Alicia didn't expect much to happen on the first day of the new school year, and she proved right.Herr Peukert talked a little about what he expected them to learn in the upcoming term. "Ask questions," he urged them. "Things are changing. What we used to think we were sure of isn't always so clear any more. Some people think this is exciting. It frightens others. However you feel, though, it won't go away any time soon. You'd better get used to it."
He passed out arithmetic books, grammar books, books of stories, and geography books to the students. Alicia filled out a white card and a blue card for each textbook, giving her name, her teacher's name, the title of the book, and the condition of the copy she had. The cards warned her that her parents would have to pay if she damaged the book.
"Question,Herr Peukert!" Trudi Krebs raised her hand.
"Go ahead, Trudi," the teacher said. Alicia nodded, impressed in spite of herself. One way students judged teachers was by how fast they learned the names of the children in their class. Peukert was doing well.
"Sir, where are our history books?" Trudi asked.
That flabbergasted Alicia. She'd been so busy filling out cards and sneaking glances at the books she had got, she hadn't noticed one was missing. She made a face-not quite what her parents annoyed her by calling her Angry Face, but close. She didn't like missing things, not one bit.
Herr Peukert took the question in stride. "I told you, things are changing. They're writing a new history book, but it isn't done yet, so I can't give you that one. They've decided the old one isn't so good, so I can't give you that one, either. For a while, we'll make do without one."
How could things in history change? That flummoxed Alicia all over again. Either they'd happened or not, right? So it seemed to her. Or did the teacher mean the new history book would get rid of some lies in the old one? That would be good, if it happened. She didn't suppose she could ask him if the old book was full of lies. Too bad.
"Question,Herr Peukert!" That was Emma Handrick. Alicia wanted to poke a finger in her ear. Emma never asked questions. She didn't care enough about school-except when it came to avoiding the paddle-to bother with them. And then Alicia understood. Emma still didn't care about school. She cared about Herr Peukert.
"Go ahead," the teacher said. He didn't remember Emma's name right away, as he had with Trudi's.
Emma must have noticed. She was noticing everything about him. But she plowed ahead anyway: "Herr Peukert, is the Fuhrer always right?"
There was a question to make politically alert people sit up and take notice. Trudi Krebs stared at Emma. So did Wolfgang Priller, who liked the way things always had been much better than Trudi seemed to. Emma was oblivious. All she'd wanted was to make the teacher pay attention to her.
She'd done that.Herr Kessler would have said yes and gone about his business.Herr Peukert looked thoughtful. By Emma's soft sigh, that made him seem more intriguing. Slowly, he said, "When he speaks as the head of the Reich or the head of the Party, he tells us which way we need to go, and we need to follow him. When he's just talking as a man…well, any man can be wrong."
Even you?Alicia thought.Herr Kessler never would have admitted anything like that, not in a million years. Alicia had always liked school; she soaked up learning the way a sponge soaked up water. But the days ahead looked a lot more interesting than the ones with Herr Kessler that she'd just suffered through.
When they went out for lunch, Emma sighed and looked back over her shoulder toward the classroom. "Isn't he wonderful?" she said.
"He's…not bad," Alicia answered. The one was higher praise from her than the other was from Emma.
Susanna Weiss had always watched the evening news with interest. If she wanted to know what was going on in the Reich and the world (or what the powers that be wanted people to think was going on-not always the same thing, or even close to it), that was the place to start. Since Kurt Haldweim's death, she'd watched the news with fascination, which also wasn't the same thing.
"Good evening," Horst Witzleben said from her televisor screen. The set from which he spoke hadn't changed. Neither had his uniform. But something about him had. Susanna had needed a while to notice it, let alone figure out what it was. Before Heinz Buckliger became Fuhrer, Witzleben had talked to the people of the Greater German Reich. Now he talkedwith them. The difference was subtle, but she was convinced it was real.
She glanced down at the quiz she was grading. Most of her undergraduates wouldn't have recognized a subtlety if it walked up and bit them in the leg.Would I, when I was twenty? she wondered. Without false modesty, she thought she would have done better than they could. Of course, she was a Jew. Spotting subtleties helped keep her alive.
She scrawled Not necessarily! in red beside a sweeping generalization, then paused with her pen frozen a couple of centimeters above the page. How did she know none of her students was a Jew? She didn't. All she knew was, none of them came from a family she was acquainted with. Given how secretive Jews had to be, that didn't prove a thing. There could be another little Jewish community in Berlin, parallel to hers but unaware it existed.
If that went on for a few hundred years and then they got to come out into the light of day once more, would one group recognize the other as Jews? Or would their beliefs have changed so much in isolation that one saw the other as nothing but a pack of heretics?
Susanna laughed at herself. Talk about building castles in the air! She'd not only lost the thread of the student's argument, such as it was, she'd also lost track of what Horst was saying. Pretty impressive woolgathering, especially when what she'd wondered about was so completely unprovable-to say nothing of unlikely.
The picture cut away to an advertisement for Volkswagens, and she realized the whole lead story had gone in one ear and out the other. It had been…something to do with banditry in the Caucasus, she thought. She wouldn't have sworn to it. In one ear and out the other, all right.
Mercifully, the singing advertisement ended. Horst Witzleben's handsome, regular features returned to the screen. He said, "the Fuhrer announced today that a division of occupation troops will soon return to the Reich from the United States.Herr Buckliger said, 'The situation no longer calls for so large a force in a country nearly as Aryan as our own.'"
Susanna frowned. Not very long before, Buckliger had questioned whether Aryan blood really mattered as much as Party doctrine said it did. Now he was using it as an excuse to pull soldiers back from the USA. What did he really think about it? Did he have any consistent beliefs, or was he just grabbing whatever tools came to hand for a given job?
Before Susanna could decide what she thought about that, Witzleben went on, "In London, Charles Lynton, the recently chosen head of the British Union of Fascists, applauded the Fuhrer 's move."
The newsreader's face disappeared again, to be replaced by Charlie Lynton's boyish visage. In pretty good German, Lynton said, "This important step can only lead to better relations between the Reich and the states that make up the Germanic Empire. Recognizing the proud history of many of these states,Herr Buckliger begins to give them some say in their internal affairs, for which I applaud him."
Instead of returning to Witzleben, the camera cut away to an advertisement for Agfa cameras and film. That gave Susanna a moment to scratch her head and think. Was Buckliger really giving the USA any say in its internal affairs? She'd taken the troop transfer as a cost-cutting measure. There'd been a lot of those lately. But maybe Lynton had a point. With fewer Wehrmacht soldiers around to point guns at their heads, the Americans would be able to do more as they pleased, with less fear of having their actions forcibly overruled.
When the advertisement ended, Horst Witzleben came back on camera. "The leaders of France, Denmark, and Finland were also quick to express their unreserved approval for Herr Buckliger's order." Their photos came up on the screen, but they didn't get quoted, as Charlie Lynton had. Witzleben continued, "And the King of Italy and the Duce both termed the Fuhrer 's move a positive step
. In other news…"
That chorus of approval and applause didn't sound as if it had sprung from nowhere. It sounded as if Heinz Buckliger had carefully orchestrated it ahead of time. While Witzleben showed horrific footage of a train wreck in Hungary, Susanna wondered what that meant if it was true. It struck her that Buckliger was a politician of a sort that no previous Fuhrer, except maybe Hitler in his early days, had ever needed to be. She took that for a good sign.
But then she frowned again. Why did Buckliger need to be that kind of politician, where Hitler through most of his career, Himmler, and Haldweim hadn't? The only answer that occurred to her was that Buckliger was facing opposition of a sort his predecessors had never met. They'd ordered and been obeyed. He was ordering, too, but it also seemed he was cajoling and maneuvering in ways they hadn't had to.
Hitler invented Party doctrine, or most of it,Susanna thought.Himmler and Haldweim believed in it. They didn't rock the boat-though there were long stretches when Haldweim didn't do much of anything. Buckliger's different. Buckliger isrocking it, sure as hell. No wonder the old guard's unhappy. And no wonder he has to-what's the English phrase? — to wheel and deal, that's it. If he doesn't, he's in trouble.
Witzleben's next story was a tribute to the Gauleiter of Bavaria, a paunchy, jowly, white-haired man in a gorgeous uniform who was finally retiring after leading the Party organization in his state for more than forty years. And there was Heinz Buckliger, shaking his hand as he stepped down. "Herr Strauss' contributions cannot be overestimated," the Fuhrer said graciously. "He served the Reich and the Party long and well. New blood comes, though. Such is the way of nature."
Buckliger said no more than that. He let pictures do the rest of the work for him. There he stood, strong and vigorous, next to the doddering official who'd been in charge for so long.Which would you rather see over you? the image asked without words.
Doing something like that would never have occurred to gray, astringent Kurt Haldweim. For one thing, he'd been even older than Strauss, old enough to have fought in the Second World War. For another, all through his long rule he'd never believed in putting anybody out to pasture. And, for a third, he, like Himmler, had taken the televisor largely for granted. Buckliger didn't. Like Hitler long before him, he understood exactly how much pictures could do.
Susanna wished she hadn't thought of it that way. She wanted to like Buckliger, wanted to trust him, wanted to believe him, wanted to reckon him a new star in the Nazi firmament. He was different from anything she'd ever known. But did that make himreally different? Did it make himbetter? Hitler, after all, had been dead for years before she was born.
She shook her head. The longer Hitler stayed in charge of things, the more power he'd gathered into his own hands. Buckliger seemed to be going in the opposite direction. He hadn't quashed Charlie Lynton for proclaiming his allegiance to the first edition, the democratic edition, of Mein Kampf. He'd even talked about it himself.
And so?Susanna wondered.The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose. Shakespeare wasn't quite medieval English. When the quotation occurred to her, she had to look it up to see which play it came from. She shivered when she found it. It was from The Merchant of Venice.
When Heinrich Gimpel found something he could sink his teeth into, he worked like a man possessed. His surroundings all but disappeared, leaving nothing but the numbers he was manipulating, his right hand dancing on the calculator or the keypad of the computer keyboard, and the figures going up on the screen.
The only reason he looked up from this particular blitz of calculations was to take another sheet full of raw data out of his in-box. When he did, he saw the office full of SS men in camouflage smocks, assault rifles at the ready. All the guns seemed to point straight at him.
He froze, the sheet of paper still between thumb and forefinger.
Willi Dorsch burst out laughing. A couple of the SS men grinned, too. "What's the matter, Heinrich?" Willi said. "Didn't you even notice them come in?"
"Uh, no," Heinrich said sheepishly.
Willi laughed some more. "I didn't think so. The way you were working there, the world could have ended, and you'd never have known the difference."
What went through Heinrich's mind was,Oh, thank God. Maybe they haven't come for me, then. He took another, less horrified, look at the big, blond, hard-faced men. When he didn't see them with eyes full of terror, the muzzles of their assault rifles pointed every which way.
"Uh-" He still couldn't avoid that dismayed stutter. "Whatare they doing here, then?"
Before Willi could answer, Heinz Buckliger strode into the room.
Along with everybody else at a desk, Heinrich sprang to his feet. He drew himself up as straight as he could. His right arm shot out. "Heil Buckliger!" he bawled at the top of his lungs. He remained in place, frozen like a statue.
Casually, the Fuhrer returned the salute. Even more casually, he waved to the men in the analysis section. "Relax," he said, sounding much more like a human being than an icon. "This isn't anything fancy. I'm here to pick somebody's brain, that's all." He peered down at a piece of paper, then up, then down at the paper again.It's an office plan, Heinrich realized.He's comparing the plan to the room. And then, to his amazement, Buckliger's eyes met his. "You're Gimpel,nicht wahr?" the Fuhrer said.
For a mad moment, Heinrich wanted to deny it. Clearly, that wouldn't do. He managed to mumble, "Uh, ja, mein Fuhrer."
Heinz Buckliger seemed used to people mumbling and stammering when they spoke to him. "Good," he said. "I want to talk with you about the Americans." He snagged the chair by Heinrich's desk with his ankle, pulled it closer, and sat down in it. "By how much can we reduce their assessment to let their economy breathe a little easier and still keep ours going?" Noticing Heinrich still stood at attention, he waved him to his chair. He also waved to the rest of the people in the office. "Relax, I told you. Go back to work. Pretend I'm not here."
With those trigger-happy SS guards eyeing everybody, that wouldn't be easy. Heinrich dizzily sank into his seat. Of itself, the calculating part of his mind engaged the Fuhrer 's question. Even as another part of him wailed,This can't be happening, he heard himself saying, "Well, sir, a lot of that depends on how much the Americans think they can get away with not paying if you let up on them. They're looking for signs of weakness."
"I don't want to be weak," Buckliger said. "I do want the Reich to be able to stand on its own two feet without being propped up so much from outside. That sets a bad example, and it sets a bad precedent, too, don't you think?"
He cocked his head to one side. Heinrich realized he really was waiting for an answer.I want the Reichto grow like an onion-with its head in the ground. No, he couldn't very well say that."Ja, mein Fuhrer," was less truthful but much safer. As for the numbers…His right hand, flying on automatic pilot, cleared the figures he'd been working with and started entering the ones that would let him answer Buckliger's question.
"You have the data at your fingertips," the Fuhrer said approvingly. "That's good. That's very good. Efficient."
"Thank you, sir. Assuming the Americans will keep on paying the same percentage of a lower assessment as they do of the current one, I would say you could reduce it by…" His voice trailed off as his fingers flew on the keypad. He considered the answer the computer had given him, then passed it to Buckliger: "By about nine percent."
"Those are the figures from the machine, right?" Buckliger said. Heinrich nodded. the Fuhrer asked, "What's your personal opinion of them?"
"That if you reduce the proposed assessment by nine percent, you'll get back fifteen to twenty percent less. That's if you don't go out and take the full assessment by force. Give the Americans a centimeter and they'll take a kilometer."
"I want to use less force in America, not more," Buckliger said. Since he was moving a division back to the Reich, Heinrich believed him. He went on, "All right, then. To get nine percent less revenue from the Americans, by how much would I have to reduce th
e assessment?"
That was a genuinely interesting question. "This is only an estimate, you understand," Heinrich warned as he started stroking the keypad again. "The computer is very good with numbers, not so good at figuring out how much people are liable to cheat."
"Aber naturlich."the Fuhrer laughed. "We need other people for that."
"Uh, yes, sir," Heinrich said. Then he gave his attention back to the screen. Designing a function on the fly to figure out how much more enthusiastically the Americans would cheat if they saw their risks as diminished was nothing he'd ever tried before, but he did it. He punched ENTER one last time, looked at the answer on the screen, and slowly nodded to himself. "I'd say a formal cut of six percent,mein Fuhrer, would give you an actual cut of nine."
Buckliger nodded. "Sounds reasonable.Danke schon. Your number's about what I'd figured for myself."
Heinrich wondered how to take that. He didn't think Buckliger could have made these calculations for himself. The new Fuhrer had been a bureaucrat, but not that kind of bureaucrat. But Buckliger didn't sound as if he were just trying to make himself sound clever. After a moment, Heinrich realized working out how much the Americans were likely to cheat wasn't only a mathematical calculation. It was also a political calculation. And if anybody could make political calculations, the Fuhrer was, or needed to be, the man.
"Happy to help, sir," Heinrich said. His own interior calculations hadn't taken more than a second and a half.
Heinz Buckliger gave him another one of those I'm-just-a-regular-fellow smiles. "Good. I like to have clever people working for me. It keeps the wheels going round." He got to his feet and nodded to the SS troopers. "Come on, boys. Now we go and talk with Field Marshal Tetzlaff." Out they went, some of the guards preceding Buckliger, the rest following.
A considerable silence reigned in the room after the Fuhrer left. Heinrich tried to get back to what he'd been doing beforehand, but discovered he couldn't, not when everybody was staring at him. He simply sat there, dazed. The two thoughts that kept going round and round in his head were Oh, thank God-I got away with it and Lise will never believe this, not in a million years.
In The Presence of mine Enemies Page 27
