In the Presence of Mine Enemies (54 page)

The chant swelled and swelled. Looking at the excited faces and sparkling eyes of the men and women all around him, Heinrich realized he wasn't the only one who'd wanted to say that for years. How many Germans did? How many would, if they got the chance? He smelled the acrid sweat of fear, but people kept shouting.

Rolf Stolle leaned toward the microphone again. “SS go home!” he called, leading the chorus. “SS go home!”

Heinrich watched the band. Would the musicians deign to take any notice of the people clamoring for them to leave? If they did, wasn't that a sign of weakness? If they didn't, how long before hotheads started throwing rocks and bottles and whatever else they could get their hands on at them? And what would the SS men do then? And what would the crowd—the mob?—do in reply?

Maybe those same questions were going through the band leader's head. Maybe he didn't like the answers that occurred to him, either. As if continuing a regular performance—which this was anything but—he led the musicians to the edge of the enormous square. They kept on playing, but they no longer interfered with Rolf Stolle's speech.

As the crowd roared in triumph, Stolle shouted, “Do you see,
Volk
of the
Reich
? Do you? Without you, they're nothing. And they aren't with you, are they?”

“No!” That was a great, pain-filled howl. Again, Heinrich yelled as loud as anyone. Had schnapps ever left him this giddy? He didn't think so.

“I was going to talk for a while longer, friends, but you just made my speech for me,” the
Gauleiter
of Berlin boomed. The crowd cheered. Rolf Stolle went on, “And do
you know what else? By this time tomorrow, the whole
Reich
will know what you've done!”

Ecstatic cheers drowned out the now-distant SS band. Heinrich joined them, but hesitantly. He thought Stolle was likely right. He wasn't so sure that delighted him. If this footage showed up on Horst Witzleben's newscast, would gimlet-eyed SS technicians pore over it, trying to identify every single person—every single subversive person—in the crowd? Could they identify
him
?

Most of the time, things like that would have left him scared to death. Today, he felt too much exultation, too much exaltation, to care very much. Germans—Germans!—had just told the SS (even if it was only a marching band) where to head in. He'd joined them. The SS (even if it was only a marching band) had retreated. And nobody had got shot.

If that all wasn't a reason to make a man feel three meters tall, Heinrich couldn't imagine what would be.

 

Something was going on. Lise Gimpel could tell as much by the way Heinrich acted when he came home from work. He had almost a mad scientist's gleam in his eye, an air of excitement, he didn't even try to hide. He wouldn't tell her what it was all about, though. That made her want to smack him.

The most he would say was, “We'll watch Horst after supper.” Since he said that about three nights a week, it didn't give Lise much of a clue about why he wanted to see the evening news.

Dinner ran late, too. The chicken Lise was roasting took longer to get done than she'd thought it would. The family didn't finish eating till just before seven. Normally, Lise would have done the dishes while the news was on. If she missed the first couple of stories, well, the world wouldn't end. Tonight, she got the feeling it might. She left plates and silverware and glasses in the sink and sat down next to Heinrich to find out what Horst Witzleben had to say for himself—and why her husband had been looking wild-eyed ever since he walked through the front door.

“Our opening story,” the newsreader said, “is the colli
sion of two airliners on the runway at Gander, Newfoundland.” A map flashed on the screen to show where Gander was. “More than 250 people are confirmed as fatalities. Only seventeen are known to have survived, many of them with severe burns.” The televisor showed smoking wreckage, and then one of those survivors coming out of an ambulance on a stretcher.

Lise glanced over at Heinrich. Whatever he'd been waiting for, that wasn't it. She knew a certain amount of relief. She would have worried if he'd got that excited about a plane crash.

Then the picture shifted to Adolf Hitler Platz. Heinrich stiffened. This was it, all right. But why? There was Rolf Stolle, making one of his usual rabble-rousing speeches. And the rabble were indeed roused, as their cheers and shouts showed. But some oom-pah music kept coming close to drowning out the
Gauleiter
of Berlin. What was that all about?

Then Horst Witzleben said, “Despite attempted interference from an SS marching band,
Gauleiter
Rolf Stolle delivered another strong statement supporting the
Führer
's reform program this afternoon in central Berlin. His large audience received him favorably, and showed their displeasure at the band's not at all coincidental presence in the square.”

His voice cut off. Lise heard people shouting. For a moment, it was just rising and falling noise. Then she made out words: “SS go home! SS go home!”

Ice and fire rivered through her, both together. They'd said
that
? Nothing had happened to them? And now the authorities were showing the pictures on the evening news?

Heinrich grabbed her hand. His voice quivering with excitement, he said, “I was
there,
out in the platz. I was listening to Stolle. And I was shouting for the SS to leave along with everybody else. And they
did
!”

“You?” Lise said in amazement. Heinrich nodded. “Was that safe?” she asked.

“I don't know. I think so. I hope so,” he answered. “So many people were there, I don't see how they can grab everybody.” But he hesitated a little before he said that.
Was he trying to convince her or himself or both of them?

“Well, it's done. I hope it turns out all right,” she said, and then, “I didn't see you anywhere on the tape.”

“Good. I didn't, either,” Heinrich said. He'd been watching for himself, then, which meant he was more worried than he let on. Lise sent him a look half affectionate, half exasperated. He
would
try to play down whatever bothered him, because he didn't want her to worry. Once in a great while, that worked. The rest of the time, it only made her worry more.

An advertisement for a breakfast cereal tried to show that eating the stuff would make you rich, athletic, and beautiful. Lise remained unconvinced. “It tastes like library paste,” she said.

“I wouldn't be surprised,” Heinrich replied, “but how do you know what library paste tastes like?”

“How? I'm the one who helps the girls put school projects together, that's how,” Lise said. “I eat the paste, I breathe it, I damn near bathe in it. Last week,
Frau
Koch wanted everybody in class to make a model of one of the forts the
Reich
uses to protect German farmers in the Ukraine from bandits. Do you have any idea how much fun it is to glue three strands of tinsel barbed wire to toothpick stakes?”

“As a matter of fact, no,” Heinrich admitted. “Is that why you were in such a lousy mood last—when was it?—Wednesday night?”

“You bet it is,” Lise said. “And there had to be
three
strands of barbed wire, too, by God, or Francesca would have lost points.
Frau
Koch said so. She really is a beast, if you ask me. Everything else about the project was like that, too: do it exactly this way, or else. How are they supposed to learn anything?”

“I'll tell you what they learn,” Heinrich said. “They learn to obey.”

Lise hadn't thought of that. But as soon as her husband pointed it out to her, she saw that he was right. School taught more than the multiplication tables and the capital of Manchukuo and how Bismarck unified the
Reich
. It
taught children how to be good Germans, how to be good Nazis. One of the things they needed to know was how to blindly obey anyone set over them. The fortress needs to have three strands of tinsel barbed wire?
Jawohl, Frau
Koch! Three strands of tinsel barbed wire it shall have! And why does it need to have them? Because
Frau
Koch says so. No other reason needed.

But Germans—some of them Nazis, no doubt—had stood out there in Adolf Hitler Platz shouting, “SS go home!” They really had. And here was Horst Witzleben, showing them to the whole
Reich,
to much of the Germanic Empire, with every sign of approval. Would people be chanting the same thing in Oslo tomorrow? In London? Even in Omaha? What would happen if they did?

Horst Witzleben said, “Today, the
Führer
met with a delegation from the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia to discuss that region's future relationship with the Greater German
Reich
. At the close of the meeting, a spokesman for the
Führer
said that while Bohemia and Moravia, which have been part of the
Reich
since 1939, cannot reasonably expect to regain their former independence, a larger degree of autonomy within the German federal structure is not beyond the realm of possibility.”

The picture cut to the delegation in the palace press room. Its leader, a white-haired man identified as—of all things—a playwright, spoke in Czech-accented German: “What we did here today marks a good beginning. I am not sure
Herr
Buckliger realizes it is only a beginning, but that is all right. If he doesn't, we will show him.”

“They didn't arrest this fellow, either?” Lise said incredulously.

“Doesn't look that way.” Heinrich sounded startled, too.

“This is all very strange,” Lise said. Her husband nodded. She went on, “I'd almost rather Buckliger had left things alone. Then we'd know where we stood. This way, everything we've been sure of for so long is up in the air.”

“What's that myth? Pandora? Is that it? The last thing that flew out was hope.” Heinrich paused, frowning. “I think that's how it is.”

“Yes, I think so, too,” Lise said. “I don't know if I have
any, not really. But even wondering if I could…It feels funny. It feels dizzy, like somebody spiked my drink when I wasn't looking.”

“I thought so, too, this afternoon,” Heinrich said. “But don't get too excited. For every scene like this, there's an ‘Enough Is Enough' or something like it. The cards may have been dealt, but they haven't been played yet. And nobody's going to lay down a dummy. We won't get to see anything till it comes out during the hand.”

“I suppose not.” Lise sighed. “We're going to have to find some new bridge partners, you know.”

“One of these days.” Heinrich gestured toward the televisor. That Czech playwright was gone, but the memory of his calm assurance lingered. Heinrich said, “Plenty of interesting things happening right now. And pretty soon the kids will learn how to play.”

“All sorts of things to pass on to the next generation,” Lise said. They both started to laugh. Bridge wasn't even illegal.

 

SS men, some in black uniforms, others in camouflage smocks, swarmed near the campus of Friedrich Wilhelm University. Snipers with rifles with telescopic sights took positions on rooftops that had never known the footsteps of anyone but occasional repairmen and not-so-occasional pigeons. Susanna Weiss would have been more alarmed if she hadn't known that Heinz Buckliger was coming here to speak.

Along with the SS men, a horde of workmen and technicians had also invaded the university. Banging hammers and buzzing power tools disrupted the quiet that was supposed to foster academic contemplation. Since Susanna had never had any enormous use for quiet, she turned up the radio a little louder to try to drown out the racket of carpentry.

That did the job well enough, but curiosity accomplished what noise couldn't: it made her get up from her work and look out the window.

A platform for the
Führer
's upcoming speech was rising in the open space between the two long wings that housed
most of the university's classrooms and faculty offices. Rising with it were platforms for televisor cameras. Those would lift the cameramen above the level of the crowd and make sure no one's head got between Heinz Buckliger and his larger audience across the
Reich
and the Germanic Empire.

The crowd was already building. Susanna thought about going downstairs and joining it. Then she thought again. What was the point? She wasn't close to the platform here, but she could see it. If she went down there, she wouldn't be able to see a damned thing, because everybody around her would be taller than she was. Better to stay where she was. She'd hear Heinz Buckliger either way.

Curiosity satisfied and decision made, she went back to grading papers. Plenty of her students understood the scatology in “The Miller's Tale.” Far fewer of them understood how the piece fit into
The Canterbury Tales
as a whole. They enjoyed gross jokes. Finding and defining structure in a work of literature was something else again.