In The Presence of mine Enemies

by Harry Turtledove

  He laughed at himself. Other analysts stopped at his desk all the time. Officers stopped there every now and again. the Fuhrer? The ruler of the Greater German Reich and the Germanic Empire? Well, no. The Fuhrer didn't pay a call on an ordinary analyst every day.

  Some people didn't try to cozy up to Heinrich. Some people turned green with envy instead, and wanted nothing to do with him. He was glad Willi didn't. Willi, instead, made a joke of it. "Me? I'm going to get rich from knowing you. How much do you suppose I can charge for twenty minutes of your time? Fifty Reichsmarks? A hundred? A hundred and fifty?" He ran his tongue across his lips. "You could get a pretty fancy floozy for that kind of money, but plenty of people would sooner seeyou. What do you think of that?"

  "I think they'd have more fun with a girl," Heinrich answered. Willi laughed till he turned red. Heinrich hadn't been kidding.

  Willi didn't seem to have noticed the speculative look Ilse had given Heinrich after the Fuhrer 's visit. Since Heinrich had pretended not to notice it, too, Ilse's dallying with Willi hadn't paused. They were given to enough long lunches to make other analysts grin and nudge one another-but only when they weren't around.

  What irked Heinrich about it at least as much as anything else was that he had to cover Willi's phone during those long lunches. He didn't mind dealing with business. That was what he was there for. Dealing with Erika Dorsch was a different story.

  "Analysis section, Heinrich Gimpel speaking," he said after transferring a call from Willi's desk to his own.

  "Hello, Heinrich," Erika said. "I was hoping for my husband. Too much to expect, I suppose."

  If you really want to talk to Willi, why don't you call him when he's likelier to be here?Heinrich wondered, a little resentfully. He didn't say that out loud. It would only cause trouble. What he did say was as neutral as he could make it: "I'll take a message for you, if you like."

  "In a bit," she answered. "Where is he?"

  They'd gone around this barn before. "At lunch," Heinrich said.

  "He should be back by now, shouldn't he?" Erika said. Heinrich didn't respond to that at all. She asked, "Where did he go?" and then said, "You're going to tell me you don't know. See? I read minds."

  "Well, I don't," Heinrich said defensively. "I ate at the canteen today."

  "I'm so sorry for you. Wherever he went, did he go there with Ilse?" Erika waited. Again, Heinrich didn't want to answer, either with the truth or with a lie. Her laugh had a bitter ring. "You're too damned honest for your own good, Heinrich."

  Was that true? Heinrich didn't think so. He had, after all, been living under an elaborate lie for more than thirty years. Erika didn't know that, of course. As long as nobody who wasn't also living the lie knew, he could go on with it. He realized he would have to respond, though. He said, "I wish you and Willi weren't having troubles, that's all." Not only did he mean it, it sounded like an answer to what she'd just said. He could have done much worse.

  He could also have done better. Erika's sour laugh proved that. "Wish for the moon while you're at it."

  Heinrich could have laughed even more sourly. When she wished for the moon, the wildest thing she could think of was repairing what had gone wrong between her husband and her. Heinrich's wish would have been not only lunar but lunatic: he would have wished for the chance to live openly as what he was. He knew too well that that wasn't going to happen no matter how hard he wished.

  All that went through his mind in what couldn't have been more than a heartbeat. Erika hardly even paused as she went on, "You don't need to wish, do you? You've really got the world by the tail." He did laugh then. He knew he shouldn't, but he couldn't help himself. That made Erika angry. "You do," she insisted.

  "Not likely," Heinrich said. He couldn't tell her why, but hoped his voice carried conviction.

  Evidently not, for she said, "No? I didn't see the Fuhrer paying a call on my dear Willi."

  If anybody had called Heinrichdear in that tone of voice, he would have run away as fast as he could. He answered, "He might have, but I'm the specialist on the United States, and he wanted to find out something about the Americans." Even that was more than he felt comfortable saying. Along with the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, he also worshiped Security, a jealous god indeed. But Erika already knew what he did. If she didn't wish Willi would dry up and blow away, she could figure this out for herself.

  Slowly, she said, "There are times when you're too damned modest for your own good, too."

  She's angry atmenow, he realized in astonished dismay.What the devil did I do? "I told you the truth," he said.

  "No, I'll tell you the truth," Erika said. "The truth is, the Fuhrer came to see you. You, not anybody else. The truth is, that's important. It could make you important. And the truth is, you don't seem to want to do anything about it or even admit it."

  She might have been a wife giving a husband a pep talk. Shewas a wife giving a husband a pep talk. The only trouble was, she wasn't Heinrich's wife, and she didn't know him as well as she thought she did. "I don't want to be important," he said, which was not the smallest understatement he'd ever made. "I don't, Erika, and that's the truth, too."

  A long silence followed. Heinrich hoped she would lose her temper, hang up on him, and either leave him alone or just think of him as her husband's friend-somebody who was fun to drink wine with and a decent bridge player, but nothing more than that.

  What he hoped for and what he got were two different things. "Well, at least you know your own mind," Erika said at last. "At least you've got a mind to know. You don't do all of your thinking below the belt. I like that. It's different in a man."

  Did she realize how much of her own thinking she was doing below the belt? Not as far as Heinrich could see, she didn't. He almost pointed it out to her. At the last minute, he didn't. Talking with her about things below the belt struck him as a very bad idea.

  "I'd better go," was what he did say. "Is there a message for Willi?"

  "Tell him I hope Ilse gives him the clap," Erika answered promptly. "He won't have the chance to give it to me, and you can tell him that, too." She did hang up then, loudly.

  Heinrich hung up, too. Rubbing at his ear, he pulled a message pad from his top desk drawer.Erika called while you were out, he wrote.No need to call her back. If she wanted to deliver any more forceful message, she could do it herself. He put the small sheet of yellow paper on Willi's desk. It didn't spontaneously combust. As he retreated to his own desk, he wondered why.

  Willi came back to the office about half an hour later. He looked almost indecently pleased with himself-and that probably was the word for it, too. Ilse, by contrast, just sat down and started typing. Willi picked up the message. "What's this?" he said. He read it and set it down, then started to laugh. He looked over at Heinrich. "What did she really say?"

  "You can ask her yourself and find out," Heinrich answered.

  "No, thanks." Willi laughed again. "She thinks the world revolves around her. High time she finds out she's wrong."

  Don't you do the same?Heinrich wondered. But he couldn't ask Willi that, any more than he could have asked Erika about the way she thought. Neither one of them would have taken the question seriously, and they both would have got angry at him. He wanted that no more than he wanted any other kind of notice.

  Willi said, "You're our fair-haired boy right now. Why don't you fix Erika up with Buckliger? That would make everybody happy."

  "You really are out of your mind!" Heinrich exclaimed in horror.

  "Thank you," Willi said, which only disconcerted him more. "I thought it was the-what do you call it? — the elegant solution, that's what I'm trying to say."

  "Shall I tell you all the things that are wrong with it?" Heinrich asked. "How much time have you got? Have you got all day? Have you got all week?"

  "What I've got is a report to write." Willi looked lugubrious. "The boss wants it this afternoon, too. I'm going to have to rush like hell to finish it on time."

/>   "You wouldn't, if-" Heinrich broke off. Telling Willi he'd have less to do now if he hadn't spent a long, long lunchtime screwing his secretary was true. Some true things, though, just weren't helpful.

  "Yes, Mommy," Willi said, which proved this was indeed one of those things.

  "All right. All right." Nothing annoyed Heinrich like being condescended to. "But if you're going to complain about what you've got to do, you'd better have a look at what you've been doing."

  "I did. A nice, close look, too." Willi's expression left no doubt what he meant.

  Heinrich found nothing to say to that, which was no doubt exactly what Willi'd had in mind. Shaking his head, he went back to work. Over at the other desk, Willi looked as desperately busy as a man juggling knives and torches. He would type like a man possessed, then shift to the calculator, mutter at the results, and go back to the keyboard.

  At five o'clock, Heinrich got up. He put on his coat and his cap. "I'm heading for the bus stop," he said. "Are you coming?"

  "No, dammit." Willi shook his head, looking harassed. "I'm still busy."

  "Too bad," Heinrich said, and left. Willi stared after him, then plunged back into the report.

  IX

  When Susanna Weiss listened to the radio in her office, she usually hunted for Mozart or Handel or Haydn or Beethoven or Bach. Verdi or Vivaldi would do in a pinch. The Italians were reckoned frivolous, but they were still allies; you couldn't get in trouble for listening to them.

  She sometimes let Wagner blare out into the hallway, too. That was protective coloration, pure and simple, and not only because she despised him as an anti-Semite. No matter how the Nazis had slobbered over him for the past eighty years and more, she couldn't take him seriously.

  A lone, lorn woman stands upon a stage trying to make herself heard,an Englishman had written at the start of the twentieth century.One hundred and forty men, all armed with powerful instruments, well-organised, and most of them looking well-fed, combine to make it impossible for a single note of that poor woman's voice to be heard above their din. She'd seen it that way long before she ran into Jerome K. Jerome. Now she couldn't even listen to Wagner without wanting to giggle.

  These days, though, less classical music lilted from the radio. She tuned it to the news station more and more often. A lot of what she heard was the same wretched sort of propaganda she'd avoided for years.

  A lot of it, but not all. Every so often, startling things came out of the speaker. She listened in the hope of hearing more of them.

  Whenever the Fuhrer made a speech, she found herself urging him on, thinking,You can do it. I know you can. And sometimes Heinz Buckliger would, and sometimes he wouldn't. Sometimes he was flat and pedestrian, praising manufacture or agriculture or the Hitler Youth. Then, as she had with too many boyfriends, she decided she'd been fooling herself. She'd been right about the boyfriends. About Buckliger…

  The trouble with Buckliger was, he could be astonishing. She was discussing a midterm with a student who had trouble understanding why he'd got only a 73. Susanna knew why-he wasn't too bright and he hadn't studied too hard. However much she wanted to, she couldn't come right out and say that. She had the radio on, not very loud, as she went over the exam with him point by point. It was one of those painful conferences. If the student worked harder, he might get a 76 next time, or even a 78. He would never blossom and get a 92.

  Susanna hardly listened to herself as she explained all the myriad ways he'd misunderstood the Old English riddles he'd tried to interpret. More of her attention was on Heinz Buckliger, who was speaking to an audience of German female pharmacists. He'd been blathering on about how pharmacists were vital for the health of the Reich, and how the women's group to which he was speaking had a long history of devoted service. It didn't seem one of his more inspired efforts.

  But then, with just a few words, everything changed. Buckliger went on, "We must examine the history of the Reich in the same way: that which is good, and also that which is not so good. We must not flinch from finding and noting our forefathers' failures."

  "Fraulein Doktor Professor, I think you should raise my grade because-"

  "Wait," Susanna said. The student tried to go on talking. She waved a hand at him. "Hush. I want to hear this." He couldn't very well complain, not when she was listening to the Fuhrer. He still looked…aggrieved. Susanna didn't care.

  "Those who complain about the recent emphasis on the first edition of Mein Kampf ignore certain essential facts," Heinz Buckliger went on. "It is perfectly obvious that inadequate representation by the Volk was at the root of past illegalities, arbitrariness, and repression-crimes based on abuse of power."

  "Professor Weiss-" The student tried again.

  "Hush, I told you," Susanna snapped. The female pharmacists were applauding the Fuhrer, but hesitantly, as if they weren't sure what they were hearing. Susanna was. She just wasn't sure she could believe her ears. What Buckliger was saying was true-was, in fact, a colossal understatement. But that the Fuhrer of the Greater German Reich should say even so much…!

  And Buckliger wasn't done. He said, "The responsibility of past National Socialist leaders"-he didn't name Hitler or Himmler, but whom else could he mean? — "and those close to them for undoubted repressions and illegalities is both difficult to forgive and difficult to admit. But we must. Even now, writers try to ignore important questions in our history. They try to pretend nothing out of the ordinary occurred. This is wrong. It neglects historical reality, of which we all must be aware."

  He paused for applause. He got…a little. Had Susanna been in the audience, she would have been on her feet whooping and hollering. The student tried to get her to pay attention to his earnest, inept essay again. She silenced him with a glare.

  "Everyone's dearest wish," Buckliger went on, "is for the Reich and its ideology to stay unchanging for the thousand years Hitler promised us. But history does not work that way, however much we wish it did. We will either find ways to develop or we will stagnate and fail and go under."

  Murmurs said the pharmacists didn't know what to make of the hard truths Buckliger was telling them. And even the Fuhrer seemed to wonder if he'd gone too far. He quickly added, "Fascism has offered to the world its answers to the fundamental questions of human life, at the center of which stands the Volk. The errors we may have made will not, must not, turn us from the path we embarked upon in 1933. We are traveling to the New Order, to the world of the Reich and the Volk. We shall never leave that road."

  There, at last, he gave the earnest women who'd come to hear him something they could get their teeth into. They cheered thunderously. Susanna wanted to yawn. The speech continued, but only in banalities.

  "Fraulein Doktor Professor-" The student was nothing if not persistent.

  "Ja, ja." Susanna realized she would have to get rid of him so she could think. She pointed to the essay. "You do understand that the ostensible answer to this riddle here isa key. That gets you a passing grade. But you don't see all the double meanings hiding underneath. What else might a man have on his hip that could fill a hole if he hiked up his clothes?"

  "Excuse me?" The student stared at her as if she'd suddenly started spouting Hindustani. "I'm very sorry, but-" He broke off. She could tell exactly when he did get it. His stare changed from one sort to another altogether. He blushed like a schoolgirl. Prone to such problems herself, Susanna knew a good blush when she saw one. "But…But…" He sputtered, then tried again: "But this…this is atext, Fraulein Doktor Professor!"

  "It's a text now," Susanna said. "It's a text to you. But to the man who wrote it, it was a riddle, it was a joke. And if you can't see the joke, well, I'm sorry, but you don't deserve anything more than a bare pass."

  He tried to argue some more, but he couldn't, or not very well. He was both demoralized and embarrassed. Had he been a dog, he would have had his tail between his legs as he left her office.

  For a wonder, no one else came in right away to complain abou
t the exam. That left Susanna a few minutes to marvel at what she'd just heard. Heinz Buckliger had been careful about what he did. He'd surrounded the meat in his speech with clouds of puffy, obscuring rhetoric. But the meat was there. He'd admitted the Nazi regime had made mistakes. He'd also admitted it had covered them up. And he'd admitted it shouldn't have.

  Once he'd done that much, gone that far, what else was left? Only spelling out what the mistakes had been. Would Buckliger have the nerve to do that? Would anyone else, now that the Fuhrer had given permission? Maybe so, if people started to see that telling the truth didn't mean a trip to a camp or a bullet in the back of the neck.

  Susanna could hardly wait to find out.

  Lise Gimpel was sorting laundry-a labor of Sisyphus if ever there was one-when the girls came home from school. Francesca, for once, didn't start complaining about the Beast right away. She and Roxane went into the kitchen to fix themselves snacks. Roxane opened the refrigerator. "Olives! Yum!" she exclaimed. Her older sisters made disgusted noises. Except for Heinrich, she was the only one in the family who really liked them.

  Alicia hunted up Lise instead of getting a snack. She sat down on the bed beside her and said, "We talked about the Fuhrer 's speech in class today."

  "Did you?" Lise's mind was still more on socks and underwear than the classroom.

  "We sure did." Alicia nodded solemnly. "Did he really say the Reich did things that were wrong, things that were against the law?"

  "I think he did," Lise answered. "I can't say for certain, though. I didn't hear the speech."

  "Well, suppose he did." Alicia waited till Lise nodded to show she was supposing. Her oldest daughter looked out the bedroom door to make sure Francesca and Roxane couldn't hear, then went on in a low voice, "Does that mean he thinks the Reich was wrong about what it did to Jews?"

  "I don't know," Lise said. "What people did to Jews wasn't against the law, though, because they made laws ahead of time that said they could do those things."