In The Presence Of My Enemies

Roxane made the doll retreat. "I'll figure out another way to get your gold, then-you see if I don't."

"Oh, no, you won't," Francesca retorted. "I'm an Aryan dragon, and I'm too tough for you."

Alicia got to her feet. "I don't think I want to play any more."

"Why not?" Roxane said. "Things are just getting good." She looked down at the doll. "Aren't they?" It responded-she made it respond-with a thoroughly evil chuckle and a, "That's right," in the high, squeaky voice she'd used before.

"She's a wet blanket, that's why," Francesca said. "She's been a wet blanket for weeks now, and I'm tired of it."

"Wet blanket! Wet blanket!" Roxane sang, now in her own voice, now in the one she'd invented for the Jew doll.

"I am not!" Alicia said angrily. "This is a stupid game, that's all."

Roxane got angry, too. "You're just saying it's stupid because I'm doing something I thought up all by myself." She wheeled out the heavy artillery: "I'm going to tell. Mommy says you can't do things like that."

And Francesca was also angry, in a quieter way. "How can you say it's a stupid game when you thought up half of it?"

"Because-" But Alicia couldn't say what she couldn't say. Knowing what she knew and not being able to talk about it threatened to choke her. "Because it is, that's all."

"I'm going to tell," Roxane said again."Mommy!"

"You and your big mouth," Alicia said, whereupon her little sister opened it as wide as she could and stuck out her tongue. Alicia was tempted to grab that tongue and give it a good yank, but it was too slimy for her to do it.

"What's going on?" came from the ground floor. Ominous footsteps on the stairs followed, each one louder than the one before. Their mother appeared at the doorway to Francesca and Roxane's room. "Can't the three of you play together nicely?"

"I didn't want to play any more, that's all," Alicia said.

"That's not all. You didn't like my ideas, that's what it is," Roxane said, and proceeded to explain in great detail what her ideas were.

Understanding kindled in their mother's eyes. She started to say something, then closed her mouth again. Awe trickled through Alicia.She can't tell, either, she thought.She's a grownup, and shecan't tell. That spoke more clearly than anything else of how important the secret was. It was important enough to constrain a grownup, and grownups by the very nature of things were beyond constraint.

Their mother tried again. This time, she succeeded. "Play the game, Alicia," she said gently. "Go ahead and play the game. It's all right. That's what we have to do."

"See?" Triumph filled Roxane. "Mommy told you to."

And so she had. But she'd told Alicia something else, too, something that had gone by Roxane and Francesca.That's what we have to do. People who weren't Jews were going to say things about them. They were going to mock them. They couldn't help it. They believed all the things they'd learned in school. (Alicia still half believed them herself, which sometimes left her half-sick with confusion.) If you couldn't get used to that, if you couldn't pretend it wasn't anything, you'd give yourself away.

"All right," Alicia said. "I'll play the game."

By the way their mother smiled, she'd also sneaked a message past her sisters. "Good, Alicia," Lise Gimpel said. "In that case, I'll get back to what I was doing." She went down the hall. She went down the stairs.

Roxane eyed Alicia expectantly. Francesca eyed her suspiciously, as if to say,You can't just start and stop like that. But Alicia could. At first, she felt as if she were in one of the little plays students sometimes had to put on at school, as if this weren't happening to her but to the person she was pretending to be. The longer she did it, though, the more natural it got.

She and her sisters foiled the doll that was being a Jew. Another doll brought an-imaginary-sack of gold, so the dragons, who'd been tricked out of theirs, got to keep their cave. Then, while the Jew was gloating over his ill-gotten gains, more dolls, these proper Aryans, swooped down on him. They took him away to another box.

Roxane closed the lid. "And that'll be the end of him," she chortled. Then, in a more practical frame of mind, she added, "Till we need him for another game, anyhow."

"See, Alicia?" Francesca said. "That was pretty good."

"I suppose so," Alicia said: for her, no small admission, and more than enough to satisfy her sister.But it's not all a game, she thought. Some of the things her father had said made that very plain.If you put a real person in a box and close the lid and go, that'll be the end of him. He won't come out again for the next game. Roxane wouldn't understand. She was too little. Alicia had trouble understanding it herself. One of the teachers at her school, though, had had the misfortune to step in front of a bus. And Frau Zoglmann would never be back again.

Death was permanent, no matter what Roxane thought. Yes, death was permanent. And so was fear.

III