In The Presence Of My Enemies

Several children nodded. Behind Alicia, Emma Handrick raised her hand. When Herr Kessler called on her, she said, "When my great-granddad got that way, my folks took him to a Reichs Mercy Center. Is that what they did with the old Fuhrer? "

"No.Gott im Himmel, no!" The teacher turned very red. The question must have rocked him. Alicia couldn't remember him ever saying anything about God before. She couldn't remember any of her teachers saying anything about God. She'd always had the idea that they weren't supposed to.Herr Kessler needed a moment to gather himself. Then he said, "Kurt Haldweim lived out his whole life. He had to, you see, because he was serving the Reich. Do you understand?"

"Ja, Herr Kessler," Emma answered. She wasn't going to argue with him.

Alicia wanted to. Before she found out she was a Jew, she might have. She didn't dare stick out her neck now. Not being able to say what she thought sometimes made her feel as if she were choking. She wanted to cheer when a boy stuck up his hand. When the teacher pointed his way, he asked, "Excuse me,Herr Kessler, but if the old Fuhrer was all feeble, whydidn't they take him to a Reichs Mercy Center? Isn't that what you're supposed to do, before he becomes a burden?"

"the Fuhrer is not a burden," Kessler said stiffly. "the Fuhrer cannot be a burden. the Fuhrer is the Fuhrer."

By the way he spoke, that was supposed to settle things. Nobody in the class asked any more questions about the Reichs Mercy Centers, so maybe it did. Or maybe all the children realized asking more questions like that would only land them in trouble.

And maybe Herr Kessler realized he hadn't satisfied everybody with his answers, for he quickly changed the subject and plunged into the day's usual lessons. No one could challenge him on those. He went back to being the classroom Fuhrer, lord of all he surveyed.

For the history lesson, he rolled up the usual map of the world as it was now and rolled down a different map, one that showed the way things had been before the Second and Third World Wars. "Do you see how tiny the Reich was in those days, and how big our enemies were?" he said. "And yet we beat them, because we were Aryans and they were full of Jews. France, England, Russia, the United States-all full of Jews. And they fell into our hands one after another. What does this tell you? Alicia Gimpel!"

She sprang to her feet. "That Aryans are superior to Jews,Herr Kessler."

"Very good. Be seated."

She knew her lessons. She could recite them without fail. Reciting them when she didn't believe them, though, made her feel all slimy inside. She wanted to know what was true. She wanted to say what was true. She knew she would get in trouble if she did. That made going on with what she learned in school necessary. It didn't make it palatable.

Herr Kessler asked the next question of someone else. It was also anti-Semitic. Alicia didn't like hearing it, either. She wondered how Herr Kessler would like listening to anti-Aryan questions all day. She suspected he would get sick of it in a hurry.

She sighed. Things had been a lot simpler before she knew what she was.

When Lise Gimpel was a girl, she'd grated cabbage by hand. As often as not, that had involved grating some fingertip or knuckle in with the cabbage. Her father, an engineer, had always found that funny-they weren'this fingertips or knuckles, after all. When she yelped, he would say, "Adds protein," and puff on his pipe.

These days, Lise used a plastic rod to guide quartered chunks of cabbage into the maw of the food processor. The push of a button, a whir, and the job was done-not even a tenth the time, and never any need to reach for the Mercurochrome. But every time she did it, she imagined she smelled pipe tobacco.

She bit her lip. She'd been pregnant with Francesca when the damned drunk cut short her parents' lives. Alicia had been only a toddler then. She didn't remember her grandparents, and they'd never got to know their other grandchildren. Sometimes life seemed dreadfully unfair.

Lise laughed, not that it was funny.As if a Jew in the Third Reichshould look for fairness. But somehow God seemed extra malicious in piling a personal disaster on top of the one she'd been born with.

Alicia came into the kitchen. She liked to help cook. So did Roxane. Francesca didn't care one way or the other. Lise was glad to see her daughter. "Hello, sweetheart," she said. "How did it go today?" Talking with Alicia would help ease her out of her gloom.

So she thought, anyway, till Alicia blurted, "Mommy, do I have to be a Jew? I don't think I want to."

Before Lise answered, she automatically looked around. "Where are your sisters?"

"Upstairs doing homework. I finished mine."

"All right. Good. You have to be careful even saying that word." Lise put her hands on Alicia's shoulders. "Now-why don't you? What happened today that made you think you don't?"