In The Presence Of My Enemies

Besides, up till the time when Buckliger became Fuhrer, politics in the Reich had been not only appalling but, worse yet, bloody dull. Some of the things that went on were still appalling. But only someone who was deaf and blind would have called them dull. And when things were interesting, how could younot try to guess what would happen next?

Outside, the applause went on and on, though the Fuhrer didn't say anything more. Susanna concluded he was leaving the platform, leaving the university. Pretty soon, the coast would be clear. She could look out her window again without worrying about trigger-happy SS sharpshooters.

In the meantime…In the meantime, she still had her essays to grade. They would have been there even if Kurt Haldweim were still Fuhrer. In a lot of ways, life went on in spite of politics.

And, in a lot of ways, it didn't. How many lives had the politics of the Reich snuffed out? Too many. Millions and millions too many. What did undergraduate essays matter, with that in the back of her mind?

But her life had to go on, no matter what the Reich had done. Shaking her head, she picked up a red pen and got back to work.

A day like any other day. That was how Heinrich Gimpel remembered it afterwards. It could have been any Tuesday. The kids were running around getting ready for school. Francesca was still grumbling about some new idiotic project Frau Koch had inflicted on the class. Roxane was spelling words out loud; she was going to have a test. And Alicia had her nose in a book. Lise had to yell at her to get her to put it down and do the things she needed to do. Yes, everything seemed normal as could be.

Blackbirds on lawns tugged at worms as Heinrich walked up the street toward the bus stop. The sun shone brightly. Spring was really here now. He couldn't recall any other spring that had seemed so hopeful, so cheerful. Was that Mother Nature's fault or Heinz Buckliger's? Heinrich didn't know. He didn't much care, either. He would enjoy the moment for as long as it lasted.

He waited at the bus stop for a few minutes, then got on the bus for the Stahnsdorf train station. Three stops later, Willi Dorsch got on, too. He sat down next to Heinrich."Guten Morgen," he said.

"Same to you," Heinrich answered."Wie geht's?"

"It's been better," Willi said. "I have to tell you, though, it's been worse, too. Erika's been…kind of cheerful lately." He looked this way and that, a comic show of suspicion. "I wonder what she's up to."

"Heh," Heinrich said uneasily. As far as he could tell, Erika had never said anything to Willi about what had happened at her sister's house on Burggrafen-Strasse-or about any of the several things that might have happened there but hadn't. He supposed he should have been grateful. Hewas grateful. But he was also suspicious, and his suspicion had no comic edge to it.

When the bus got to the Stahnsdorf station, he and Willi bought their copies of the Volkischer Beobachter and carried them out to the platform. They climbed aboard the train up to Berlin, sat down together, and started reading the morning news. Almost as if they'd rehearsed it, they simultaneously pointed to the same story below the fold on the front page.

STOLLE ANNOUNCES CANDIDACY, the headline said. There was a small head shot of the Gauleiter of Berlin just below the line of big black type. The story, as bald as any Heinrich had ever seen in the Beobachter, announced that Rolf Stolle was indeed running for the Reichstag.

"Can he do that?" Heinrich said, and then, "How can he do that? He's already Gauleiter." The puzzle offended his sense of order.

But Willi had the answer: "Gauleiter's a Party office.Reichstag member would be a state office. He could hold both at once."

"You're right," Heinrich said wonderingly. The National Socialist Party and the Reich were as closely intertwined as a pair of lovers-or as a tree and a strangler fig. But they weren't quite one and the same.

"I wonder how the Fuhrer will like that," Willi said.

"Stolle trying for a national forum?"

Willi nodded. "Ja. And Stolle trying for votes in general." He lowered his voice. "I mean, who ever voted for Buckliger for anything? Party Bonzen and Wehrmacht bigwigs, sure, but nobody else."

"You're right." Again, wonder filled Heinrich's voice. Till Buckliger's speech at Friedrich Wilhelm University, that wouldn't have mattered. Who'd voted-really voted-for anyone who mattered in the Reich? No one. Elections had been afterthoughts, farces. This one felt different. Stolle must have sensed it, too. He might well have been a clown. Several of the moves he'd made lately convinced Heinrich he was anything but a fool.

And Willi, when it came to politics if not to women, was also anything but a fool. "I wonderwhy the Fuhrer 's not running for a seat in the Reichstag, " he said thoughtfully.

That was an interesting question, too. Heinrich said, "Maybe he's worried he'd lose."