In The Presence Of My Enemies

"Everyone's dearest wish," Buckliger went on, "is for the Reich and its ideology to stay unchanging for the thousand years Hitler promised us. But history does not work that way, however much we wish it did. We will either find ways to develop or we will stagnate and fail and go under."

Murmurs said the pharmacists didn't know what to make of the hard truths Buckliger was telling them. And even the Fuhrer seemed to wonder if he'd gone too far. He quickly added, "Fascism has offered to the world its answers to the fundamental questions of human life, at the center of which stands the Volk. The errors we may have made will not, must not, turn us from the path we embarked upon in 1933. We are traveling to the New Order, to the world of the Reich and the Volk. We shall never leave that road."

There, at last, he gave the earnest women who'd come to hear him something they could get their teeth into. They cheered thunderously. Susa

"Fraulein Doktor Professor-" The student was nothing if not persistent.

"Ja, ja." Susa

"Excuse me?" The student stared at her as if she'd suddenly started spouting Hindustani. "I'm very sorry, but-" He broke off. She could tell exactly when he did get it. His stare changed from one sort to another altogether. He blushed like a schoolgirl. Prone to such problems herself, Susa

"It's a text now," Susa

He tried to argue some more, but he couldn't, or not very well. He was both demoralized and embarrassed. Had he been a dog, he would have had his tail between his legs as he left her office.

For a wonder, no one else came in right away to complain about the exam. That left Susa

Once he'd done that much, gone that far, what else was left? Only spelling out what the mistakes had been. Would Buckliger have the nerve to do that? Would anyone else, now that the Fuhrer had given permission? Maybe so, if people started to see that telling the truth didn't mean a trip to a camp or a bullet in the back of the neck.

Susa

Lise Gimpel was sorting laundry-a labor of Sisyphus if ever there was one-when the girls came home from school. Francesca, for once, didn't start complaining about the Beast right away. She and Roxane went into the kitchen to fix themselves snacks. Roxane opened the refrigerator. "Olives! Yum!" she exclaimed. Her older sisters made disgusted noises. Except for Heinrich, she was the only one in the family who really liked them.

Alicia hunted up Lise instead of getting a snack. She sat down on the bed beside her and said, "We talked about the Fuhrer 's speech in class today."

"Did you?" Lise's mind was still more on socks and underwear than the classroom.

"We sure did." Alicia nodded solemnly. "Did he really say the Reich did things that were wrong, things that were against the law?"

"I think he did," Lise answered. "I can't say for certain, though. I didn't hear the speech."

"Well, suppose he did." Alicia waited till Lise nodded to show she was supposing. Her oldest daughter looked out the bedroom door to make sure Francesca and Roxane couldn't hear, then went on in a low voice, "Does that mean he thinks the Reich was wrong about what it did to Jews?"

"I don't know," Lise said. "What people did to Jews wasn't against the law, though, because they made laws ahead of time that said they could do those things."

"But it was wrong," Alicia said fiercely.

"Oh, yes. It was wrong. I think so just as much as you do. But-" Lise broke off and put both hands on Alicia's shoulders. "The people who run things probably don't think it was wrong. You have to remember that. And even if they say they do think it was wrong, we can't just come out and go, 'Oh, yes, here we are. Now we can get on with our lives again.'"

"Why not?" Plainly, Alicia wanted to do exactly that.

"Because it might be a trap. They might be trying to lure us out so they can get rid of us once and for all. The Nazis have been killing us for almost eighty years. Why should they stop now?"

Alicia bit her lip. She was, after all, only eleven years old. "Would they do such a thing?" she whispered.

"Would they? I don't know," Lise answered. "Could they? You tell me, sweetheart. What do they teach you about Jews in school?"

"Nasty things." Alicia made a face. "Horrible things. You know that."

"Well, yes, I do," Lise said. "I wanted to make sure you did."

"Oh." Alicia thought that over, then nodded. "I'm going to go get a snack before sisters eat everything good in the house." She ran out of the bedroom and started gabbing with Francesca and Roxane. She didn't even tease Roxane about the olives. To her, they weren't part of everything good in the house, and Roxane was welcome to them.

Lise went back to stacking socks and underwear into neat piles, one for each person in the family. She wished there were a laundry fairy to do the job for her, but no such luck. If she didn't do it, nobody would. Heinrich, at least, put away his own clean clothes without being told. The girls…Lise wished for a laundry fairy again.

She also wished she could share Alicia's optimism. She wanted to, maybe more than anything else in all the world. She hated living in hiding, hated fearing a knock on the door that could mean the end not just for her but for everybody she loved. Feeling she carried the weight of the world hadn't been easy when she was a child, and hadn't got any easier now that she'd grown up.

But I do,she thought miserably.We all do, the handful of us who are left. If we let go, if we give up-or if, God forbid, we get caught-a world goes with us.

"Why have you got yipes stripes, Mommy?" There stood Roxane in the doorway, holding an olive impaled on a toothpick.

"Have I?" Lise was sure she did. She tried to make the frown lines leave her forehead. "There. Is that better?"

"A little," Roxane said dubiously.

"How about this?" Lise stuck out her tongue and crossed her eyes.

Roxane giggled. That suggested some improvement. But then the youngest Gimpel girl said, "You didn't tell me why you had them in the first place." Her stubborn streak was as wide as she was. It would probably help make her a good Jew when she got old enough to find out she was one. In the meantime…In the meantime, it made her hard to distract.

"Grown-up stuff," Lise answered. "Nothing for you to worry about."Not yet. Not for another few years. And when you do find out, you'll be one more who knows-and one more who can give us away. Letting children know what they were was the hardest part of this secret life. Considering the rest of it, that was no small statement.

Roxane made a face of her own. "What good is being a grownup, if you have to have yipes stripes so much?" She darted away without waiting for an answer.