In the Presence of Mine Enemies (47 page)

But then, though Rolf Stolle kept right on hamming it up for all he was worth, he suddenly stopped boring Heinrich, for he went on, “Wise leadership is always important. And our beloved
Führer
is very wise in setting our affairs to rights. Some of the things we did in days gone by are no longer needed. And
some
of the things we did in days gone by, perhaps, we never should have done at all.”

Heinrich looked at Willi. Willi was looking back at him. A low mutter of surprise ran through the hall. Whatever people had expected Stolle to say, this wasn't it.

“There are people who say, ‘Let's not change this,'” he rolled on. “There are people who say, ‘Let's not remember this.' There are people who say, ‘Let's not remind the
Volk
that the Party was supposed to be democratic, that the first
Führer
said so right from the start.' These people, some of them, have lots of decorations. These people, some of them, have lots of power. These people, most of them, have got fat and comfortable and lazy with things just the way they are. And,
meine Damen und Herren,
that's a pile of crap!”

The mutter of astonishment that went through the hall wasn't low this time. Rolf Stolle beamed, as if he'd set eyes on a good-looking blonde. His bald bullet head gleamed under the televisor lights. “A pile of crap I said,
meine Damen und Herren,
and a pile of crap I meant. The
Führer
knows it, too, and he's trying to clean it up. But he needs help. And he needs something else, too.

“Trouble is, Heinz Buckliger is a gentleman. He wants to go slow. He wants to be polite. He doesn't want to hurt anybody's feelings, God forbid. But I am here to tell you, I don't think going slow and being polite will get the job done. I am here to tell you, when you see a pile of crap, you grab the biggest goddamn shovel you can find, you wade in, and you clean it up. No ifs, ands, or buts.”

Stolle slammed his fist down on the lectern. “We have to move faster. We have to push harder. If it were up to me, I'd get rid of a lot of the lemon-faced naysayers who sit behind big desks and look important. Let 'em do something useful for a change, or else put 'em out to pasture.
And let the people speak
. As soon as we have real elections, you'll see what they think about folk like that. The sooner, the better. And let the chips fall where they may. They will, too.
Danke schön. Auf wiedersehen
.”

He made as much of a production of leaving the stage as most people did of coming to it. Only a thin spattering of applause followed him. Heinrich understood that. He hardly remembered to clap himself. What he'd heard, what Rolf Stolle had said, left him stunned. He couldn't possibly have been the only one, either.

Beside him, Willi said, “My God.”

No, Heinrich couldn't have been, and he wasn't. He said, “Some people don't like the
Führer
because he's doing too much. I knew that. I never dreamt anybody would have the nerve to say he's not doing enough.”

“Neither did I,” Willi said. “Stolle's off the reservation—he has to be. And he'll be
on
the televisor. For all I know, that speech could have been broadcast live. What are people going to think? What's Buckliger going to think?”

“Beats me,” Heinrich answered. “Maybe he's saying what Buckliger told him to.”

“Fat chance! When was the last time anybody ever criticized a
Führer?
” Willi said. “And you were the fellow who didn't want to come,” he added as they got up and started back to their office. “You were the fellow who didn't want to leave his precious desk. What do you think now?”

“I think I'd have felt like an idiot if I'd stayed away,” Heinrich said honestly. “A speech like that will go in the history books.”
If Stolle isn't taken out and shot in the next few days, anyhow
. By the look on Willi's face, he was thinking the same thing.

If Rolf Stolle thought his speech would land him in trouble, he gave no sign of it. He came into the office where the budget analysts worked. He wasn't after information, the way Heinz Buckliger had been. He just wanted to see and, especially, to be seen. Heinrich watched Ilse watching the
Gauleiter,
and watched Willi watching Ilse watching the
Gauleiter
. Ilse looked charmed, or perhaps calculating. Willi looked…
dyspeptic
was the word that came to mind.

And Stolle noticed Ilse, too. “Hello, sweetie,” he said. “What do you do around here?”

“Why, whatever these gentlemen want me to do,
mein Herr,
” she answered in a breathy, little-girl voice.

“Do you, now?” the
Gauleiter
rumbled. His eyes lit up. “Maybe you could do that kind of work for me, too. Let me have your number. We'll see what we can find out.” He didn't pretend to be anything but the predator he was. Ilse gave him her extension. Willi quietly steamed. Heinrich did his best to seem very, very busy.

Rolf Stolle swept away, flanked by his bodyguards. How many other phone numbers would he collect before he went back to his own office? More than a few, unless Heinrich was altogether mistaken. He missed some of the subtle human byplay that went on around him. He didn't think he was missing anything here.
Subtle
was not a word in Stolle's vocabulary.

But some of the words that were in his vocabulary…! When this speech went out, a lot of Party
Bonzen
would hate him. But a lot of ordinary people would love him. Which counted for more? Till Heinz Buckliger took over, the answer would have been obvious. It wasn't any more.

And what
would
Buckliger himself think of Stolle's speech? That might be the most interesting question of them all.

 

Esther Stutzman looked up from the billing to see a woman and a little boy come into Dr. Dambach's waiting room. “Good morning,
Frau
Klein,” she said. “Good morning, Eduard. How are you today?”

“
I'm
all right,” said Eduard, who was just in for a checkup.

Maria Klein let out a long sigh. “I'm not so well,
Frau
Stutzman,” she said. In public, they didn't let on how well they knew each other away from the pediatrician's office. But she didn't look good; makeup couldn't hide the dark circles under her eyes, and their whites were tracked with red. “Richard and I have decided to take Paul to a
Reichs
Mercy Center.”

“I'm so sorry,” Esther whispered.

“He'll be better,” Eduard said. “He'll be happy after that. He's not happy now.”

His mother winced and turned away for a moment. It wasn't that Eduard was wrong, for he wasn't. From everything Esther had unwillingly learned, Tay-Sachs disease was a slow descent into hell, made all the worse because the children who suffered from it were too little to understand what was happening to them. But that made it no easier for parents to let go of children who had it. How could you not love a child, even if—or maybe especially because—something was wrong with it?

“He was such a sweet baby,” Maria whispered. “He still is, as much as he can be. But he—” She turned away again, and fished a tissue out of her purse. “I don't want Eduard to see me like this,” she said, dabbing at her eyes.

“I see you, Mommy.” To Eduard, none of this meant much. He was the lucky one. “And Paul will be all better. You and Daddy said so.”

“Yes, sweetheart. He'll be just fine,” Maria said. “Why don't you go sit down and look at a picture book till it's time to see the doctor?”

Eduard went. The book he picked up was
Trust No Fox in the Green Meadow and No Jew on His Oath
. It had been in the waiting room since before Esther started working for Dr. Dambach. The pediatrician took the book for granted. Why shouldn't he? It had been a children's fa
vorite and a Party favorite for seventy-five years. Eduard opened it. He smiled as he swallowed a dose of cheerful, colorful poison.

Maria Klein saw what her son was looking at. The most she could do was exchange a rueful glance with Esther. If she'd come in for an afternoon appointment today, when Irma Ritter sat behind the counter, she couldn't even have done that.

So much Eduard will have to unlearn when he gets older,
Esther thought sadly. Gottlieb and Anna were still battling that. So was Alicia Gimpel. Esther knew she was still battling it herself, and would be till the end of her days. When everyone around her thought she and all the people like her deserved to be dead, how could she help wondering whether what the Nazis taught wasn't right after all? Those were the black thoughts, the up-at-three-in-the-morning-and-can't-sleep thoughts. She knew they were nonsense. She knew, but they kept coming back anyway.

Maria sat down by Eduard. He held the book up to her. “Look, Mommy! It's funny!”

She made herself look. She had to know what was in there. When she was Eduard's age, she'd probably thought it was funny, too. With a visible effort, she nodded. “Yes, dear,” she said. “It is.”

A woman came out of one of the examination rooms carrying a wailing toddler who'd just had a tetanus shot. “She may be cranky and feverish for a day or two, and the injection site will be sore,” Dr. Dambach told her. “A pain-relieving syrup will help. If the discomfort seems severe, bring her back in, and I'll look at her.” How many times had he made that speech?

“Thank you, Doctor,” the woman said. The toddler didn't seem grateful.

“
Frau
Klein, you can take your boy back in there now,” Esther called. Poor Maria got no relief, for Eduard carried Streicher's book into the examining room with him. When he laughed at the anti-Semitic book, that had to be one more lash for her, especially since her other son was dying of a disease commonest among Jews.

Dr. Dambach had patients waiting in the other examin
ing rooms. It was a while before he could get to Maria and Eduard. Once he went in there, he spent a good long while with the Kleins. Esther knew he was thorough. If he hadn't been, he wouldn't have noticed discrepancies in their genealogy. Usually, though, that thoroughness worked for him and for his patients.

When he came out with Maria and her son, he had one hand on the boy's shoulder and the other on hers. “This one here is in the best of health,
Frau
Klein,” he said. “He'll drive you crazy for years to come.”

“Crazy!” Eduard said enthusiastically. He crossed his eyes and stuck out his tongue.

The pediatrician ignored him, which wasn't easy. Dambach went on talking to Maria Klein: “And I think you are doing the right thing in the other case. The procedure is very fast. It is absolutely painless. And it does relieve needless suffering.”

“Paul's, yes,” she answered. “What about mine, and my husband's?”

“Things are not always as simple as we wish they would be,” Dr. Dambach said with a sigh. “You have the suffering of doing this, yes, but you escape the suffering of watching his inevitable downhill course over the coming months, perhaps even over a couple of years. Which counts for more?”

“I don't know,” Maria whispered. “Do you?”

The pediatrician shrugged. He was basically an honest man. Now that the Kleins had been released, he showed no antagonism toward them. He'd done what he thought he had to do in reporting the discrepancy in their pedigree to the authorities. If the authorities turned out not to care, he didn't seem to, either.

Maria went on, “And it's also hard knowing that there's a fifty-fifty chance Eduard carries this horrible—thing inside him.”

“Don't let that worry you,” Dr. Dambach said. “In most populations, this gene is very rare. Even if he does carry it, the odds that he will marry another carrier are also very slim. There is hardly any chance he would father another baby with this disease.”

Maria Klein didn't answer. Like all surviving Jews, she
was practiced in the art of deception, so she didn't even look towards Esther. Esther didn't look her way, either, but kept on with the billing as she and Eduard walked out. But she knew, and Maria knew, in fifteen or twenty years Eduard would probably marry a girl who was a Jew. And in how many of those girls did the Tay-Sachs gene lurk?

The Kleins left the waiting room. Esther called in the next patients. But she had trouble keeping her mind on her work. If Jews kept marrying Jews, would disease finish what the Nazis hadn't quite been able to? But if Jews didn't marry Jews, wouldn't the faith perish because they couldn't tell their partners what they were?

Was there a way out? For the life of her, Esther couldn't see one.

 

Susanna Weiss had been taking her students through Chaucer's
Troylus and Criseyde
. When she asked for questions, one of them asked, “This is the basis for Shakespeare's play, isn't it?”