In The Presence of mine Enemies

by Harry Turtledove

  The questions were stupid. Some of the answers the contestants gave were even stupider. And the way the people jumped up and down and squealed-men as well as women-made Susanna cringe.This was the Herrenvolk? This was the material from which the Nazis had forged a Reich they said would last for a thousand years?

  "If this is the master race, Lord help the rest of the world," Susanna said. But what had the Lord done for the rest of the world? Given most of it German overlords, that was what. How could you go on believing in a God Who went and did things like that?

  Susanna looked down and discovered her glass was empty again. That, fortunately, was easy to fix. The book-crowded living room swayed a little when she got up. She made it to the kitchen and back without any trouble, though-and she didn't spill the fresh drink, either. As for how and why you could go on believing in a God Who did dreadful things-people had been wrestling with that at least since the time of Job. She wasn't going to settle it one drunken, frightened night in Berlin.

  And if she drank enough, maybe she'd even stop worrying. She set about finding out.

  Heinrich Gimpel sat in a cell that held a cot whose frame was immovably set in the concrete of the floor, a sink, a toilet, and damn all else. Whenever he stood, he had to hang on to his trousers. They'd taken away his belt-his shoelaces, too.

  Of course, the first thing they'd done when they got him here was yank down his trousers and his underpants. They'd grunted when they saw he was made the same way they were. One of them said, "Is that all you've got?" He supposed that sort of insult was meant to tear him down so he'd be easier meat when they really started questioning him. He wondered why they bothered. He was already about as frightened as he could be. He was so frightened, he reckoned it a minor miracle he had anything at all to show down there.

  They hadn't beaten him-not yet, anyway. They hadn't drugged him, either. They'd just tossed him in this cell and left him alone. He didn't know what that meant. Were they working up something particularly horrible? Or were they unsure he was what they thought he was?

  Think, Heinrich, dammit,he told himself. If he could change the mess he was in to any degree, it would have to be with his brains. But what were the odds hecould change it? Slim, and he knew as much. Still, he had to try.

  If I were truly agoy,how would I act? He'd still be frightened. He was sure of that. If you weren't frightened after the Security Police grabbed you, you had to be crazy. But he would also be outraged. Howdared they think him a dirty Jew? The anger he generated was ersatz, but after a while it started to feel real. He wondered if actors worked themselves into their roles this way.

  For the time being, he had no one for whom to show off his fine synthetic fury. None of the cells close by had anyone in it. No guards tramped past. Why should they? He wasn't going anywhere.

  "I want a lawyer!" he said loudly. "This is all a stupid frame-up! Get me a lawyer!" Maybe nobody was listening. He wouldn't have bet on it, though. A Security Police prison was bound to have microphones.

  After what seemed a very long time-he didn't have his watch any more-two blackshirts came up the corridor. One pushed a food cart. The other carried an assault rifle. "Stand away from the bars," he ordered in a bored voice. Heinrich obeyed. The man pushing the cart shoved a tray into his cell.

  "I want a lawyer," Heinrich said again. "You've got to get me out of here. the Fuhrer himself has consulted me."

  They ignored him. He might have known they would. How many prisoners had they seen? Thousands, without a doubt. How many had admitted they were guilty? Even one?

  He ate what they gave him: cabbage stew with little bits of salt pork in it (did they think he would pick them out if he was a Jew?) and a chunk of brown bread. It wasn't as good as what he got at the canteen at work, but it wasn't a whole lot worse. He turned on the water in the sink and drank from the cupped palm of his hand till he'd had enough to cut his thirst.

  Then he lay down on the cot on his back and stared up at the rough concrete of the ceiling. He hoped they hadn't grabbed Lise and the girls, too. He did his best to pray, but that didn't come easy. If God had let this happen to him, how reliable was He? But if you didn't believe, what point to staying a Jew?

  Good question. He had no answer. He felt empty, useless. What happened to him now was out of his hands. He hoped it was in God's. He knew for certain it was in the Security Police's.

  He fell asleep with his glasses on. He never heard the fellow with the cart retrieve his tray, which he'd left by the bars. He stayed asleep till a key clicked in the lock and half a dozen blackshirts burst in. "On your feet, you Schweinehund, you kike, you stinking sheeny!" they screamed.

  Blearily, he obeyed. What time was it? Somewhere in the middle of the night, he thought.I have to keep saying no. Whatever they do to me, I have to keep saying no. If they killed him, they killed him. With a little luck-maybe a lot of luck-he could keep his family and friends alive.

  The Security Police hustled him along the corridor. His pants fell down. They wouldn't let him pull them up again.

  "I'm no Jew. I want a lawyer," he said.

  "Shut up!" they shouted in unison. One of them stuck an elbow in his ribs. It hurt. He grunted. He'd never make a cinema hero, laughing at wounds that would kill the average hero. On the other hand, they could have done worse to him than they did.

  INTERROGATION, said the sign over the door to the chamber where they took him. It wasn't quite, All hope abandon, ye who enter here, but it was, in the most literal sense of the words, close enough for government work.

  They slammed him down into a hard chair and shackled him at wrists and ankles. They shone bright lights in his face. He'd seen this scene at the movies, too. The hero usually mocked his tormentors. Heinrich felt much more like screaming. He managed to keep quiet, which might have been the hardest thing he'd ever done.

  "So, Jew…" said a voice from somewhere behind the glaring lights.

  "I'm no Jew!" Heinrich exclaimed. "Jesus, are you people out of your minds?" The more offended and horrified he sounded, the better the chance he had…if he had any chance at all.

  One of the blackshirts lifted his glasses off his nose. Another one slapped him in the face. His head snapped to the side. His ears rang. He blinked. It didn't do much good. Without glasses, the whole room was blurry.

  "Don't spew your lies," the voice said. "You'll only make it worse for yourself."

  How could I?he wondered bleakly. "But you've got the wrong man!" he wailed. "I've worked for Oberkommando der Wehrmacht for almost twenty years now, and-"

  Another slap. This time, his head jerked the other way. "Tearing down everything the Reich builds up," the voice growled.

  An opening! "That'sa lie!" Heinrich said. "Look at my evaluations, if you don't believe me. I've served the Reich. I've never hurt it." That was true. He'd hated himself because it was true, too. Working for the regime might save him now, though. Quickly, desperately, he went on, "Ask the Fuhrer, if you don't believe me."

  Raucous laughter from the interrogator. "Tell me another one, Jewboy. As if the Fuhrer cares about the likes of you."

  One of the blackshirts who'd frog-marched him into the room muttered to the man behind the lamps. That man, whom Heinrich still hadn't seen, let out a scornful grunt. Then he shifted gears. He started hammering away at Heinrich's pedigree.

  That pedigree was, of course, fictitious from top to bottom. The interrogator would have caught out a lot of Jews, grilling them about ancestors they didn't have. But Heinrich was a meticulous man. He knew the ancestors he didn't have as well as the ones he did-maybe better, since more about the fictitious ones had gone down on paper. He had to remind himself to throw in "I don't know" s every so often. How many people really could recite chapter and verse about great-great-grandparents off the tops of their heads? He didn't want the blackshirts to think he'd memorized a script, even if he had.

  They slapped him a few more times. It stung, but he endured it. They weren't working anywhere near s
o hard as they might have to break him. Maybe they weren't sure what they had. Heinrich clung to that hope.

  At last, after what could have been half an hour or three hours, the head man said, "Take the kike back to his cell. We'll have another go at him later."

  Back Heinrich went. He could have done without that promise from the interrogator. But he hadn't told the Security Police anything. And they still hadn't roughed him up too badly.It could be worse, he thought. On his way out of an interrogation, that would do.

  Alicia Gimpel envied her sisters. No matter what the Nazi matrons asked them, they couldn't give anything away. When they denied they were Jews, they believed those denials from the bottom of their hearts. Some of the blackshirts would remember taking them out of school for a long time.

  The matrons called this place a foundlings' disciplinary home. The other children in here were ragged and scrawny, but very clean. The whole building reeked of disinfectant. They'd separated the Gimpel girls, maybe to keep them from coming up with a story together. For Francesca and Roxane, there wasn't any story to come up with. They were genuinely outraged at what was happening to them. Alicia had to pretend she was, too. If she could manage that, she had a chance. She might have a chance, anyway.

  They'd put her in a room with a sharp-faced, stringy-haired blond girl named Paula. "What are you here for?" Paula asked.

  "You won't believe it." Alicia assumed somebody was listening to everything she said.

  "Try me." The other girl's smile showed pointed teeth. "I burned down my schoolroom." She spoke with nothing but pride.

  "Wow!" Alicia wasn't sure she believed that. Maybe Paula was bragging. Or maybe she was trying to get Alicia to talk big, too, and hang herself. Could an eleven-year-old be an informer? Of course she could.

  "So what did you do?" Paula asked.

  "They say I'm a Jew-or they say my father is, anyway," Alicia answered. That was the truth; admitting it couldn't hurt.

  Paula's pale blue eyes widened. Now she was the one who said, "Wow!" and then, "That's so neat! I didn't think any of you people were left. The way the Nazis go on, they got rid of you. If you stayed ahead of 'em, more power to you."

  She sounded as if she meant it. But then, if she was an informer, shewould sound that way.I can't trust her, Alicia reminded herself. She said, "That's what they say, but it's a lie. I'm not, and Daddy isn't, either."

  "Sure he's not." Paula's smile was knowing. "You've got to say that, don't you? If you say anything else, it's the showers or a noodle, right?"

  That was what Alicia was afraid of. But she couldn't even show that the thought had crossed her mind. "They wouldn't do that to me!" she exclaimed. "I haven't done anything, and I'm not what they say I am!"

  "Maybe you're not," Paula said. "What the hell-I don't know. But if they decide you are, you are, whether you are or not. You know what I mean?"

  Whether she was an arsonist or not, she was a perfect cynic. How many brushes with the authorities had she had? How many of them had she won? More than a few, or Alicia would have been astonished. But not all, or she wouldn't be here. Alicia knew perfectly well what she meant, too. Here, though, she had to pretend she didn't. If she'd been seized for something she wasn't, none of these dire things would have occurred to her. She said, "They can't do that! It'swrong! " Maybe fear sounded like anger. She hoped so, anyhow.

  All Paula said was, "When has that ever stopped them?"

  Alicia had no answer, not at first. That had never stopped them. But then hope flared. "The new Fuhrer won't let them do things like that."

  "Buckliger?" Paula didn't try to hide her scorn. "You wait till the time comes. Lothar Prutzmann will eat his lunch." She might have been handicapping a football match, not politics.

  "Oh, I hope not!" Alicia said. Even that might have been too much, when Prutzmann's Security Police had her. She said it anyway. She meant it. And she couldn't get in too much trouble for showing she was loyal to the Fuhrer… could she?

  Paula only laughed. "You just watch. You'll find out." In the hallway, a bell rang. Paula bounced to her feet. "That's supper. Come on."

  It was a wretched excuse for a real supper: cabbage soup, boiled potatoes, and brown bread without butter. Alicia could see why Paula was so skinny. She looked around for her sisters. Each of them had a matron hovering close. When Alicia looked back over her shoulder, she saw one behind her, too. She decided not to get up and try to see Francesca or Roxane. Why give the matron the pleasure of telling her she couldn't? These women looked as if saying no was their chief pleasure in life.

  She did ask her matron, "When will you let us go back to our mother and father?" She made sure she mentioned Daddy as well as Mommy. Nobody seemed to think Mommy was a Jew. She wondered how that had happened.

  The matron frowned. She had a long, sour face, a face made for frowning. At last, after a pause for thought, she said, "Well, dear"-Alicia had never heard a more insinceredear — "that depends on what they decide to do with your father, you see."

  Maybe she hoped Alicia wouldn't understand that. And maybe, if Alicia hadn't been a Jew, she wouldn't have. She was, and she did, but she had to pretend she didn't.If they decide Daddy's an Aryan, you'll go home, too. But if they decide he's a Jew, he's dead, and your sisters are dead, and so are you.

  Lise Gimpel paused in cleaning up the house to take a pull from a glass of schnapps. The place was an astonishing mess. It might have suffered a visit from an earthquake or a hurricane, not the Security Police. They'd torn the place apart, looking for evidence that Heinrich was a Jew. If she hadn't flushed the photographs, they would have found it, too.

  Her brain felt as badly disordered as the house. They'd roared questions at her while they were throwing everything on the floor. Why had she married a Jew? How long had she known he was a Jew? Why was she such a filthy whore? Did she think it was more fun sucking a circumcised cock?

  Maybe they'd figured that one would horrify her into spilling secrets. All it did was make her furious. "You stupid fucking bastards!" she'd screamed. "You've got him! You know goddamn well he's not circumcised!"

  They hadn't arrested her. They'd even been a little more polite after that-not much, but a little. They hadn't got anything out of her, or she didn't think they had. And they'd been in a rotten mood when they finally quit searching the house, so she didn't think they'd come up with anything there, either.

  Now…Now all she could do was pick up the pieces. They hadn't smashed things on purpose, anyhow. All they'd done was toss them every which way. Getting them back where they belonged would take time, but she could do it. What else did she have to do, with Heinrich and the girls gone? Work helped hold worry at bay-again, not much, but a little.

  The telephone rang. Lise jumped."Scheisse," she said crisply. The last thing she wanted to do was talk to anybody right now. But she knew she had to. It might be important. It might-literally-be life and death. Making her way through drifts of things on the floor, she went to the phone and picked it up. "Bitte?"

  "Lise?" It was Willi. "How are you? Is there any news?"

  "News? Well, yes. They've turned the house inside out. They've taken the children. Other than that, everything's jolly."

  "Gott im Himmel!" Willi burst out. In the background, Erika asked what was wrong. He relayed what Lise had just told him.

  "The children?" Erika said. "Du lieber Gott!I didn't even think about the children!"

  "That's terrible," Willi said to Lise. "Is there anything I can do?"

  "I've got Heinrich a lawyer. I hope it helps," Lise answered. "It should. He's innocent, so there's no way they can prove he's a Jew." She assumed more people than Willi Dorsch were listening to her telephone calls. She wouldn't have admitted what Heinrich was even to Willi alone. With the Security Police surely tapping the line, she wouldn't admit anything to anybody.

  "There you go," Willi said. "Keep your chin up, and everything will turn out all right." He sounded like a man whistling past a graveyard.

/>   Lise said, "Thanks," anyhow. Willi meant well. That probably wouldn't do Heinrich any good, but it was there. She went on, "I'm going to go. They left the house a hell of a mess."

  "Oh. All right. Take care of yourself. We're thinking about you." Willi hung up.

  So did Lise.Thinking about me? Thinking what about me? she wondered.Thinking I may be a Jew myself? But that wasn't fair. Willi had sounded the way a friend ought to sound. And Erika seemed genuinely horrified when he told her the Security Police had grabbed the girls, too.

  They're good friends if they call, thinking Heinrich's not a Jew. They'd be better friends if they thought he was a Jew and called anyway. Maybe they did think so. But Lise would be a fool to ask them, and they would be fools to tell her.

  Shaking her head, she got back to work.

  "You! Gimpel!" a blackshirted jailer roared, and Heinrich sprang to his feet and stiffened to attention as if he were back in elementary school. Back then, he would have worried about a paddling. Now two more men from the Security Police leveled assault rifles at him. The jailer unlocked his cell and swung the door open. "Come with us."

  "Jawohl!" Heinrich said. Another grilling? Another tentative thumping? Or were they really going to get down to business this time?

  "Hands behind your back," the jailer told him when he'd stepped out into the corridor. Numbly, he obeyed. The man cuffed them behind him, then gave him a shove. "Get moving."

  Feet light with fear, he obeyed. He couldn't do anything about his flopping trousers now. They didn't seem to care-they were hauling him along. They took him by a different route this time. He didn't know if that was good or bad. His heart thuttered. One way or the other, he'd find out.

  They brought him to a room divided in half by a thick glass wall. A grill let someone on his side talk with someone on the other side. And someone did wait on the other side: a tall man, almost as tall as Heinrich, with an impressive mane of gray hair. The stranger wore a sharp pinstripe suit and carried a crocodile-leather attache case with fittings that looked like real gold.