In The Presence Of My Enemies

They followed Esther toward the kitchen. Susanna sat on the sofa, scotch on the table in front of her. She got up to hug Heinrich and Lise. She and Heinrich each raised an eyebrow at the other. They were, in a way, veterans of the same campaign. It hadn't lasted long and there hadn't been many casualties, but it could have been much worse, and they both knew it.

"Did you ever find new bridge partners?" Susanna asked him.

"We play every now and then, but not regularly, not the way we used to," he replied. "Willi and I still get along fine at work, but…"

"Yes. But," Lise said pointedly. "It's hard to play cards with somebody who tried to seduce your husband and then tried to kill him." Heinrich wondered which of Erika's transgressions his wife resented more. Since asking would have landed him in hotter water than knowing was worth, he expected he'd go right on wondering.

Esther came back with two steins of pale gold pilsner. "Here you are." She gave Heinrich one and Lise the other.

"Thanks." Heinrich sipped. He nodded appreciatively. "Is that-?"

"Pilsner Urquell?" Esther said it before he could. She nodded, too. "It's good beer. And besides, buying it sends the Czechs a little money. They deserve all the help we can give them." Her usually sunny face clouded for a moment. "Anyone who wants to get away from the Reich deserves all the help we can give them."

"Omayn,"Lise said softly. She and Heinrich and Esther and Susanna all smiled. That particular pronunciation of the word ordinary Germans said asamen was one Jews could only use among themselves, which meant it was one they couldn't use very often. Hearing it reminded Heinrich he was part of a small but very special club.

"Where's Walther?" he asked, at the same time as Lise was saying, "What smells so good?"

"I'm carving the goose," Walther called from the kitchen, answering both questions at the same time. He added, "It probably won't be the neatest job in the world, because the joints aren't quite in the same places as they are on a capon. But the taste won't change. Esther's responsible for that."

"The two of you cooked goose last summer, too," Susanna said. "Lothar Prutzmann's, I mean."

Esther blushed like a schoolgirl. "Who can say for sure? The Putsch might have fallen apart anyhow. The SS had already started shooting at the Wehrmacht at the Berlin televisor station, and that would have started things rolling downhill on Prutzmann all by itself."

Heinrich shook his head. "Don't sell yourselves short. You weren't in the square when Stolle shouted out that Prutzmann was a Jew. It took the wind right out of the SS panzer troopers' sails, and it gave the crowd something new and juicy to yell at them." He sipped from his beer. "I was yelling it myself." That he'd yelled it embarrassed him now, though it hadn't then.

"So was I, as loud as I could." Susanna sounded proud and guilty at the same time.

Walther came out. He was wearing an apron, to guard against grease. He had a beer in one hand for himself and in the other a glass of liebfraumilch, which he gave to Esther. Heinrich raised his own seidel in salute. "Here's to getting that story out."

"I'm just glad it may have helped," Walther said. "At the time, I wasn't even close to sure I was doing the right thing."

"Who was?" Heinrich answered. "But it worked out-as well as anything could have, anyhow." If he'd had things exactly as he wanted them, everyone would have gathered at his house for supper, the way people had two years before. But he still had to assume the Security Police had planted bugs there, and that they were monitoring them. The blackshirts were down, but they weren't necessarily out.

Esther took his mind off his worries by saying, "Let's eat, shall we?" She went to the base of the stairs and hallooed for the children. Anna's bedroom door opened. She and the Gimpel girls reluctantly emerged. Whatever they'd been doing in there, they'd had a good time at it.

The table groaned with food. The goose was stuffed with sauerkraut and caraway seeds, and was done to perfection. There was liver dumpling soup, a puree of yellow peas, boiled potatoes with plenty of butter to slather on them, and a medley of green peas, carrots, asparagus, kohlrabi, and cauliflower garnished with more butter and salt and chopped parsley. There was home-baked bread with cinnamon and raisins and candied cherries-that accounted for the enticing spicy scent Heinrich had noticed when Esther opened the door. And there was a peach cobbler, if by some accident anyone had room for it.