In The Presence Of My Enemies

She paused in front of a telephone booth. The man inside might well have come from South America. He was certainly too swarthy to live comfortably within the Greater German Reich. He hung up, came out of the booth, and tipped his fedora to Esther as he hurried into the milliner's shop.

Fumbling in her handbag, she pulled out a fifty-pfennig coin and went into the telephone booth. A man who'd started towards it turned away in disappointment. He would have to find another place from which to call, not that there weren't plenty of public telephones along the Kurfurstendamm. Esther fed the coin into the slot and dialed the number she needed. The phone rang once, twice…

"Bitte?"a woman said in Esther's ear.

"Guten Tag, Frau Klein," Esther answered. "I have an important message for you."

"I'm sorry, but I'm not inter-" Maria Klein broke off, perhaps recognizing Esther's voice. Esther hoped that was why she stopped, anyhow. After a moment, the other woman said, "Well, go ahead, as long as you've got me on the line."

She had the sense not to name names, just as Esther had had the sense not to call from her own home or from Dr. Dambach's office. If the Kleins' phone was tapped (as it might well be, after Dambach had discovered the two versions of their family tree), technicians could trace the call here-but how much would they gain if they did? Precious little, because Esther intended to leave as soon as she hung up.

"Thank you," she said now. "I just wanted to let you know that there are people who know there are two sets. Isn't that interesting?" She tried to sound bright and cheerful, as a telephone solicitor should.

"This, too?" Maria said. "This, too, on top of everything with the baby?"

"I'm afraid so." In the face of the other woman's bitterness, Esther's good cheer collapsed like a burst balloon.And it's my fault, she thought miserably.Mine-nobody else's. She didn't know how she was going to live with that.

"What are we supposed to do now?" Maria Klein demanded. "Gott im Himmel,what are we supposed to do now?"

She wasn't really asking Esther. And if she was asking God, He'd had few answers for Jews these past seventy-five years. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry for everything," Esther whispered, and hung up. As soon as she left the booth, another woman went in. She hoped the other woman had happier business. She also hoped the other woman, and whoever used the booth afterwards, would cover up all of her own fingerprints.

Esther wanted to find another phone booth and call Walther, to let him know she'd warned the Kleins. She wanted to, but she didn't. Calls into and out of Zeiss were too likely to be monitored. She could have worked out some sort of code phrase to tell him what she'd done, but she didn't want to take the chance today. Such phrases were fine if nobody was likely to be paying close attention. If, on the other hand, someone was trying to build a case…

With a shiver, Esther shook her head. "No," she murmured.

A man gave her a curious look. Susanna would have frozen him with a glare. Heinrich would have walked past him without even noticing the curious look, which would have confounded him just as well. Esther's way was to smile sweetly at him. He turned red, embarrassed at wondering about such an obviously normal person.

If only you knew,Esther thought. But the truth, no matter how little the Nazis wanted to admit it, was that Jews were, or could be, normal people, some good, some bad, some indifferent. Shylock's words from The Merchant of Venice echoed in Esther's mind.If you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison us, do we not die?

Esther tried to imagine an SS man tickling a Jew. The picture was enough to set her laughing without the deed-but only for a moment. The Nazis had poisoned Jews, poisoned them by the millions, and the Jews had died.

Shylock went on,and if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? She doubted a Jew was left alive who didn't dream of revenge at least once a day. But dreams were only dreams.

Survival is a kind of revenge,Esther thought.Just by living on, by passing our heritage to our children, we beat the Nazis. She smiled. Now Alicia Gimpel knew what she was, too. Pretty soon, her sisters would also know.

And if all went well-and Esther, with her sunny disposition, still hoped it would-Eduard Klein would find out one of these days, too. But then that smile disappeared. No matter how sunny Esther was, she couldn't keep it. The Kleins had passed on some of their heritage to little Paul, too, and he would never live to find out what he was.

Heinrich Gimpel was starting to get used to seeing long black limousines pull up to Oberkommando der Wehrmacht about the time he and Willi got off their bus in front of the building. He was getting used to watching Party and SSBonzen he'd seen on the televisor and read about in newspapers and magazines climbing the steps he climbed every day.