Lise stared after her. Willi'd said the one thing. Now she'd said the other. Maybe a lot of people paid as little attention to what they got taught in school about hating Jews as they did about geometry. But how could you afford to find out?
Alicia Gimpel had always been good at remembering her lessons. That helped her now. The Security Police were trying to get her to admit she knew her father was a Jew. They didn't have a real interrogation room at the foundlings' home. They had to make do with an office. A desk lamp glaring into her eyes was almost as bad as some of the fancy lights they would have had back at their own headquarters.
"You must have known!" one of them shouted. He slammed his fist down on the desk. Alicia jumped. So did the gooseneck lamp. He had to grab it to keep it from falling over. "How could you not know your own father is a stinking Jew?"
"He is not!" Alicia said shrilly. "That's a lie, and you know it!" She took her cue from her little sisters. They thought they were telling the truth, which gave them an edge on her. But she was acting for her life. And, while some people might not have learned their lessons, she knew what her teachers had drilled into her. "Jews are bloodsucking tyrants. They cheat people at business. They crawl around their betters with vilest flattery. They always try to steal credit where they don't deserve it. That's what Mein Kampf says! Does Daddy do any of those things? You know he doesn't!"
"Jesus!" said a blackshirt behind Alicia. "She's even worse than the other two brats. Maybe that son of a bitch really isn't a goddamn sheeny."
"Why'd they grab him, then?" asked the one at the desk. "If they grab you, you bet your ass you deserve it." He glowered at Alicia. He had a red, beefy face, with black-heads on his nose and between his eyebrows. His teeth were yellow; his breath stank of old cigars. "If you don't tell us the truth, you'll be sorry."
"Iam telling the truth," Alicia lied. "Why don't you believe me? All I want to do is go home." She sure told the truth there. She wanted to cry, but held back her tears. When she did cry, it felt as if the Security Police had won something from her.
The blackshirts hadn't slapped her or hit her or done anything worse than that. As far as she knew, they hadn't hurt her sisters, either. Maybe even the Security Police didn't like the idea of torturing little girls. Alicia had her doubts about that. If you joined the Security Police, you had to want to hurt people, didn't you? More likely, they weren't sure enough about Daddy to have too much of that kind of fun.
They won't find anything out from me,Alicia vowed.And they really won't find anything out from Francesca and Roxane.
Scowling, the blackshirt who smelled like cigar butts said, "What do you know about"-he looked down at some notes on the desk-"Erika Dorsch?"
"Frau Dorsch?" Alicia said in surprise-this was a new tack. "The Dorsches are Daddy and Mommy's friends, that's all." This fellow couldn't think she was a Jew…could he?
With a leer, the man from the Security Police asked, "Is this Dorsch galreal good friends with your old man?" The other blackshirts laughed.
Most of that went over Alicia's head. "I don't know," she answered. "They all play bridge together and they talk till it's late."
"Bridge?" The blackshirt threw back his head and snorted in contempt. He needed to blow his nose. Alicia fought against revulsion. The man asked, "Whatother games do they play?" His pals laughed again.
Still out of her depth, Alicia only shrugged. "I don't know about any other games. I don't know what you're talking about."
"Forget it, Hans," said one of the fellows behind Alicia. "If this Gimpel bastard is fooling around with her, the kid doesn't know about it."
That was plain enough for Alicia to understand. She gasped at the very idea. "Daddy wouldn't do any such thing!" she exclaimed. "Not ever!"
All the blackshirts laughed at that. "No, eh?" said the one who was questioning her. "I sure as hell would. She's a piece and a half." He looked past her to his buddies. "You guys seen a picture of this broad? She's a blonde, good looking, built…" His hands described an hourglass in the air. "Hell, I'd crawl through a thousand kilometers of broken glass just to let her piss on my toothbrush."
"Ewww!" Alicia's voice rose to a thin squeak. "That's disgusting!" The men from the Security Police thought her horror was funnier than their friend's joke.
The interrogator thought revolting her was pretty funny, too. He kept on asking her questions after that, but he didn't seem so mean and threatening any more. It wasn't much worse than getting grilled by Herr Kessler.He taught me all kinds of things-including some he probably didn't intend to, she thought.
Even so, she knew she'd never be able to look at Frau Dorsch the same way again.
Finally, the man from the Security Police turned off the desk lamp. "Well, kid, that's enough of that for a while," he said in oddly intimate tones, as if what they'd been doing together had somehow made them friends. Maybe he thought it had. He stepped back, straightened up, and stretched. Trying to get her to say things that would kill her father-and, incidentally, herself-was all in a day's work for him. "Go on, Ulf. Take her back with the rest of the snotnoses."
You should talk,Alicia thought. They'd made her miss supper. This wasn't the first time that had happened. She knew the staff at the foundlings' home wouldn't give her anything till breakfast. If you weren't there when they dished out a meal, that was your tough luck. They weren't actively cruel, but they had no give whatever in them.
She lay down on her cot. Even if the blackshirts hadn't beaten her, she felt trampled and miserable. For Hans and Ulf and the others, this was all just a game, a game they'd played hundreds or thousands of times before. Alicia's life was on the line, and her father's, and her sisters', and she knew it. And she didn't see how she could win.
Paula came into their room. In a practically inaudible whisper, she said, "Here. When I saw they weren't going to let you go, I swiped these for you." Like a magician pulling a rabbit out of a top hat, she produced two hard rolls from under her dress and tossed them to Alicia.
Alicia blinked. "If they caught you, you'd get in big trouble."
"Well, then, you'd better destroy the evidence, eh?" Paula wasn't especially smart, not in the way that got you good grades at school. Alicia could tell. But the other girl had a feel for whatneeded doing, one that Alicia couldn't begin to match. She took Paula's advice. The rolls quickly disappeared. They tasted like sawdust. Empty as Alicia was, she didn't care. "Better?" Paula asked when she was done.
"Ja,"Alicia said. "Thank you!"
"For what?" Paula waved it away. "Those shitheads are giving you a hard time. Anybody can see that. If they were giving a vulture a hard time, I'd try and get him some dead, smelly meat."
Springs squeaked as Alicia shifted on the cot. One of them poked at her, too, so she shifted again. She stuck her head out and flapped her arms as if she were a vulture. Paula thought that was so funny, she buried her face in her pillow to muffle her laughter. Alicia watched her out of the corner of her eye. The other girl acted like somebody who hated the Reich and the Nazis and everything they stood for. But if it was an act and Alicia fell for it, she'd ruin herself and her whole family. And so she wouldn't fall for it.
If Paula really did hate the Reich and the Nazis…then she did, that was all. Alicia couldn't afford to let on that she did, too, except for arresting her when they had no business to. And that, maybe, was the hardest, the saddest, thing of all.
Heinrich Gimpel sat in his cell, waiting for whatever happened next. That was all he could do. Boredom mixed with occasional terror-that was what his life in prison had been. He could see how the blend was in and of itself part of what broke prisoners down. As he sat on the cot, he could practically feel his mind slowing down, slowing down, slowing…
And he was better equipped than most to fight boredom. He had a fine memory. He could call up books and plays and films in his mind, trying to squeeze out every last detail. He could set up complicated accounting problems and solve them in his head instead of with a calcu
lator. He could remember the last time he'd made love with Lise, and the time before that, and the quickie they'd sneaked in, and…
He could worry. He spent a lot of time worrying. That was part of leaving him here by himself, too. He knew as much, and tried to fight against it. There, he didn't have much luck.
He was brooding and wishing he weren't when guards clumped up the hallway toward his cell. One opened the door while two others pointed assault rifles at him. He couldn't understand why they thought he was so dangerous. Under different circumstances, it might have been flattering.
"Come on, you," growled the guard with the key. "Your mouthpiece is waiting."
As Heinrich rose, he got a whiff of himself. His nostrils curled. He'd done his best to stay clean, but his best wasn't very good. And he was still wearing the uniform in which he'd been arrested. It was ranker than he was.
Down the hall he went, holding up his trousers with one hand. At least they hadn't cuffed him this time. Never mind the assault rifles at his back. He couldn't very well make a break when his pants would fall down if he tried. Without laces, his shoes flopped on his feet, too.
Klaus Menzel stood waiting in the room with the glass partition. The lawyer had on another suit that would have cost Heinrich a month's pay. He stepped up to the grill and said, "I have some good news and some bad news for you. Which do you want first?"
"Give me the good news," Heinrich said at once. "I haven't heard any in so long…"
"All right. Here it is." Menzel told him how the charges against him had come from Erika Dorsch, and how she'd tried to kill herself after she found out she'd got the girls seized along with Heinrich. Menzel added, "You should have just screwed the broad, Gimpel. No matter what your wife did to you afterwards, you wouldn't've landed in this kind of shit. And you'd've had the roll in the hay to remember."
"Heh," Heinrich said in a hollow voice. That had occurred to him, too. He went on, "You say Erika's going to be all right, and that's she's withdrawn these stupid charges." He needed to go on repeating that they were stupid, or the blackshirts were liable to think he believed them. "That's all wonderful! They have to let me out now, don't they?"
Gloomily, Klaus Menzel shook his head. "They don'thave to do a goddamn thing, and you ought to know it by this time. Trouble is, they don't believe this Dorsch item. They figure she's got the hots for you, so she's lying to protect you."
"That's crazy!" Heinrich yelped.
"Tell me about it," Menzel said. "But the way things are now, they aren't about to let you go right this minute. They don't want to look soft." He wrinkled up his nose, as if at a bad smell.
"Is Prutzmann-?" Heinrich began.
"I don't know anything about politics," his lawyer broke in. "If you're smart, you don't, either." That was undoubtedly good advice. With the guards in the room, with microphones bound to be picking up every word, saying anything bad-or anything at all-about the Reichsfuhrer — SS couldn't be smart.
"Well, what are you doing about everything?" Heinrich demanded. That was a question he could legitimately ask, even here.
"Trying to get them to look at what's right in front of their noses," Menzel answered. "Maybe they will, maybe they won't. They haven't given you a noodle yet, anyhow. That's something, believe me. I don't remember the last time they arrested somebody here they thought was a fullblood, not just some kind of Mischling. Whoever the last bastard was, I bet he didn't come close to lasting as long as you have. So keep your pecker up, and we'll see what happens."
As soon as Menzel turned away from the grill, the Security Police jailers marched Heinrich back to his cell. There he sat, by the world forgot though he couldn't forget the world. They didn't take him out and shoot him or send him to a camp. That was his only consolation. No, he had one other: as long as they didn't do anything to him, they wouldn't do anything to the girls, either.
Three days later, a tall, blond man in the uniform of a Security Police major came to his cell along with the warder. The officer signed some papers on a clipboard and gave them to the warder, who read them, nodded, and opened the door. "He's all yours," he said.
"Good," the officer answered briskly. He pointed a leather-gloved finger at Heinrich. "You're Gimpel?" Heinrich nodded. The major gestured peremptorily. "Come with me."
Gulping, Heinrich came. He'd been here long enough to have learned to fear changes in routine. They were rarely changes for the better. He shuffled around, shoes loose on his feet, one hand holding up his pants. Behind him, the cell door clanged.
His fear grew when the officer took him down unfamiliar corridors. Would they give him the noodle right here, when he least expected it? He braced himself, not that that would do him any good. They left the cells and went into the prison's office block. The blackshirt opened a door. "In here."
The room was small and bare. The walls were whitewashed brick, the floor cheap linoleum. A bare bulb burned in a ceiling fixture. On a rickety wooden table lay Heinrich's greatcoat, his belt and shoelaces, his wallet, his keys, his comb, even his pocket change-the personal effects he'd had when he was arrested.
"Fix yourself up," the Security Police major said. Heinrich obeyed, though his hands shook so much, he had trouble putting the laces in his shoes. Would they shoot him "while attempting escape"? When he was dressed, the major took him to a bathroom across the hall. A scissors and a razor sat on the sink.
"Shave." He did, trimming his beard with the scissors before attacking it with the blade. Shaving in cold water without soap was unpleasant, but he managed. The major nodded. "You'll do."
Heinrich was surprised when the blackshirt, after signing more papers, led him out of the prison. He was astonished when the man took him to a bus stop two blocks away, so astonished that he blurted, "What's going on?"
"You're free," the major said. "Charges quashed. Go home. This bus will take you right to South Station."
"My God," Heinrich whispered. "Menzel came through?" A few meters away, a wren scuttling through a flowerbed chirped shrilly. It was the sweetest music he'd ever heard.
"Your lawyer?" The Security Police officer threw back his head and laughed. "He thinks he did, anyhow." A bus came up. The wren flew away. The major winked at Heinrich.Did I really see that? he wondered. Casually, the fellow said, "You find us in the oddest places." The bus door opened. The major pushed Heinrich towards it.Us? He couldn't mean- He never got the chance to ask. The major had turned away, and the bus driver waited impatiently. Heinrich fed his card into the fare slot. The light flashed green. The bus rolled away.
XIII
The matron who ran the foundlings' disciplinary home reminded Alicia of Frau Koch. Like the Beast, she was perfectly Aryan: blond, blue-eyed, fair. And, also like the Beast, she had a face like a boot. She was tough and mean and ready to lash out at any moment. Alicia wondered why people like that had-or wanted-anything to do with children.
"Gimpel!" the matron said now, sticking her head into Alicia's room. "Come with me. This minute."
"Jawohl!" Alicia didn't know why the matron wanted her to come, or where she was going. Asking questions was not encouraged. Blind obedience was.
Alicia had to hurry to keep up with the matron, whose soldierly stride conceded nothing to smaller people. The woman always looked angry at the world. This morning, she seemed even angrier than usual. She kept glaring down at Alicia and muttering things the girl couldn't quite make out.Maybe I'm lucky, Alicia thought, and shivered.
"In here." The matron pulled open the door to her own office. Alicia hadn't been there since the day the Security Police pulled her sisters and her out of school. And there were Francesca and Roxane now. They sat on identical metal folding chairs and wore identical wary expressions. The matron pointed to another chair by theirs. "Sit down," she told Alicia. The next word seemed aimed at all three Gimpel girls: "Wait."
Still muttering, the matron stalked to another door and flung it open. In came…"Daddy!" Alicia shrieked, and ran to him. Her sisters' squea
ls might even have been higher and shriller, but couldn't have been any more delighted. The three of them put together almost knocked their father off his feet.
He bent down to kiss and squeeze all of them. Behind his glasses, tears gleamed in his eyes. "I've come to take you home," he said huskily. "The Security Police have seen that I'm not a Jew after all, and if I'm not a Jew, the three of you can't possibly be Mischlingen. And since you aren't, you don't have to stay here any more."
Francesca broke free of his arms and rounded on the matron. "I told you we weren't filthy, stinking Jews. Itold you so, and you didn't want to listen. Well, now you see I knew what I was talking about." She had her hands on her hips. She might have been an irate housewife telling off a clerk who'd been rude to her. The matron turned bright red. Her formidable fists clenched. But she didn't say a thing.
Daddy was more polite. He asked the matron, "Is there paperwork I have to fill out so I can take my girls home?"
"Paperwork?" The woman nodded jerkily. Little by little, her angry flush faded. "Ja,there is paperwork. There is always paperwork,Herr Gimpel." She took forms from filing cabinets and out of her desk. Daddy signed and signed and signed. The matron studied everything. She finally nodded. "You may take them. Their behavior here has been…acceptable."
"I'm glad," Alicia's father said. "They should never have been brought here in the first place, but I'm glad." He gathered up the girls. "Come on, kids. Let's go."
Alicia had never left any place so gladly in all her life, not even the doctor's office after a shot. As Daddy led the three sisters towards a bus stop down the street from the foundlings' home, Roxane said, "They thought we were Jews! Ugly, smelly, yucky Jews!" She made a horrible face.
"They sure did. They're pretty dumb," Alicia chimed in. She and her father knew the truth, but her little sisters didn't. She had to hold up a mask in front of them. That wasn't any fun, but she'd just found out how needful it was.
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