In The Presence Of My Enemies

Esther laughed; she knew he was even less likely to do something like that than he was to sue. Take his anger out on a child? Impossible. Unthinkable. But what if he found out a child he treated was a Jew? She had no doubt he would call the authorities, and never lose a moment's sleep afterwards worrying about what happened to it or to its family. He was conscientious, law-abiding-a good German.

She took the signed letters and made envelopes for them. The stamps she used were black-and-white mourning issues for Kurt Haldweim. As she put them on one by one, she wondered about the folk among whom she lived-something else she'd done many times before. Germans were the sort of people who would stay on the path and off the grass in a park even if someone was shooting a machine gun at them.

And yet…A lot of the Jews surviving in Berlin were there because Germans had helped their parents or grandparents get false papers during the war. Without the right papers, life in the Reich had been impossible even so long ago. They'd been easier to get then, when enemy bombs sent records up in smoke and replacements were issued without many awkward questions. More than a few friends and neighbors had vouched for Jews, and some of them, discovered, had paid for their kindness with years in prison or with life itself.

And some Jews in Nazi hands had kept themselves alive-for a while-by going out onto the streets of Berlin and capturing other Jews still free. Set them in the scales against the brave Germans and it taught you…what? Esther sighed. Only what anyone with a gram of sense already knew: that there were good Jews and bad Jews, in proportions not much different from those of any other folk.

The door to the outer office opened. Esther looked at the clock in surprise. Was it nine already? It really was. In came a squat, heavyset woman with jowls and protruding eyes. She looked like nothing so much as a bulldog. And her seven-year-old daughter, poor thing, might have been her in miniature.

"Good morning,Frau Bauriedl," Esther said. "And how is Wilhelmina today?"

"Well, that's what I want the doctor to see,"Frau Bauriedl answered.

She brought Wilhelmina in every couple of weeks regardless of whether anything was really wrong with the little girl. Dr. Dambach tried to discourage her, but he hadn't had much luck. She did pay her bills on time; neither Esther nor any of the other receptionists had ever had to send her even the most polite letter.

The telephone rang. "Excuse me," Esther said, glad for an excuse not to have to talk to Frau Bauriedl. She picked up the handset. "Dr. Dambach's office."

"Frau Stutzman?" The woman on the other end of the line waited for Esther to agree that she was herself, then went on, "This is Maria Klein,Frau Stutzman. I'm…I'm afraid I'm going to have to cancel Paul's appointment this morning. You see, we are under investigation for something…something of which we are certainly not guilty. Good-bye." She hung up.

She hadn't let on that she knew Esther in any way except as the pediatrician's receptionist. There in the warm, bright, sterile calm of Dambach's office, Esther shivered as if caught in a Lapland blizzard. Was Maximilian Ebert or some other hard-faced Nazi in the uniform of the Reichs Genealogical Office or the Security Police standing next to Maria, listening to every word she said and how she said it? Or was she just afraid her line was tapped?

Under investigation. How long had it been since the Germans caught a Jew in Berlin? It must have been some time not long after Esther found out she was one. There had been a great hue and cry then. How much more strident would it be now, when the whole Reich was thought to be Judenfrei for years? And if the Kleins were found guilty of such a heinous crime, what else would the investigators be able to tear out of them?

When Esther got to her feet, her legs didn't want to hold her up. She held on to the top of the desk for a moment till she steadied. She made the trip back to Dr. Dambach's personal office more by main force of will than any other way. He looked up from a medical journal, a question on his face. "That telephone call was from Frau Klein," Esther said carefully. She had to watch every word, too, in case her turn came up next. "She won't be bringing Paul in this morning after all."

"No?" Dambach said. "Have she and her husband decided to take him to the Reichs Mercy Center, then? It's the only sensible thing to do, I'm afraid."

Was it? For someone old and in torment from, say, cancer, it might be. For a baby? But, on the other hand, for a baby doomed to a lingering, horrible, certain death? Esther just didn't know. That was beside the point now, though. Shaking her head, she answered, "No, because she and her husband are-under investigation, she said."