Страница 13 из 127
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 ru
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 fu
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 fu
"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 fu
"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.