In The Presence of mine Enemies

by Harry Turtledove

  That left Heinrich alone at the table with Erika, exactly where he didn't want to be. "I'm going to give Lise a hand," he said, and started to rise.

  But when Erika said, "Wait," he didn't see what else he could do. She asked, "Was Willi at lunch with you today?"

  He didn't want to lie. He didn't want to tell the truth, either. In the end, he didn't say anything. That was also unlikely to help, as he knew only too well.

  And it didn't. Erika's eyes narrowed. "Uh-huh," she said, packing a world of meaning into two wordless syllables. "Well, where was he, then?"

  "I don't know." Heinrich could tell the literal truth there, and did, gladly.

  By then, telling the truth didn't help, either. Erika asked the next question he dreaded: "Wherever he was, who was with him?"

  "How am I supposed to know that if I don't know where he was?" Heinrich hoped he sounded reasonable, but feared he sounded desperate.

  Erika sent him the sort of look he hadn't got since the last time he'd tried explaining to a teacher why he didn't have his homework. But before she could call him a liar to his face or ask another question he didn't want to answer, the toilet down the hall flushed. Out came Willi, whistling.Saved by-well, no, not the bell, Heinrich thought.

  "That'sbetter," Willi said.

  Lise brought in a tray of cold cuts and crackers and cheese. "Here," she said. "We don't have to think about this."

  "I didn't have to think about what I was doing before," Willi said.

  "Are you sure?" Erika asked, in tones that would have given him credit for any disgusting habit. Heinrich built himself a snack. That was probably the safest thing he could do. Even scratching his head struck him as dangerous.

  Erika had come right out and propositioned him, or as near as made no difference, and she didn't see anything wrong with that. The only place where she saw anything wrong was with what Willi did. Willi had had some sort of interesting time with Ilse. But if he ever found out what Erika had said to Heinrich…

  It sounded like one of the televisor dramas that ran on weekday afternoons. Unfortunately, it was real.If Willi finds out, will he try to knock Erika's block off, or mine? Heinrich got up and poured himself another glass of wine. That was a more interesting question than he really wanted to contemplate.

  In the kitchen, Lise had missed the byplay. "We're all cheerful tonight, aren't we?" she remarked.

  "Iam," Willi said, piling a wobbly mountain of meat and cheese on a cracker. "Why wouldn't I be?" When he devoured his creation, he looked like a hamster stuffing sunflower seeds into its cheek pouches. Heinrich wouldn't have believed all that would fit in a man's mouth, but it did.

  "Yes, why wouldn't you be?" Bombers were taking off in Erika's voice. Panzers were rolling for the border.Why wouldn't you be, when you were out screwing around? She didn't say it, but it hung in the air.

  Somehow, Willi seemed not to hear it. Heinrich didn't know whether to be appalled or jealous. Willi assembled another monster snack. He managed to eat this one, too, and smacked his lips in triumph.Did you do the same thing after you ate…? Heinrich made himself stop, not quite soon enough.

  Now Lise realized something was wrong. She didn't know what, but she did find a solution of sorts. Reaching for the cards, she asked, "Whose deal is it, anyway?"

  "Mine," Willi said with his mouth full. He took the deck from Lise and started shuffling. "I'll deal them off the bottom this time. Only way to make sure I get myself some decent cards."

  "Wouldn't you rather have indecent ones?" Erika asked. Again, Willi only gave back a vague smile. He went on dealing.

  Heinrich arranged his hand. "This looks like you dealt it off the bottom, all right," he told Willi.

  "I told you I was going to." Willi took a look at his own cards. "One heart."

  "Pass," Heinrich said gloomily.

  "One no-trump," Erika said, which meant she had some help for Willi but not much. Heinrich told himself not to look at bridge bids as a metaphor for life. As often happened, telling himself was easier than making himself listen.

  "Two diamonds," Lise said.

  That made Heinrich look at his hand in a new way. He had five diamonds to the queen: not really a biddable suit, not with the rest of the junk that accompanied them, but pretty decent support. His singleton heart looked better, too.

  "Two hearts," Willi said.

  "Three diamonds," Heinrich said.

  Erika passed. So did Lise. Willi muttered to himself. "Three hearts," he said. Now Heinrich passed. His wife had the stronger hand. She was the one who'd have to decide whether to go up. After Erika passed, Lise did, too. Willi made gloating noises. "Mine! All mine!"

  Heinrich led a diamond. Erika laid out the dummy, which was about what Heinrich had expected: not much. She did have two little diamonds in it. Willi put one of those on the lead. Lise played the ace and took the trick. Then she threw out the king, saying, "Maybe this will go and maybe it won't." Heinrich didn't think it would. He had five diamonds, he figured Lise for five, the dummy showed two-and that left only one for Willi.

  But Willi had two after all, which meant Lise had had only four. No wonder she hadn't rebid them. Willi looked disgusted at setting his second and surely last diamond on the trick. Lise led the eight of spades. Willi took the trick with the ace from his hand. He looked put upon. He didn't want to be there, but he didn't have much in the way of entries to the board.

  He played the hand about as well as he could, and ended up going down two anyhow. Lise had stronger cards than he did. "I was going to open at one no-trump," she said, "but I couldn't, not when it got to me, and I had even distribution and no rebiddable suit. So"-she shrugged-"I played defense instead."

  "And ran over me," Willi said sadly.

  "You were the one who overbid the hand," Erika said.

  "The hell I did," Willi retorted. That got to him, where the other sneers hadn't.

  Heinrich grabbed the cards and started shuffling. "We've all butchered a hand or two-or twenty-two," he said. "And some of us-I'm not sure now, but I think it's just barely possible-some of us may even have made some other mistakes, too." He started to deal.

  "You've got good sense, Heinrich," Willi said gratefully. Erika also nodded. Neither Dorsch looked happy about agreeing with the other. Heinrich wasn't happy about having Erika praise him in any way. It might give her more ideas than she had already-ideas about which Heinrich couldn't and wouldn't do anything.

  The second rubber turned out even longer and sloppier than the first one had. Heinrich and Lise took two games out of three, but they went set three times while they were vulnerable and the Dorsches had a couple of hands with honors bonuses, so in spite of "winning" the rubber they came out 150 points in the hole.

  "Well, no one will send any of those hands to the bridge magazines," Heinrich said ruefully.

  "Oh, I don't know," Willi said. "If they're looking for lessons on how not to do it, I think we just wrote the book."

  "Another rubber?" Lise asked.

  Willi nodded. "Why not? The night is young, and I am beautiful."

  Even Erika laughed, and she'd been sniping at her husband all evening. She still had the tricks they'd taken during the last hand in front of her. She tossed them across the table to Willi. "Shut up and deal."

  "Always a good idea," he said, and did. When he picked up his hand and arranged it, he solemnly shook his head. "Nothing's going to go right tonight, though. I pass."

  Everybodypassed. Heinrich took the cards and shuffled them extra hard, trying to get rid of the mediocre hands people had been having. He looked at what he'd dealt himself. No such luck, not as far as he was concerned. "Pass."

  They all passed again. "At this rate, we'll be here forever," Willi said, which proved economic planners in the USA weren't the only ones given to extrapolating too far from not enough data.

  "Give me the cards," Erika said. As she shuffled, she sent the deck a severe look. "Have to be some playable hands in here somewhere." By the wa
y she said it, the cards would go to bed without supper if there weren't. She nodded briskly once she saw her own hand. "One heart."

  She won the contract at four hearts, and made it without much trouble. Even Lise murmured, "About time," as she shuffled for the next deal. She and Heinrich made three diamonds and then made two hearts, so they were vulnerable, too.

  That sent the deal to Heinrich. He liked the face cards that looked back at him when he picked up his hand. He put things together, and… "One no-trump." Erika passed. Lise made it two no-trump. Willi opened his mouth and then closed it again, as if he wanted to jump in but couldn't, not at the three level. Heinrich said, "Three no-trump. Let's see if we can steal this rubber." Everyone passed.

  Erika led. Lise set out the dummy. Heinrich looked at what she had and added it in his head to what he had. He saw eight sure tricks, one more with a spade finesse-and he knew which way he intended to try it, because of Willi's wiggling-and maybe a couple of overtricks if he could set up her clubs and run them.

  Everything turned out the way he thought it would. He ran the spade finesse past Willi the first chance he got, while he still had the other suits stopped-vital in no-trump-and it worked. After that, everything else flew on automatic pilot. He ended up making five.

  "Very neat," Willi said. "Nothing we could do about that one."

  "I don't know," Erika said. "Why didn't you hold up a sign that said,I've got the strength?" Willi bridled. As he had in the auction, he started to say something. This time, Erika forestalled him: "And who did you really have lunch with today?"

  "I told you-with Heinrich," Willi answered.

  "Yes, you told me. Now try telling the truth, because I know crap when I hear it," Erika snarled. Lise looked at Heinrich in surprise-she'd known something was going on, all right, but she hadn't realized Willi was out-and-out lying. Heinrich did his best to keep all expression off his face. Anything he did or said now was only liable to throw gasoline on the fire.

  Willi got to his feet with ponderous dignity. "I don't have to take these kinds of questions," he declared. "You're not the Security Police, even if you think you are." He left the table and walked down the hall again.

  Erika looked daggers at his back. "Bastard," she said, just as the bathroom door closed. She turned back to Heinrich and Lise, her eyes going from one of them to the other and then returning. "I swear, there are times when I'd like to sleep with the first man I happen to see, just to pay him back." She was staring squarely at Heinrich when she said that.

  He tried to look at the floor, at the ceiling, out the window-anywhere but at either Willi's wife or his own. He kept waiting for Willi to flush the toilet again. But Willi, this time, was using the bathroom as a bomb shelter, and odds were he wouldn't come out any time soon.

  Silence stretched. At last, warily, Lise said, "Don't you think that's a little…drastic?"

  "Why?" Erika didn't keep her voice down. If anything, she pitched it to carry. "If he's fooling around on me, why shouldn't I fool around on him?"

  More silence. Heinrich decided he'd better say something. If he didn't, Lise was liable to get the idea he wanted Erika thinking about him like that. He chose his words with even more caution than Lise had: "If you're going to stay married, it's probably a good idea that neither one of you fool around on the other."

  "Ha!" Erika said: a one-syllable demolition of the very idea. Lise had started to nod in agreement with her husband. That scornful laugh froze her for a moment with her chin in the air. She looked as if she needed a distinct effort to bring her head back down to a normal posture.

  After what seemed like forever, water ran in the pipes at the far end of the hall. Willi came back to the bridge table looking grim. "We'd better go," he said to Erika. "It's getting late."

  "It certainly is-in a lot of ways," she answered. "And we have a few things to talk about, don't we?"

  "Yes, just a few," Willi said. The Dorsches headed up the street for the bus stop after the most perfunctory good-byes. They were shouting at each other long before they got there.

  "Well!" Lise said. "That was another interesting evening."

  "Interesting." Heinrich considered. "Mm, yes, that's one word for it, anyhow."

  "It was the politest word I could think of," his wife replied. "What exactly did Erika mean there? And whowas Willi at lunch with?"

  Answering the second question seemed safer, so Heinrich did that first: "Ilse-again-if lunch is where they went." Lise's eyes widened. Her mouth shaped a silentoh. But her expression said she hadn't forgotten the other question, either. Unhappily, he told her, "Erika probably meant just what she said. She usually does."

  "I know she does. That's why I wondered." Lise frowned. "But she was looking at you when she said it. I didn't much care for that. What did you think about it?"

  Now there was a question to make a man want to pretend he'd suddenly gone deaf. "It's a compliment of sorts," said Heinrich, whose ears still worked, however much he wished they didn't. His wife coughed dangerously. "Will you let me finish?" he exclaimed. Lise gave back a pace in surprise; he didn't raise his voice very often. He went on, "It's notmuch of a compliment, not when she would have said the same thing to any man who happened to be in the neighborhood." He didn't mention that Erika had already said the same thing about him in particular. He did add, "And I've told you before-I know when I'm well off."

  "Oh, you do, do you?" Lise sent him a challenging stare. "How am I supposed to be sure of that?"

  He took her in his arms. He kissed her. His hands wandered. "I'll think of something," he said, before adding the father's usual caveat: "If the children stay quiet, anyhow."

  He was lucky. They did.

  Children in the United States, Alicia Gimpel had learned, got long summer vacations from school. Her teachers said that scornfully. They offered it as one of the reasons Germany had beaten the USA: Americans didn't study enough, and had been too ignorant to take full advantage of their country's riches. No matter what her teachers said, though, the idea sounded wonderful to Alicia.

  Here it was the middle of August, and she remained in school. The only real breaks she got were two weeks around Christmas and New Year's and another week at Easter time. The rest of the year was school, punctuated by much-too-occasional holidays.

  Herr Kessler said, "Many important things have happened in our country. the Fuhrer is setting us on a new course, and that is the way we shall go. Matthias Walbeck!"

  The boy jumped up and came to attention. "Jawohl, Herr Kessler!"

  "Tell me how the Fuhrer is changing the Reich."

  Poor Matthias couldn't do it. He was a big, strong boy, but good-natured-not a bully at all. Unfortunately, he also was not a scholar at all. He stayed at attention, his face a mask of misery. "I'm very sorry,Herr Kessler," he whispered. "Please excuse me."

  Kessler took the paddle off the nail where it hung. Matthias turned and bent over. The teacher delivered a swat that made the boy hop forward. But Matthias let out not a peep. Showing weakness would only have earned him more. "You must study, Matthias," the teacher said. "You must pay attention."

  "I will,Herr Kessler. I promise,Herr Kessler," Matthias said. Everyone in the classroom-probably including him-knew the promise would be broken.

  The teacher's glower raked the room. Alicia knew the answer. She didn't throw up her hand, though. Volunteering too often got you a reputation as a teacher's pet. She already had more of that reputation than she wanted.

  Herr Kessler picked another hapless student, this one a girl. She couldn't answer, either. He swatted her, too. When he was in a bad mood, he would choose children who weren't likely to know what he wanted, just so he could hand out swat after swat. He wasn't the only teacher in the school who did that, either.Frau Koch was universally known as "the Beast" to her students, and had been for years-but not a teacher ever heard the nickname.

  After dealing out yet another whack on the bottom,Herr Kessler put the paddle back in its place. "I don't k
now what the younger generation is coming to," he said sadly. "When the Fuhrer speaks, you must listen. And what is his name, class?"

  "Heinz Buckliger,Herr Kessler," the children chorused.

  "Very good. You've learned that, anyway," the teacher said. "And Heinz Buckliger has said that not everything we did in days gone by was perfect, so some things must change. And why must things change?"

  "Because the Fuhrer is always right,Herr Kessler," the whole class said together.

  That was the right answer. Alicia knew it was. Teachers had been drilling it into students since kindergarten. She sang out as confidently as her classmates. So she was amazed when Herr Kessler shook his head. "No. What did I just say?"

  They were trained to repeat his words back to him. They did now: "And Heinz Buckliger has said that not everything we did in days gone by was perfect, so some things must change."

  "Yes." Kessler nodded. "So why must things change, then?"

  "Because the Fuhrer says so." Again, all the children were sure they had it right. Again, Alicia was as sure as any of the others.

  But the teacher shook his head once more. "No. You are wrong. What did the new Fuhrer say?"

  "That not everything we did in days gone by was perfect, and-"

  "Stop!" Herr Kessler held up his hand. "There is the answer. We must change because not everything we did in days gone by was perfect."

  He paused to let that sink in. The children murmured among themselves.Herr Kessler didn't correct them, which was at least as astonishing as the lesson he was teaching. Alicia wanted to ask several questions. She didn't think she ought to ask any of them. But Wolfgang Priller's hand rose. "Question, Herr Kessler!"

  "Go ahead, Priller." The teacher braced, as if expecting bad news.

  Wolf stood up and came to attention. "Sir, if the Fuhrer is always right, the way we know he is, how is it that not everything we did in days gone by was perfect?"

  Sure enough, that was one of the questions Alicia had wanted to ask. It had occurred to her because of the logical inconsistency. She suspected it had occurred to Wolf Priller because he remained convinced the Fuhrer was always right. He took to indoctrination the way a duck took to water.