In The Presence Of My Enemies

"Things are not always as simple as we wish they would be," Dr. Dambach said with a sigh. "You have the suffering of doing this, yes, but you escape the suffering of watching his inevitable downhill course over the coming months, perhaps even over a couple of years. Which counts for more?"

"I don't know," Maria whispered. "Do you?"

The pediatrician shrugged. He was basically an honest man. Now that the Kleins had been released, he showed no antagonism toward them. He'd done what he thought he had to do in reporting the discrepancy in their pedigree to the authorities. If the authorities turned out not to care, he didn't seem to, either.

Maria went on, "And it's also hard knowing that there's a fifty-fifty chance Eduard carries this horrible-thing inside him."

"Don't let that worry you," Dr. Dambach said. "In most populations, this gene is very rare. Even if he does carry it, the odds that he will marry another carrier are also very slim. There is hardly any chance he would father another baby with this disease."

Maria Klein didn't answer. Like all surviving Jews, she was practiced in the art of deception, so she didn't even look towards Esther. Esther didn't look her way, either, but kept on with the billing as she and Eduard walked out. But she knew, and Maria knew, in fifteen or twenty years Eduard would probably marry a girl who was a Jew. And in how many of those girls did the Tay-Sachs gene lurk?

The Kleins left the waiting room. Esther called in the next patients. But she had trouble keeping her mind on her work. If Jews kept marrying Jews, would disease finish what the Nazis hadn't quite been able to? But if Jews didn't marry Jews, wouldn't the faith perish because they couldn't tell their partners what they were?

Was there a way out? For the life of her, Esther couldn't see one.

Susanna Weiss had been taking her students through Chaucer's Troylus and Criseyde. When she asked for questions, one of them asked, "This is the basis for Shakespeare's play, isn't it?"

"It's probably the most important source, yes, but it's far from the only one," she answered. Again, the question reminded her how Shakespeare was a more vital presence in modern Germany than in England. His Troilus and Cressida was rarely produced or even read in English.

A few more questions about the material followed. Students started drifting out the door. Others-not so many-came up to the lectern to ask questions of less general interest, to pump her on what the next essay topic would be, or to complain about the grades they'd got on the last one.

And then one of the students asked, "What did you think of Stolle's speech, Professor Weiss?"

"It was interesting," Susanna answered. "We haven't heard anything like it in a while." That was the truth. When had anyone ever publicly criticized the Fuhrer, even for not pushing his own agenda far enough and fast enough? Had anyone ever done such a thing in all the days of the Third Reich? She didn't think so.

"But what did youthink of it?" he persisted. "Isn't it wonderful to hear somebody come out and speak his mind like that?"

She didn't say anything for a moment.Who are you? she wondered. All she knew about this enthusiastic undergrad was that his name was Karl Stuckart and he was getting a medium B in the course. What did he do when he wasn't in her class? Did he report to the SS? Lothar Prutzmann, who headed the blackshirts, undoubtedly had an opinion about Stolle's speech: a low opinion. And if Stuckart didn't report to the SS, did some of the other smiling students here?The smiler with a knife -a fine Chaucerian phrase.

One of those students, an auburn-haired girl named Mathilde Burchert, said, "I certainly think it's about time we get moving with reform. We've been in the doldrums forever, and the Gauleiter 's right. The Fuhrer 's not going fast enough."

Several other students smiled and nodded. Susanna smiled, too, but she didn't nod. She didn't know much about Mathilde Burchert, either. Was she serious? Was she naive? Was she a provocateur, either working with Stuckart or independently? Were the young men and women who showed they agreed with her fools? Or did they sense a breeze Susanna couldn't, or wouldn't, feel?

She hated mistrusting everyone around her. She hated it, but she couldn't let it go. Were she worried about only her own safety, she thought she would have. But choices she would make for herself she wouldn't for other Jews she might endanger if she turned out to be wrong.

"Whatdo you think, Professor?" another student asked her.

"I think the Fuhrer will go at his own pace regardless of whether anyone tries to jog his elbow," she answered. Hard to go wrong-hard to land in trouble-for backing the Fuhrer. It made her seem safely moderate: not a hard-liner who hated the very idea of change, but not a wild-eyed, bomb-throwing radical, either.

And what's a moderate? Someone who gets shot at from the rightandthe left. She wished she hadn't had that thought.