her daughter might tell a school friend she'd stayed hungry all day long. If that reached the wrong ears…Even so small a thing could mean disaster.

And so she ate breakfast with everybody else, and silently apologized to God. Heinrich, no doubt, was doing the same thing. By the somber expression on Alicia's face, so was she. Lise had told her what the holidays were and what they meant and how they were supposed to be celebrated if only that were possible. Francesca and Roxane ate pancakes and sausage without the slightest idea that today was different from any other day.

Heinrich got to his feet and grabbed his attaché case. “I'm off,” he said. “I'll see you all tonight.” Collecting kisses all around, he hurried out the door. It closed behind him. Lise sighed and smiled at the same time. She didn't worry about him running off with Erika Dorsch or anybody else, even if she teased him. He wasn't the sort to leave unfinished anything he started. If his eyes sometimes
wandered—well, he was a man. His hands and, more to the point, his heart didn't.

“Come on, eat up,” Lise told the girls. “Then get out of your nightgowns and into school clothes. I know you don't have to leave as early as Daddy does, but you can't lie around eating grapes all day, either.”

She got giggles from the younger two girls and a disdainful sniff from Alicia, who said, “You've used that one before, Mommy.”

Lise wasn't about to put up with literary criticism before eight in the morning, especially when she hadn't finished her coffee (the biggest advantage she saw to not fasting on Yom Kippur was that she didn't have to miss it). She said, “I don't care whether I have or not. It's still true. Get moving.”

Alicia was the one she had to bully, the one a bird or a book or anything else might distract from the business at hand. Francesca could barely grunt before ten, but she did what she had to do on automatic pilot. Roxane liked mornings, probably because her sisters didn't.

Lise got them out the door in good time. She always did, and she always breathed a sigh of relief once they were gone, too.
Especially today,
she thought. The Day of Atonement she wanted to herself. Had things been different, gathering with her fellow Jews would have been sweet. But, though they got together on minor holidays like Purim, they didn't dare meet on the big ones. Someone might be watching, might be listening, might be wondering. You never could tell.

She sat down in front of the televisor. It was off. She left it off, too. She didn't want any distractions, not while she was doing her best to forgive the people who'd troubled her during the past year. In spite of her earlier forgiving thoughts about Heinrich, she wasn't surprised when Erika rose to the top of the list. Lise's smile was slightly sour. Erika couldn't help being what she was, any more than a tiger could.

Things around a tiger had a way of ending up dead. Things around Erika…

Methodically, Lise went through the rest of the list, starting with
Herr
Kessler, who'd vexed her because he vexed
Alicia, and ending with the cleaner who had returned a linen blouse with a scorch mark and without two buttons. Then she took on the hard one she attempted every Yom Kippur: to forgive the German people.

She'd never done it, not in her heart. She'd never even come close, and she knew it. That wasn't only because their crimes were so enormous, either. Worse, they had no idea they'd committed crimes. They were convinced they walked the path of truth and justice and righteousness. If they didn't see they had anything to atone for, what was the point to forgiving them? Was there any? Not that she'd ever been able to see.

This year…This year, for the first time since she was a girl, she wondered. Heinz Buckliger seemed to have some idea that the
Reich
and the
Volk
of the
Reich
didn't come to their dominant position in the world with hands perfectly clean. If the
Führer
thought the German people stood in need of atonement for some things…Well, how much did that mean?

Buckliger hadn't said a word about Jews, not in his speech on the televisor and not in anything else Heinrich and Walther had been able to uncover. But he had cast some doubt on the overwhelming importance of Aryan blood. And how much did
that
mean?

“I want to hope,” Lise murmured, to herself and possibly to God. “It's been so long. I
want
to hope.”

 

Willi Dorsch glowered in mock severity—Heinrich Gimpel hoped the severity was mock, anyway—as he climbed aboard the bus that would carry Heinrich and him to the Stahnsdorf train station. He sat down next to Heinrich and demanded, “Well, what have you got to say for yourself?”

Did he know? Had Erika been as forthright as she often was? Or had he just added two and two and come up with—surprise!—four? If he did know, he was going to have to come out and say so. “Well, how does ‘good morning' sound?” Heinrich answered.

“It'll do.” With a grin, Willi thumped him on the back. “Better than a lot of things you could have told me.”

“I'm so glad.” Heinrich hoped irony would keep Willi
from noticing he was telling the exact and literal truth. Having got away with one question, he tried another: “And how are you today?”

“I could be worse. I have been worse. I probably will be worse again before too long,” Willi answered. Heinrich concluded he and Erika hadn't fought during the night. The way things had been going with them, that was indeed something. His friend went on, “How about yourself?”

“Me? I just go on from day to day,” Heinrich said. That was true enough. Getting through the High Holy Days every year reminded him of just how true it was.

“Just go on from day to day,” Willi repeated, and sighed gustily. “Christ, I wish I could say the same. I never know if tomorrow will blow up in my face.”

Neither do I,
Heinrich thought.
And you're talking about your marriage. I'm talking about my life
. He'd grown very used to thinking things he couldn't say. What he could say was, “I hope everything turns out all right.”

“You're a good fellow, you know that?” Willi sounded a little maudlin, or maybe more than a little, as he might have after too much to drink. But this morning he didn't smell like a distillery, and he didn't wince at every noise and every sunbeam like a man with a hangover. Maybe he really was just glad to have a friend. And how glad would he be after a few ill-chosen words from Erika?

Those words evidently hadn't come. Maybe they wouldn't. Heinrich dared hope. In the
Reich,
the mere act of hoping was—had to be—an act of courage for a Jew. With a shrug, Heinrich said, “All I know is, I've got too much work waiting for me at the office.”

“Ha! Who doesn't?” Willi said. “Our section could have twice as many people in it, and we'd still be behind. Of course, if the new
Führer
cuts the assessments in the Empire the way he's been talking about, we'll all end up out of work.”

“Do you think he will?” Heinrich asked with even more genuine curiosity than he dared show.

“Me? I'm not going to try and guess along with him any more, no, sir,” Willi said. “I was wrong a couple of times, and all that proves is, I shouldn't do it.”

The bus pulled into the train station. Heinrich and Willi hurried off. They both paused to buy copies of the
Völkischer Beobachter
from a vending machine, then went to the platform to catch the commuter train into Berlin.

They sat side by side, reading the paper. Heinrich, as usual, went through it methodically. Willi was a butterfly, flitting from story to story. He found as many interesting tidbits as Heinrich did, and sometimes found them faster. “Americans question assessment,” he said, pointing to a piece on page five.

Heinrich, who hadn't got there on his own yet, flipped to the story. He read it, then shook his head. “They can question, but it won't do them much good,” he said. “The occupying authorities will collect their pound of flesh one way or another.”

“Ah, a pound of flesh.” Willi laughed wistfully. “I remember how much fun that used to be.”

Heinrich winced at the pun. Maybe that wince was what made him ask, “What about Ilse?” Normally, he would think such a thing, but he wouldn't say it. The wry joke had made him drop some of his defenses. He didn't like that. He couldn't afford to drop them, even for an instant.

Willi blinked. He hadn't expected the question, any more than Heinrich had expected to ask it. After a pause when Heinrich wondered if he would answer at all, he said, “Ilse's sweet, and she's good in bed, but it's not the same, you know what I mean?”

“I…think so,” Heinrich said. He thought about making love with a near-stranger after so long with Lise and nobody else. Yes, that would be very odd, especially the first few times. Then he thought about making love with Erika, who was, after all, anything but a stranger. What would
that
be like?
Cut it out,
he told himself sternly. Most of him listened.

“You're lucky, being happy where you are,” Willi said, and dove back into the newspaper.

“Yes, I suppose I am,” Heinrich said, which was certainly the truth, for he would have been stuck where he was whether he was happy or not. Divorce drew notice to a couple, even these days. Jews mostly stayed married no matter how badly they got along.

A lot of
goyim
did the same thing. Willi said, “If it weren't for the kids, and if it weren't for the way people look at you funny afterwards, Erika and I would have split up by now. Hell, we may yet, in spite of all that stuff.”

“I hope not,” Heinrich said, which was true for all kinds of reasons his friend didn't understand. He chose one Willi would: “If you guys broke up, we'd have to find somebody else to beat at bridge.”

“Ha! What
have
you been smoking?” That touched Willi's pride where a lot of other gibes wouldn't have. And if he thought of Heinrich as a rival at the card table, maybe he wouldn't worry about him any other way.

The train pulled into South Station. Heinrich and Willi rode the escalators to the upper level, where they caught the bus to
Oberkommando der Wehrmacht
headquarters. Heinrich went to his desk with more than a little apprehension—not only because now he knew Willi was sleeping with Ilse, but also because the Americans were acting up. When they did that, they made his job harder. He had enough other things to worry about without trouble from the far side of the Atlantic.

But sure as hell, four people came up to him in the first hour he was there, all of them with the
Beobachter
in their hands. They all wanted to know what the Yankees would do, and what the
Reich
would do to them after they did it. “We'll have to wait and see,” Heinrich said again and again, which satisfied no one.

He said the same thing to two more men on the telephone. One was a lieutenant general, a man who disliked ambiguity of any sort. “Dammit, I need to know if we're going to move or not,” the officer growled.

“So do I, sir,” Heinrich answered. The general swore and hung up.

When the telephone rang again, Heinrich felt like swearing, too. “Budget analysis—Gimpel speaking,” he said.

“Good morning to you,
Herr
Gimpel. This is Charlie Cox, calling from Omaha.” The American's German was fluent, but had the flat accent English-speakers gave the language.

“I know your name,
Herr
Cox. You are in the Department of the Treasury,
nicht wahr
? What can I do for you today?”

“You can tell me how serious
Herr
Buckliger is about a new deal for the different parts of the Germanic Empire.” Cox didn't beat around the bush. And that, of course, would be
the
question in the eyes of any American administrator.

It was also
the
question, or at least closely related to
the
question, in Heinrich's eyes. It happened to be one he couldn't answer, either for Charlie Cox or for himself. “I'm very sorry,
Herr
Cox,” he said, and meant it. “I don't make policy. I just implement it when someone else has made it.”