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"It will be all right," she told her sister. "Remember, you're only stuck with the Beast for a year. It's not forever."
"It seems like forever!" Francesca often looked for the cloud, not the silver lining. She added, "And then next year I'll probably get Herr Kessler."
She probably would, too. Alicia didn't want to tell her so, especially since that was also when she would find out she was a Jew. How would she react to that? Like Alicia-maybe even more than Alicia-she believed everything she'd learned in school about Jews. She would have to change her mind.
The school bus turned the corner and rumbled toward the stop. Alicia pointed towards it. "Here. We're going home now," she said. Sometimes distracting Francesca worked better than actually answering her.
Heinrich Gimpel had never imagined he could be a celebrity. What occurred to him was a most un-Jewish thought:O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me. Celebrity meant visibility. Visibility, in his mind, was inextricably wed to danger.
He was stuck with it, though. Half the analysts in Oberkommando der Wehrmacht headquarters made a point of coming up to him and passing the time of day. Even crusty Wehrmacht officers-real soldiers, not just bureaucrats in uniform-unbent around him where they never had before. Some of them-not all, but a surprising number-proved to be pretty good fellows under the crust.
And all because someone stopped at my desk for fifteen or twenty minutes,he thought dazedly.People do that all the time. It shouldn't be so important.
He laughed at himself. Other analysts stopped at his desk all the time. Officers stopped there every now and again. the Fuhrer? The ruler of the Greater German Reich and the Germanic Empire? Well, no. The Fuhrer didn't pay a call on an ordinary analyst every day.
Some people didn't try to cozy up to Heinrich. Some people turned green with envy instead, and wanted nothing to do with him. He was glad Willi didn't. Willi, instead, made a joke of it. "Me? I'm going to get rich from knowing you. How much do you suppose I can charge for twenty minutes of your time? Fifty Reichsmarks? A hundred? A hundred and fifty?" He ran his tongue across his lips. "You could get a pretty fancy floozy for that kind of money, but plenty of people would sooner seeyou. What do you think of that?"
"I think they'd have more fun with a girl," Heinrich answered. Willi laughed till he turned red. Heinrich hadn't been kidding.
Willi didn't seem to have noticed the speculative look Ilse had given Heinrich after the Fuhrer 's visit. Since Heinrich had pretended not to notice it, too, Ilse's dallying with Willi hadn't paused. They were given to enough long lunches to make other analysts grin and nudge one another-but only when they weren't around.
What irked Heinrich about it at least as much as anything else was that he had to cover Willi's phone during those long lunches. He didn't mind dealing with business. That was what he was there for. Dealing with Erika Dorsch was a different story.
"Analysis section, Heinrich Gimpel speaking," he said after transferring a call from Willi's desk to his own.
"Hello, Heinrich," Erika said. "I was hoping for my husband. Too much to expect, I suppose."
If you really want to talk to Willi, why don't you call him when he's likelier to be here?Heinrich wondered, a little resentfully. He didn't say that out loud. It would only cause trouble. What he did say was as neutral as he could make it: "I'll take a message for you, if you like."
"In a bit," she answered. "Where is he?"
They'd gone around this barn before. "At lunch," Heinrich said.
"He should be back by now, shouldn't he?" Erika said. Heinrich didn't respond to that at all. She asked, "Where did he go?" and then said, "You're going to tell me you don't know. See? I read minds."
"Well, I don't," Heinrich said defensively. "I ate at the canteen today."
"I'm so sorry for you. Wherever he went, did he go there with Ilse?" Erika waited. Again, Heinrich didn't want to answer, either with the truth or with a lie. Her laugh had a bitter ring. "You're too damned honest for your own good, Heinrich."
Was that true? Heinrich didn't think so. He had, after all, been living under an elaborate lie for more than thirty years. Erika didn't know that, of course. As long as nobody who wasn't also living the lie knew, he could go on with it. He realized he would have to respond, though. He said, "I wish you and Willi weren't having troubles, that's all." Not only did he mean it, it sounded like an answer to what she'd just said. He could have done much worse.
He could also have done better. Erika's sour laugh proved that. "Wish for the moon while you're at it."
Heinrich could have laughed even more sourly. When she wished for the moon, the wildest thing she could think of was repairing what had gone wrong between her husband and her. Heinrich's wish would have been not only lunar but lunatic: he would have wished for the chance to live openly as what he was. He knew too well that that wasn't going to happen no matter how hard he wished.
All that went through his mind in what couldn't have been more than a heartbeat. Erika hardly even paused as she went on, "You don't need to wish, do you? You've really got the world by the tail." He did laugh then. He knew he shouldn't, but he couldn't help himself. That made Erika angry. "You do," she insisted.
"Not likely," Heinrich said. He couldn't tell her why, but hoped his voice carried conviction.
Evidently not, for she said, "No? I didn't see the Fuhrer paying a call on my dear Willi."
If anybody had called Heinrichdear in that tone of voice, he would have run away as fast as he could. He answered, "He might have, but I'm the specialist on the United States, and he wanted to find out something about the Americans." Even that was more than he felt comfortable saying. Along with the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, he also worshiped Security, a jealous god indeed. But Erika already knew what he did. If she didn't wish Willi would dry up and blow away, she could figure this out for herself.
Slowly, she said, "There are times when you're too damned modest for your own good, too."
She's angry atmenow, he realized in astonished dismay.What the devil did I do? "I told you the truth," he said.
"No, I'll tell you the truth," Erika said. "The truth is, the Fuhrer came to see you. You, not anybody else. The truth is, that's important. It could make you important. And the truth is, you don't seem to want to do anything about it or even admit it."
She might have been a wife giving a husband a pep talk. Shewas a wife giving a husband a pep talk. The only trouble was, she wasn't Heinrich's wife, and she didn't know him as well as she thought she did. "I don't want to be important," he said, which was not the smallest understatement he'd ever made. "I don't, Erika, and that's the truth, too."
A long silence followed. Heinrich hoped she would lose her temper, hang up on him, and either leave him alone or just think of him as her husband's friend-somebody who was fun to drink wine with and a decent bridge player, but nothing more than that.
What he hoped for and what he got were two different things. "Well, at least you know your own mind," Erika said at last. "At least you've got a mind to know. You don't do all of your thinking below the belt. I like that. It's different in a man."
Did she realize how much of her own thinking she was doing below the belt? Not as far as Heinrich could see, she didn't. He almost pointed it out to her. At the last minute, he didn't. Talking with her about things below the belt struck him as a very bad idea.
"I'd better go," was what he did say. "Is there a message for Willi?"
"Tell him I hope Ilse gives him the clap," Erika answered promptly. "He won't have the chance to give it to me, and you can tell him that, too." She did hang up then, loudly.