In The Presence Of My Enemies

"Everything was fine when I left the house this morning," Esther said, still dazed. "Or I thought it was, anyhow."

"Well, it isn't fine now," Dambach said. "Heaven only knows when it'll be fine again. Talk about your hypocrites and whited sepulchers!" He made as if to spit again, and again seemed barely able to check himself.

"What do you mean?" Esther asked.

"Don't you recall?" Dr. Dambach said in surprise. "The whole business with the Kleins and how they escaped the suspicion of being Jews after they had that poor baby with Tay-Sachs disease?"

"Of course I remember that they ended up being set free," Esther answered. "Didn't that nasty man from the Reichs Genealogical Office say they got away because Lothar Prutzmann's niece had also had a Tay-Sachs baby?"

"Maximilian Ebert. A nasty man indeed." Dambach's round face was roundly disapproving. "But you seem to miss the point, or at least part of the point. What is the most likely explanation for the fact that Prutzmann's niece had a baby with Tay-Sachs?"

"I'm very sorry, Doctor, but you're right-I think I am missing the point," Esther said.

The pediatrician clucked reproachfully. "The most likely explanation for the fact that Lothar Prutzmann's niece had a baby with Tay-Sachs disease-not the only explanation, mind you, but the most likely one-is that there is in fact Jewish blood in Prutzmann's family. Jews are the most common carriers of the disease-and who would have a better chance of concealing such an unfortunate pedigree than the Reichsfuhrer -SS?…Yes,Frau Stutzman, you may well look horrified. I don't blame you a bit."

Esther hadn't known she looked horrified, but she supposed she might have. She remembered the hidden Jew, the practicing Jew, in the SS who'd helped Heinrich escape. He wasn't one of the little group of which she was a part. Walther hadn't been able to identify him for sure even after tapping into SS records. Whoever he was, though, he'd preserved his identity. Lothar Prutzmann might have had Jewish ancestors, but he was no Jew.

Dr. Dambach rammed that point home: "Nothing but a damned hypocrite-excuse me, please-as I told you before. 'Duty-bound to the highest conception of Aryan blood and honor,' the Reichsfuhrer -SS claimed, when the odds are he is not fully of Aryan blood himself. Tell me,Frau Stutzman, where is the honor in a lie?"

"I…don't see it, either," Esther said. Her boss nodded. Why not? She'd agreed with him. If that didn't make her a clear thinker, what would? She went on, "Do you mind if I call my husband from here, Dr. Dambach? I'd like to meet him for lunch."

"Go right ahead," Dambach answered. "But would you be kind enough to put the coffee on first? I really would like some, but I held off on making it till you got here. You always have better luck with the machine than I do."

It's not luck. It's following the bloody directions. But Esther said, "I'll take care of it right away." A Putsch might have overthrown the Fuhrer, but Dr. Dambach messing with the coffee machine would have been a real catastrophe…

Susanna Weiss' hand shook as she dialed the telephone. She had both the radio and the televisor going full blast. Lothar Prutzmann talked about duty and Aryan blood on the radio. Odilo Globocnik was speaking on the televisor-rambling, rather, and not making a whole lot of sense. If he wasn't drunk, he could have made money doing impressions of someone who was.

The telephone rang-once, twice, three times. Then a woman picked it up. "Department of Germanic Languages."

"Guten Morgen,Rosa," Susanna said to Professor Oppenhoff's secretary. "This is Professor Weiss. Will you please post a notice in my classes that I won't be in today?"

"Yes, of course,Fraulein Doktor Professor," Rosa answered. "Now that we're finally rid of that stinking Buckliger, a lot of people are celebrating."

"I'm sure they are," Susanna said, and hung up in a hurry. Now she knew what sort of politics the department chairman's secretary had. She wished she didn't, though it wasn't really a surprise. Professor Oppenhoff himself was probably out in a Bierstube downing a couple of seidels and smoking one of his smelly cigars and singing along to the asinine lyrics of the "Horst Wessel Song."

She switched the televisor to the Berlin channel. There was Rolf Stolle staring out of the screen, sweaty and disheveled and furious. "If you can still see me, the thieving bastards in the SS haven't won yet," he growled. "They think they can get away with dirty deeds done in the dark of night, like they have for so long.I think they're full of shit. I think the Reich has seen enough of that to last it forever. I think it's seen too goddamn much. And I think the Volk are going to show Lothar Prutzmann what they think of him, and of his lousy henchmen. If you think the same way, come and join me.Deutschland erwache! "