In the Presence of Mine Enemies (58 page)

They'd put her in a room with a sharp-faced, stringy-haired blond girl named Paula. “What are you here for?” Paula asked.

“You won't believe it.” Alicia assumed somebody was listening to everything she said.

“Try me.” The other girl's smile showed pointed teeth. “I burned down my schoolroom.” She spoke with nothing but pride.

“Wow!” Alicia wasn't sure she believed that. Maybe Paula was bragging. Or maybe she was trying to get Alicia
to talk big, too, and hang herself. Could an eleven-year-old be an informer? Of course she could.

“So what did you do?” Paula asked.

“They say I'm a Jew—or they say my father is, anyway,” Alicia answered. That was the truth; admitting it couldn't hurt.

Paula's pale blue eyes widened. Now she was the one who said, “Wow!” and then, “That's so neat! I didn't think any of you people were left. The way the Nazis go on, they got rid of you. If you stayed ahead of 'em, more power to you.”

She sounded as if she meant it. But then, if she was an informer, she
would
sound that way.
I can't trust her,
Alicia reminded herself. She said, “That's what they say, but it's a lie. I'm not, and Daddy isn't, either.”

“Sure he's not.” Paula's smile was knowing. “You've got to say that, don't you? If you say anything else, it's the showers or a noodle, right?”

That was what Alicia was afraid of. But she couldn't even show that the thought had crossed her mind. “They wouldn't do that to me!” she exclaimed. “I haven't done anything, and I'm not what they say I am!”

“Maybe you're not,” Paula said. “What the hell—I don't know. But if they decide you are, you are, whether you are or not. You know what I mean?”

Whether she was an arsonist or not, she was a perfect cynic. How many brushes with the authorities had she had? How many of them had she won? More than a few, or Alicia would have been astonished. But not all, or she wouldn't be here. Alicia knew perfectly well what she meant, too. Here, though, she had to pretend she didn't. If she'd been seized for something she wasn't, none of these dire things would have occurred to her. She said, “They can't do that! It's
wrong!
” Maybe fear sounded like anger. She hoped so, anyhow.

All Paula said was, “When has that ever stopped them?”

Alicia had no answer, not at first. That had never stopped them. But then hope flared. “The new
Führer
won't let them do things like that.”

“Buckliger?” Paula didn't try to hide her scorn. “You
wait till the time comes. Lothar Prützmann will eat his lunch.” She might have been handicapping a football match, not politics.

“Oh, I hope not!” Alicia said. Even that might have been too much, when Prützmann's Security Police had her. She said it anyway. She meant it. And she couldn't get in too much trouble for showing she was loyal to the
Führer…
could she?

Paula only laughed. “You just watch. You'll find out.” In the hallway, a bell rang. Paula bounced to her feet. “That's supper. Come on.”

It was a wretched excuse for a real supper: cabbage soup, boiled potatoes, and brown bread without butter. Alicia could see why Paula was so skinny. She looked around for her sisters. Each of them had a matron hovering close. When Alicia looked back over her shoulder, she saw one behind her, too. She decided not to get up and try to see Francesca or Roxane. Why give the matron the pleasure of telling her she couldn't? These women looked as if saying no was their chief pleasure in life.

She did ask her matron, “When will you let us go back to our mother and father?” She made sure she mentioned Daddy as well as Mommy. Nobody seemed to think Mommy was a Jew. She wondered how that had happened.

The matron frowned. She had a long, sour face, a face made for frowning. At last, after a pause for thought, she said, “Well, dear”—Alicia had never heard a more insincere
dear
—“that depends on what they decide to do with your father, you see.”

Maybe she hoped Alicia wouldn't understand that. And maybe, if Alicia hadn't been a Jew, she wouldn't have. She was, and she did, but she had to pretend she didn't.
If they decide Daddy's an Aryan, you'll go home, too. But if they decide he's a Jew, he's dead, and your sisters are dead, and so are you
.

 

Lise Gimpel paused in cleaning up the house to take a pull from a glass of schnapps. The place was an astonishing mess. It might have suffered a visit from an earthquake or
a hurricane, not the Security Police. They'd torn the place apart, looking for evidence that Heinrich was a Jew. If she hadn't flushed the photographs, they would have found it, too.

Her brain felt as badly disordered as the house. They'd roared questions at her while they were throwing everything on the floor. Why had she married a Jew? How long had she known he was a Jew? Why was she such a filthy whore? Did she think it was more fun sucking a circumcised cock?

Maybe they'd figured that one would horrify her into spilling secrets. All it did was make her furious. “You stupid fucking bastards!” she'd screamed. “You've got him! You know goddamn well he's not circumcised!”

They hadn't arrested her. They'd even been a little more polite after that—not much, but a little. They hadn't got anything out of her, or she didn't think they had. And they'd been in a rotten mood when they finally quit searching the house, so she didn't think they'd come up with anything there, either.

Now…Now all she could do was pick up the pieces. They hadn't smashed things on purpose, anyhow. All they'd done was toss them every which way. Getting them back where they belonged would take time, but she could do it. What else did she have to do, with Heinrich and the girls gone? Work helped hold worry at bay—again, not much, but a little.

The telephone rang. Lise jumped.
“Scheisse,”
she said crisply. The last thing she wanted to do was talk to anybody right now. But she knew she had to. It might be important. It might—literally—be life and death. Making her way through drifts of things on the floor, she went to the phone and picked it up.
“Bitte?”

“Lise?” It was Willi. “How are you? Is there any news?”

“News? Well, yes. They've turned the house inside out. They've taken the children. Other than that, everything's jolly.”

“Gott im Himmel!”
Willi burst out. In the background, Erika asked what was wrong. He relayed what Lise had just told him.

“The children?” Erika said. “
Du lieber Gott!
I didn't even think about the children!”

“That's terrible,” Willi said to Lise. “Is there anything I can do?”

“I've got Heinrich a lawyer. I hope it helps,” Lise answered. “It should. He's innocent, so there's no way they can prove he's a Jew.” She assumed more people than Willi Dorsch were listening to her telephone calls. She wouldn't have admitted what Heinrich was even to Willi alone. With the Security Police surely tapping the line, she wouldn't admit anything to anybody.

“There you go,” Willi said. “Keep your chin up, and everything will turn out all right.” He sounded like a man whistling past a graveyard.

Lise said, “Thanks,” anyhow. Willi meant well. That probably wouldn't do Heinrich any good, but it was there. She went on, “I'm going to go. They left the house a hell of a mess.”

“Oh. All right. Take care of yourself. We're thinking about you.” Willi hung up.

So did Lise.
Thinking about me? Thinking what about me?
she wondered.
Thinking I may be a Jew myself?
But that wasn't fair. Willi had sounded the way a friend ought to sound. And Erika seemed genuinely horrified when he told her the Security Police had grabbed the girls, too.

They're good friends if they call, thinking Heinrich's not a Jew. They'd be better friends if they thought he was a Jew and called anyway
. Maybe they did think so. But Lise would be a fool to ask them, and they would be fools to tell her.

Shaking her head, she got back to work.

 

“You! Gimpel!” a blackshirted jailer roared, and Heinrich sprang to his feet and stiffened to attention as if he were back in elementary school. Back then, he would have worried about a paddling. Now two more men from the Security Police leveled assault rifles at him. The jailer unlocked his cell and swung the door open. “Come with us.”

“Jawohl!”
Heinrich said. Another grilling? Another tentative thumping? Or were they really going to get down to business this time?

“Hands behind your back,” the jailer told him when he'd stepped out into the corridor. Numbly, he obeyed. The man cuffed them behind him, then gave him a shove. “Get moving.”

Feet light with fear, he obeyed. He couldn't do anything about his flopping trousers now. They didn't seem to care—they were hauling him along. They took him by a different route this time. He didn't know if that was good or bad. His heart thuttered. One way or the other, he'd find out.

They brought him to a room divided in half by a thick glass wall. A grill let someone on his side talk with someone on the other side. And someone did wait on the other side: a tall man, almost as tall as Heinrich, with an impressive mane of gray hair. The stranger wore a sharp pinstripe suit and carried a crocodile-leather attaché case with fittings that looked like real gold.

“Your mouthpiece.” The jailer sounded disgusted. Neither he nor his gun-toting pals showed any sign of leaving the room. Whatever Heinrich said to the lawyer, he'd say in front of them.

He hardly cared. He shuffled to the grill. He had to stoop a little to put his mouth by it. He didn't care about that, either. “Who are you?” he asked. “Can you get me out of here? Did Lise hire you?”

“Your wife, you mean?
Ja
. My name's Klaus Menzel, and I don't have any idea whether I can spring you,” answered the man on the other side of the grill. “I'll give it my best shot, though. All billable hours either way.” He sounded cheerfully mercenary.

Somehow, that made Heinrich like him more, not less. He seemed less likely to be a Security Police plant, someone put in place to get Heinrich to spill his guts. Of course, if they'd wanted him to do that, they would have kept the guards out of the room.

“Do you know who falsely alleged you're a Jew?” Menzel asked. Again, the way he put things cheered Heinrich. He wasn't assuming his client was guilty. He wasn't acting as if he was assuming that, anyway.

Hearing him talk like that made Heinrich want to help
him. Unfortunately, he couldn't. He tried to spread his hands. The cuffs wouldn't let him. He said, “I haven't the slightest idea. Will the Security Police tell you?”

Menzel shrugged. He had broad shoulders and a narrow waist, as if he were a retired soldier or—perhaps more likely—a football player who'd stayed in shape into his fifties. He said, “They're supposed to. Of course, they don't always do what they're supposed to.” He raised his voice and called out to a blackshirt on Heinrich's side of the glass: “Isn't that right, Joachim?”

“Screw you, you damn fraud,” answered one of the men with an assault rifle. “You had your way, the
Reich
'd be ass-deep in kikes. Then they'd study law and squeeze you out of business. Serve you right, too.”

He sounded more amused than angry. For that matter, so did the lawyer. How often had they harassed each other? A good many times, plainly. Heinrich asked, “When will you know if you can get me out?”

“I'm not sure,” Menzel said with another shrug. “When they hear somebody might be a Jew, they grab first and ask questions later. Depends on what they turn up next. Depends on how much of an uproar they want to get their bowels into, too. I can promise you the moon, but I don't know if I can deliver.”

That wasn't what Heinrich wanted to hear. He would have loved to be promised the moon, all wrapped up in a pretty pink ribbon. But, again, Klaus Menzel seemed to work in the realm of the possible. Heinrich said, “What's your best guess?”

“I'll find out as fast as I can. A few days, most likely,” the lawyer answered.

“Is Lise all right? The girls?”

“Your wife is fine. She's mad as hops because they made a mess of your house when they searched it. I like her. She's good people, and she doesn't scare easy.” Menzel hesitated. As soon as he did, Heinrich feared he knew what was coming next. And he was right: “They've got your kids. If you were a Jew, they'd be first-degree
Mischlingen,
and subject to the same sanctions.” That was a bloodless, legalistic way to put it. What Menzel meant was,
They'll kill them, too
.

Heinrich groaned. “They can't!” But they could. They'd been doing it for seventy years. Why should they stop now? He'd had a surge of panic when he heard the blackshirts searched his house. Lise must have managed to dispose of the photos before they got there. Otherwise, Menzel wouldn't have been able to do anything at all for him, probably wouldn't even have been allowed to see him. He would have been dead by now, and so would his children.