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Roxane wasn't one to let anybody, even an enormous officer in an intimidating uniform, get the better of her. She tilted her head back so she could look him in the eye and said, "What question?" Alicia was suddenly, horribly, afraid she already knew.
And sure enough, the officer said the worst thing in the world: "The question of whether your father, Heinrich Gimpel, is a Jew, and of whether the three of you are first-degree Mischlingen, subject to the same penalties as full-blooded Jews."Subject to being shot or gassed or anything else we feel like doing to you, he meant.
A terrified scream bubbled up in Alicia's throat. But before she could let it out and give everything away, Francesca screamed first, and her shriek was pure fury: "That's a lie!"She went on, just about as loud, "We're no damned, stinking, big-nosed, big-lipped, lying, cheating, germy Jews! And neither is Daddy! And don't you say he is, either!" She kicked the Security Police officer in the shin.
"Teufelsdreck!"he shouted. He swung back his hand as if to slap Francesca. Roxane grabbed it and bit him. He roared in pain. "You idiots!" he yelled at his men. "Seize them!" He had to yell, because Roxane let go of him and started screeching it was all a lie, too.
That told Alicia what she had to do. She added her voice to the clamor, and did her best to fight and to get away before one of the big men grabbed her. "Christ, they sure don't act like a bunch of kikes," the man said, panting with the effort of hanging on to her.
Francesca and Roxane, of course, were convinced they were no such thing. Alicia realized she had to act as if she were, too. It was the only chance she and her sisters had…if they had any chance at all.
Frau Fasold finally did emerge from her office. She disapprovingly surveyed the chaos in the outer room. Shaking her head, she fixed the officer with the gray mustache with an icy blue glare. "Really,mein Herr, " she said in a voice just as icy. "Is this disorder altogether necessary?"
Her ma
"These are children-and fine children, too, I might add,"Frau Fasold said. Even in Alicia's terror, that astonished her. The principal never had a good word for anybody.Frau Fasold went on, "Why didn't you bring panzers and helicopters and flamethrowers, too? Then you could have been safe." She all but spat her contempt in the blackshirt's face.
He turned red. "We have our orders, ma'am," he said stonily. "We have to carry them out."
"Orders for murdering children?"Frau Fasold said. "Why?"
The Security Police officer turned redder. "It is our duty."
"God help you, in that case," the principal told him.
He turned his back on her, the way a petulant second-grader might have. Unlike a petulant second-grader, he didn't get a swat for being rude. Alicia wished he would have. He deserved one. But nobody was paying any attention to what she wished. The officer with the mustache nodded to his men. "Take them away."
They had their orders. They carried them out. It was their duty.
Lise Gimpel had just got back from the drugstore when the telephone rang. She muttered to herself. She'd been about to make a fresh pot of coffee. The ringing phone didn't magically shut up, the way she wished it would. She went over and picked it up."Bitte?"
The first thing she heard was a car horn blaring. Was somebody playing a practical joke? Then, as traffic noises continued, she realized the call was from a pay phone on a busy street. "Lise, is that you?" a man asked.
"Ja. Willi?" she answered doubtfully.
"Dammit, I wish you hadn't said my name." Yes, that was Willi. But why was he calling from a pay phone and not from his desk? No sooner had the question formed in her mind than she found out, for he went on, "Listen, they've just arrested Heinrich for-for something completely ridiculous. I've got to go. 'Bye." He slammed the phone down in its cradle. The line went dead.
As if moving in a dream, Lise hung up, too. But it wasn't a dream. It was a nightmare, the worst nightmare she could have.Something completely ridiculous could mean only one thing, and it wasn't ridiculous, not to her. Like any Jew in Berlin, she'd rehearsed this disaster in her mind, hoping and hoping she would never have to use the plans she'd made. So much for that hope. She might not have long. They might be coming for her right now.
She reached for the telephone. It rang again before she could pick it up. She almost screamed. "Bitte?" she snapped. If it was some idiot salesman trying to get her to buy carpets…
"Frau Gimpel?" A woman's voice this, not a familiar one.
"Yes. What is it, please?"
"Frau Gimpel, this in Ingeborg Fasold, the principal at your daughters' school. I don't know how to tell you this, but…the Security Police have taken your daughters. They accuse them of being-forgive me for saying this-they accuse them of being part Jew… Are you there,Frau Gimpel?"
"I'm here." In her own ears, Lise's voice sounded far away, eerily calm. "They've arrested my husband, too. It's all a lie, a mistake, of course." She had to say that. She remembered she had to say that. Somebody might be-probably was-listening.
"Of course." To her amazement,Frau Fasold sounded as if she meant it. She added, "I think it's a shame and a disgrace that they should take children, no matter what. How can a child have done anything bad to anyone? Even if the childwere a Mischling, how could it? Nonsense. Pure Quatsch. Good luck to you."
"Thank you," Lise said in that same strange, calm voice. Her mind was racing a million kilometers a second.Mischlingen. They thought the girls were Mischlingen. She was pretty sure they'd arrested Heinrich as a Jew. That should mean they still believed she was an Aryan herself. If they kept on believing that, it might give her the chance to save everyone.
Or it might not help at all. She couldn't tell till she tried.
"If there's anything I can do,Frau Gimpel, please don't hesitate to ask,"Frau Fasold said.
She really did sound as if she meant that. Lise's eyes filled with tears. "Danke," she whispered. "This is a false accusation. We will beat it."
"I hope so," the principal said. "Again, good luck." She hung up.
So did Lise. Maybe people were more decent than she'd ever dared dream. Willi,Frau Fasold…Neither had had to say a word. Both had taken a chance in picking up the phone. But they'd done it.
Lise had her own ideas about how and why Heinrich had been arrested. But finding out if she was right would have to wait. It didn't make any difference, not when she had no time to lose. The blackshirts were liable to come here next, to see what evidence they could dig up against her husband. Or they might not worry about evidence, and simply act. If they did that, Heinrich and the girls were lost.
So they won't do that. You have to think they won't. And if they come looking for evidence, they'd better not find any. There wasn't much to find: nothing printed in Hebrew, no Sabbath candlesticks, nothing like that. She had pork ribs in the freezer right now.
But there were those pictures, the ones that had come down from Heinrich's father. Lise had never looked at them, but she knew what they were. They recorded the murder of a people, first on this side of the Atlantic and then, a generation later, on the other. They would have been illegal any time. Now they were worse than illegal-they were incriminating. Heinrich had kept them to show the girls if the time ever came, to remind them what the Nazis did to Jews who revealed themselves.
Well, the girls wouldn't need that kind of reminder any more. Now they had a better one.