In The Presence Of My Enemies

Alicia Gimpel was talking with Emma Handrick and Trudi Krebs, waiting for the bus to take them home from school, when Francesca came up with steam pouring out of her ears. "What's the matter with you?" Alicia asked.

"The Beast, that's what." Francesca was so furious, she didn't even try to keep her voice down. Had a teacher heard her, she would have got in trouble, and not a little bit, either.

All the girls at the bus stop exclaimed in sympathy. Even some of the boys there did the same. The natural antipathy between Frau Koch and children overpowered the natural antipathy between girls and boys. Some of the other children had already had her. The ones who hadn't knew about her.

"What's she done now?" Alicia asked.

"You know that article that was in the paper a little while ago-that 'Enough Is Enough' thing?" her sister said. "Did your teacher talk about it, too?"

"Some," Alicia answered. Emma and Trudi nodded. Alicia went on, "Herr Peukert was pretty cagey about it, though."Herr Peukert, in fact, had treated the Volkischer Beobachter story as if it were a large, poisonous snake. He couldn't ignore it, but he didn't want much to do with it, either. Alicia said, "How come? What did the Beast tell you about it?"

"Oh, my God, you should have heard her!" Francesca said. "She thought it was the greatest thing since Mein Kampf. She went on and on about how Dr. Jahnke was a true patriot who really understood what National Socialism was all about, and how everybody who liked these stupid newfangled ideas ought to go straight to the showers. She said they sounded like a bunch of stinking, big-nosed Jews put them together."

"Even for the Beast, that's bad," Trudi said. Several people nodded.

"But that's not the worst of it," Francesca said. "She's been talking like this ever since 'Enough Is Enough' came out in the paper. And then yesterday the Fuhrer made a speech, andhe said the article wasn't any good, and we were going to go right on with the new stuff no matter what. And do you know what the Beast said?"

"Did she…say the Fuhrer was wrong?" Alicia asked. A year earlier, the bare possibility wouldn't have occurred to her. All sorts of new possibilities had occurred to her in the past year.

Her sister shook her head. Her hair-straighter and a little lighter brown than Alicia's-flipped back and forth. "No. That would have been bad. What she did was even worse. She started going on about how we needed change and how good it was going to be. It was like she hadn't been talking about the other stuff at all. It was scary."

The bus came up then. Alicia and Francesca sat down together. Emma and Trudi sat on the seat in front of them so they could all keep talking. As the bus pulled away from the curb, Alicia said, "Didn't anybody ask her about that?"

"Werner Krupke did," Francesca answered. "She looked at him like he was something you had to scoop out of the cat box, and she didn't say a thing. Nobody asked any more questions after that."

"I wonder why," Alicia said. Trudi snorted.

Emma said, "Boy, I'm glad I never had the Beast."

Alicia was glad she'd never had Frau Koch, too. How could you call yourself a teacher if what you said on Wednesday didn't count on Thursday? The Beast probably still believed what she'd said before. You didn't say those things if you didn't believe them. When "Enough Is Enough" came out, she must have thought it was safe to say them out loud. How scared was she when she found out she was wrong? Plenty, I hope, Alicia thought.

Trudi had to wiggle past Emma to get out at her stop. "See you tomorrow," she called as she went up the aisle, down the rubber-matted steps, and out the door.

A few stops later, Emma got out with all three Gimpel girls-Roxane had been chattering with a couple of her friends toward the back of the bus. She'd got to the stop after Francesca, and hadn't even noticed how mad she was. Now she did. When she asked why, Francesca started ranting all over again.

"That doesn't sound very good," Roxane said when she could get a word in edgewise, which took a while.

"What does your teacher say about all this stuff?" Alicia asked her.

"She's said the Fuhrer is making some changes in how things work, and they'll probably work better once everything's done," Roxane answered. That seemed sensible enough. And Roxane was only in the first grade. What more did she need to know?

"Has she said anything about 'Enough Is Enough'?" Francesca asked.

"She says that all the time-whenever we're too noisy." Roxane spoke with a certain amount of pride. If she wasn't one of the first-graders who made a lot of the noise, Alicia would have been surprised. But she'd plainly never heard of Dr. Jahnke's article.

Emma waved good-bye to the Gimpel girls when she came to her house. Alicia, Francesca, and Roxane walked on. Alicia said, "Maybe getting caught like this will make the Beast pull her horns in."