"Well, it's done. I hope it turns out all right," she said, and then, "I didn't see you anywhere on the tape."
"Good. I didn't, either," Heinrich said. He'd been watching for himself, then, which meant he was more worried than he let on. Lise sent him a look half affectionate, half exasperated. Hewould try to play down whatever bothered him, because he didn't want her to worry. Once in a great while, that worked. The rest of the time, it only made her worry more.
An advertisement for a breakfast cereal tried to show that eating the stuff would make you rich, athletic, and beautiful. Lise remained unconvinced. "It tastes like library paste," she said.
"I wouldn't be surprised," Heinrich replied, "but how do you know what library paste tastes like?"
"How? I'm the one who helps the girls put school projects together, that's how," Lise said. "I eat the paste, I breathe it, I damn near bathe in it. Last week,Frau Koch wanted everybody in class to make a model of one of the forts the Reich uses to protect German farmers in the Ukraine from bandits. Do you have any idea how much fun it is to glue three strands of tinsel barbed wire to toothpick stakes?"
"As a matter of fact, no," Heinrich admitted. "Is that why you were in such a lousy mood last-when was it? — Wednesday night?"
"You bet it is," Lise said. "And there had to bethree strands of barbed wire, too, by God, or Francesca would have lost points.Frau Koch said so. She really is a beast, if you ask me. Everything else about the project was like that, too: do it exactly this way, or else. How are they supposed to learn anything?"
"I'll tell you what they learn," Heinrich said. "They learn to obey."
Lise hadn't thought of that. But as soon as her husband pointed it out to her, she saw that he was right. School taught more than the multiplication tables and the capital of Manchukuo and how Bismarck unified the Reich. It taught children how to be good Germans, how to be good Nazis. One of the things they needed to know was how to blindly obey anyone set over them. The fortress needs to have three strands of tinsel barbed wire?Jawohl, Frau Koch! Three strands of tinsel barbed wire it shall have! And why does it need to have them? Because Frau Koch says so. No other reason needed.
But Germans-some of them Nazis, no doubt-had stood out there in Adolf Hitler Platz shouting, "SS go home!" They really had. And here was Horst Witzleben, showing them to the whole Reich, to much of the Germanic Empire, with every sign of approval. Would people be chanting the same thing in Oslo tomorrow? In London? Even in Omaha? What would happen if they did?
Horst Witzleben said, "Today, the Fuhrer met with a delegation from the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia to discuss that region's future relationship with the Greater German Reich. At the close of the meeting, a spokesman for the Fuhrer said that while Bohemia and Moravia, which have been part of the Reich since 1939, cannot reasonably expect to regain their former independence, a larger degree of autonomy within the German federal structure is not beyond the realm of possibility."
The picture cut to the delegation in the palace press room. Its leader, a white-haired man identified as-of all things-a playwright, spoke in Czech-accented German: "What we did here today marks a good beginning. I am not sure Herr Buckliger realizes it is only a beginning, but that is all right. If he doesn't, we will show him."
"They didn't arrest this fellow, either?" Lise said incredulously.
"Doesn't look that way." Heinrich sounded startled, too.
"This is all very strange," Lise said. Her husband nodded. She went on, "I'd almost rather Buckliger had left things alone. Then we'd know where we stood. This way, everything we've been sure of for so long is up in the air."
"What's that myth? Pandora? Is that it? The last thing that flew out was hope." Heinrich paused, frowning. "I think that's how it is."
"Yes, I think so, too," Lise said. "I don't know if I have any, not really. But even wondering if I could…It feels funny. It feels dizzy, like somebody spiked my drink when I wasn't looking."
"I thought so, too, this afternoon," Heinrich said. "But don't get too excited. For every scene like this, there's an 'Enough Is Enough' or something like it. The cards may have been dealt, but they haven't been played yet. And nobody's going to lay down a dummy. We won't get to see anything till it comes out during the hand."
"I suppose not." Lise sighed. "We're going to have to find some new bridge partners, you know."
"One of these days." Heinrich gestured toward the televisor. That Czech playwright was gone, but the memory of his calm assurance lingered. Heinrich said, "Plenty of interesting things happening right now. And pretty soon the kids will learn how to play."
"All sorts of things to pass on to the next generation," Lise said. They both started to laugh. Bridge wasn't even illegal.
SS men, some in black uniforms, others in camouflage smocks, swarmed near the campus of Friedrich Wilhelm University. Snipers with rifles with telescopic sights took positions on rooftops that had never known the footsteps of anyone but occasional repairmen and not-so-occasional pigeons. Susanna Weiss would have been more alarmed if she hadn't known that Heinz Buckliger was coming here to speak.
Along with the SS men, a horde of workmen and technicians had also invaded the university. Banging hammers and buzzing power tools disrupted the quiet that was supposed to foster academic contemplation. Since Susanna had never had any enormous use for quiet, she turned up the radio a little louder to try to drown out the racket of carpentry.
That did the job well enough, but curiosity accomplished what noise couldn't: it made her get up from her work and look out the window.
A platform for the Fuhrer 's upcoming speech was rising in the open space between the two long wings that housed most of the university's classrooms and faculty offices. Rising with it were platforms for televisor cameras. Those would lift the cameramen above the level of the crowd and make sure no one's head got between Heinz Buckliger and his larger audience across the Reich and the Germanic Empire.
The crowd was already building. Susanna thought about going downstairs and joining it. Then she thought again. What was the point? She wasn't close to the platform here, but she could see it. If she went down there, she wouldn't be able to see a damned thing, because everybody around her would be taller than she was. Better to stay where she was. She'd hear Heinz Buckliger either way.
Curiosity satisfied and decision made, she went back to grading papers. Plenty of her students understood the scatology in "The Miller's Tale." Far fewer of them understood how the piece fit into The Canterbury Tales as a whole. They enjoyed gross jokes. Finding and defining structure in a work of literature was something else again.
Twenty minutes later, the telephone rang. She picked it up. "Bitte?This is Susanna Weiss."
"Fraulein Doktor Professor, this is Rosa." Professor Oppenhoff's secretary paused for a moment, then said, "The department chairman strongly advises against watching the Fuhrer 's speech from your window."
"He does?" Susanna said indignantly. "Why?"
"Because the SS has told him they may shoot anyone they see appearing in a window. Whoever it is might be an assassin, they say."
"Oh." Now it was Susanna's turn to pause. "Well, I hope you get hold of everybody. Otherwise, we'll need to fill some vacancies next semester."
"I'll do my best," the secretary said, and hung up. Considering how badly they got along, Susanna knew a certain amount of relief that Rosa had called her. The other woman didn't seem to want to see her dead, anyhow. That was something.
Then she started to laugh. "God help anyone who's in the men's room when the phone rings!" she exclaimed.
Even if watching Buckliger's speech turned out not to be such a good idea, she could still listen to it. She opened her window a few centimeters so she could hear better. the Fuhrer wasn't there yet, so none of the SS snipers took a shot at her.
Noise from down below swelled as the crowd built up. You could put a lot of people between the two main wings of the university buildings. From the excited buzz that ro
se, she knew to the minute when
Heinz Buckliger came into sight.
"Guten Tag,students, faculty, and friends," Buckliger said. His amplified voice sounded a little tinny. Technicians would probably improve it for the radio and televisor. "I am glad to come to this great center of learning. Knowledge is at the heart of the Reich 's progress in war and peace. Without our talented scientists and engineers, we could not have won our great victories. Nor would the peace that followed have been so prosperous, so healthy, or so enjoyable."
He got a hand. Susanna might have known he would. She wouldn't have cheered that, not in a million years. Buckliger proved he was a German after all. The Volk might live prosperous, healthy, enjoyable lives. What about the Jews? The gypsies? Homosexuals? Poles? Russians? Ukrainians? Serbs? Arabs? Negroes? Feebleminded people? Did he think of them at all? Or only of his own comfort? From what he said, the answer seemed all too obvious.
"We need to know ourselves as well," the Fuhrer said, after showing he didn't know himself so well even if he could sound like Marcus Aurelius. Would a Roman Emperor count as an Aryan? Probably not, not when he'd been fighting Germans along the Danube while he wrote the Meditations. Buckliger continued, "And the best way to know ourselves is to tell ourselves the truth.
"We cannot do that while the Reichstag is only a rubber stamp. It has been nothing more for much too long. As Hitler pointed out in the first edition of Mein Kampf, democratic elections are the best way to find representatives who will serve the people who chose them and not themselves alone." He paused for applause, and got it.
"This being so," he went on, "I am calling new elections to the Reichstag, voting to take place on Sunday, July 10. All seats are to be contested. Candidates need not be members of the Party, so long as they are of Aryan blood and good character. Ballots will be secret. There will be no penalty for voting one's conscience. I have not the slightest particle of doubt that the best will prevail. And the Volk and the Reich will be better for it."
The ovation this time was hesitant, as if the Fuhrer 's audience was not sure whether it was allowed to cheer. That didn't surprise Susanna. What Heinz Buckliger had said did. But it was hardly surprising to be surprised in Berlin these days. That speech of Rolf Stolle's in the Adolf Hitler Platz where the crowd drove off the SS band…The SS had gone away, and not only did no one get arrested, the story made the evening news. Heinrich had been there. Up till today, Susanna had been sick with envy. Now she too had a moment of history to claim as her own.
"We National Socialists have ruled Germany wisely and well for many years," Buckliger said. "I have faith that the Volk will recognize our service and give us the large majority in the Reichstag we deserve."
Loud, confident applause rang out. Of course people knew they were safe clapping after the Fuhrer praised the Nazis. Susanna thought Buckliger was probably right about the Party's winning most of the seats in the Reichstag. Even now, how many non-Nazis would be bold enough to run against Party Bonzen? How many who did run would win? Maybe some. Many? It seemed unlikely.
Did Buckliger really believe the Nazis had ruled Germany well and wisely? They'd won, thanks in no small measure to Hitler's demonic energy and Himmler's grim ruthlessness. But the blood of the people they'd murdered-the blood of the peoples they'd murdered-still cried out from the grave…and from the crematorium for those millions who'd never got a grave.
"I know reform, revitalization, cannot come overnight," the Fuhrer said. "The Reich is large and complex.
Those who call for everything to be perfect by tomorrow are naive. But those who say nothing needs repair are willfully blind. Change is part of life. It is here. It will go forward. And it will succeed."
He got another big hand. Susanna was intrigued by his methods. In back-to-back sentences, he'd skewered Rolf Stolle and Lothar Prutzmann. No doubt he meant to show himself as a moderate, as a man embarked on the only possible course. That could work. But she remembered the thought she'd had not so long before. A moderate was also somebody vulnerable from both the left and the right. Did Heinz Buckliger see that?
Most people would say,What do you think you're doing, trying to guess along with the Fuhrer?Susanna cared very little about what most people said. If she had, she would have dropped her Judaism like a grenade with the fuse lit.
Besides, up till the time when Buckliger became Fuhrer, politics in the Reich had been not only appalling but, worse yet, bloody dull. Some of the things that went on were still appalling. But only someone who was deaf and blind would have called them dull. And when things were interesting, how could younot try to guess what would happen next?
Outside, the applause went on and on, though the Fuhrer didn't say anything more. Susanna concluded he was leaving the platform, leaving the university. Pretty soon, the coast would be clear. She could look out her window again without worrying about trigger-happy SS sharpshooters.
In the meantime…In the meantime, she still had her essays to grade. They would have been there even if Kurt Haldweim were still Fuhrer. In a lot of ways, life went on in spite of politics.
And, in a lot of ways, it didn't. How many lives had the politics of the Reich snuffed out? Too many. Millions and millions too many. What did undergraduate essays matter, with that in the back of her mind?
But her life had to go on, no matter what the Reich had done. Shaking her head, she picked up a red pen and got back to work.
A day like any other day. That was how Heinrich Gimpel remembered it afterwards. It could have been any Tuesday. The kids were running around getting ready for school. Francesca was still grumbling about some new idiotic project Frau Koch had inflicted on the class. Roxane was spelling words out loud; she was going to have a test. And Alicia had her nose in a book. Lise had to yell at her to get her to put it down and do the things she needed to do. Yes, everything seemed normal as could be.
Blackbirds on lawns tugged at worms as Heinrich walked up the street toward the bus stop. The sun shone brightly. Spring was really here now. He couldn't recall any other spring that had seemed so hopeful, so cheerful. Was that Mother Nature's fault or Heinz Buckliger's? Heinrich didn't know. He didn't much care, either. He would enjoy the moment for as long as it lasted.
He waited at the bus stop for a few minutes, then got on the bus for the Stahnsdorf train station. Three stops later, Willi Dorsch got on, too. He sat down next to Heinrich."Guten Morgen," he said.
"Same to you," Heinrich answered."Wie geht's?"
"It's been better," Willi said. "I have to tell you, though, it's been worse, too. Erika's been…kind of cheerful lately." He looked this way and that, a comic show of suspicion. "I wonder what she's up to."
"Heh," Heinrich said uneasily. As far as he could tell, Erika had never said anything to Willi about what had happened at her sister's house on Burggrafen-Strasse-or about any of the several things that might have happened there but hadn't. He supposed he should have been grateful. Hewas grateful. But he was also suspicious, and his suspicion had no comic edge to it.
When the bus got to the Stahnsdorf station, he and Willi bought their copies of the Volkischer Beobachter and carried them out to the platform. They climbed aboard the train up to Berlin, sat down together, and started reading the morning news. Almost as if they'd rehearsed it, they simultaneously pointed to the same story below the fold on the front page.
STOLLE ANNOUNCES CANDIDACY, the headline said. There was a small head shot of the Gauleiter of Berlin just below the line of big black type. The story, as bald as any Heinrich had ever seen in the Beobachter, announced that Rolf Stolle was indeed running for the Reichstag.
"Can he do that?" Heinrich said, and then, "How can he do that? He's already Gauleiter." The puzzle offended his sense of order.
But Willi had the answer: "Gauleiter's a Party office.Reichstag member would be a state office. He could hold both at once."
"You're right," Heinrich said wonderingly. The National Socialist Party and the Reich were as closely intertwi
ned as a pair of lovers-or as a tree and a strangler fig. But they weren't quite one and the same.
"I wonder how the Fuhrer will like that," Willi said.
"Stolle trying for a national forum?"
Willi nodded. "Ja. And Stolle trying for votes in general." He lowered his voice. "I mean, who ever voted for Buckliger for anything? Party Bonzen and Wehrmacht bigwigs, sure, but nobody else."
"You're right." Again, wonder filled Heinrich's voice. Till Buckliger's speech at Friedrich Wilhelm University, that wouldn't have mattered. Who'd voted-really voted-for anyone who mattered in the Reich? No one. Elections had been afterthoughts, farces. This one felt different. Stolle must have sensed it, too. He might well have been a clown. Several of the moves he'd made lately convinced Heinrich he was anything but a fool.
And Willi, when it came to politics if not to women, was also anything but a fool. "I wonderwhy the Fuhrer 's not running for a seat in the Reichstag, " he said thoughtfully.
That was an interesting question, too. Heinrich said, "Maybe he's worried he'd lose."
"Maybe," Willi said. "It's the only thing I thought of that made any sense at all, too. But it doesn't make a whole lot of sense, if you know what I mean. He can find a district full of Prussian cabbage farmers or Bavarian beer brewers that would elect him no matter what."
"You'd think so, wouldn't you?" Heinrich agreed. The more they talked about it, the more normal their tone became. The more freedom all the people of the Reich got, the more they seemed to take it for granted. The more they got, the more they craved? Was that true, too? Could that be true? Maybe it could. Maybe it really could. But who would have believed it a year before?
Willi suddenly looked sly. "The other side of the coin is what happens if Buckliger doesn't run for the Reichstag. If he doesn't, he's still Fuhrer. He's still got all the Fuhrer 's powers. He can tell it what to do."
"That's the way things work, all right," Heinrich said. But then he did a little more thinking of his own. "That's the way things worknow, all right. If the Volk chooses the Reichstag, though, will it be so easy to ignore? What's the point to having a real election if right afterwards you go and pretend you never did?"
In The Presence of mine Enemies Page 39
