In the Presence of Mine Enemies (9 page)

Lise hoped they weren't, anyway. She also hoped no one outside the family had noticed anything out of the ordinary. Alicia was a bright child and, more than either of her sisters, a solitary child. That ought to make any odd behavior from her stand out less and be more likely to get forgiven. It ought to. Lise hoped it would.

She wondered if there was any point to praying it would. Did God listen to a Jew's prayers these days? If He did, why had He let the Nazis do what they'd done?
What did we do—what could we have done—to deserve
that
?
The question had haunted Lise ever since she learned she was a Jew. She'd never come close to finding an answer that satisfied her.

And how long till Alicia asked the same thing? Not very, not if Lise was any judge. Alicia was too clever—too
clever by half—not to wonder about that. There were times when Lise wished her eldest daughter were a little less clever, or at least had a little more in the way of sense to go with her precocious intelligence. She laughed.
As well wish for the moon while I'm at it
.

She went back to getting supper ready.
And then, in a couple of years, we'll have to tell Francesca, and after that Roxane. How long can we hope to get away with it? How long can we keep being what we are?
She was chopping an onion. She told herself the tears in her eyes came from that. Maybe she was right. Maybe.

 

Heinrich Gimpel poked a button on the remote control. The televisor in the living room came to life. It was seven o'clock, time for the evening news. The news reader, Horst Witzleben, looked like a cross between an SS man and a film star. “Come on, Lise,” Heinrich called. “Let's see what's gone on today.”

“I'll be there in a second,” she answered from the kitchen. “Dishes are nearly done. Turn up the sound so I can hear it.”

“All right.” He did.

That made Witzleben's booming greeting—“Good day,
Volk
of the Greater German
Reich
”—sound even more impressive than it would have otherwise. He owned an almost operatic baritone. Heinrich wouldn't have been surprised if technicians in the studio pumped it up electronically to make it sound more impressive, more believable, still. The Ministry of Propaganda didn't miss a trick. “And now the news.”

And now what they want people to hear,
Heinrich thought. He had excellent good reasons not to rely completely on the Propaganda Ministry's trained seal. It wasn't just that he was a Jew and the Nazis had been thundering lies about his kind since before they came to power. He also worked in the
Oberkommando der Wehrmacht;
things he found out about professionally sometimes showed up on the news. When they did, they were often distorted past recognition.

Ordinary people, though—butchers, bakers, candlestick
makers,
goyim
—had no way to know that, no reason to believe it. As far as they were concerned, Witzleben might have been spouting Holy Writ.
I heard it from Horst
was a synonym for
You can take it to the bank
. Heinrich had a sneaking suspicion the Ministry of Propaganda had set out to make it one.

“Our beloved Leader, Kurt Haldweim, is reported to be resting comfortably in the
Führer
's palace, recovering from what his physicians describe as a stubborn cold,” Horst Witzleben intoned. “Routine matters proceed normally. Should anything extraordinary arise, the
Führer
is fully capable of attending to it on the instant.”

The picture of the
Führer
on the screen behind Witzleben had to be at least fifteen years old. Like Hitler himself, Kurt Haldweim had been born in the Ostmark when it was still Austria, and separate from Germany. He'd been a young officer in the Second World War. He was perhaps the last of that generation still in the saddle—if he
was
still in the saddle. Over the past few years, he'd had a long series of “stubborn colds” and “minor illnesses” that kept him out of the public eye for weeks at a time. Everything went on in his name. How much that meant…was not the sort of thing Horst Witzleben discussed on the air.

Even working where he did, Heinrich didn't know the full answer there. Along with everyone else in the Germanic Empire, he could only wait and see if the
Führer
rallied, as he had several times before.

Lise came in then. Heinrich turned down the sound and slipped an arm around her as she sat down on the sofa beside him. She rested her head on his shoulder. “You didn't miss a thing,” he told her. “Horst was just going on about the
Führer
's ‘cold.'” He put a certain ironic twist on the word.

“He says everything with Haldweim is fine, then?” Lise asked. Heinrich nodded. She sighed. “And one of these days before too long he'll be dead—but he'll still be fine.”

Heinrich automatically turned his head to make sure nobody, not even the children, could hear such a thing. Only when he was sure it was safe did he laugh. “That's how it was with Himmler, all right,” he agreed. Only dialysis had
kept the second
Führer
going the last five years of his life, but not a word of that had ever got into the news. Some people claimed Himmler had really died in 1983, not 1985, and that a junta of SS men and generals had run the Empire till they finally agreed on Haldweim as a successor. Heinrich had never spoken with anyone in a position to know who was willing to talk about that, though.

The televisor screen suddenly cut away from Horst Witzleben's Aryan good looks to a shot of a city rising from a prairie of almost Russian immensity: Omaha, the capital of the United States since the destruction of Washington. A tight shot of German jet fighters circling overhead. Another shot of uniformed German officials conferring with dumpy Americans who looked all the dumpier because they wore business suits.

“Discussion of payment of remaining American debts for the current fiscal year continues in a frank and forthright manner,” Witzleben said. “A solution satisfactory to the
Reich
is anticipated.”

A stock clip showed a company of panzers rolling through the American countryside. Another one, older, showed a city disappearing in atomic fire. Lise shivered. “Would the
Reich
really do that again?” she whispered.

“It can,” Heinrich answered. “Because it can, it probably won't have to. The real questions are, how much of what they owe will the Americans pay, and how loud will the
Reich
have to yell before they do?” He nodded to himself. Those were the questions that counted, all right. Who persuaded—or browbeat—the Americans into coughing up how much could have a good deal to do with who followed Kurt Haldweim into the
Führer
's palace.

Another camera cut, this one to London. Like Paris, the town was more a monument to what had been than to what was nowadays. Parts of it remained in ruins more than sixty years after its fall to German panzers and dive-bombers. Horst Witzleben said, “The British Union of Fascists will be convening for their annual congress next week. Their full support for all Germanic programs is anticipated.”

Heinrich and Lise both snorted at that. The British fas
cists had always followed Berlin's line. They'd always had to, or the
Reich
would clamp down on them even harder than usual. But no sooner had that thought crossed Heinrich's mind than a beefy, red-faced Englishman in BUF regalia appeared on the televisor screen. In Cockney-accented German, he said, “We're good fascists, too, we are. We think we've got a proper notion of what's right for Britain.”

Dryly, Witzleben commented, “Whether the British Union of Fascists will endorse this position remains to be seen.”

The next story was on the state visit of the
Poglavnik
of Croatia to the King of Bulgaria. Heinrich thought he knew what they would be talking about: hunting down the Serb terrorists who kept the Balkans bubbling. He was still amazed the Englishman had had the nerve to say what he'd said, and that the news had shown it. Someone in the Ministry of Propaganda had gone out on a limb there. And the Englishman had gone out on a bigger one. Were the Security Police looking for him even now?

Lise had a different thought: “Susanna will be in London for this,
nicht wahr?
”

“For it? No.” Heinrich shook his head. “But yes, at the same time.”

His wife sent him a severe look. “There are times, sweetheart, when you're too precise for your own good. You—”

He waved her to silence. There on the screen were the
Poglavnik
and the King, each in a different fancy uniform, shaking hands. And the correspondent from Sofia was saying, “—lating each other on the discovery and elimination of a nest of Jews deep in the Serbian mountains. Back to you, Horst.”

“Danke,”
Witzleben said as his image reappeared on the screen. He looked out at his vast audience. “The menace of world Jewry never goes away,
meine Damen und Herren
. It is as true now as it was when our
Führer
served in Salonica during the Second World War.”

Lise shivered. “They don't give up, do they?”

“Not likely.” Heinrich made a fist and pounded it down on his knee. “No, not likely, dammit.”

“We thought things would be easier when Himmler finally kicked the bucket,” Lise said in a soft voice no one but Heinrich could possibly hear. “And then what did we get instead? Kurt Haldweim!” She didn't try to hide her bitterness.

Heinrich stroked her hair. “Maybe it will be better this time. The SS isn't so strong now—at least, I hope it isn't.”

“I'll believe it when I see it,” Lise said, and he had no answer for that.

The next story was about a riot at a football match in Milan, when the home team's goal against visiting Leipzig was disallowed on a questionable offside call. The crowd did more than question it. They bombarded the field with rocks and bottles, so that both teams and the officials had to flee for their lives. One German football player was slightly injured; one official—not the one who'd made the dubious call—ended up with a broken collarbone.

“Leaders of the German Federation of Sport have called upon their Italian counterparts for explanation and apology,” Witzleben said in tones of stern disapproval. “Thus far, none has been forthcoming. These disgraceful scenes have grown all too common at matches on Italian pitches. The German Federation of Sport has declared it reserves the right to withdraw from further competition with teams from the Italian Empire unless and until the situation is corrected.”

That would hurt the Italians a lot worse than it did their German foes. They depended on revenue from matches against visiting German powerhouses to keep themselves in the black. And if they couldn't tour in the Germanic Empire…Some of their teams would probably have to fold.

Heinrich tried to look at things philosophically: “What can you expect from Italians? They get too excited about what's only a game.”

And then Lise brought him down to earth, saying, “And who was it who whooped like a wild Indian when we won the World Cup four years ago?”

“I don't know what you're talking about,” Heinrich said, whereupon Lise made a face at him. He poked her in the ribs and found a ticklish spot. She squeaked.

“What's that funny noise?” Francesca called from upstairs.

“That funny noise is your mother,” Heinrich answered.

“Why are you a funny noise, Mommy?” their middle daughter asked.

“Because your father is tickling me, which he's
not
supposed to do,” Lise said. She tried to tickle him back, but he wasn't ticklish. “Unfair,” she muttered. “Very unfair.”

“And why is this night different from all other nights?” Heinrich murmured. The first of the Four Questions from the Passover service reminded Lise that life wasn't fair for Jews, never had been, and probably never would be.
But we—somehow—go on anyway,
Heinrich thought. His wife didn't answer him. He did stop tickling her.

 

Esther Stutzman worked a couple of mornings a week as a receptionist at a pediatrician's office. It wasn't so much that the family needed the money; they didn't. But she was a gregarious soul, and she'd wanted to see people after Gottlieb and Anna started going to school and didn't need to be looked after all the time.

The doctor was a short, plump man named Martin Dambach. He wasn't a Jew. Several of his patients were, but he didn't know that. “Good morning,
Frau
Stutzman,” he said when Esther came in.

“Good morning, Doctor,” she answered. “How are you today?”

“Tired,” he said, and rubbed his eyes. “There was a traffic accident outside the house in the middle of the night—one of the drivers reeked like a brewery—and I gave what help I could. Then the police wanted to talk with me, which cost me
another
hour of sleep. Would you please get the coffeemaker going?”