In The Presence Of My Enemies

The picture cut to the delegation in the palace press room. Its leader, a white-haired man identified as-of all things-a playwright, spoke in Czech-accented German: "What we did here today marks a good beginning. I am not sure Herr Buckliger realizes it is only a beginning, but that is all right. If he doesn't, we will show him."

"They didn't arrest this fellow, either?" Lise said incredulously.

"Doesn't look that way." Heinrich sounded startled, too.

"This is all very strange," Lise said. Her husband nodded. She went on, "I'd almost rather Buckliger had left things alone. Then we'd know where we stood. This way, everything we've been sure of for so long is up in the air."

"What's that myth? Pandora? Is that it? The last thing that flew out was hope." Heinrich paused, frowning. "I think that's how it is."

"Yes, I think so, too," Lise said. "I don't know if I have any, not really. But even wondering if I could…It feels funny. It feels dizzy, like somebody spiked my drink when I wasn't looking."

"I thought so, too, this afternoon," Heinrich said. "But don't get too excited. For every scene like this, there's an 'Enough Is Enough' or something like it. The cards may have been dealt, but they haven't been played yet. And nobody's going to lay down a dummy. We won't get to see anything till it comes out during the hand."

"I suppose not." Lise sighed. "We're going to have to find some new bridge partners, you know."

"One of these days." Heinrich gestured toward the televisor. That Czech playwright was gone, but the memory of his calm assurance lingered. Heinrich said, "Plenty of interesting things happening right now. And pretty soon the kids will learn how to play."

"All sorts of things to pass on to the next generation," Lise said. They both started to laugh. Bridge wasn't even illegal.

SS men, some in black uniforms, others in camouflage smocks, swarmed near the campus of Friedrich Wilhelm University. Snipers with rifles with telescopic sights took positions on rooftops that had never known the footsteps of anyone but occasional repairmen and not-so-occasional pigeons. Susanna Weiss would have been more alarmed if she hadn't known that Heinz Buckliger was coming here to speak.

Along with the SS men, a horde of workmen and technicians had also invaded the university. Banging hammers and buzzing power tools disrupted the quiet that was supposed to foster academic contemplation. Since Susanna had never had any enormous use for quiet, she turned up the radio a little louder to try to drown out the racket of carpentry.

That did the job well enough, but curiosity accomplished what noise couldn't: it made her get up from her work and look out the window.

A platform for the Fuhrer 's upcoming speech was rising in the open space between the two long wings that housed most of the university's classrooms and faculty offices. Rising with it were platforms for televisor cameras. Those would lift the cameramen above the level of the crowd and make sure no one's head got between Heinz Buckliger and his larger audience across the Reich and the Germanic Empire.

The crowd was already building. Susanna thought about going downstairs and joining it. Then she thought again. What was the point? She wasn't close to the platform here, but she could see it. If she went down there, she wouldn't be able to see a damned thing, because everybody around her would be taller than she was. Better to stay where she was. She'd hear Heinz Buckliger either way.

Curiosity satisfied and decision made, she went back to grading papers. Plenty of her students understood the scatology in "The Miller's Tale." Far fewer of them understood how the piece fit into The Canterbury Tales as a whole. They enjoyed gross jokes. Finding and defining structure in a work of literature was something else again.

Twenty minutes later, the telephone rang. She picked it up. "Bitte?This is Susanna Weiss."

"Fraulein Doktor Professor, this is Rosa." Professor Oppenhoff's secretary paused for a moment, then said, "The department chairman strongly advises against watching the Fuhrer 's speech from your window."

"He does?" Susanna said indignantly. "Why?"

"Because the SS has told him they may shoot anyone they see appearing in a window. Whoever it is might be an assassin, they say."

"Oh." Now it was Susanna's turn to pause. "Well, I hope you get hold of everybody. Otherwise, we'll need to fill some vacancies next semester."

"I'll do my best," the secretary said, and hung up. Considering how badly they got along, Susanna knew a certain amount of relief that Rosa had called her. The other woman didn't seem to want to see her dead, anyhow. That was something.

Then she started to laugh. "God help anyone who's in the men's room when the phone rings!" she exclaimed.