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"Wonderful." Lise's voice stayed flat, now choking back a scream. Erika hadn't cared if she killed Heinrich-hell, she'd wanted him dead. But she drew the line at the girls.How generous of her.
"When she's better, she'll go back to the Security Police and tell them it was all a lie. I swear she will," Willi said. "She wants to make things right if she can."
"Wonderful," Lise repeated, as flatly as before.
"It'll be all right. It really will." Willi was all but babbling. His laugh was nervous, but it was a laugh. "I know Heinrich's not a Jew-believe me, I know; don't get me wrong-but the way things are nowadays, Buckliger might not even care if he was." He laughed again.
Don't you have any sense in your head? Don't you know they're bound to be tapping my phone?Lise couldn't say that, because, of course, theywere listening. Before she could say anything, someone knocked on the front door. "I've got to go," she told Willi, and hung up in a hurry. It didn't sound like the knock the Security Police used. It didn't declare,We'll kick the door open if you don't let us in right this minute. But you never could tell.
Guts knotting, Lise turned the knob and swung the door on its hinges. It wasn't the Security Police. It was Adela Handrick, Emma's mother, a rather squat blond woman who wore expensive clothes in loud colors that didn't suit her sallow skin.
Up till now, the neighbors had stayed away from the Gimpel house. The plague might have struck here. "Hello," Lise said hesitantly. "Uh-won't you come in?"
Frau Handrick shook her head. Lise got a whiff of some fancy cologne. "No, that's all right," the other woman answered. She sounded nervous, too, and licked her carefully reddened lips. "I just wanted to tell you that Stefan and I"-Stefan was her husband-"hope everything goes…as well as it can for you. Emma says she wants to see Alicia back in school, too."
Tears stung Lise's eyes. "Thank you," she whispered. "Thank you very much."
Seeming to take courage, Adela Handrick said, "You're all good people. Everybody in the neighborhood knows it. This is all nothing but a bunch of garbage. But"-an expressive shrug-"what can you do? You have to be careful. Maybe things will be better after the elections. But maybe they won't, too."
Even suggesting that they might be better was a wonder. Lise said, "All I want is for Heinrich and the girls to come home."
"What else?"Frau Handrick said. "Even if you were Jews, you'd probably want the same thing. Who could blame you?" She dipped her head. "Take care of yourself." Without another word, she started up the street toward her own house.
Lise stared after her. Willi'd said the one thing. Now she'd said the other. Maybe a lot of people paid as little attention to what they got taught in school about hating Jews as they did about geometry. But how could you afford to find out?
Alicia Gimpel had always been good at remembering her lessons. That helped her now. The Security Police were trying to get her to admit she knew her father was a Jew. They didn't have a real interrogation room at the foundlings' home. They had to make do with an office. A desk lamp glaring into her eyes was almost as bad as some of the fancy lights they would have had back at their own headquarters.
"You must have known!" one of them shouted. He slammed his fist down on the desk. Alicia jumped. So did the gooseneck lamp. He had to grab it to keep it from falling over. "How could you not know your own father is a stinking Jew?"
"He is not!" Alicia said shrilly. "That's a lie, and you know it!" She took her cue from her little sisters. They thought they were telling the truth, which gave them an edge on her. But she was acting for her life. And, while some people might not have learned their lessons, she knew what her teachers had drilled into her. "Jews are bloodsucking tyrants. They cheat people at business. They crawl around their betters with vilest flattery. They always try to steal credit where they don't deserve it. That's what Mein Kampf says! Does Daddy do any of those things? You know he doesn't!"
"Jesus!" said a blackshirt behind Alicia. "She's even worse than the other two brats. Maybe that son of a bitch really isn't a goddamn sheeny."
"Why'd they grab him, then?" asked the one at the desk. "If they grab you, you bet your ass you deserve it." He glowered at Alicia. He had a red, beefy face, with black-heads on his nose and between his eyebrows. His teeth were yellow; his breath stank of old cigars. "If you don't tell us the truth, you'll be sorry."
"Iam telling the truth," Alicia lied. "Why don't you believe me? All I want to do is go home." She sure told the truth there. She wanted to cry, but held back her tears. When she did cry, it felt as if the Security Police had won something from her.
The blackshirts hadn't slapped her or hit her or done anything worse than that. As far as she knew, they hadn't hurt her sisters, either. Maybe even the Security Police didn't like the idea of torturing little girls. Alicia had her doubts about that. If you joined the Security Police, you had to want to hurt people, didn't you? More likely, they weren't sure enough about Daddy to have too much of that kind of fun.
They won't find anything out from me,Alicia vowed.And they really won't find anything out from Francesca and Roxane.
Scowling, the blackshirt who smelled like cigar butts said, "What do you know about"-he looked down at some notes on the desk-"Erika Dorsch?"
"Frau Dorsch?" Alicia said in surprise-this was a new tack. "The Dorsches are Daddy and Mommy's friends, that's all." This fellow couldn't think she was a Jew…could he?
With a leer, the man from the Security Police asked, "Is this Dorsch galreal good friends with your old man?" The other blackshirts laughed.
Most of that went over Alicia's head. "I don't know," she answered. "They all play bridge together and they talk till it's late."
"Bridge?" The blackshirt threw back his head and snorted in contempt. He needed to blow his nose. Alicia fought against revulsion. The man asked, "Whatother games do they play?" His pals laughed again.
Still out of her depth, Alicia only shrugged. "I don't know about any other games. I don't know what you're talking about."
"Forget it, Hans," said one of the fellows behind Alicia. "If this Gimpel bastard is fooling around with her, the kid doesn't know about it."
That was plain enough for Alicia to understand. She gasped at the very idea. "Daddy wouldn't do any such thing!" she exclaimed. "Not ever!"
All the blackshirts laughed at that. "No, eh?" said the one who was questioning her. "I sure as hell would. She's a piece and a half." He looked past her to his buddies. "You guys seen a picture of this broad? She's a blonde, good looking, built…" His hands described an hourglass in the air. "Hell, I'd crawl through a thousand kilometers of broken glass just to let her piss on my toothbrush."
"Ewww!" Alicia's voice rose to a thin squeak. "That's disgusting!" The men from the Security Police thought her horror was fu
The interrogator thought revolting her was pretty fu
Even so, she knew she'd never be able to look at Frau Dorsch the same way again.
Finally, the man from the Security Police turned off the desk lamp. "Well, kid, that's enough of that for a while," he said in oddly intimate tones, as if what they'd been doing together had somehow made them friends. Maybe he thought it had. He stepped back, straightened up, and stretched. Trying to get her to say things that would kill her father-and, incidentally, herself-was all in a day's work for him. "Go on, Ulf. Take her back with the rest of the snotnoses."