St. Wenceslas' equestrian statue was surrounded by figures of other Bohemian saints. Counting the large base, the statue stood seven or eight times as high as a man. It dwarfed the men and women at its base and the signs they carried. Some of those signs were in German. They said things like FREEDOM FOR THE CZECHS! and WE REMEMBER! Others, in Czech, presumably said the same thing.
And some of the demonstrators carried flags: the blue, white, and red banners of the long-vanished Republic of Czechoslovakia. A chill ran through Susanna when she recognized those flags. How many years had it been since anyone dared show them in public? Almost as amazing as the sight of the Czechoslovak flags was that of the policemen who stood watching the demonstration without storming in to break it up and throw everybody in sight into jail or a concentration camp.
"Because the protest was peaceful and orderly, no arrests were made," Horst Witzleben said, and he went on to a different story. He spoke as if that had been standard practice in the Third Reich from the beginning, not the next thing to a miracle.
A fat official pontificated about improvements to the harbor in Hamburg. Susanna hardly heard him. Though they'd vanished from the screen, she kept seeing those Czechoslovak flags fluttering in the long shadow St. Wenceslas cast. If those flags could come out of the dark backward and abysm of time-if they could come out and survive-what else might follow them? Susanna shivered with awe.
And then something else occurred to her. She shivered again, this time a lot less happily. Did even Heinz Buckliger know all that might follow if he let people say what they really thought? No one in the Greater German Reich, no one in the part of the Germanic Empire on this side of the Atlantic, had been able to do that for a lifetime. How much was bottled up? And how would it come out?
When the telephone on his desk rang, Heinrich jumped. That happened about a third of the time. When he was really concentrating, the outside world seemed to disappear. It seemed to, but it didn't. As if to prove as much, the phone rang again.
He picked it up. Willi was laughing at him. Ignoring his friend, he used his best professional tones: "Analysis Section, Heinrich Gimpel speaking."
"Hello, Heinrich." Had Willi heard the voice on the other end of the line, he would have stopped laughing, and in a hurry: it was Erika.
"Hello." Heinrich did his best to keep his own voice normal. It wasn't easy. "What…what can I do for you?"
"I'm at my sister's house. Leonore lives at 16 Burggrafen-Strasse, just south of the Tiergarten. Do you know where that is?"
"Yes, I think so," Heinrich said automatically. Then he wished he could deny everything. Too late, of course. For wishes like that, it always was.
"Good," Erika said: another questionable assumption. "Come over at lunchtime. We need to talk."
"You, me, and your sister?" Heinrich said in surprise. He hardly knew Erika's sister. Leonore, if he remembered right, was separated from a mid-ranking SS officer. She was a year or two younger than Erika and looked a lot like her, but wasn't quite so…carnivorouswas the word that came to Heinrich's mind. He asked, "What about?"
"I'm not going to go into it on the phone," Erika said, which, considering that the lines into Oberkommando der Wehrmacht headquarters were monitored as closely as any in the Reich, was probably a good idea.
Heinrich thought it over. If Leonore were there, things couldn't get too far out of hand. And even if they did, all he had to do was walk out. "All right," he said. "I'll see you a little past twelve." Erika hung up without another word.
Willi looked up from whatever he was working on. "Going out to lunch with Lise and her sister, eh?" he said, proving he'd been snooping.
Thank God I didn't say Leonore's name,Heinrich thought. He managed a rather sickly answering smile. That avoided the lie direct, anyhow. Willi took it for agreement. He went back to the papers scattered across his desk. Heinrich, who kept his work area almost surgically neat, wondered how Willi ever found anything. But he did. Though he had his problems, that wasn't one of them.
When Heinrich wanted to do something at lunch, the time before he could leave crawled on hands and knees. Today, when he really didn't, hours flew by. Had he done anything more than blink once or twice before he got up from his desk? If he had, it didn't feel that way. At the same time, Willi headed out the door with Ilse. That had to mean Rolf Stolle never called her back. Willi was smirking. Seeing him with the secretary made Heinrich a little less uncomfortable about paying a call on his wife, but only a little.
Why didn't I say no?Heinrich wondered, waiting for the bus that would take him up to the park. He could have stood Erika and her sister up even after saying yes, but that never occurred to him. What he said he would do, he did.
Brakes squealing, the bus stopped in front of him. He climbed aboard, stuck his account card in the slot, and then put it back in his pocket. The bus wasn't too crowded. He sat down as it pulled out into traffic.
Ten minutes later, he got off at Wichmannstrasse, a little north of Burggrafen-Strasse. When he looked across to the Tiergarten, he saw that it wasn't very crowded, either. Not surprising, on this cold, gray winter's day. A few stubborn people sat on the benches and fed the squirrels and the few stubborn birds that hadn't flown south.
Reluctantly, he turned his back on the park and walked south down Wichmannstrasse to where it branched, then turned right onto Burggrafen-Strasse. The neighborhood dated from the last years of the nineteenth century or the start of the twentieth. Time had mellowed the bricks on the housefronts. Here and there, gray or greenish or even orange lichen spread over the brickwork, as if it came not from the time of the Kaisers but from the Neolithic age.
Here was 20 Burggrafen-Strasse, here was 18…and here, looking very little different from the houses on either side, was 16. With a sour half smile, Heinrich went up the slate walkway, climbed three red-brick steps, and stood in front of a door whose ornate carved floral border spoke of Victorian bourgeois respectability. Wishing he were somewhere, anywhere, else, Heinrich rang the bell.
"It's open," Erika called. "Come on in."
He did. The entry hall was narrow and cramped. It made a dogleg to the left, so he couldn't see any of the rest of the house from the doorway. A polished brass coat-and-hat rack by the door offered a mute hint. Heinrich took it, hanging his black leather greatcoat and high-crowned cap on two of the hooks. Then, with a shrug, he went into the front room-and stopped in his tracks.
He'd seen plenty of seduction scenes in films. He'd never expected to walk into one in real life, but he did now. It was almost too perfect. A pair of champagne flutes sat on a coffee table. Behind it, on a couch, lolled Erika Dorsch. She wore something white and lacy that didn't cover very much of her and didn't cover that very well. There were no perfumes in films, either. This one-Chanel? — was devastating. "Hello, Heinrich," Erika murmured.
If he wasn't going to go forward and do what she obviously wanted him to do, he should have turned on his heel and got out of there as fast as he could. He realized that later. At the moment, captivated if not quite captured, he simply stared. "Where's your sister?" he blurted.
Erika laughed musically. She sat up, which put even more of her on display as the lingerie gave ground. "You were the one who said she'd be here," she answered. "I never did."
Heinrich thought back. She was right. He'd assumed what he wanted to assume. Maybe she'd let him-no, she'd certainly let him-do that, but she hadn't lied. The collar of his uniform shirt felt much too tight. "I'd better go," he muttered-the first half-smart thing he'd said, and it wasn't any better than half-smart.
"Don't be silly. You just got here." Erika patted the couch by her. "Sit down. Make yourself at home. Have something to drink."
He didn't. "This is…" He cast about for a word. He didn't take long to find one. "This is ridiculous. What on earth do you want with me?"
"About what you'd expect," she answered. "Do I have to draw you a picture? I don't think so-you're smart. And you'regemutlich. You're…not bad-
looking." He almost laughed. Even she couldn't push it any further than that. Then venom filled her voice as she went on, "And Willi's a two-timing asshole. So why not?"
She leaned forward to pick up one of the flutes. A pink nipple appeared for a moment as the lace shifted. Then it vanished again. Heinrich hadn't added a memory to thethings I'm glad I saw even if I wasn't supposed to file since he was sixteen. He did now.
"Why not?" Erika repeated, this time making it a serious question. "Who'd know? Nobody but us, and I'd get some of my own back. Willi's probably out fucking that little whore right now."
So he was. Heinrich knew that, where Erika only suspected it. But she'd asked him why not, and he thought he owed her an answer. That was also, at best, half-smart. Again, he didn't realize it till later. His thinking, just then, was less sharp than it might have been. He said, "I love my wife. I don't want to do anything to hurt her."
Erika laughed at him. "You sound like a script from the Propaganda Ministry-except I happen to know that every Propaganda Minister from Goebbels on has screwed around on his wife whenever he got the chance. So where does that leave you?"
"Say whatever you want," he answered. "I don't think this is a good idea."
"No? Part of you does." Erika wasn't looking at his face.
Heinrich intended to have a good long talk with that part, too. The trouble was, it talked back. Unhappily, he said, "Find some other way to get even with Willi. Find some way to make him happy, if you can, and for him to make you happy, too. I know the two of you used to be."
Her eyes flashed. "You don't know as much as you think you do."
"Who ever does, when it's somebody else's marriage?" Heinrich said reasonably-he was reasonable most of the time, even when being reasonable wasn't. "But that's how it looked from the outside."
"I don't care how it looked," Erika said. "And I didn't ask you to come over here to tell you stories about my miserable marriage."
"No, you asked me to come over here so you could blow holes in it-and in mine," Heinrich said.
"Mine's already got holes in it," Erika said. Heinrich waited to see if she'd add anything about his. She didn't. Instead, she went on, "I asked you to come over so I could forget about mine for a little while."
She wouldn't forget hers. Heinrich was blind to many things that went on around him, but not to that. If this went forward, Willi would be in the back of her mind-or more likely the front of her mind-every second. She'd be gloating and laughing at him with every kiss, with every caress. Didn't she see as much herself?
He thought about asking her. While he thought, Erika lost patience. "Heinrich," she said in a voice more imperious than seductive, "are you going to make love to me or not?"
He had to fight the giggles. They wouldn't do just now. What she reminded him of was a Hitler Jugend physical-training instructor who'd always bawled out, "Well, are you going to push yourselves or not?"
"Well?" she said when he didn't answer right away. He bit down hard on the inside of his cheek. The giggles were very close.
He had to say something. What came out was, "I'm sorry, Erika."
"Sorry?" The heat that might have been passion turned to fury. One way or another, itwould come out. "You think you're sorry now?I'll make you sorry, God damn you! Get out of here!" She grabbed the empty champagne flute and threw it at him. He ducked. It smashed against the wall behind him. He beat a hasty retreat as she reached for the full one. That got him in the seat of the pants. It didn't break till it hit the floor.
He had his greatcoat and cap on (the cap askew) and was out the door before he realized he had a wet spot back there. He shrugged. The coat would cover it till he got back to the office, and then he could sit on it till it dried. All things considered, he would rather have eaten lunch.
XI
Lise Gimpel knew something was wrong when Heinrich poured himself a healthy slug of schnapps as soon as he got home from the office. He didn't do that on days when things went well. Then he'd have a bottle of beer, if he had anything at all. But when she asked him what the trouble was, he jumped as if she'd poked him with a pin. "Nothing," he said quickly: much too quickly.
She paused, wondering where to go from there-wondering whether to go anywhere from there. But what he'd said and the way he'd said it were too blatant to ignore. She picked her words with care: "You don't lie to me much. When you do, you aren't very good at it."
"Oh," he said, and then,"Scheisse." He knocked back the schnapps at a gulp. Lise blinked. That wasn't his style at all. As if to prove it, he coughed several times. His cheeks turned pink. Embarrassment or schnapps? Schnapps, Lise judged. Heinrich coughed again, this time as if he'd started to say something and swallowed it at the last moment.
"Well, are you going to tell me about it or not?" Lise asked.
For some reason, that set her husband off again, in a different way. If his laugh wasn't hysterical, it came close. Finally, he said, "I suppose I'd better. This is all by way of explaining how I managed to get a champagne stain on my ass this afternoon."
Now it was Lise's turn to say, "Oh." She didn't know what she'd been looking for. Whatever it was, that wasn't it. "I'm listening," she told him, which seemed safe.
He talked. It took about ten minutes and another drink, this one gulped down as fast as the first. Lise had seen and heard for herself some of what Heinrich was talking about. At the time, she hadn't realized it applied to him in particular; she'd thought Erika was venting her spleen at the world at large. "…and that's that," Heinrich finished. "That, as a matter of fact, is pretty definitely that. I don't think there will be any more bridge games with the Dorsches after this."
Bridge, just then, wasn't the first thing on Lise's mind. "How do you feel about all this?" she asked.
"Glad it's over." Heinrich reached for the schnapps bottle again.
That he did made Lise sure he wasn't saying everything on his mind. "Pour some for me, too," she told him. "If you've earned three, I think I'm entitled to one." After a sip, she went on, "You kept quiet about this for months."
"I kept hoping everything would just…settle down," Heinrich said.
"Is that what you were hoping for?" Lise said. Erika Dorsch made formidable competition. Those cool Aryan good looks, and the suggestion of raw heat underneath…Lise took another swallow of schnapps, larger than the first. Formidable indeed.
"If I'd hoped for the other, it would have been easy enough to get."
"Why didn't you?" she asked. "It might have been the easiest way out of the trouble."
Heinrich shook his head. "My life is complicated enough. It has to be, because of what I am-what we are. If you think I want any more complications on top of that, you're crazy. And besides, I love you."
She would have liked it better if he'd put those in the other order. Being who and what she was herself, though, she understood why he hadn't. She prodded a little, anyhow: "And you were enjoying yourself, weren't you, with a, a beautiful woman"-there, she'd said it-"falling all over you?"
"I might have enjoyed it a hell of a lot more if I hadn't been scared to death all the damn time," he said. "This is mylife we're talking about, mine and lots of other people's. I hope I'm not stupid enough to put that on the line for a roll in the hay. If-" He drank instead of finishing.
"If what?" Lise asked. Her husband didn't answer. He peered out the kitchen window, resolutely pretending he hadn't heard. Lise almost repeated the question. But she could make a good guess at what he'd swallowed. It would have been something like,If I weren't a Jew, or if she were…
She supposed she could get angry at him for even that much. What was the point, though? Things were the way they were. There was no world where Heinrich was agoy or Erika a Jew.A good thing, too, Lise thought, and finished her schnapps with a gulp. She poured the glass full again.
"We're both going to go to sleep in the middle of supper," Heinrich said.
"That's all right. That's the least of my worries right now," Lise answered
. "You turned her down. She's going to be angry-you said so yourself. What can she do to you? What can she do to us?"
"I thought about that," Heinrich said. "I can't see anything. Can you? She's not going to pour gasoline on the house and set it on fire, or anything like that."
"I suppose not," Lise admitted. She didn't stop worrying, though. How could any Jew in her right mind stop worrying? If you weren't worrying, you were likely to miss something that might kill you.
"Is it all right?" Heinrich asked anxiously.
"It could be better," Lise said, and he flinched. Considering all the things that might have happened, and all the different kinds of unpleasantness that might have sprung from them, she decided she had to relent, and she did: "It could be worse, too. So I guess it's all right. But if any more beautiful blondes make a play for you, you might want to let me know a little sooner."
"I promise," he said.
She snorted. "Or, of course, you might not want to let me know at all. But I hope you do." He had no answer for that, which was, in its own way, reassuring.
When Susanna Weiss watched Czechs demonstrating on the televisor without getting arrested, she was astonished. When she saw Frenchmen demonstrating, she was shocked. But there they were, marching by the Arc de Triomphe with signs that said "LIBERTY,EQUALITY,FRATERNITY!" That slogan had been outlawed for seventy years. Ever since 1940, the motto of the French state had been Work, Family, Country. But, while the older phrase might have been forbidden, it hadn't been forgotten. Here it was, for all the world to see.
As in Prague, policemen stood around watching without doing anything. In their round, flat-crowned kepis, they looked even more French than the demonstrators. But they collaborated with the Reich more enthusiastically than the Czechs did-or they had up till now, anyhow.
For the French, collaboration had meant survival. To Germany, Czechoslovakia had been an annoyance. France had been the deadly foe. Crushed in 1870, avenged in 1918, she'd been crushed once more in 1940 and never allowed to get off her knees again. From that day till this, French Fascists had toed the German line. Anyone who didn't toe the line disappeared, mostly forever. When Germany spat, France swam. But while she swam, she breathed, if softly.
In The Presence of mine Enemies Page 36
