In The Presence of mine Enemies Read online

  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 every
one 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.