In The Presence of mine Enemies Read online

  "I know," he said gently. If he teased her too hard, she'd lose her temper, and nothing and nobody was safe if that happened. "Go on. Lise's trying that recipe you sent her."

  The girls waylaid Susanna before she got to the kitchen. Though she'd never been married, she made an excellent ersatz aunt. She took children seriously, listened to what they had to say, and treated them like small adults. Heinrich smiled. Come to that, she was a small adult herself. He knew better than to say so out loud.

  Walther and Esther Stutzman arrived a few minutes later, along with their son, Gottlieb, and daughter, Anna. Anna promptly went off with the Gimpel girls; she was a year older than Alicia, the eldest of the three. Heinrich Gimpel stared at Gottlieb. "Good heavens, is that a mustache?"

  The younger male Stutzman touched a finger to the space between his nose and upper lip. "It's going to be one, I hope." At the moment, the growth was hard to see. For one thing, he'd only just turned sixteen. For another, his hair was even fairer than his father's. And, for a third, he'd chosen to keep untrimmed only a toothbrush mustache; the first Fuhrer 's style was newly popular again.

  Walther Stutzman differed from his son in appearance only by the presence of twenty-odd years and the absence of even the vestiges of a mustache. As he handed Heinrich his topcoat, he asked quietly, "Tonight?"

  "Yes, I think Alicia's ready," Heinrich answered, as quietly. "I told her she could stay up late. How has Anna done, the past year?"

  "Well enough," her father said.

  "We're still here, after all," Esther Stutzman put in. A slim woman with light brown hair, she peered at Heinrich through glasses thicker than his own. Somehow, in spite of everything, her laugh held real mirth. "And if she hadn't done well, we wouldn't be, would we?"

  "Wouldn't be what, Aunt Esther?" Alicia Gimpel asked, a doll under one arm.

  "Wouldn't be standing out here in the hall if we expected the curly-haired Gestapo to listen in." Esther's grin took all sting from the words.

  Imitating her father, Alicia said, "Oh,Quatsch! " Anna Stutzman tried to sneak up behind her, but she whirled before she got tickled. Both girls squealed. They ran off together, Alicia's brown curls bobbing beside Anna's blond ones. They were very much of a height; though Anna was older, Alicia was tall for her age.

  "Dinner!" Lise called from the kitchen. "Dinner, dinner, dinner!" Everyone trooped into the dining room. Heinrich Gimpel and Gottlieb Stutzman dropped the leaves on the table to accommodate the unusual crowd. Walther, meanwhile, fetched in a couple of extra chairs, and Susanna Weiss placed them around the table.

  They all paused to admire the fragrantly steaming pork roast before Heinrich attacked it with fork and carving knife. With onions, potatoes, and boiled parsnips, it made a feast to fight the chill outside and leave everyone happily replete. Most of the talk that punctuated the music of knife and fork was praise for Lise's cooking.

  Smooth wheat beer mixed with raspberry syrup went with the meal. The two younger Gimpel girls usually got only small glasses. Tonight, they found grownup-sized mugs in front of them. Francesca and Roxane proudly drained them dry, and were nodding by the time their mother brought out dessert. They munched their way through the little cakes stuffed with prunes or apricots or mildly sweet chocolate, but the filling sweets only made them sleepier. The food and beer slowed Alicia down, too, but she was buoyed by the prospect of sitting up and talking with the adults.

  Seeing her daughter's excitement, Lise said, "She doesn't know yet how boring we can be, with our chatter of children and taxes and work and who's going to bed with whom."

  "Whois going to bed with whom?" Esther asked. "It's more interesting than taxes and work, that's for sure."

  Susanna parodied a Hitler Jugend song:

  "In the fields and on the heath, We lose strength through joy."

  Gottlieb Stutzman blushed almost as red as she had before. She teased him: "Why, Gottlieb, don't you hope to meet a friendly maiden when you go to work your year in the fields?"

  "It is not…not practical, not for me," he answered stiffly, rubbing a finger over his peach-fuzz mustache.

  "It is not practical for any of us, as Susanna knows." Walther Stutzman gave her a severe look. "It is also not practical for us to sing that song anywhere but among ourselves. If the Security Police hear it-"

  "It's wiser not to draw the attention of the Security Police, anyway," Lise Gimpel said with her usual solid good sense. "Even children know that." She looked at her own two younger children, who were valiantly trying not to yawn. "After I get the table cleared away, time for the little ones to go to bed."

  Heinrich nodded to Walther and Gottlieb Stutzman. "Nice to have some other men in the house for a change," he remarked.

  "You are outnumbered, aren't you?" Walther said. "I kept the numbers even. But then, that's what they pay me for." He held a moderately important post with the computer-design team at Zeiss.

  Everyone, even the men, pitched in to help Lise cart dirty dishes and leftovers (not that there were many of those) back to the kitchen. The two younger Gimpel girls exchanged their party dresses for long cotton nightgowns. Francesca and Roxane collected kisses from the grownups, then went off to the bedroom they shared-not without a couple of sleepily jealous glances at Alicia, who got to stay up.

  Despite being sleepy, Alicia Gimpel felt about to burst from curiosity and excitement. She sat on the edge of the couch. Her eyes flew from her parents to Aunt Susanna or Aunt Esther or Uncle Walther or Gottlieb. As her mother had said, Alicia didn't know what the grownups talked about after she went to sleep, and she could hardly wait to learn.

  Her gaze swung to Anna. She stuck out an accusing forefinger. "You've found out what this secret is."

  "Yes, I have." Anna sounded serious enough to startle Alicia. She looked back to her father. Behind his glasses, he was blinking quickly, as if fighting back tears. Alicia saw that, but had trouble believing it. She couldn't imagine her father crying. And she couldn't imagine Anna keeping a secret from her. Her mouth twisted down. Her eyes narrowed. It was what her family called her Angry Face. Her father started to raise a hand. Before he could say anything, Anna, who also recognized it, hastily went on, "After tonight, you'll know, too."

  "All right," Alicia said, partway mollified. But it wasn't all right. She could tell. "Why are you all staring at me like that? I don't like it!" She twisted around to press her face against a sofa cushion.

  "It's an important secret, sweetheart," her mother said. "Come out, please. It's such an important secret, you can't even tell your sisters."

  That got through to Alicia. She did pull away from the pillow and stared at her mother, her eyes wide. Her father said, "You can't tell anyone. Not anyone at all, not ever. We've waited till you got old enough so we could tell you, because we wanted to be sure, or as sure as we could be"-sometimes he was maddeningly precise-"you wouldn't give us away by telling somebody you shouldn't."

  "I've known for a year now, and I didn't even tellyou, " Anna said. "See how important it is?" She sounded proud of herself. Alicia looked over to Aunt Esther and Uncle Walther. They looked proud of Anna, too. And they also looked frightened. Alicia had never seen them frightened before, but she couldn't mistake it. Seeing that frightened her, too.

  "What's going on, then?" she asked. "You're right, Anna-I never knew you had a secret, and we're best friends." She still sounded hurt, but only a little now: whatever it was, her time to learn it had come. She repeated, "What's going on?"

  Her father and mother didn't answer, not right away. They looked frightened, too, which alarmed Alicia far more than the fear on the Stutzmans' faces. Whatever this was, it had more weight than anything she could have imagined. At last, after a deep breath, Susanna Weiss spoke one blunt sentence: "You are a Jew, Alicia."

  Alicia stared. She shook her head, as if at a joke. "Don't be silly, Aunt Susanna. There are no more Jews, not anywhere. They'rekaputt — finished." She spoke with the assurance of one reciting a lesson well
learned in school.

  But her father shook his head, too, to contradict her. "Youare a Jew, Alicia. Your sisters are Jews, too. So is Susanna. So are Esther and Walther and Gottlieb and Anna. And so are your mother and I."

  He means it. He's not kidding,Alicia realized. Her ears and cheeks felt cold. That meant she was turning pale, all the blood going away from her face. "But-But…" She didn't know how to go on, so she stopped. After a moment, she rallied: "But Jews were filthy and wicked and diseased and racially impure." Perhaps trying to convince herself, she went on, "That's why the wise Reich got rid of them. That's what my teachers say."

  "All the textbook lessons." Her father let out a long, long sigh. "I learned them, too."

  Walther Stutzman said, "One of the hardest lessons anybody learns is that not everything your teachers tell you is true. For us, it's twice as hard."

  "Is Anna filthy?" Alicia's mother asked.

  "Of course not." Alicia got angry at the very idea. She looked over at her friend, still wanting Anna to tell her this was all just a game. But Anna looked back with impressively grown-up solemnity. She'd had a year to think about what rode on holding this secret close.

  "Are your father and I wicked?" Alicia's mother persisted. "Is Susanna diseased?"

  "I can get to feel that way, the morning after too much Scotch," Susanna said.

  "Hush, Susanna," Lise Gimpel said impatiently.

  "But-what happens if anyone finds out I'm-I'm a Jew?" Alicia pronounced the name with difficulty; it was too strong a curse to fit in the mouth of a well-brought-up ten-year-old. "If my friends at school know, they won't like me any more."

  "If your friends at school find out, dear, it will be worse than that," her father said. "If anyone learns you're a Jew, the Einsatzkommandos will come for you, and for your sisters, and for your mother and me, and for the Stutzmans, and for Susanna-and, after that, probably for other people, too." His voice was usually soft and gentle. Now he made it hard as armor plate, sharp as a Solingen dagger.

  Alicia couldn't doubt he meant exactly what he said. She'd learned about the Einsatzkommandos in school, too. In the lessons, they were heroes, cleaning up the conquered east and then the ghettos of New York and Los Angeles. But if they came to clean up her family…

  Her mother tried to soothe her: "Nobody has to find out, my little one. Nobody will, unless you give yourself away, and us with you. We're well hidden these days, the few of us who are left. We have to be." But worry clouded even her sunny face.She must have learned the same lessons I did, Alicia thought, remembering what her father had said moments before.She's scared of the Einsatzkommandos, too. Her mother repeated, "We're well hidden."

  But Alicia wildly shook her head. She knew about the millions who had died in Europe and then, a generation later, in the United States. Every schoolchild knew. The Reich made sure of that.And now they'll come for me! Oh, God, they'll come for me!

  "My father helped keep us hidden," Uncle Walther said. "He altered the Reichs genealogical database to show that our families are all of pure Aryan blood. No one looks for us any more, not here at the heart of the Germanic Empire. No one thinks there's any reasonto look. We're safe enough, unless we give ourselves away. Maybe one day, not in our time but when your children or grandchildren have grown up, Alicia, we can be safe living openly as what we are. Maybe. Till then, we go on."

  His soft words about changing databases had begun to reassure Alicia. What he didn't know about computers, nobody did. But when he spoke of living openly as Jews, she only stared at him. She felt like an animal caught in a trap. "It will never be safe! Never!" she said shrilly. "The Reich will last a thousand years, and how can there be room in it for Jews?"

  "Maybe the Reich will last a thousand years, the way Hitler promised," her father said. "No one can know that till it happens, if it does. But, dear, there have been Jews for three thousand years already. Even if the Germanic Empire lives out all the time Hitler said it would, it will still be a baby beside us. Uncle Walther was right: one way or another, we go on. It's hard to pretend not to be what we really are-"

  "I hate it," Susanna Weiss broke in. "I've always hated it, ever since I found out."

  Alicia's father nodded. "We all hate it. But when times are dangerous for Jews, the way they are now, what other choice have we got?"

  "This isn't the first time Jews have had to be what they are only in secret," Esther Stutzman said. "In Spain a long time ago, we pretended to be good Catholics. Now we have to pretend to be good Aryans and National Socialists. But underneath, we still are what we've always been."

  The grownups all sounded so cool, so collected. As far as they were concerned, everything was fine, and everything would stay fine no matter what. That wasn't how it felt to Alicia. "I don't want to be a

  Jew!" she shouted.

  Her father's head whipped toward the windows. Sudden stark fright filled his face, and everyone else's. Alicia understood that. She clapped her hands to her mouth. If one of the neighbors heard, the Security Police were only a phone call away.

  After a deep breath, her father said, "You have a way out, Alicia."

  "What is it?" She stared at him, tears and questions in her eyes.

  "You can just pretend this night never happened," he told her. "You know we'll never betray you, no matter what you decide. If you choose not to tell your husband one day, if he's not one of us, and if you choose not to tell your children, they'll never know you-and they-are Jewish. They'll be just like everybody else in the Germanic Empire. But one more piece of something old and precious will have disappeared from the world forever."

  "I don't know what to do," Alicia said.

  To her surprise, her father got up, came over, and kissed her on top of the head. "You may not realize it, but that's the most grownup thing you've ever said."

  Alicia didn't want to sound like a grownup, any more than she wanted to be a Jew. She didn't seem to have much choice about either. Figuring that out was another grownup thing to do, not that she knew it at the time.

  "It's not so bad, Alicia," Anna said. "I cried, too, when I found out-"

  "So did I," Gottlieb added, which made Alicia's eyes widen. He was so much older than she that she thought of him as practically a grownup.

  Anna went on, "But it's special in a way, like being part of a club that won't take just anybody. And it's not like what we are is written on our foreheads or anything like that, even though it does feel like it at first. But if we keep the secret, no one will find out what we are. We even have our own special holidays-today is one."

  "What's today?" Alicia asked, intrigued in spite of herself.

  "Today is the festival of Purim," her father answered. "The Germans and the Spaniards Aunt Esther was talking about weren't the first people who wanted to get rid of the Jews. We've always stood out a little because we're different from the other people in a country. And a long time ago, in the Persian Empire…"

  He got out a Bible to help tell Alicia the story. Not every family had one in its house or flat these days. Still, the National Socialists mostly tolerated quiet Christianity. Alicia's teachers sometimes made scornful noises about a religion better fit for slaves than for heroes, but she'd never heard of the Security Police paying a call on anybody who believed in Jesus. She didn't know what would happen if somebody made a fuss about Jesus, but people knew better than to make fusses about such things. Christianity that wasn't quiet was dangerous, too.

  "And so," her father finished, "King Ahasuerus hanged Haman on the very gallows he'd built for Mordechai, and Mordechai and Queen Esther lived long, happy, rich lives afterwards." Caught up in the ancient tale even though she hadn't really wanted to be, Alicia laughed and clapped her hands.

  Very softly, Susanna Weiss said, "I wish someone had built a gallows for Hitler and Himmler. So many of our people gone…" She stared down into her snifter of Scotch.

  Alicia stared, too-at Aunt Susanna. The first Fuhrer and the first Reichsfuhrer — SS, who'd
later followed Hitler as ruler of the Germanic Empire, were saints nowadays, or as close to saints as made no difference. Even with what Alicia had learned tonight, hearing someone wish they'd been hanged was a jolt. And Susanna…Susanna sounded as if she felt guilty for living on where so many of her people-so many of my people, too,Alicia thought wonderingly-had died.

  "I wish I could tell my sisters," Alicia said.

  Her father and Walther Stutzman smiled at each other. A moment later, Alicia discovered why, for Anna said, "When I found out last year, I said, 'I wish I could tell Alicia.'"

  Uncle Walther said, "It's new, little one. It's a shock. I remember how confused finding out what I was made me."

  "But you can't say anything to Francesca and Roxane, you know-not anything at all," Alicia's father told her. "They're too little. It would be very dangerous. They'll learn when the time comes, the way you have now. If this secret gets to the wrong ears, we're all dead. Just because there aren't many Jews left doesn't mean people won't start hunting us. We're still fair game."

  "Are we-the people in this room-all the Jews who are left?" Alicia asked.

  "No," her father said. "There are others, all through Greater Germany and the rest of the Empire. Sooner or later, you'll meet more, and some of them will surprise you. But for now, the fewer Jews you know, the fewer you can give away if the worst happens."

  Who?Alicia wondered. Her eyes went far away.Which of our friends are really Jews? She never would have guessed about the Stutzmans, who with their blond good looks seemed perfect Aryans, not in a million years. Her teachers went on and on about how ugly Jews had been, with fat, flabby lips and grotesque hooked noses and almost kinky hair. It didn't seem to be true. What else had they told her that wasn't true?

  Her mother said, "Even though we have our own holidays, sweetheart, we can only celebrate them among ourselves. The little three-cornered cakes we had tonight are special for Purim-they're called Hamantaschen."