"But it was wrong," Alicia said fiercely.
"Oh, yes. It was wrong. I think so just as much as you do. But-" Lise broke off and put both hands on Alicia's shoulders. "The people who run things probably don't think it was wrong. You have to remember that. And even if they say they do think it was wrong, we can't just come out and go, 'Oh, yes, here we are. Now we can get on with our lives again.'"
"Why not?" Plainly, Alicia wanted to do exactly that.
"Because it might be a trap. They might be trying to lure us out so they can get rid of us once and for all. The Nazis have been killing us for almost eighty years. Why should they stop now?"
Alicia bit her lip. She was, after all, only eleven years old. "Would they do such a thing?" she whispered.
"Would they? I don't know," Lise answered. "Could they? You tell me, sweetheart. What do they teach you about Jews in school?"
"Nasty things." Alicia made a face. "Horrible things. You know that."
"Well, yes, I do," Lise said. "I wanted to make sure you did."
"Oh." Alicia thought that over, then nodded. "I'm going to go get a snack before sisters eat everything good in the house." She ran out of the bedroom and started gabbing with Francesca and Roxane. She didn't even tease Roxane about the olives. To her, they weren't part of everything good in the house, and Roxane was welcome to them.
Lise went back to stacking socks and underwear into neat piles, one for each person in the family. She wished there were a laundry fairy to do the job for her, but no such luck. If she didn't do it, nobody would. Heinrich, at least, put away his own clean clothes without being told. The girls…Lise wished for a laundry fairy again.
She also wished she could share Alicia's optimism. She wanted to, maybe more than anything else in all the world. She hated living in hiding, hated fearing a knock on the door that could mean the end not just for her but for everybody she loved. Feeling she carried the weight of the world hadn't been easy when she was a child, and hadn't got any easier now that she'd grown up.
But I do,she thought miserably.We all do, the handful of us who are left. If we let go, if we give up-or if, God forbid, we get caught-a world goes with us.
"Why have you got yipes stripes, Mommy?" There stood Roxane in the doorway, holding an olive impaled on a toothpick.
"Have I?" Lise was sure she did. She tried to make the frown lines leave her forehead. "There. Is that better?"
"A little," Roxane said dubiously.
"How about this?" Lise stuck out her tongue and crossed her eyes.
Roxane giggled. That suggested some improvement. But then the youngest Gimpel girl said, "You didn't tell me why you had them in the first place." Her stubborn streak was as wide as she was. It would probably help make her a good Jew when she got old enough to find out she was one. In the meantime…In the meantime, it made her hard to distract.
"Grown-up stuff," Lise answered. "Nothing for you to worry about."Not yet. Not for another few years. And when you do find out, you'll be one more who knows-and one more who can give us away. Letting children know what they were was the hardest part of this secret life. Considering the rest of it, that was no small statement.
Roxane made a face of her own. "What good is being a grownup, if you have to have yipes stripes so much?" She darted away without waiting for an answer.
"What good is being a grownup?" Lise echoed. She thought of the obvious things, the things that appealed to a child-going to bed as late as you wanted to, being able to drive, having all the money you needed, getting out of school forever, not having anybody standing over you waiting to yell "No!" all the time. Then she thought about all the worries that accumulated when you grew up. When you had a family, you worried plenty even if you weren't a Jew. If you were…"What goodis being a grownup?" Lise said again. It was, when you got right down to it, a damned good question.
In the Stahnsdorf train station, Heinrich Gimpel remarked, "Never know what's in the paper these days."
"God knows that's true," Willi Dorsch agreed. "Sometimes you wonder if you want to find out, too."
They threw fifteen pfennigs apiece into the vending machine. Nothing would have stopped them from grabbing two copies of the Volkischer Beobachter when Willi opened the machine to take out his copy. Nothing would have stopped them, but it didn't occur to either man. A man had to do all kinds of things to get along in the Third Reich. That kind of petty the Ft, though, was downright un-German. Willi was a good German. In most ways, so was Heinrich.
The train got there almost as soon as they walked out on the platform. They sat down side by side and started going through the newspaper. Some of the fuss over Heinz Buckliger's speech to the pharmacists was starting to die down. Nobody'd said much in public except Rolf Stolle, the Gauleiter of Berlin, and he'd been all for it. He'd also thundered fearsome warnings about all the Bonzen who hated the very idea of reform. Heinrich thought Stolle at least as much a clown as a politician-with friends like him, who needed enemies? Clown or not, though, he probably hadn't been wrong about the Bonzen.
"Nothing too much today, doesn't look like," Willi said.
"No, I don't see anything very exciting, either." Heinrich tried not to sound too disappointed. People might wonder why he was. If the thaw ended-and he knew too well it could, knew too well it was probably going to-someone might remember. Landing in trouble for being on the wrong side of a political squabble would be just as bad for him (though perhaps not for everyone around him) as landing in trouble for being a Jew. He went on working his way through the Volkischer Beobachter. When he got to page eight, he stopped. "Hello! What's this?"
"What's what?" Willi hadn't got there yet.
"Two men arrested in Copenhagen for carrying an anti-German banner through the streets," Heinrich answered. "They wanted full independence for Denmark."
"Damn fools," Willi said. "Hell, the Danes have it, or close enough. Those idiots don't know when they're well off. They ought to go to Poland or Serbia for a while. That'd teach 'em."
"It sure would." Heinrich hoped that sounded like agreement. The Danes were better off than the Poles or the Serbs or what was left of the Russians and Ukrainians. Like Dutchmen, Norwegians, and Englishmen, Danes got credit for being Aryans. They weren't Slavic Untermenschen. They'd always been pretty peaceful-or at least resigned-under German occupation, too.
But they plainly still remembered they'd been free for hundreds of years before 1940. Heinrich wondered if…Before he could even finish the thought, Willi beat him to it: "They probably listened to the Fuhrer 's speech the other day and figured anything goes from here on out."
"I wouldn't be surprised," Heinrich said. If he had finished the thought, he would have kept quiet about it. Willi, confident about who and what he was, didn't censor himself so severely.
He didn't waste much sympathy on the Danes, either. "They're lucky theydid get arrested, not shot down on the spot. We're softer than we were in Hitler's day. I've told you that before." Then, shifting gears, he went on, "You want to have lunch today?"
"Can't," Heinrich answered. "Our goddaughter's birthday is three days from now, and I've got to find her a present." Anna Stutzman wasn't literally a goddaughter-Jews didn't use that custom-but came close enough. Heinrich couldn't resist asking, "Besides, what about Ilse?"
"I'm not eighteen, for God's sake," Willi said. "I can't do it every day any more. And I've got to save some for Erika. Otherwise, she'd be even crankier than she is."
"Generous of you," Heinrich murmured. He'd intended that for sarcasm. It didn't quite come out that way. Willi had his own inimitable style, but at least part of his heart seemed to be in the right place.
He grinned now. "Isn't it?" he said complacently. The train rattled on toward South Station in Berlin.
When lunchtime came, Heinrich hopped a cab up to the Kurfurstendamm. He knew-he had detailed instructions from Lise-what he was supposed to get for Anna. Like everyone else who was breathing and halfway conscious, he'd seen advertisements fo
r the Vicki dolls imported from the United States. They had flaxen hair, vacant expressions, improbable figures, and clothes Mata Hari would have envied. They looked perfectly Aryan. Maybe that was why they were so wildly popular in the Reich. Or maybe not-you never could tell with kids. With three of his own, Heinrich knew that.
At least people weren't fighting hand to hand these days, the way they had been when the dolls first came out. Heinrich had asked Lise if she was sure he wasn't getting something passe for Anna. She'd shaken her head. "I checked with our girls," she'd answered. "They're still popular. With all the different outfits you can get for them, they'll stay that way for years." If the girls said it, it had to be true.
Heinrich did wonder who made clothes for the swarms of Vickis. They weren't that expensive, and they didn't come from the Empire of Japan with its ocean of cheap labor. Did the doll manufacturer know an official who could pull seamstresses out of a prison camp? — or maybe not pull them out of a camp, but make them work inside? They'd sew as if their lives depended on it. Their lives would, too.
He grimaced. You could ask that kind of question about a lot of things you saw every day. Sometimes-usually-not knowing was better. He shook his head. That wasn't right. You needed to know. Heinz Buckliger was dead on target there. But ignorance could be easier for your peace of mind.
Ducking into Ulbricht's toy store banished such gloomy reflections. If you couldn't be happy in Ulbricht's, you were probably dead. Dolls, stuffed animals, brightly colored children's books, football and basketball and archery sets, toy soldiers and sailors and panzers and U-boats and fighter planes (Landser Sepp was the counterpart of Vicki for boys, and came with enough materiel to conquer Belgium), all waited for your money. Loud, cheerful music made you want to smile-and to part with your Reichsmarks.
There. He'd been told to get that one: a New Orleans Vicki, dressed in lace and satin and looking as if she'd just stepped out of Gone with the Wind. (That had been one of Hitler's favorite movies. It still got rereleased every few years. Susanna loved to go to it and make fun of the dubbing.) Heinrich grabbed for the package.
A woman's hand closed on it at the same time as his.
Annoyed, he looked up from the doll to see who else wanted it-only to discover Erika Dorsch, also annoyed, also looking up from the doll for what had to be the same reason. They stared at each other and started to laugh. "For my sister Leonore's girl," Erika said.
"For my goddaughter," Heinrich said. "Is there another one like it in the bin?"
"Let's see." Erika had to dig a little, but she found one. She handed it to him. "Here."
"Oh, good," he said. "Now we won't have to go to court, the way those two women did a few months ago when the craze was at its craziest. The judge should have played Solomon and cut the doll in half, if you ask me."
"Ja." Erika cocked her head to one side, studying him. "If we're not going to court, whereshall we go?"
"I was going to pay for this and head back to the office," Heinrich answered. "It's been busy."
"It can't bethat busy, if dear Willi takes Ilse out so often," Erika said. "And shouldn't you pay him back for the extra work you get stuck with when he does?"
Pay him back how?Heinrich wondered. He was afraid Erika would tell him-or show him. He had to be afraid of so many things. That this should be one of them struck him as most unfair. "It's not so bad," he said.
That didn't satisfy Erika, either. He might have known it wouldn't. "You're too easygoing for your own good," she said. "You let people push you around, do things to you-everybody but me."
"Ha," Heinrich said in a distinctly hollow voice. "Ha, ha. What would you do to me?"
She kissed him, right there in front of the bin of Vicki dolls. She made a good, thorough job of it, too. Behind Heinrich, somebody coughed. His ears felt ready to catch fire. But so did the rest of him, in a different way. The only way he could have kept from kissing her back and tightening his arms around her was to die on the spot.
"There," she said, breaking the kiss as abruptly as she'd started it. "See you later. Enjoy your work." She went off toward a cashier, that New Orleans Vicki still in her hand.
Heinrich stared after her. A man with a white Hitler mustache-probably a grandfather shopping for a grand-daughter-winked at him. "You lucky dog. If Ulbricht's sold dolls like that, I'd buy myself one in a minute," he said, and cackled at his own wit like a laying hen.
"Lucky. Right," Heinrich said dazedly. The old man thought that was pretty funny, too. Still cackling, he went on toward a display of stuffed kittens.
Heinrich fumbled in his pocket for a handkerchief. He rubbed at his mouth. He could still taste the sweetness of Erika's lipstick-and of her lips. The handkerchief came away stained the same bright pink Erika had been wearing. To make sure he'd got it all, Heinrich went into a men's room and checked in the mirror. A good thing he did, too-he'd missed a large, incriminating spot. A few more dabs got rid of it.
He started out of the men's room, then stopped. The stained handkerchief went into the wastebin full of crumpled paper towels. Explaining how he'd lost it-a blank look and "I don't know"-would be easier than telling Lise how it had got those telltale stains on it. Anything would be easier than that.
He paid for the Vicki and went out onto the Kurfurstendamm to flag a cab for the ride back to Oberkommando der Wehrmacht headquarters. A taxi pulled up. The driver hopped out and opened the rear door for him. "Here you go, sir," he said.
"Thanks." Heinrich slid in. The cabby zoomed away from the curb. Heinrich looked down at the Ulbricht's sack on his knees. He'd paid for the doll, all right.
Alicia Gimpel peered out the window. "Here she comes," she hissed suddenly, and ducked back out of sight like a sniper who had to stay hidden to stay alive. She waved importantly to the other girls gathered in the living room. "Quiet, everybody!"
She needed to say it three times before they paid any attention to her. They finally did, just when Anna Stutzman and her mother came up the walk toward the front door. Anna's mother rang the bell. Alicia and her mother answered it. Francesca and Roxane stood behind them in the entrance hall. That was all right. Anna could see Alicia's little sisters. They lived here, after all. And it was quiet-pretty quiet, anyhow-in the living room.
"Hello, there," Alicia's mother said, opening the door. "How are you today? Heavens, Anna, you're getting so big!"
"I'm barely keeping up with Alicia," Anna said. That was true, but Alicia showed signs that she would be very tall when she grew up. Anna didn't.
"What does being twelve feel like?" Alicia asked after they hugged.
"Like being eleven, but one more," Anna answered. They both laughed. Alicia hadn't found out what being eleven was like till a few weeks before.
"Come in, come in, come in," her mother said. Alicia thought Francesca and Roxane would ruin things then, because they made some of the most ridiculous faces she'd ever seen. But Anna didn't seem to notice anything wrong. Maybe she thought Alicia's sisters were always ridiculous. Alicia often did.
Francesca and Roxane raced back into the living room. That should have been a giveaway, too, but somehow it wasn't. Alicia and Anna and their mothers followed more slowly. Anna was saying, "Have you seen the new singers in the-"
"Surprise!" yelled a dozen girls. "Surprise!" Alicia echoed, grinning from ear to ear. It had worked! In spite of everything, it had worked.
The look on Anna's face was worth a hundred Reichsmarks. "You didn't!" she said to Alicia. "I'll get you for this."
"I did, too," Alicia answered, and the other didn't bother her one bit.
Anna rounded on her mother. "You must have known," she accused.
"Who, me?" Frau Stutzman said. That made everybody laugh again.
Before long, it stopped being a surprise party and just turned into a birthday party. Alicia didn't know all of Anna's friends very well. Some of them lived near Anna, while others were in her class at school. They seemed nice enough. They put up with Alicia's little
sisters. Some of them would have little sisters or brothers of their own. Alicia would have got mad if they'd teased Francesca or Roxane. That washer job. As far as she could tell, none of the other girls shared the secret she and Anna did. That made the two of them special-or she thought it did, anyhow. How could she know for sure? She couldn't.
It also made Francesca and Roxane special. They didn't know it yet, though, and they wouldn't be too happy when they found out. Alicia shook her head. This whole business still seemed very strange.
But then, in the midst of games and songs and cake and ice cream and "genuine American hot dogs" from a stand that had opened up a few blocks away (they tasted like any other frankfurters to Alicia), she forgot all about the secret. When she'd first learned it, she hadn't thought she would ever be able to do that.
Anna unwrapped her presents. She squealed extra loud when she opened the New Orleans Vicki. Several of the other girls made envious noises. Alicia felt especially good because of that. She wanted to give Anna a really nice present.
More cake and ice cream followed. "You're going to make them sick,"Frau Stutzman told Alicia's mom. She didn't sound as if she meant it, though. Not too much later, she went home, saying, "I'll see you in the morning, Anna. Happy birthday, sweetie."
The guests ran around and sang more songs and played games and fooled around with the Gimpel girls' dolls and toys. When it got late, they spread out sleeping bags on the floor of the front room. Nobody who'd ever gone on a Bund deutscher Madel outing was without a sleeping bag. Francesca and Roxane had theirs, too, even though they weren't old enough to join the organization for German girls.
They might have got into the sleeping bags. The lights might have been out. They weren't going to fall asleep any time soon, though. Alicia's father made a brief appearance, coming halfway down the stairs. "Try to keep it down to a low roar, if you please," he said. He sounded as if he knew that was a lost hope.
They giggled. They gossiped. They told scary stories, which seemed even scarier in the dark. One of Anna's friends had read a translation of "The Telltale Heart." That was good for plenty of goose bumps.
In The Presence of mine Enemies Page 30
