In The Presence Of My Enemies

HERR PEUKERT WAS TALKING ABOUT NEGATIVE NUMBERS when a clerk from the office came into the room and took him aside to speak with him. Alicia was glad for the break. Her head was spinning. When you added negative numbers you really subtracted, and when you subtracted negative numbers you really added? It sounded crazy, to say nothing of confusing.

"What?" The teacher, who had been speaking quietly, exclaimed in surprise. The clerk nodded and muttered something else.Herr Peukert shook his head. The clerk nodded again. The teacher sighed and shrugged. "Alicia Gimpel!" he said.

Alicia jumped up to her feet. "Ja, Herr Peukert?"

"Please go to the office with Fraulein Knopp here. Something has come up."

"Jawohl, Herr Peukert." Alicia wondered what was going on. It sounded as if her mother needed to pull her out of class for some reason or other. Had Mommy forgotten to tell her about a dentist's appointment, or something like that? She was usually good about remembering all kinds of things, but she had forgotten once.

The way Fraulein Knopp kept looking at her all the way back to the office made her wonder. When they were almost there, the clerk asked, "Are you really?"

"Am I really what?" Alicia asked. But the clerk didn't answer.

When they got to the office, Alicia was surprised to find Francesca and Roxane already there. They looked surprised to see her. Roxane asked, "Are you in trouble, too?"

"I didn't think so," Alicia said.

"If they call you to the office, you're in trouble." Roxane spoke with experience born of more mischief than both her sisters together had got into.

Fraulein Knopp went into the inner office, the principal's office. Alicia heard her say, "They're all here now."

But the principal-a gray-haired, severe woman named Frau Fasold-didn't come out. Half a dozen large men in black uniforms did. One of them had a gray mustache that made him look like the boss. Sure enough, he was the one who spoke up: "You will come with us immediately, children, until this question is answered."

Roxane wasn't one to let anybody, even an enormous officer in an intimidating uniform, get the better of her. She tilted her head back so she could look him in the eye and said, "What question?" Alicia was suddenly, horribly, afraid she already knew.

And sure enough, the officer said the worst thing in the world: "The question of whether your father, Heinrich Gimpel, is a Jew, and of whether the three of you are first-degree Mischlingen, subject to the same penalties as full-blooded Jews."Subject to being shot or gassed or anything else we feel like doing to you, he meant.

A terrified scream bubbled up in Alicia's throat. But before she could let it out and give everything away, Francesca screamed first, and her shriek was pure fury: "That's a lie!"She went on, just about as loud, "We're no damned, stinking, big-nosed, big-lipped, lying, cheating, germy Jews! And neither is Daddy! And don't you say he is, either!" She kicked the Security Police officer in the shin.

"Teufelsdreck!"he shouted. He swung back his hand as if to slap Francesca. Roxane grabbed it and bit him. He roared in pain. "You idiots!" he yelled at his men. "Seize them!" He had to yell, because Roxane let go of him and started screeching it was all a lie, too.

That told Alicia what she had to do. She added her voice to the clamor, and did her best to fight and to get away before one of the big men grabbed her. "Christ, they sure don't act like a bunch of kikes," the man said, panting with the effort of hanging on to her.

Francesca and Roxane, of course, were convinced they were no such thing. Alicia realized she had to act as if she were, too. It was the only chance she and her sisters had…if they had any chance at all.

Frau Fasold finally did emerge from her office. She disapprovingly surveyed the chaos in the outer room. Shaking her head, she fixed the officer with the gray mustache with an icy blue glare. "Really,mein Herr, " she said in a voice just as icy. "Is this disorder altogether necessary?"

Her manner could paralyze any student. It seemed to have the same effect on the Security Police man. "These are, uh, Jews, or, uh,Mischlingen, anyway," he said in a low voice. "We can't, uh, be too, uh, careful."

"These are children-and fine children, too, I might add,"Frau Fasold said. Even in Alicia's terror, that astonished her. The principal never had a good word for anybody.Frau Fasold went on, "Why didn't you bring panzers and helicopters and flamethrowers, too? Then you could have been safe." She all but spat her contempt in the blackshirt's face.

He turned red. "We have our orders, ma'am," he said stonily. "We have to carry them out."

"Orders for murdering children?"Frau Fasold said. "Why?"

The Security Police officer turned redder. "It is our duty."

"God help you, in that case," the principal told him.