In The Presence Of My Enemies

"That's funny," Anna said. Alicia made a soft, inquiring noise. Her friend went on, "Gottlieb said almost the same thing to me-almost the same thing about me-after I finally did find out what was what." The last few words came out muffled by a yawn.

Alicia yawned, too. They were both up long past their usual bedtime. Of course, that was what slumber parties were for. Alicia's head went down. "I think I am going to sleep now," she said. "Happy birthday again."

"It was the happiest!" Anna said. In a couple of minutes, both of them were snoring with the other girls.

Something peculiar was happening in Adolf Hitler Platz when Heinrich Gimpel and Willi Dorsch got off the bus from South Station. Heinrich asked, "What's going on?" He had trouble seeing, not only because of the mist and light drizzle themselves but because of the way they spattered his glasses.

"Looks like…" Willi brought up his hand. Heinrich wondered why. His friend didn't wear glasses. Maybe the hand helped the visor on his cap keep water out of his eyes. Maybe he just thought the gesture looked impressive. After peering, he said, "I will be damned. Looks like some Dutchmen are holding a demonstration over there."

"Dutchmen?" Heinrich echoed. Then, between raindrops, he too got a glimpse of the red, white, and blue flag with the stripes laid out horizontally, not vertically as in the French tricolor. A couple of dozen men and women huddled beneath the damp banner. A few of them carried signs. Distance and rain kept Heinrich from making out the words. He would have had to do some guessing, anyway; Dutch had a teasing almost-familiarity to someone who spoke German and English.

"Vrijheid!"the Dutch shouted. Heinrich didn't have to do much guessing to figure out what that meant. It was very close to Freiheit, the German word for freedom."Vrijheid!"

Willi got it, too. "Where are the Security Police?" he demanded.

"Here they come." If Heinrich was dismayed-and he was-he didn't show it.

"About time," Willi said, which showed what he thought.

The men in black tunics and trousers trotted briskly across the square. They carried truncheons and pistols; a couple of them had assault rifles. Would it be arrests or a massacre? Lights blazing and sirens howling, police wagons followed the troopers. It turned out to be arrests. The Dutchmen and -women didn't try to flee. They kept calling,"Vrijheit!" as the Security Police herded them into the wagons, which screeched away. Adolf Hitler Platz was quiet again. The whole thing couldn't have taken more than three minutes.

"They must have been out of their minds," Willi said. "They don't have the faintest idea when they've got it good. Bunch of damned fools, like those Danes. Give 'em a little, treat 'em halfway decent because they're Aryans, and what do they do? Do they thank you? Hell, no! They grab with both hands, that's what."

"Maybe they're taking the new Fuhrer seriously," Heinrich said as he and Willi went up the stairs to Oberkommando der Wehrmacht headquarters.

Willi gave him an odd look. "Maybe they're taking Buckligertoo seriously," he said. "What'll we see next? Poles shouting for freedom? Russians? Jews?" He threw back his head and laughed.

So did Heinrich. The idea was, when you got down to it, pretty funny. He tried to imagine some of the handful of surviving Jews in Berlin getting out there in the middle of that enormous square and clamoring for their freedom. Would the Security Police even need to come? Or would ordinary people beat and stone them to death before the men in black uniforms got there? Everyone here, or as near as made no difference, had that same casual loathing for Jews.

"Do you think…" Willi sounded as if he'd decided to take Heinrich seriously after all instead of laughing at him. "Do you think Buckligerintends for things like this to happen?"

Heinrich didn't even try to answer that till the security guards had checked their identification cards and waved them through into the building. Then he said, "I doubt it. Who would? But how can you make changes in the way things work if you can't even talk about changes without getting arrested?"

"Oh, come on," Willi said. "These were Dutchmen. The others were a bunch of crazy Danes. You didn't see any real Germans out there, did you?"

"Not a one," Heinrich agreed. He wondered if he ever would. The Party had spent the last three generations teaching the Germans to be docile to their rulers, no matter how ferocious they were when they put on uniforms and marched off to war. Could they nerve themselves to speak their minds? After three generations of Nazi propaganda, did they have any minds to speak? He wasn't an optimist. On a question like that, he couldn't afford optimism. The cost of being wrong was too high.