In The Presence of mine Enemies

II

Franz Oppenhoff looked at Susanna Weiss through spectacles that grotesquely magnified his bloodshot blue eyes. "I fail to see the necessity for this journey," he said, and scratched at the bottom edge of a white muttonchop sideburn.

Susanna looked back at the department chairman with a loathing she tried to conceal. "But,Herr Doktor Professor, it is the annual meeting of the Medieval English Association-and only the third time it's metin England since the war."

Oppenhoff paused to light a cigar. It was a fine Havana, but the smoke still put Susanna, who didn't use tobacco, in mind of burning long johns. She coughed, not too ostentatiously. After a puff, he said, "Many-even most-of these meetings are a waste of time, a waste of effort, and a waste of our travel budget."

"Oh?" Somehow, Susanna made one syllable sound dangerous. "Is that what you said when Professor Lutze asked to attend?"

"I didn't…" Professor Oppenhoff paused, evidently deciding he couldn't get away with the lie direct. He tried again: "I thought the conference would enhance his professional development, he being-"

"A man?" Susanna finished for him.

"That is not what I was going to say." The chairman sounded offended.

Susanna Weisswas offended. "What were you going to say, then,Herr Doktor Professor? That Professor Lutze is junior to me? He is. That he has published less than half of what I have? He has. That what hehas published is superficial compared to my work? It is, as any specialist will tell you." She smiled with poisonous sweetness. "There. You see? We agree completely."

Professor Oppenhoff tried to draw on the cigar again, but choked on the smoke. Susanna held the poisoned smile till his coughs subsided into wheezes. He wagged a shaky forefinger at her. "You have not the attitude of a proper National Socialist woman," he said severely.

"Do I have the attitude of a proper National Socialist scholar?" No matter how offended, no matter how angry Susanna was, she took care to throw back the Party's name as if she were returning a lob in a game of tennis. "Don't you think that is how you ought to judge me?"

"You should be turning out babies, not articles," Oppenhoff said.

That she remained unwed, that she had no children, was a private grief for Susanna. Her back stiffened. Her private griefs were none of Oppenhoff's damned business. "If Professor Lutze's work is good enough to let him deserve to go to London for the Medieval English Association meeting, what part of mine disqualifies me from going, too?" She didn't say Lutze didn't deserve to go, no matter what she thought. That would have got her another enemy. Academic politics were nasty enough without trying to make them worse.

"The travel budget…" the chairman said portentously.

This time, Susanna's smile was pure carnivore. "I've spoken with the accountants. We have plenty. In fact, they recommend that we spend more before the end of the fiscal year in June. If we have unexpended funds, people are liable to decide we don't need so much next year."

Franz Oppenhoff went gray with horror. A budget cut was every department chairman's nightmare. He threw his hands in the air. Cigar ash fluttered down onto his desk like snow. "Go to London,Fraulein Doktor Professor Weiss! Go! Uphold the reputation of the university!" Not quite inaudibly, he added, "And get the devil out of my hair."

Susanna pretended not to hear that. Having got what she wanted, she could afford to be gracious. "Thank you very much, Professor Oppenhoff. I'll make my travel arrangements right away." In fact, she'd already made them. If she hadn't been able to browbeat Oppenhoff into letting her go, she would have had to cancel. She could easily have afforded the plane ticket and hotel, but she couldn't have gone during the semester without leave from on high. Now she had it.

"Is there anything else?" Professor Oppenhoff inquired.

She was tempted to complain that her office was smaller and had a worse view than those of male professors less senior than she-she seldom did things by half. Here, though, she judged she'd pushed the chairman about as far as she could. "Not today, thanks," she said grandly, like a snooty shopper declining a salesgirl's assistance. Small, straight nose tilted high, she strode out of Oppenhoff's office.

Spring was in the air when she left the east wing of the university complex and walked out into the chestnut grove that lay between the wings. The chestnuts were still bare-branched, but the first leaf buds had begun to appear. Soon the trees would be gloriously green, with birds singing and nesting in them. For now, Susanna could see down to the garden and the bronze statues of the great scholars there: Wilhelm von Humboldt, the founder of the university; his brother, Alexander; Helmholtz; Treitschke; Mommsen; and Hegel.

Towering above all the other statues was a colossal bronze of Werner Heisenberg. Arno Breker, Hitler's favorite sculptor, had commemorated the physicist at the first Fuhrer 's personal request. Susanna had seen photos of Heisenberg. He was tall, yes, but on the scrawny side, almost as much so as Heinrich Gimpel. Breker had turned him into one of his countless Aryan supermen: broad-shouldered, deep-chested, with a narrow waist and thighs like a draft horse's. The usual heroic Breker nude struggled to burst forth from the suit in which the sculptor had reluctantly had to drape his subject.

Susanna sighed. If Heisenberg and the other German scientists hadn't been so quick to see the implications of atomic fission…She sighed again. The world would be different, but who could guess how? One of the things she'd seen was that different didn't necessarily mean better.

A swarthy young man who wore a neat black beard and had a turban wrapped around his head hurried past Susanna. "Please to excuse me," he said in musically accented German.

"Aber naturlich,"she replied with regal politeness. The beturbaned young man went up the stairs two at a time and into the east wing of the university building. The Department of Germanic Languages shared the wing with the German Institute for Foreigners, which since 1922 had been instructing those from abroad on the German language and German culture, and the more recent Institute for Racial Studies, which helped decide which foreigners deserved to survive and be instructed about the blessings of German culture.

The fellow who'd gone past Susanna in such a rush had to be from Persia or India, probably the latter. Despite their complexions, folk from those lands got credit for being Aryans, and so lived on as subjects-sometimes even privileged subjects-within the Germanic Empire.

Had the young man been born farther west, had he been an Arab rather than an Aryan…As far as the Institute for Racial Studies was concerned, anti-Semitism extended to Arabs as well as Jews. Some of the things the Reich had done, and had browbeaten the Italians into doing, in the Middle East were on a scale to rival the destruction of the Slavic Untermenschen in Eastern Europe.

We aren't the only ones,Susanna thought with a shudder.We remember better than most of the others, though. That is one thing we have always done: we remember. But so do the Nazis. Can we really hope to outlast them? Heinrich and Walther think so, or say they do, but do they believe it when a noise outside wakes them up in the middle of the night?

She didn't know how they kept from screaming when they heard a noise like that. She had no idea at all howshe kept from screaming when she heard a noise like that. Even fourth-generation Nazis who'd never had an ideologically impure thought in their lives started sweating at noises in the night.They might know their thoughts were unsullied, their bloodlines uncontaminated. Yes, they might know, but did the Security Police? You never could tell.

And if you really had something to hide…

So far, though, all the noises Susanna had heard in and around her block of flats were those of everyday life: neighbors trying to go in and out quietly or sometimes too drunk to bother, a tree branch scraping on her window, traffic swishing by outside, once in a great while the trashcan-rattle of an accident. No men in high-crowned caps and black trenchcoats pounding on the door and roaring,"Judin, heraus!"

Not yet. Never yet. But the fear never went away, either.

With another shiver, Susanna hurried down toward the garden, down toward the statues of the men who had advanced German scholarship. And if she tried not to look at Breker's bronze of Heisenberg, well, even the Security Police weren't going to notice that.

Heinrich Gimpel kissed Lise and went up the street to the bus stop. He got there five minutes before the bus did. As it stopped, the door hissed open in front of him. He fed his account card into the fare slot, then withdrew it and stuck it back in his wallet as he looked up the aisle for a seat. He found one. At the next stop, a plump blond woman sat down next to him. When Willi Dorsch got on a couple of stops later, he and Heinrich nodded to each other, but that was all.

Not sitting with Willi didn't break Heinrich's heart. His friend had been cooler than usual since the awkward end to their evening of bridge.Does he worry that I'm looking for an affair with Erika? Heinrich shook his head as Willi sank into a seat near the back of the bus. He enjoyed looking at Erika Dorsch, but that wasn't the same thing at all. Even Lise, who wasn't inclined to be objective about such things, understood the difference.

But then a new, troubling thought crossed Heinrich's mind.Or does Willi think Erika's looking for an affair with me? Even if Willi didn't think Heinrich wanted the affair, he might not be so happy about seeing him every morning. And Heinrich hadn't the faintest idea what he could do about that.

The bus made its last few stops and pulled into the train station. Everyone got off. Almost everyone went to the platform for the Berlin-bound commuter train. As people queued up, Heinrich and Willi weren't particularly close. Heinrich sighed. More often than not, the two of them had chatted and gossiped like a couple of Hausfrau s all the way in to the city. It hadn't happened the past few days, and it didn't look as if it would today, either.

It didn't. When the train came into the the Stahnsdorf station, Willi sat down on the aisle next to a taken window seat. The seat on the other side of the aisle was taken, too. Whatever Willi Dorsch wanted, Heinrich's company wasn't it. Willi pulled a copy of the Volkischer Beobachter out of his briefcase and started to read.

Heinrich also read the Nazi Party newspaper: one more bit of protective coloration. He found a seat halfway down the car from Willi, got out his own copy, and looked it over. He did find it professionally useful every now and then. What the Party decided could dictate what Oberkommando der Wehrmacht did next. Reading the paper carefully-especially reading between the lines-gave clues about which way the wind was blowing at levels of the Party more exalted than those in which Heinrich traveled.

Today he went to the imperial-affairs section first. It still looked as if the United States was going to fall short on its occupation assessment. Heinrich kept waiting for someone in the Foreign Ministry or the Fuhrer 's office to comment. So far, no one had. That in itself was interesting. When he first started at Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, the Americans wouldn't have got a warning if they were late or came up short on what they owed. They would simply have been punished. Thingswere more easygoing these days.

Some things were, anyhow. A small story announced the execution of a dozen Serbs for rebellion against the Reich. Serbs had touched off the First World War, almost a hundred years ago now. They'd been nuisances ever since. And another story told of the jailing of an SS man who'd been caught taking bribes in a French town near the English Channel.

Such shameless corruption,the Volkischer Beobachter declared,cannot be tolerated in an orderly, well-run state. Heinrich nodded to himself. He'd seen three or four anti-corruption drives since his university days. That the Reich needed a new one every few years told how well they worked.

This one, though, gave signs of being more serious than some of its predecessors. An SS man, behind bars? That was news of the man-bites-dog sort. Heinrich wondered which German bigwigs the Frenchmen who'd been shaken down happened to know. Odds were they'd known somebody. SS men seldom got into trouble for what they did even inside Germany, let alone in occupied territory.

When the train pulled into the station in Berlin, Heinrich and Willi naturally went the same way, for they had to catch the same bus to the same office. The story about the SS man intrigued Heinrich enough to make him wave the Volkischer Beobachter under Willi Dorsch's nose and ask, "Did you see this?"

"Which?" Willi asked. He sounded more distant than usual, but not actively unfriendly. Heinrich pointed to the story. "Oh, that," Willi said. "Yes, I saw it. Politics. Has to be."

"Politics?" Heinrich said it with such surprise, he might never have heard the word before.

Willi gave back an impatient nod. "I don't see what else could be going on."

"I just figured somebody knew somebody," Heinrich said. "You know what I mean."

"Oh, sure." Willi nodded again, with a little more animation this time. "It's possible, I suppose, but how likely is it? Who could a bunch of froggies know who's got the clout to land somebody with SS runes on his collar tabs in hot water? Pigs will fly before we see that." He started walking faster. "Come on-there's the bus, just waiting for us."

It did wait. They even found seats, which they didn't manage every day during the morning rush. "Politics," Heinrich repeated. "Well, I suppose you're right."

"You bet I am," Willi said as the bus pulled out of the station. He patted Heinrich on the knee. "You have any other problems you can't see your way around, you come to your Uncle Willi, and he'll set you right."

He smiled a superior smile. If Erika admired Heinrich for anything, it was his brains-it couldn't very well have been his body or his looks, as he was ruefully aware. And if Willi felt smarter than he was, then all of a sudden he didn't seem such a threat. He hoped that was how things were working inside his friend's head, anyhow. He didn't want to be a threat to anybody or anything. Threats were visible. He couldn't afford that kind of visibility.

And maybe Willi was right, too. To most of the Germanic Empire's subjects, politics had to seem simple. The Germans gave orders, and the subjects obeyed. Subjects who didn't obey paid for it, often with their lives. (Sometimes subjects who did obey paid with their lives, too, but they seldom knew that ahead of time.)

But, seen from within the ruling bureaucracy, things weren't so simple.Wehrmacht and SS officials warily watched one another. The Wehrmacht and civilian administrators didn't always see eye-to-eye, either. And the administrators and the SS quarreled over who really represented the National Socialist Party. It wasn't just a factional split, either. Personalities in each camp further complicated things. the Fuhrer, Kurt Haldweim, was supposed to keep everyone going in the same direction, but Haldweim had celebrated his ninety-first birthday just before last Christmas. For his age, he was said-frequently and loudly said-to be vigorous and alert, but how much did that prove?

When the bus stopped in front of Oberkommando der Wehrmacht headquarters, Willi Dorsch had to nudge Heinrich. "We get off here, you know," he said, enjoying the tiny triumph. "No matter what great thoughts you think, they won't do you any good if you can't find the place where you're supposed to use them."

"You're right, of course." Heinrich stood up, feeling foolish. As he hurried to get off the bus, he noted that Willi sounded much more like his usual self.And why? Because I'm acting like an idiot. I've never heard of the power of positive stupidity, but this must be it.

The guards at the front of the building saw the two of them five mornings a week. Nonetheless, they held out their hands for identity cards. They not only matched photos, they also fed the cards, one after the other, into a machine reader. Only after a light on it glowed green twice in a row did they stand aside.

"Nice to know I'm me," Willi said, sticking his card into his wallet again. He pointed at Heinrich. "Or maybe I'm you today, and you're me. The machine didn't say anything about that." He laughed.

So did Heinrich, relieved to see Willi acting like his usual silly self. But one of the guards scowled suspiciously at Willi. The other eyed the card reader, as if wondering if it could change a man's true identity. Sometimes Heinrich worried about the younger generation's brains, if any. But he knew people had been doing that since the days of the Pyramids, so he kept quiet about it.

"Pass on!" the second guard barked, still sending the machine a fishy stare.

Once inside the building with Willi, Heinrich said, "He's not going to trust that gadget for the next week. You're a subversive, you know."

Willi drew himself up in mingled alarm and hauteur. "That's a fine thing to call me in this place." But he was joking again, and kept right on doing it: "Did you lay down the trail of bread crumbs last night? No? How the devil are we going to find the way to our desks, then?"

Oberkommando der Wehrmachtwas something of a maze, but not so bad as Willi made it out to be. Old-timers who remembered how things were before central Berlin got rebuilt said the old headquarters building really had been a nightmare to navigate. This one was just big, with lots of corridors and lots of rooms along each one. Even strangers-strangers with security clearances-found their way without too much trouble. Heinrich and Willi were in their places in a couple of minutes.

As soon as Heinrich sat down, he turned on his computer and entered the password that gave him access to his files. He tapped the keyboard and looked over his shoulder at Willi, saying, "These things are the biggest change since I came to work here. Used to be only a few specialists had them. Now they're everywhere, like toadstools after a rain."

"They're handy, all right." Willi had his computer up and running, too. "Sometimes I wonder who's in charge, though, us or the machines."

"I have a friend"-Heinrich didn't name Walther Stutzman-"who says they could all be connected into one giant linked system."

"There's a hell of a difference between 'could' and 'will,'" Willi said. "I don't believe it'll happen, not in a million years. Can you imagine the security nightmare with that kind of system? Anybody could put anything on it. Anybody couldfind anything on it. The Party's got too much sense to let that sort of nonsense get started. You couldn't stop it once it did; it'd be like unscrambling an egg."

"You're right," Heinrich said. "It only stands to reason." He knew he had more book smarts than Willi. But his friend was plenty shrewd, and understood the way the world-especially the part through which he moved-worked.

"You bet I'm right," Willi said now. "Once security starts to slip, everything's in trouble."

"Ja,"Heinrich said absently. He was busy typing in another password, the one that gave him access to the Wehrmacht 's information links. Thanks to Walther, he knew a lot more passwords than he was supposed to. He carried them in his memory; he wasn't mad enough to write any of them down. He wasn't mad enough to use any of them, either, except in direst emergency. The one he entered he'd acquired legitimately, in the course of his job. "I want to find out what's going on with the United States."

"Yes, that will be interesting," Willi Dorsch agreed. "If they're going to fall short of their assessment, that will putour budget in the red."

"Further in the red," Heinrich said.

Willi nodded. "Further in the red, true. The powers that be won't like it."

"The Americans will scream that we're trying to get blood from a turnip," Heinrich predicted.

"They've been screaming that ever since we beat them," Willi said. "So far, blood's come out every time we've squeezed."

"True, but I don't suppose it can go on forever," Heinrich said. "Look at France. Look at Denmark. They don't pay their way any more-we spend more both places than we take out. We would in Britain and Norway, too, if they hadn't struck oil in the North Sea." He waited to see if Willi would argue with him. He could call up the budget numbers with a couple of keystrokes and use them as a club to beat his friend over the head.

But Willi didn't argue. He knew Heinrich always had facts and figures at his fingertips. Instead, Willi poked through a different part of the Wehrmacht network. He cherished oddities the way Heinrich cherished precision. He got more attention-and certainly more laughs-with them than Heinrich did with tribute assessments, too. That was fine with Heinrich, who didn't want attention anyhow.

Willi scrolled down, scrolled down, then all at once stopped short. "Well, I'll be damned," he said, and let out a low whistle of astonishment.

"Was ist los?" Heinrich asked, as he was surely supposed to.

"They just found three families of Jews in some backwoods village in the Serbian mountains," Willi answered. "Probably hadn't seen German soldiers more than three or four times since the war ended. Can you believe it? Real live Jews, in this day and age? Men had their cocks clipped and everything. The damned Serb headman says he didn't know he was doing anything wrong harboring them. Likely story, eh? You can't trust Serbs, either-look at those bandits in the news today-and that's the God's truth."

His rant let Heinrich pull his face straight. "What happened to them?" he asked, his voice steady, mildly curious, as if it had nothing to do with him. Willi drew a thumb across his throat. Heinrich nodded. "Just what they deserved," he said.Yisgadal v'yiskadash sh'may rabo: the opening words of the Mourner's Kaddish, lovingly taught him by his father, echoed in his mind. So did another thought.If I show my grief, I am dead. My family is dead. My friends are dead. He showed not a thing.

Herr Kessler leaned forward. To Alicia, as to every other student in the class, he seemed to be leaning straight toward her. He took a deep breath. His usually sallow cheeks turned red. He let out the breath in a great shout: "Jews!"

Everybody jumped. Half a dozen girls squealed. Alicia's own start, her own squeal-nearly a shriek-hadn't betrayed her after all. In fact, no one paid any attention to her. All eyes were riveted on the teacher.

And Herr Kessler was wrapped up in his own performance."Jews!" he roared again, even louder than the first time. "Our brave Wehrmacht soldiers caught up with more than a dozen filthy, stinking Jews in the mountains of Serbia. Otto Schachtman!" His forefinger stabbed out at a boy.

Otto sprang to his feet. "Jawohl, Herr Kessler!"

"Show me immediately the location of Serbia on the map. Immediately!"

Otto couldn't do it, though the occupied country was plainly labeled. The teacher paddled his backside. He took the swat in stoic silence. Showing pain would have earned him another one. He didn't get in trouble for sitting down with great care, though. Alicia had only so much sympathy for him. She could have found Serbia without the label; she'd always been good at geography. But why couldn't poor Otto justread?

Herr Kessler pointed out Serbia himself. Then he went back to his tirade: "You see now, dear children, why we must stay ever on our guard. The hateful enemy still lurks within the borders of the Germanic Empire. Like a serpent, the Jew waits until our attention is turned elsewhere. He waits, and then hestrikes! We must track him down and hunt him out wherever he may hide. Do you understand?"

"Ja, Herr Kessler," the children chorused. Alicia made sure her voice rang as loud as any of the others. She was still frightened at the idea of being a Jew, but it didn't throw her into blind panic any more. She'd had a little while to get used to it, a little while even to develop an odd sort of pride in it.

But then the teacher pointed at her. "Alicia Gimpel!"

She was out of her chair and at attention behind it in a heartbeat. "Jawohl, Herr Kessler!"

"What is a Jew?"

All she had to do was point at her own chest and say,I am a Jew, to ruin herself and everyone she loved. She knew that. Knowing it came close to bringing the blind panic back. It came close, but didn't quite manage-not least because the familiar fear at being unexpectedly called on left little room for the other.

She knew her lessons well. No one in the class knew them better. "The Jew is the opposite of the Aryan,Herr Kessler," she recited. "He is and remains the typical parasite, a sponger who like a noxious bacillus keeps spreading as soon as a favorable medium invites him. Wherever he appears, the host people dies out after a shorter or longer period. Existence impels the Jew to lie, and to lie perpetually. He lacks idealism in any form. His development has always and at all times been the same, just as that of the peoples corroded by him has also been the same."

She stopped. She knew she had the textbook definition straight. Up until a little while before, she'd believed every word of it. Part of her still did. The rest…The rest seemed to stand outside of the self she'd had before the night that turned out to be Purim. She felt somehow bigger than she had before that night. Her new self enclosed the old-and who could say how much else besides?

Herr Kessler drummed the fingers of his right hand against the side of his thigh. "This is correct," he said, as if he didn't care to admit it. "Now-you will tell me the meaning of the wordnoxious." He spoke with a certain gloating anticipation. If she were parroting the definition without grasping what went into it, he would make her pay for that.

But she wasn't."Jawohl," she said again, still at attention. "Noxiousmeans disgusting or nasty or poisonous."

Kessler's fingers drummed on his thigh for another few seconds. Then he gestured peremptorily. Alicia sat down. From the desk beside hers, Emma whispered, "Smarty-pants."

That whisper wasn't quite quiet enough. "Emma Handrick!" the teacher thundered.

Emma almost knocked over her chair jumping out of it. "Jawohl, Herr Kessler!"

"Since you enjoy talking so much, you will now tell the class from what source we have the proper definition of the Jew."

Alicia could have answered. Emma stuttered and stammered and looked up at the ceiling. Paddle in hand, the teacher bore down on her."Mein Kampf!" she blurted in desperation. "It must be Mein Kampf! "

Kessler had already begun to swing back the paddle. Ever so slowly, he lowered it. Emma might have made a lucky guess, but she hadn't been wrong."Ja," the teacher said. "Be seated, and do not speak out of turn any more."

"Jawohl, Herr Kessler.Danke schon, Herr Kessler." Emma sat down in a hurry, as if glad to put the nice, solid chair seat between her bottom and the paddle.

Balked of his prey, Kessler lobbed an easy question to the whole class: "And who wrote Mein Kampf, children?"

"Our beloved first Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler!" everyone said together.

"That's right. Very good." The teacher nodded. "If it weren't for Adolf Hitler, the Jews would still be running the world and exploiting the Aryans." His finger shot out. "Hans Natzmer!" The boy leaped to his feet. Kessler said, "Tell me whatexploiting means."

Hans had red hair and freckles that showed ever more plainly as he went pale. Licking his lips, he said, "I am very sorry,Herr Kessler, but I do not know."

Whap!The paddle struck home, and Hans was sorrier yet. Kessler said, "Exploitingmeanstaking advantage of. Remember it. You must not merely bleat out your lessons like so many sheep. You must understand them, must understand the fundamental truth in them, down to the depths of your souls."

Fundamental truth? Alicia wondered about that. Till she'd learned what she really was, she'd accepted everything her teachers taught her. They all said the same things. Her books all said the same things. Didn't that mean they were all true? She'd thought so.

Where she'd believed everything, now suddenly she doubted everything. If what her teachers and the books said about Jews was a lie (and it had to be, because they said Jews were evil, and she refused to believe that about her family and its friends-she knew better), did they lie about everything else, too? Was anything they taught her the truth, anything at all? Did the Earth really go around the sun? Were four and four really eight?

She could find out about that last one. She looked down at her hands. Four fingers on each, her thumbs hidden beneath her palms. Yes, four and four really did make eight. She sighed, a little regretfully. She would have to keep all the arithmetic they'd rammed down her throat.Too bad, she thought. It wasn't her favorite subject. Everything else, though…Everything else remained up for grabs.

She had to make another surrender a few minutes later, when Herr Kessler went through the day's grammar lesson. She didn't suppose he was lying about that. People did talk the way he said they did, and they did look down their noses at what he said were mistakes.

What she felt after that was a strange mix of exaltation and terror. From now on, she was going to have to figure things out for herself if she wanted to know what was so and what wasn't. She would have to weigh and judge and decide. She would have to try to see what her teachers weren't telling her from what they did say. It wouldn't be easy. She realized that, too.

Beside her, Emma was humming to herself. Alicia didn't think the other girl even knew she was doing it. Would Emma be able to handle something like this? Alicia laughed at the very idea. Emma had the imagination of a potato. She had to believe everything the teachers said, because she couldn't think for herself. Tell her one thing was true but she had to behave as if another were, and she'd go to pieces like a broken mechanical toy.

Alicia laughed again, perhaps a little cruelly, imagining gears and springs popping out of Emma's nose and ears. That was funny, all right-too funny. "Alicia Gimpel!" the teacher shouted.

Out of the chair. At attention. "Jawohl, Herr Kessler!"

"Perhaps you would care to tell the whole class what you find so amusing?"

"Nothing,Herr Kessler. Please excuse me,Herr Kessler." If he swatted her…Well, if she got punished for small things, maybe no one would notice she deserved to be punished for something enormous.

"Be seated. Keep quiet."

"Ja, Herr Kessler.Danke schon, Herr Kessler."

"Lucky," Emma whispered as Alicia sat down. Alicia nodded without a word. Most of her mind was far away.If being a Jew isn'tbad, why do I deserve to be punished for it? The more she looked at it, the more complicated it got.

Lise Gimpel was chopping cabbage when Francesca came into the kitchen and waited to be noticed. She didn't have to wait long. Her mother put down the knife and said, "Hello, little one. What can I do for you?"

"Can I ask you something, Mommy?" Francesca said seriously.

"Of course you can, dear. What is it?" Lise was especially fond of her middle daughter, though she tried hard not to show it to her children or her husband. Alicia had a clear, cool intelligence very much like Heinrich's. Roxane…Lise smiled. Roxane was a law unto herself. But Francesca reminded Lise of what she'd been like when she was a little girl.

With eight-year-old solemnity, Francesca asked, "What's wrong with Alicia? She's sure been acting funny lately."

"Has she?" Lise said. "I hadn't noticed." She didn't like lying to her children. She didn't like it, but she didn't hesitate, either.

"Well, she has." Francesca rolled her eyes at adult blindness. She looked more like Lise than either of the other girls, too. Her face was broader than theirs, and her hazel eyes were a compromise between Lise's green and the brown Heinrich had passed on undiluted to Alicia and Roxane.

"Acting funny how?" Lise asked, though she had a pretty good idea.

"She doesn't want to play so much," Francesca said. "And she just stays in her room looking at books and thinking about things."

"Well, you know Alicia." Lise tried to pass it off lightly. "She gets that way sometimes." That much was true. The oldest Gimpel daughter had developed a series of enthusiasms-collecting seashells was the latest-that consumed her for days or weeks or sometimes months and then vanished as if they'd never been.

But Francesca shook her head. "It's not like that this time. Usually when she gets that way, she wants Roxane and me to get that way, too. Sheexpects us to get that way, too, and she gets mad when we don't."

Lise hid a smile. Francesca wasn't wrong-Alicia did act like that. Another way Francesca was like her mother was that she noticed the way people behaved. Alicia was all too often blind to it. Now Lise did smile, a little sourly. That also came straight from Heinrich. Since Francesca did notice, Lise would have to answer her. She tried another question: "But not this time?"

"Not this time," Francesca agreed. "I asked her what it was, and she looked at me and she said, 'Nothing.'" Her mouth twisted. "I don't know what it is, but it's not nothing. I hope she's…I hope she's not in trouble at school and trying to hide it."

That was the worst thing she could think of. Lise's heart went out to her because it was the worst thing she could think of. "I'm pretty sure you don't need to worry about that," Lise said. "Herr Kessler would let me know if anything were wrong. He's very diligent." He reminded her at least as much of a policeman as of a teacher, but that was a different story.

She'd succeeded in distracting her daughter, anyhow. "What does diligent mean?"

"It means he takes care of everything that needs taking care of."

"Oh." Francesca spread her hands, a gesture of pure frustration. "Well, whatis wrong with Alicia, then?"

"I don't know. Whatever it is, she'll probably get over it pretty soon," Lise said.She'd better get over it pretty soon. If she doesn't, more people than Francesca will notice. No doubt her own parents had had the same worries, the same fears, over her. And no doubt they'd had good reason to.

Roxane bustled into the kitchen. She greeted Francesca: "Oh, there you are. What are you doing?"

"Talking with Mommy." Francesca looked down her nose at her little sister.

"What are you talking about?" Roxane wouldn't have recognized a snub if it bit her in the ankle.

"What a nuisance you are," Francesca said.

"We were not!" Lise said. "You apologize this instant."

"Sorry." Francesca sounded anything but.

"Well, whatwere you talking about, then?" Roxane persisted.

"About Alicia," Francesca said reluctantly.

"Oh." Roxane nodded. Her hair, even curlier than Alicia's, bounced up and down. "She's been peculiar lately, all right." She fixed Francesca with a baleful stare. "Aber naturlich,you're pretty peculiar yourself."

"Roxane, you stop that, too." Not for the first time, Lise Gimpel had the feeling of being in no-man's-land between forces that were going to keep sniping at each other no matter what she did. Sometimes the squabbles among her children were three-sided, which only made her feel completely surrounded. She did her best to sound severe: "Now you say you're sorry."

"Sorry." Roxane outdid Francesca in insincerity. Then, happily, she went back to talking about Alicia, who wasn't there to defend herself: "She's been reading those funny Jew books again, and just a little while ago she was talking about how they were still in her room even though they're too easy for her."

Those funny Jew books. Streicher's poison had a candy coating that had made it seem tasty to German children for almost eighty years. Lise remembered thinking the same thing about his books before finding out what she was. Carefully, she said, "Sometimes you most want to look back at something just when you're getting too big for it."

To her relief, Francesca nodded in agreement to that. "I think the kindergarten rooms are a lot cuter now than I did when I was in them."

"They aren't cute," said Roxane, who was in kindergarten now. "They're just…schoolrooms." She laced the word with scorn.

"But they have all those tiny little desks and chairs and things," Francesca said. "They're sosweet." She was the sentimental one in the family, another way she took after Lise. Roxane made a horrible face. Francesca made one back at her-she wasn't too sentimental for that.

"Cut it out, both of you," Lise said. "You're behaving like a couple of Hottentots." She had no idea how Hottentots behaved, or even if the Reich had left any of them alive, but she liked the sound of the name.

Instead of cutting it out, Francesca and Roxane egged each other on. That gave Lise the excuse to shoo them out of the kitchen. If they wanted to drive each other crazy somewhere else, she didn't mind. If they were driving each other crazy, they weren't wondering why Alicia was acting strange.

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 Fuhrer 's palace, recovering from what his physicians describe as a stubborn cold," Horst Witzleben intoned. "Routine matters proceed normally. Should anything extraordinary arise, the Fuhrer is fully capable of attending to it on the instant."

The picture of the Fuhrer 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 hewas 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 Fuhrer 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 Fuhrer '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 Fuhrer 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 Fuhrer '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 fascists 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 Fuhrer 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'snot 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 meanother hour of sleep. Would you please get the coffeemaker going?"

"How awful! Of course I will," Esther said. Dr. Dambach was a skilled and knowledgeable physician, but when he tangled with the percolator he turned out either hot water faintly tinged with brown or unpalatable mud. As she got the coffee started, she asked, "Was anyone badly hurt?"

"Not the drunk," he said sourly. "He was so limp and relaxed, you could have dropped him from the top of the Great Hall and he wouldn't have got hurt when he hit the ground. A woman in the other car broke her leg, and I'm afraid the man with her had internal injuries. They took him away in an ambulance."

"What will they do to the drunk?" Esther asked.

Dr. Dambach looked less happy still. "That I cannot tell you. He kept blithering on about what an important fellow he was in the Party. If he was lying, he'll be sorry. But if he was telling the truth…You know how these things go."

Being an Aryan, the pediatrician could afford to grumble about the way the world worked. Esther Stutzman nodded, but she never would have complained herself. Even nodding made her feel as if she was taking a chance.

"What appointments do we have this morning?" Dambach asked.

"Let me look." She went to the register. "There are…three immunizations, and the Fischers will be bringing in their seven-year-old for you to check his scoliosis, and-" The telephone rang, interrupting her. She picked it up. "Dr. Dambach's office. How may I help you?…Yes…Can you bring her in at ten-thirty?…All right. Thank you." She turned back to the doctor. "And Lotte Friedl has a sore throat."

"Probably the first of several," Dambach said, in which he was probably right. "Anything else?"

"Yes, Doctor. The Kleins are bringing in their little boy for another checkup," Esther answered. She tried not to change her tone of voice. Richard and Maria Klein and their son, Paul, were Jews-though Paul, who was only eight months old, had no idea that he was.

Dr. Dambach frowned. "Paul Klein,ja. That baby is not thriving as he should, and I do not know why." He sounded personally affronted at not knowing, too. He was a good doctor; he had that relentless itch to find out.

"Maybe you'll see something this time that you didn't notice before," Esther said. She paused and sniffed. "And the coffee's just about ready."

"Good," Dambach said. "Pour me a big cup, please. I have to get my brains from somewhere today."

The outer door to the waiting room opened. In came the first patient and her mother. Esther started to say hello, then got interrupted when the telephone rang again. Sure enough, it was a woman whose son had a sore throat. Feeling harried, Esther made an appointment for her. As if by magic, a cup of coffee appeared at her elbow. Dr. Dambach had not only poured one for himself, he'd poured one for her, too, and laced it with cream and sugar.

"I'msupposed to do that," she said indignantly.

He shrugged. "You were busier than I was just then. I suspect it will even out as the day goes along."

Esther had her doubts about that, though she kept quiet about them. Dr. Dambach's work was more specialized than hers; she knew that. But the phones, the patients and parents in the waiting room, the billing, and the medical records often made her feel like a juggler with a stream of plates and knives and balls in the air. If she didn't pay attention every moment, everything would come crashing down.

On the other hand, she'd felt that way ever since she found out what she was. At worst, an office disaster could get her fired. A disaster of a different sort…She resolutely declined to think about that. Staying busy helped drive worry away. Busy she was.

But she was reminded of her heritage when the Kleins brought in little Paul.Something was wrong with him; she could see as much. He seemed listless and unhappy and somehow less well assembled than he should have been. He didn't hold his head up the way a baby his age should have, nor did he act fascinated with his hands and feet like most eight-month-olds. His parents, especially his mother, looked drawn and worried.

They were the last appointment before lunch. Dr. Dambach stayed in the examining room with them for a long time. Paul cried once. He didn't sound quite right, either, though Esther had trouble putting her finger on why. It wasn't astrong cry; that was as close as she could come. Working here, she'd heard plenty of unhappy babies. Paul Klein should have raised a bigger fuss.

At last, the Kleins came out of the examining room, the baby in Maria's arms. "Thank you, Doctor," Richard Klein said. "Maybe this means something important."

"I will have to do more investigating myself before I can say for certain," Dr. Dambach replied. "Make an appointment with Frau Stutzman, please-I'll want to see him again in another two weeks." He sounded brisk and businesslike. The Kleins probably wouldn't know he used that demeanor to mask alarm.

Having worked with him for two years, Esther did. After she'd made the appointment, after the Kleins had left, she turned to the doctor and asked, "What's wrong with him?"

"His muscular development is not as it should be," Dambach said. "He seemed normal up until a couple of months ago, but since then…" He shook his head. "If anything, he has gone backwards, when he should be moving ahead. And I saw something peculiar when I looked in his eyes: a red spot on each retina."

"What does that mean?" Esther asked.

"I'm not sure. I don't believe I've ever seen anything like it before," the pediatrician said. "I don't know if it is connected to the other problem, either. Can you order some food brought here, please? I was going to go out for lunch, but I believe I will stay here and go through my books instead."

"Of course, Doctor," Esther Stutzman said. "Will one of those Italian cheese pies do? The shop is close, and they deliver."

Dambach nodded. "That will be fine. I know the place you mean. They promise to get it where it should go in under half an hour, which is all to the good today."

"I'll take care of it." Esther made the call. The cheese pie arrived twenty-seven minutes later. She'd heard the owner had fired delivery boys for being late, so she was glad this one showed up on time. She paid for it from the cash drawer, then brought it in to Dr. Dambach.

"Just set it on the desk, please," he said without looking up from the medical book he was going through. Only his left hand and his mouth gave the food any notice; the rest of his attention was riveted on the book. Esther thought she could have substituted a coffee cake or plain bread without his knowing the difference.

She was eating her own lunch, ready to go home as soon as the afternoon receptionist came in, when Dambach exclaimed in what might as easily have been dismay as triumph. "What is it, Doctor?" she called.

"I know what Paul Klein has," Dr. Dambach said.

Esther still couldn't tell how he felt about knowing. She asked, "Well, what is it, then?"

He came out of the office, a half forgotten slice of the cheese pie still in his left hand. His face said more than his voice had; he looked thoroughly grim. "It's an obscure syndrome called Tay-Sachs disease, I'm afraid," he answered. "Along with the rest of his condition, the red spots on his retinas nail down the diagnosis."

"I never heard of it," Esther said.

"I wish I hadn't." Now the pediatrician sounded as unhappy as he looked.

"Why?" she asked. "What is it? What does it do?"

"There is an enzyme called Hexosaminidase A. Babies with Tay-Sachs disease are born without the ability to form it. Without it, lipids accumulate abnormally in the cells, and especially in the nerve cells of the brain. The disease destroys brain function a little at a time. I will not speak of symptoms, but eventually the child is blind, mentally retarded, paralyzed, and unresponsive to anything around it."

"Oh, my God! How horrible!" Esther's stomach did a slow lurch. She wished she hadn't eaten. "What can you do? Is there a cure?"

"I can do nothing. No one can do anything." Dr. Dambach's voice was hard and flat. "There is no cure. All children who have Tay-Sachs disease will die, usually before they turn five. I intend to recommend to the Kleins that they take the baby to a Reichs Mercy Center, to spare it this inevitable suffering. Then I intend to go out and get drunk."

He couldn't bring himself to come right out and talk about killing a baby, though that was what he meant. The Germans who'd slaughtered Jews hadn't talked straight out about what they were doing, either, though people weren't so shy about it any more. Here, Esther had more sympathy. "How awful for you," she said. "And how much worse for the Kleins! What causes this horrible disease? Could they have done anything to keep the baby from getting it?"

Dr. Dambach shook his head. "No. Nothing. It's genetic. If both parents carry the recessive, and if the two recessives come together…" He spread his hands. Even that gesture didn't remind him of the cheese pie he was holding. Intent on his own thoughts, he went on, "We don't see the disease very often these days. I have never seen it before, thank heaven, and I hope I never see it again. The books say it used to be fairly common among the Jews, though, before we cleaned them out… Are you all right,Frau Stutzman?"

"Yes, I think so. This is all just so-so dreadful." Esther made herself nod. Dambach nodded back, accepting what she'd said. He couldn't know why her heart had skipped a beat. A good thing, too. He couldn't come out and talk about killing a baby, but he took the extermination of the Jews for granted. Why not? He hadn't even been born when it happened.

"Dreadful,ja. A very unfortunate coincidence. Even among the Jews it was not common, you understand, but it was up to a hundred timesmore common among them than it is among Aryans." Dambach thoughtfully rubbed his chin. "Did you happen to see on the news a few days ago the story about the Jews found in that village in backwoods Serbia?"

How to answer? Esther saw only one way: casually. "I sure did. Who would have imagined such a thing, in this day and age?" What she wanted to do was get up and run from the doctor's office. That that would be the worst thing she could possibly do didn't matter. Reason held her in her chair, held a polite smile on her face. Behind the facade, instinct screamed.

Still thoughtful, Dr. Dambach went on, "Tay-Sachs disease is so rare among Aryans, it almost makes one wonder…"

Ice lived in Esther. "Don't be silly, Doctor," she said, keeping up the casual front. "None ofthem left any more, not in a civilized country." Pretending she wasn't a Jew was second nature to her; she'd done it almost automatically ever since she learned what she was. But mocking, scorning her true heritage wasn't so easy. She didn't have to do that very often, simply because Jews were so nearly extinct.

"I suppose you're right," the pediatrician said, and relief flowered like springtime in her. But then he added, "Still…"

The door to the waiting room opened. In came Irma Ritter, who would work in the afternoon. She was even rounder than Dr. Dambach. Pointing to the slice of cheese pie in his hand, she asked, "Any more of that left?"

He looked down in surprise. "I don't know," he said, sounding foolish. "Let me go look." While he did, Esther made her escape-and that was exactly what it felt like.

Alicia Gimpel and her sisters were playing an elaborate game with dolls. Part of it came from an adventure film they'd seen a few weeks before, but that was only the springboard; more came straight from their imaginations. "Here." Roxane picked up one of the few male dolls they had. "He can be the nasty Jew who's trying to cheat the dragons out of their cave."

"No!" Alicia exclaimed before remembering she wasn't supposed to say anything like that no matter what.

"Why not?" Roxane clouded up. "You never like any of my ideas. It's not fair."

"I think Alicia's right this time," Francesca said. "He's not ugly enough to be a Jew."

That wasn't why Alicia had said no, of course. She seized on it gratefully all the same. "Yes, that is what I meant," she said. She still didn't like lying to her sisters, but she didn't see what she could do about it, either. She couldn't tell the truth. She could see that.They'll find out soon enough, she thought from the height of her own ten years.

Roxane examined the doll, who was indeed plastic perfection. "Well, we canpretend he's ugly," she declared, and made him advance on the cardboard box doing duty for a cave. In a high, squeaky, unnatural voice, she said, "Here, dragons, I'll give you these beans if you'll move away from here and never come back. They may be magic beans." She laughed shrilly and whispered, "And they may not, too."

Francesca reached into the box and pulled out a stuffed dragon. "You nasty old Jew, you're trying to fool us. You'd better get out of here or I'll burn your ears off."

Roxane made the doll retreat. "I'll figure out another way to get your gold, then-you see if I don't."

"Oh, no, you won't," Francesca retorted. "I'm an Aryan dragon, and I'm too tough for you."

Alicia got to her feet. "I don't think I want to play any more."

"Why not?" Roxane said. "Things are just getting good." She looked down at the doll. "Aren't they?" It responded-she made it respond-with a thoroughly evil chuckle and a, "That's right," in the high, squeaky voice she'd used before.

"She's a wet blanket, that's why," Francesca said. "She's been a wet blanket for weeks now, and I'm tired of it."

"Wet blanket! Wet blanket!" Roxane sang, now in her own voice, now in the one she'd invented for the Jew doll.

"I am not!" Alicia said angrily. "This is a stupid game, that's all."

Roxane got angry, too. "You're just saying it's stupid because I'm doing something I thought up all by myself." She wheeled out the heavy artillery: "I'm going to tell. Mommy says you can't do things like that."

And Francesca was also angry, in a quieter way. "How can you say it's a stupid game when you thought up half of it?"

"Because-" But Alicia couldn't say what she couldn't say. Knowing what she knew and not being able to talk about it threatened to choke her. "Because it is, that's all."

"I'm going to tell," Roxane said again."Mommy!"

"You and your big mouth," Alicia said, whereupon her little sister opened it as wide as she could and stuck out her tongue. Alicia was tempted to grab that tongue and give it a good yank, but it was too slimy for her to do it.

"What's going on?" came from the ground floor. Ominous footsteps on the stairs followed, each one louder than the one before. Their mother appeared at the doorway to Francesca and Roxane's room. "Can't the three of you play together nicely?"

"I didn't want to play any more, that's all," Alicia said.

"That's not all. You didn't like my ideas, that's what it is," Roxane said, and proceeded to explain in great detail what her ideas were.

Understanding kindled in their mother's eyes. She started to say something, then closed her mouth again. Awe trickled through Alicia.She can't tell, either, she thought.She's a grownup, and shecan't tell. That spoke more clearly than anything else of how important the secret was. It was important enough to constrain a grownup, and grownups by the very nature of things were beyond constraint.

Their mother tried again. This time, she succeeded. "Play the game, Alicia," she said gently. "Go ahead and play the game. It's all right. That's what we have to do."

"See?" Triumph filled Roxane. "Mommy told you to."

And so she had. But she'd told Alicia something else, too, something that had gone by Roxane and Francesca.That's what we have to do. People who weren't Jews were going to say things about them. They were going to mock them. They couldn't help it. They believed all the things they'd learned in school. (Alicia still half believed them herself, which sometimes left her half-sick with confusion.) If you couldn't get used to that, if you couldn't pretend it wasn't anything, you'd give yourself away.

"All right," Alicia said. "I'll play the game."

By the way their mother smiled, she'd also sneaked a message past her sisters. "Good, Alicia," Lise Gimpel said. "In that case, I'll get back to what I was doing." She went down the hall. She went down the stairs.

Roxane eyed Alicia expectantly. Francesca eyed her suspiciously, as if to say,You can't just start and stop like that. But Alicia could. At first, she felt as if she were in one of the little plays students sometimes had to put on at school, as if this weren't happening to her but to the person she was pretending to be. The longer she did it, though, the more natural it got.

She and her sisters foiled the doll that was being a Jew. Another doll brought an-imaginary-sack of gold, so the dragons, who'd been tricked out of theirs, got to keep their cave. Then, while the Jew was gloating over his ill-gotten gains, more dolls, these proper Aryans, swooped down on him. They took him away to another box.

Roxane closed the lid. "And that'll be the end of him," she chortled. Then, in a more practical frame of mind, she added, "Till we need him for another game, anyhow."

"See, Alicia?" Francesca said. "That was pretty good."

"I suppose so," Alicia said: for her, no small admission, and more than enough to satisfy her sister.But it's not all a game, she thought. Some of the things her father had said made that very plain.If you put a real person in a box and close the lid and go, that'll be the end of him. He won't come out again for the next game. Roxane wouldn't understand. She was too little. Alicia had trouble understanding it herself. One of the teachers at her school, though, had had the misfortune to step in front of a bus. And Frau Zoglmann would never be back again.

Death was permanent, no matter what Roxane thought. Yes, death was permanent. And so was fear.