In The Presence Of My Enemies

Francesca gave her a look. "Fat chance!" She was probably right. People like Frau Koch were the way they were, and that was all there was to it. The Beast wasn't about to change her mind or the way she acted. Alicia wouldn't have wanted to be Werner Krupke, who'd called her on her inconsistency. She'd likely make his life miserable for the rest of the school year.

"Home!" Roxane said with a theatrical sigh as they came to the front door.

Mommy let them in. Francesca told her horrible story for the third time. She'd no doubt tell it all over again when Daddy got home, too. Mommy never turned a hair. What was going on inside her? Did she feel the sting because her own daughter didn't know what she was? Of course she did. She had to…didn't she?

When Francesca was done, Mommy said, "The Beast sounds like she's living up to her name, all right. But you've only got her for this school year, and then you'll be done with her forever. And when you have children of your own, you can say, 'You think your teacher's mean? You should hear about the one I had. She was so bad, everybody called her the Beast.'"

Alicia smiled. Francesca didn't. She said, "That doesn't do me any good now!"

"Well, would cookies and milk do you some good now?" Mommy asked. Francesca nodded eagerly. Alicia and Roxane didn't complain, either-not a bit.

Susanna Weiss got back from a shopping run along the Kurfurstendamm a little past seven on a cold, snowy February evening. She set down her packages-three pairs of shoes, including some gloriously impractical high-heeled sandals-took off her foxskin hat, and got out of her overcoat. Then she dithered for a moment, wondering whether to make dinner right away or sit down and watch the rest of the news first.

She poured a knock of Glenfiddich over ice and turned on the televisor. That wasn't Horst Witzleben's face that appeared on the screen. It was Charlie Lynton's. The head of the British Union of Fascists spoke good, if accented, German. He was saying, "-intend here to bring the democratic principles of the first edition into effect as soon as possible. Most seats in the next Parliamentary elections will be contested. I particularly admire the Fuhrer for looking on this course with favor, and for recognizing that he need not yield to the forces of reaction."

His image disappeared. Horst's replaced it. "Along with the Scandinavian leaders, Great Britain stands foursquare behind the Greater German Reich 's revitalization effort," the newscaster said. "We'll be back in a moment."

The picture cut away to an obviously German farm family somewhere in the conquered East-probably on the broad plains of the Ukraine. The advertisement was for Agfa color film. The smiling father took pictures of his wife and children. Relatives in a crowded German apartment admired them when they came in the mail. That not only promoted the film, it also urged Germans to go out and colonize. The Propaganda Ministry didn't miss a trick. Susanna smiled when that phrase went through her mind. It made her think of Heinrich and his passion for bridge.

Another advertisement followed, this one for Volkswagens. They still looked buggy, as they had for more than seventy years. But the lines were smoother, more rounded, now. The engine had moved to the front, the trunk to the rear. The engine was water-cooled these days, and didn't sound flatulent. The bumpers were actually good for something besides decoration. The VW still had a bud vase on the dashboard, though.

Horst Witzleben returned. "In St. Wenceslas Square in Prague, several hundred persons gathered near the statue of the saint to protest the incorporation of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia into the Reich, " he said.

St. Wenceslas' equestrian statue was surrounded by figures of other Bohemian saints. Counting the large base, the statue stood seven or eight times as high as a man. It dwarfed the men and women at its base and the signs they carried. Some of those signs were in German. They said things like FREEDOM FOR THE CZECHS! and WE REMEMBER! Others, in Czech, presumably said the same thing.

And some of the demonstrators carried flags: the blue, white, and red banners of the long-vanished Republic of Czechoslovakia. A chill ran through Susanna when she recognized those flags. How many years had it been since anyone dared show them in public? Almost as amazing as the sight of the Czechoslovak flags was that of the policemen who stood watching the demonstration without storming in to break it up and throw everybody in sight into jail or a concentration camp.

"Because the protest was peaceful and orderly, no arrests were made," Horst Witzleben said, and he went on to a different story. He spoke as if that had been standard practice in the Third Reich from the beginning, not the next thing to a miracle.