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"What good is being a grownup?" Lise echoed. She thought of the obvious things, the things that appealed to a child-going to bed as late as you wanted to, being able to drive, having all the money you needed, getting out of school forever, not having anybody standing over you waiting to yell "No!" all the time. Then she thought about all the worries that accumulated when you grew up. When you had a family, you worried plenty even if you weren't a Jew. If you were…"What goodis being a grownup?" Lise said again. It was, when you got right down to it, a damned good question.
In the Stahnsdorf train station, Heinrich Gimpel remarked, "Never know what's in the paper these days."
"God knows that's true," Willi Dorsch agreed. "Sometimes you wonder if you want to find out, too."
They threw fifteen pfe
The train got there almost as soon as they walked out on the platform. They sat down side by side and started going through the newspaper. Some of the fuss over Heinz Buckliger's speech to the pharmacists was starting to die down. Nobody'd said much in public except Rolf Stolle, the Gauleiter of Berlin, and he'd been all for it. He'd also thundered fearsome warnings about all the Bonzen who hated the very idea of reform. Heinrich thought Stolle at least as much a clown as a politician-with friends like him, who needed enemies? Clown or not, though, he probably hadn't been wrong about the Bonzen.
"Nothing too much today, doesn't look like," Willi said.
"No, I don't see anything very exciting, either." Heinrich tried not to sound too disappointed. People might wonder why he was. If the thaw ended-and he knew too well it could, knew too well it was probably going to-someone might remember. Landing in trouble for being on the wrong side of a political squabble would be just as bad for him (though perhaps not for everyone around him) as landing in trouble for being a Jew. He went on working his way through the Volkischer Beobachter. When he got to page eight, he stopped. "Hello! What's this?"
"What's what?" Willi hadn't got there yet.
"Two men arrested in Copenhagen for carrying an anti-German ba
"Damn fools," Willi said. "Hell, the Danes have it, or close enough. Those idiots don't know when they're well off. They ought to go to Poland or Serbia for a while. That'd teach 'em."
"It sure would." Heinrich hoped that sounded like agreement. The Danes were better off than the Poles or the Serbs or what was left of the Russians and Ukrainians. Like Dutchmen, Norwegians, and Englishmen, Danes got credit for being Aryans. They weren't Slavic Untermenschen. They'd always been pretty peaceful-or at least resigned-under German occupation, too.
But they plainly still remembered they'd been free for hundreds of years before 1940. Heinrich wondered if…Before he could even finish the thought, Willi beat him to it: "They probably listened to the Fuhrer 's speech the other day and figured anything goes from here on out."
"I wouldn't be surprised," Heinrich said. If he had finished the thought, he would have kept quiet about it. Willi, confident about who and what he was, didn't censor himself so severely.
He didn't waste much sympathy on the Danes, either. "They're lucky theydid get arrested, not shot down on the spot. We're softer than we were in Hitler's day. I've told you that before." Then, shifting gears, he went on, "You want to have lunch today?"
"Can't," Heinrich answered. "Our goddaughter's birthday is three days from now, and I've got to find her a present." A
"I'm not eighteen, for God's sake," Willi said. "I can't do it every day any more. And I've got to save some for Erika. Otherwise, she'd be even crankier than she is."
"Generous of you," Heinrich murmured. He'd intended that for sarcasm. It didn't quite come out that way. Willi had his own inimitable style, but at least part of his heart seemed to be in the right place.
He gri
When lunchtime came, Heinrich hopped a cab up to the Kurfurstendamm. He knew-he had detailed instructions from Lise-what he was supposed to get for A
At least people weren't fighting hand to hand these days, the way they had been when the dolls first came out. Heinrich had asked Lise if she was sure he wasn't getting something passe for A
Heinrich did wonder who made clothes for the swarms of Vickis. They weren't that expensive, and they didn't come from the Empire of Japan with its ocean of cheap labor. Did the doll manufacturer know an official who could pull seamstresses out of a prison camp?-or maybe not pull them out of a camp, but make them work inside? They'd sew as if their lives depended on it. Their lives would, too.
He grimaced. You could ask that kind of question about a lot of things you saw every day. Sometimes-usually-not knowing was better. He shook his head. That wasn't right. You needed to know. Heinz Buckliger was dead on target there. But ignorance could be easier for your peace of mind.
Ducking into Ulbricht's toy store banished such gloomy reflections. If you couldn't be happy in Ulbricht's, you were probably dead. Dolls, stuffed animals, brightly colored children's books, football and basketball and archery sets, toy soldiers and sailors and panzers and U-boats and fighter planes (Landser Sepp was the counterpart of Vicki for boys, and came with enough materiel to conquer Belgium), all waited for your money. Loud, cheerful music made you want to smile-and to part with your Reichsmarks.
There. He'd been told to get that one: a New Orleans Vicki, dressed in lace and satin and looking as if she'd just stepped out of Gone with the Wind. (That had been one of Hitler's favorite movies. It still got rereleased every few years. Susa
A woman's hand closed on it at the same time as his.
A
"For my goddaughter," Heinrich said. "Is there another one like it in the bin?"
"Let's see." Erika had to dig a little, but she found one. She handed it to him. "Here."
"Oh, good," he said. "Now we won't have to go to court, the way those two women did a few months ago when the craze was at its craziest. The judge should have played Solomon and cut the doll in half, if you ask me."