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But, as she realized when she'd watched a little more, it wasn'tjust a parody. It was also a comment, and a barbed one. Pounding his fist and bellowing up there on his little balcony with the old-fashioned iron railing (even rusty in places), Stolle made a genuine human co
Of course, if he ever moved to the Fuhrer 's palace, he would have to behave as Himmler and Haldweim and Buckliger had before him. Behaving that way was part of what being the Fuhrer involved. Maybe Stolle didn't realize that yet. Maybe he did, but didn't want anyone else to know he did. Susa
The Gauleiter got less air time than the Fuhrer. Horst Witzleben soon cut away to dramatic footage of an industrial accident in Saarbrucken. A helicopter plucked a workman out of what looked like a sea of flames. More than a dozen other Germans hadn't been so lucky. "Along with the Aryans, an unknown number of Untermenschen also perished," Horst said, and went on to the next story.
Laborers from Poland or Russia or the Ukraine or Serbia or Egypt who'd been lucky enough to be chosen to stoke furnaces or clean chemical tanks or do some other work too hard or too nasty for Aryans and do it till they dropped instead of going to the showers right away…This was their epitaph: one sentence on the evening news. It was more than most of their kind would ever get, too.
With a shiver, Susa
"And so," Susa
That didn't stop her from topping up the drink a little later on. Put down enough and it would build a barrier against thought. She wasn't often tempted to get drunk, but that one dispassionate sentence on the news had gone a long way toward doing the trick. Heinz Buckliger talked about disclosing and ending abuses. Did he even begin to know what all the abuses in the Reich were? Susa
The telephone rang. Her hand jerked-not enough, fortunately, to spill any scotch. "Who's that?" she asked God. God wasn't listening. When was the last time He'd ever listened to a Jew? It rang again. She walked over and picked it up."Bitte?"
"Professor Weiss? Uh, Susa
"Yes? Who is this?" Not a student, whoever it was. No student would have had the nerve to call her by her first name, even hesitantly.
"This is Konrad Lutze, Susa
"Is it?" she said. "Well, this is a surprise. What can I do for you, uh, Konrad?" She had almost as much trouble using his first name as he'd had with hers.
She really did wonder what he wanted, too. Something to do with her work? With his work? With department politics? She tried to steer as clear of those as she could. With national politics? If he thought she was going to talk about those on the telephone, he had to be a little bit crazy, too. She wasn't anywhere near sure that was safe.
But after a couple of hesitant coughs, he said, "I was, uh, wondering if you would, uh, like to go to di
Susa
How long had the silence stretched? Long enough for Konrad Lutze to say, "Hello? Are you still there?"
"I'm here," she answered. "You…startled me, that's all."
"What do you say?" he asked. "We would have things to talk about, anyhow. That is not so bad-do you know what I mean? If I go out with someone I just happened to meet, and she says, 'So, what do you do?' and I answer, 'I am a professor of medieval English at Friedrich Wilhelm University,' where do I go from there? Her eyes glaze over. I have never yet met a nurse or a librarian or a salesgirl who gave a damn about Piers Plowman or Sir Gawain and the Green Knight."
"I believe that." Giggling would have been rude, no matter how much Susa
"Will you, then?" Now he seemed almost pathetically eager.
Will I, then?Susa
So…would she, then? Could she even imagine being serious about a gentile? (Whether she could imagine being serious about Konrad Lutze seemed an altogether different, and much smaller, question.)
"I-I'm sorry, Konrad," she heard herself say. "I'm afraid I've got other plans that evening."
"I see," he said heavily. "Well, I'm sorry I've taken up your time. I hope I wasn't too much of a bother. Good night." He hung up.
So did Susa
Her head started to spin. She didn't care. Tonight, she would have been good company for the drunk she'd dumped. She'd feel like hell tomorrow. That was all right. She felt like hell right now, too.
Admiral Yamamoto's again. A big plate of Berlin rolls, herring and onion and seaweed and rice. Wasabi to heat them up. Wheat beer to wash them down. Imperfectly Japanese. Perfectly good.
The place was jammed, as usual. Heinrich and Willi sat at a tiny table wedged up against the wall. Bureaucrats and soldiers. SS men and Party Bonzen. Businessmen and tourists. Secretaries and shopgirls. A radio going in the background. Nobody paying any attention to it. Nobody able to pay any attention to it, because you couldn't hear anything but the din of people chattering.
After a bite of his shrimp tempura, Willi said, "Beats the hell out of what they were feeding you a little while ago, doesn't it?"
Heinrich eyed him. Try as he would, he couldn't find any irony. Reluctantly, fighting hard not to believe it, he decided Willi meant that as a simple comment, not as any sort of jab or gibe. Anyone else would have, anyone else at all. Heinrich nodded. "I thought of that the last time we were here. You might say so. Yes, you just might."