In The Presence Of My Enemies

Erika laughed at him. "You sound like a script from the Propaganda Ministry-except I happen to know that every Propaganda Minister from Goebbels on has screwed around on his wife whenever he got the chance. So where does that leave you?"

"Say whatever you want," he answered. "I don't think this is a good idea."

"No? Part of you does." Erika wasn't looking at his face.

Heinrich intended to have a good long talk with that part, too. The trouble was, it talked back. Unhappily, he said, "Find some other way to get even with Willi. Find some way to make him happy, if you can, and for him to make you happy, too. I know the two of you used to be."

Her eyes flashed. "You don't know as much as you think you do."

"Who ever does, when it's somebody else's marriage?" Heinrich said reasonably-he was reasonable most of the time, even when being reasonable wasn't. "But that's how it looked from the outside."

"I don't care how it looked," Erika said. "And I didn't ask you to come over here to tell you stories about my miserable marriage."

"No, you asked me to come over here so you could blow holes in it-and in mine," Heinrich said.

"Mine's already got holes in it," Erika said. Heinrich waited to see if she'd add anything about his. She didn't. Instead, she went on, "I asked you to come over so I could forget about mine for a little while."

She wouldn't forget hers. Heinrich was blind to many things that went on around him, but not to that. If this went forward, Willi would be in the back of her mind-or more likely the front of her mind-every second. She'd be gloating and laughing at him with every kiss, with every caress. Didn't she see as much herself?

He thought about asking her. While he thought, Erika lost patience. "Heinrich," she said in a voice more imperious than seductive, "are you going to make love to me or not?"

He had to fight the giggles. They wouldn't do just now. What she reminded him of was a Hitler Jugend physical-training instructor who'd always bawled out, "Well, are you going to push yourselves or not?"

"Well?" she said when he didn't answer right away. He bit down hard on the inside of his cheek. The giggles were very close.

He had to say something. What came out was, "I'm sorry, Erika."

"Sorry?" The heat that might have been passion turned to fury. One way or another, itwould come out. "You think you're sorry now?I'll make you sorry, God damn you! Get out of here!" She grabbed the empty champagne flute and threw it at him. He ducked. It smashed against the wall behind him. He beat a hasty retreat as she reached for the full one. That got him in the seat of the pants. It didn't break till it hit the floor.

He had his greatcoat and cap on (the cap askew) and was out the door before he realized he had a wet spot back there. He shrugged. The coat would cover it till he got back to the office, and then he could sit on it till it dried. All things considered, he would rather have eaten lunch.

XI

LISE GIMPEL KNEW SOMETHING WAS WRONG WHEN HEINRICH poured himself a healthy slug of schnapps as soon as he got home from the office. He didn't do that on days when things went well. Then he'd have a bottle of beer, if he had anything at all. But when she asked him what the trouble was, he jumped as if she'd poked him with a pin. "Nothing," he said quickly: much too quickly.

She paused, wondering where to go from there-wondering whether to go anywhere from there. But what he'd said and the way he'd said it were too blatant to ignore. She picked her words with care: "You don't lie to me much. When you do, you aren't very good at it."

"Oh," he said, and then,"Scheisse." He knocked back the schnapps at a gulp. Lise blinked. That wasn't his style at all. As if to prove it, he coughed several times. His cheeks turned pink. Embarrassment or schnapps? Schnapps, Lise judged. Heinrich coughed again, this time as if he'd started to say something and swallowed it at the last moment.

"Well, are you going to tell me about it or not?" Lise asked.

For some reason, that set her husband off again, in a different way. If his laugh wasn't hysterical, it came close. Finally, he said, "I suppose I'd better. This is all by way of explaining how I managed to get a champagne stain on my ass this afternoon."

Now it was Lise's turn to say, "Oh." She didn't know what she'd been looking for. Whatever it was, that wasn't it. "I'm listening," she told him, which seemed safe.

He talked. It took about ten minutes and another drink, this one gulped down as fast as the first. Lise had seen and heard for herself some of what Heinrich was talking about. At the time, she hadn't realized it applied to him in particular; she'd thought Erika was venting her spleen at the world at large. "…and that's that," Heinrich finished. "That, as a matter of fact, is pretty definitely that. I don't think there will be any more bridge games with the Dorsches after this."

Bridge, just then, wasn't the first thing on Lise's mind. "How do you feel about all this?" she asked.

"Glad it's over." Heinrich reached for the schnapps bottle again.

That he did made Lise sure he wasn't saying everything on his mind. "Pour some for me, too," she told him. "If you've earned three, I think I'm entitled to one." After a sip, she went on, "You kept quiet about this for months."

"I kept hoping everything would just…settle down," Heinrich said.

"Is that what you were hoping for?" Lise said. Erika Dorsch made formidable competition. Those cool Aryan good looks, and the suggestion of raw heat underneath…Lise took another swallow of schnapps, larger than the first. Formidable indeed.

"If I'd hoped for the other, it would have been easy enough to get."

"Why didn't you?" she asked. "It might have been the easiest way out of the trouble."

Heinrich shook his head. "My life is complicated enough. It has to be, because of what I am-what we are. If you think I want any more complications on top of that, you're crazy. And besides, I love you."

She would have liked it better if he'd put those in the other order. Being who and what she was herself, though, she understood why he hadn't. She prodded a little, anyhow: "And you were enjoying yourself, weren't you, with a, a beautiful woman"-there, she'd said it-"falling all over you?"

"I might have enjoyed it a hell of a lot more if I hadn't been scared to death all the damn time," he said. "This is mylife we're talking about, mine and lots of other people's. I hope I'm not stupid enough to put that on the line for a roll in the hay. If-" He drank instead of finishing.

"If what?" Lise asked. Her husband didn't answer. He peered out the kitchen window, resolutely pretending he hadn't heard. Lise almost repeated the question. But she could make a good guess at what he'd swallowed. It would have been something like,If I weren't a Jew, or if she were…

She supposed she could get angry at him for even that much. What was the point, though? Things were the way they were. There was no world where Heinrich was agoy or Erika a Jew.A good thing, too, Lise thought, and finished her schnapps with a gulp. She poured the glass full again.

"We're both going to go to sleep in the middle of supper," Heinrich said.

"That's all right. That's the least of my worries right now," Lise answered. "You turned her down. She's going to be angry-you said so yourself. What can she do to you? What can she do to us?"

"I thought about that," Heinrich said. "I can't see anything. Can you? She's not going to pour gasoline on the house and set it on fire, or anything like that."

"I suppose not," Lise admitted. She didn't stop worrying, though. How could any Jew in her right mind stop worrying? If you weren't worrying, you were likely to miss something that might kill you.