When the panel ended, the audience applauded politely. Buckingham turned to Susanna. "I thought that went off rather well," he said. His breath was formidable, no doubt because of those mottled teeth.
"Not bad." Susanna still thought his interpretation naive, but she wasn't inclined to argue-not at close range, anyhow. A paper in a learned journal would offer her a more impersonal way to stick a knife in his scholarship, and would also give her something she could show her department chairman.
"Would you care to discuss things further over a drink?" he asked. The way he smiled said scholarship wasn't the only thing on his mind.
I don't want to be within three meters of you, let alone closer. The retort hovered on the tip of Susanna's tongue. Not without regret, she let it die there. She said, "Not now, thanks. I have no more discussions until the evening session, and nothing on the program really draws me, so I am going to go across the street. The British Union of Fascists' meeting has turned out to be fascinating, don't you think?"
"Fascinating. Indeed." Professor Buckingham departed with marked haste. At first Susanna thought that meant he had no use for fascists, which got him a point in her book despite his bad breath. Then she realized another explanation was more likely. To him, she was a German, nothing else. She knew otherwise, but he didn't. And what did a German interested in the congress of the British Union of Fascists add up to? Someone with connections to a security bureau.
Under different circumstances, that might have been funny. As things were…Susanna sighed. Buckingham would talk-what else did academics do? If the other professors at the Medieval English
Association didn't start sidling away from her, it would be a miracle, and God was depressingly stingy with miracles these days.
She went across the street to the Crown Hotel anyhow. She'd never been able to resist political drama. This was the genuine article-what Americans called, for no reason she could fathom,the real Mc Coy. On the surface, everything seemed exactly as it should have. Union Jacks and BUF flags with lightning bolts that resembled the SS runes flew at half-staff in commemoration of Kurt Haldweim. English and Scottish fascists had praised the departed Fuhrer to the skies. They'd also spent at least as much time patting one another on the back as the scholars of the MEA had done.
That was the surface. Underneath, and sometimes not so far underneath, things were different. Susanna hadn't even got into the Crown when a parade came up the street toward her. Nothing out of the ordinary there; British fascists were no less enamored of public display than their German counterparts.
But these tough-looking men in uniforms and shiny jackboots carried signs that said: REMEMBER THE FIRST EDITION! The mere idea was enough to make Susanna want to hug herself with glee. Political action mixed with textual analysis? The earnest academics at the Medieval English Association didn't know what they were missing.
To make sure their British colleagues and, more to the point, the National Socialists in Germanydid remember, other paraders carried banners that stretched from one side of the street to the other, with the relevant passages spelled out in English andauf Deutsch. The English read: IN LITTLE AS WELL AS BIG THINGS,THE MOVEMENT ADVOCATES THE PRINCIPLE OF A GERMANIC DEMOCRACY: THE LEADER IS ELECTED,BUT THEN ENJOYS UNCONDITIONAL AUTHORITY. Other banners declared,THE FIRST CHAIRMAN OF A LOCAL GROUP IS ELECTED,BUT THEN HE IS THE RESPONSIBLE LEADER OF THE LOCAL GROUP AND THE FIRST PRINCIPLE APPLIES TO THE NEXT HIGHER ORGANIZATION — THE LEADER IS ALWAYS ELECTEDand AND FINALLY,THE SAME APPLIES TO THE LEADERSHIP OF THE WHOLE PARTY.THE CHAIRMAN IS ELECTED,BUT HE IS THE EXCLUSIVE LEADER OF THE MOVEMENT. And, at the very tail of the procession, another big banner proclaimed, MEMBERS OF THE MOVEMENT ARE FREE TO CALL HIM TO ACCOUNT BEFORE THE FORUM OF A NEW ELECTION,TO DIVEST HIM OF HIS OFFICE IN SO FAR AS HE HAS INFRINGED ON THE PRINCIPLES OF THE MOVEMENT OR SERVED ITS INTERESTS BADLY.
British policemen in their blue uniforms and tall helmets stood on the sidewalk watching the fascists' procession. They didn't seem to know what to make of it. Neither did the German occupation authorities. Ifthey had decided to come out and quash it, they would have used panzers and rocket-firing fighter jets. They'd done that more than a few times in the earlier years of the occupation, though not so often lately.
As for Susanna, she marveled that the British Union of Fascists, or at least one wing of the party, had managed to find a way to call for democracy without immediately getting lined up in front of a wall and shot. How could you give a man a cigarette and a blindfold for quoting Adolf Hitler, whose words were close to Holy Writ all through the Germanic Empire? You couldn't possibly.
Susanna rapidly discovered the marchers represented one wing of the BUF, not the entire organization. More men in uniform swarmed out of a side street and attacked the men in the parade with clubs and brass knuckles. The marchers fought back with similar weapons. Other fascists rushed out of the Crown to join in the melee, on whose side Susanna wasn't sure. She had all she could do to keep from getting bowled over.
Whistles shrilling, the British bobbies waded into the fray. They flailed away with their truncheons, whacking brawlers on both sides with fine impartiality. "Break it up!" they bawled. "Break it up, you bloody sods!" But nobody on either side seemed to want to break it up.
Even as the men who extolled the first edition fought, they raised a chant in English: "The whole world is watching! The whole world is watching!"
Odd sort of battle cry,Susanna thought. But maybe it wasn't. Sure as the devil, televisor cameras from the BBC and the German RRG were filming the clash. The marchers must have known the cameras would be there; otherwise, they wouldn't have quoted from Mein Kampf in both English and German.
Police cars raced up, sirens screeching. The men inside them wore pig-snouted gas masks. They shot tear-gas canisters into the riot. Where nothing else had worked, that did. Fascists for and against the first edition fled.
So did Susanna, not quite soon enough. Her eyes were streaming and her stomach twisting with nausea when she made it back into the lobby of the Silver Eagle. The academics in there were fleeing, too, for fresh wisps of gas came in every time the doors opened.
Susanna repaired to the bar, which seemed a popular port in the storm. Of course, the bar was a popular port in the storm at every academic conference she'd ever attended. She took off her glasses and dabbed at her eyes with a tissue. It didn't help much. The single-malt Scotch she ordered didn't help her eyes much, either, but it made the rest of her feel better.
"Dear God in heaven," said a British professor who also staggered in weeping like a fountain, "whatis going on out there?"
Susanna eyed him-blurrily. "Literary criticism," she said.
"Achtung! Form your lines!" Herr Kessler shouted as the schoolchildren got off the bus to one side of the Great Hall. He sounded more like a Wehrmacht drill sergeant than a teacher-but then, that was true a lot of the time. "Take your partner's hand! Hold your flag in your free hand! Now-forward to the end of the queue!"
Alicia Gimpel took Emma Handrick's hand. The alphabet made them line partners, as it made them sit close together. Alicia wished she were paired with someone else. Emma had cold, sweaty palms. Nothing Alicia could do about it. She imagined complaining to Herr Kessler. Imagining the paddling she would get for trying it immediately squelched the idea.
The swastika flag she held in her left hand was bordered in black, a token of mourning for the departed Fuhrer. Kurt Haldweim lay in state under the monstrous dome of the Great Hall. Along with other children from all over Berlin-from all over Germany-Alicia and her school-mates would file past his body and then line the parade route as his funeral procession went past.
"This way!" Herr Kessler shouted.
"No-over here," a uniformed attendant said, pointing in the opposite direction. "Your group is to take its place behind those bigger children." Fuming, his face beet red, the teacher led them to the right place.
"He doesn't know everything," Emma whispered, and smiled maliciously. For t
hat, Alicia forgave her her sweaty palm.
The line moved forward with what the world had learned to call Germanic efficiency. Not even Herr Kessler could find anything to complain about there. Within twenty minutes, Alicia and her classmates had entered the Great Hall. The space under that unbelievable dome seemed even vaster within than without. The interior appointments had a simple grandeur to them. A recess clad in gold mosaic opposite the entrance broke a circle of a hundred marble columns, each twenty-five meters tall. In front of the recess, on a marble pedestal fourteen meters high, stood a German eagle with a swastika in its claws. And in front of the pedestal lay the mortal remains of Kurt Haldweim.
Floral decorations and shrubbery surrounded the casket of gilded bronze in which the Fuhrer lay in state. SS guards stood on either side of the coffin, displaying the many decorations Haldweim had won in his long, illustrious career as a soldier and National Socialists administrator. Yet try as they would, the wizards of ceremony who had staged this scene could not overcome one basic difficulty: the Great Hall altogether dwarfed the pale, still remains of the hawk-faced man who had ruled the Germanic Empire for a quarter of a century.
Haldweim had been Fuhrer far longer than Alicia had been alive; to her, then, he was as one with the Pyramids of Egypt. But the Pyramids remained, and now he was gone. If anything, his last surroundings stressed how transitory any mere man was. To make any sort of show at all, he would have had to be the size of a Brachiosaurus. Alicia had always imagined the Fuhrer as being more than a man, but here she saw at first hand it wasn't so.
Young mourners went by in a steady stream, almost close enough to touch the nearest wreaths. With a ten-year-old's instinctive love of horror, Alicia wondered what would happen if anybody did. She supposed one of those SS men-each as still now as if himself carved from stone-would suddenly spring to life and shoot the miscreant. Or maybe even that wouldn't be enough. Maybe they would drag him away to SS headquarters and take their time disposing of him.
Then she was past the display, past the coffin, past the wizened corpse inside, and walking quickly towards a door of simply human proportions that led out to Adolf Hitler Platz. The square was already filling with people either in uniform-military, Party, and SS-or in civilian mourning attire. "We won't be able to see," Emma whispered in dismay.
"Yes, we will," Alicia whispered back. "They wouldn't bring us all the way here and then hide us. Besides, they'll want people to see we're here." Televisor cameras on platforms stood out from the throng like islands in the sea. More cameras on the Great Hall, on the Fuhrer 's palace to the left, and on the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht building across the street gave broader views. The building where Alicia's father worked seemed like an old friend.
She proved right, too, which always made her feel good. Officials in particularly fancy uniforms shepherded the schoolchildren into reserved spaces right next to the route of the funeral procession, which was marked off by red-and-black tape imprinted with swastikas. There the officials arranged them roughly in order of height, shortest in front, so they could all be seen to best advantage.
"Told you so," Alicia whispered. Emma stuck out her tongue.Herr Kessler coughed and glared. Emma turned pale. He wouldn't whack her in public, not on this somber occasion, but he wouldn't forget, either. When the bus took them back to Stahnsdorf…
"I have to go to the bathroom!" exclaimed a little redheaded boy who couldn't have been much older than Roxane. One of the officials took him by the hand, led him to a portable toilet, and then brought him back. Alicia giggled-but first she made sure Herr Kessler was looking the other way.
Buses and commuter trains brought more and more mourners into the Adolf Hitler Platz, until the entire immense square was full. Most of the people there wouldn't be able to see much, although the televisor screen mounted on the front of the Fuhrer 's palace showed them what they were missing. A lot of them had doubtless been ordered to come, as Alicia had, but what about the others? Did they want to be a part of history, if only a tiny part?
Alicia looked down at the German flag with the mourning border in her hand. Suddenly she wondered whyshe was supposed to be sorry Kurt Haldweim had died. He'd been Fuhrer of the Germanic Empire, yes. If she'd been all German, that would have made reason enough. A few weeks earlier, she would have thought it did. Now…Now she knew what the Germans had done toher folk.
She still felt like a German. She also felt like a Jew-and wouldn't a Jew be glad, not sorry, the German Fuhrer was dead? Not for the first time lately, she felt very confused.
Funereal music poured from speakers mounted at the edge of the square. "Everyone keep quiet and look sad,"Herr Kessler hissed.
Next to Alicia, Emma had a good reason for frowning. She just needed to think about what would happen to her when she got back to school. Alicia had to work hard to make the corners of her mouth turn down. She finally managed it the way she had in the game with her sisters: by pretending she was in a play and had to act a part.
Pallbearers wearing Army field-gray,Luftwaffe light blue, Navy dark blue, SS black, and National Socialist brown bore Kurt Haldweim's coffin out of the Great Hall and set it on a wheeled bier drawn by eight black horses that had pulled up in front of the entrance. Every one of the men was blond and handsome and close to two meters tall-and every one of them was made to seem taller still by a high-crowned cap. The pallbearers looked magnificent in closeup shots on the televisor screen at the front of the Fuhrer 's palace. Seen live, they might have been ants in front of the inhuman, overwhelming immensity of the Great Hall.
The bier set out across the Adolf Hitler Platz towards Alicia at a slow walk. It was draped in black velvet, against which the red in the German national flag stood out like blood. The pallbearers goose-stepped behind the bier. Their somber faces might have been stamped from the same mold.
Behind them came visiting heads of state, some in uniform, others wearing dark civilian garb. German military and Party functionaries followed, all in their distinctive costumes. Next came foreign ambassadors, and after them elite units from the military and Waffen — SS, from the National Socialist Party hierarchy, and from the Hitler Jugend.
When the bier was almost directly in front of Alicia, one of the horses did what horses do. Half the sorrowful schoolchildren suddenly snorted and squealed. Half the teachers hastily hissed in horror. The goose-stepping pallbearers couldn't alter their paces, not without looking bad. One of them stepped in it. He marched on past, his expression unchanged no matter what clung to the sole of his gleaming boot.
Most of the heads of states and other dignitaries evaded the unfortunate substance. By the time the soldiers and fliers and sailors and SS men and brownshirts and Hitler Youths had gone by, though, it was quite thoroughly trodden into the concrete of the square.
By then, the teachers had stopped hissing. Once Haldweim's coffin had passed, the cameras turned away from the schoolchildren. They'd served their purpose.Herr Kessler and another teacher started talking in low voices. "I wonder when we'll have a new Fuhrer, " the other man said.
"I hope it's soon," Alicia's teacher answered. "It wasn't like this when Himmler died. I remember that. Back then, everybody knew we'd stay on a steady course. Nowadays?" He shook his head. Disapproval radiated from him.
"They'll make a good choice, whoever it finally is," the other teacher said.
Herr Kessler seemed to realize he might have gone too far. "Oh, I'm sure they will," he said quickly. You never could tell who might be listening. Alicia had learned that long before she found out she was a Jew.
I could report him,she thought. The news always ran stories about heroic children who turned in evildoers they'd discovered-sometimes even their own parents. Getting rid of her bad-tempered teacher was tempting, too.
But the idea died before it was fully formed, for Alicia's next thought was,If I denounce him, they'll probably investigate me, too. She shook her head in horror of her own. How did the handful of Jews at the heart of the Germanic
Empire survive? By never drawing any special notice to themselves. Perhaps someone else would report Herr Kessler, but she wouldn't. She couldn't. She didn't dare.
The last unit of brownshirts left the Adolf Hitler Platz. It began to empty, and did so almost as quickly and efficiently as it had filled. People streamed away to the buses and trains that had brought them to the square. The lines were long, but they were orderly, and they moved fast. There was next to no pushing and shoving and shouting, as Alicia's schoolbooks said there was in less enlightened parts of the world.
Again, she wondered,Are my books telling the truth? If they lied about Jews-and she had to believe they did-what else did they lie about? Had there ever been a Roman Emperor named Augustus? Was Mt. Everest really the tallest mountain in the world? Had Horst Wessel been a hero and a martyr? Were two and two truly four?
She muttered in annoyance. She'd checked her arithmetic lessons before, and they held good. But how could she test what the books said about Mt. Everest, which was far away and hard to get to, or about Horst Wessel and Augustus, who'd lived in the altogether irretrievable past? She saw no simple way.
Maybe Daddy knows,she thought as she scrambled aboard her school bus. Her father knew all sorts of strange things, many of them useless but most of them interesting or entertaining. If he didn't know these, she couldn't think of anyone who would.
Herr Kessler got on the bus. He counted the students to make sure nobody had been left behind, then grunted in satisfaction. "Everyone present and accounted for," he told the driver before returning his attention to the class. "Out of respect for the memory of our beloved Fuhrer, you will be silent-completely silent-on the return journey to Stahnsdorf. If you are not silent, you will be very, very sorry. Do you understand me?" He sounded as if he looked forward to making someone, or several someones, very, very sorry.
Alicia didn't expect anyone to respond to what was obviously a rhetorical question, but a boy held up his hand and said, "Herr Kessler!"
In The Presence of mine Enemies Page 10
