In The Presence Of My Enemies

"I don't know why Hebrew does that," he answered unhappily. "I just knowthat it does. My father knew more about being a Jew than I do, andhis father knew much more than he did, because his father had grown up in the days when Jews in Germany were free to be what they were. I'll teach you as much as I can, and you need to remember it so you can teach it to your children."

"If we keep learning less and less every time, will a time come when we don't know enough?" Alicia asked.

Her father looked more unhappy still. "I don't know that, either, sweetheart. All I know is that I hope not. We have to try to pass it along, and that's what I'm doing."

Alicia looked down at the curious set of characters she'd written. "Which letter says what? Which one saysah and which one saysdo and which one saysnoi? "

"It's not that simple," her father said.

"Why not? What do you mean? This is confusing!" Alicia said.

"Because it doesn't really sayadonoi. It says Jahweh, more or less-it's the word Jehovah comes from. But that's the name of God, and Jews aren't supposed to speak the name of God, so we sayadonoi instead. That means Lord."

"Oh." Alicia eyed those four formidable letters once more. "Thisis confusing. Are there books where I can find out more about it?"

"Yes, there are, and you can't have any of them," her father answered. Alicia stared at him in something close to shock. Their family loved books. The shelves in the front room and in her parents' bedroom held everything from mystery novels to books about the theater to bird-watching guides to studies of ancient

Greece. But there were, she realized, no books about Jews except the Streicher children's classics in her own room. Her father went on, "You won't find those books in any Jew's house. It's not safe for us to have them. People might wonder why we do. And the last thing we want is people wondering about us. Not having those books is part of the disguise we wear. Do you see?"

"I suppose so," Alicia said unwillingly. "But it seems a shame that we can't learn more if the books are there."

"One of the things we could learn is what gives the Security Police an excuse to arrest us," her father said. "When you're a grownup, you can decide for yourself what you think is safe. For now, we're not going to take any chances."

He didn't use that tone of voice very often. When he did, it meant his mind was made up and he wouldn't change it no matter what. Alicia sighed. It didn't seem fair. He usually pushed her toward learning as hard as he could. Here, he was pushing her away instead. But when he sounded like this, she would only waste her breath arguing with him.

He picked up the paper where they'd written the name of God, the name too holy to be spoken, and methodically began tearing it into little pieces. "Most of what we know, we have to pass on by word of mouth," he said. "That's not so dangerous. It's there, and then it's gone. Paper, now, paper lasts. Paper is what gets you into trouble, because it stays there. Even if you've forgotten about it, it stays. That's what got the Kleins into trouble-a piece of paper that stayed in a file."

"The Kleins-are Jews?" Alicia asked. Excitement flared in her when her father nodded. The more people she knew who shared this burden with her, the less heavy it seemed and the less alone she felt.

Her father said, "Because of this paper, the Reichs Genealogical Office thought they were, too. But nobody could prove anything, and they had to let them go. And one of the reasons nobody could prove anything is that the Kleins are careful about what they keep at home. They didn't have anything where people could point and say, 'Ha! They have that, so they must be Jews!'"

From everything Alicia had heard, people didn't need to be sure to settle with Jews. She said as much to her father, finishing, "Why didn't they take them away and do things to them anyhow?"

That made her father frown. "I don't quite know," he admitted. He sounded grumpy; like her, he was someone with a restless, relentless itch to find things out. "There has to be a reason. I just hope it's not a bad one."

"What do you mean?" Alicia asked.

"Well, they could have let them go so they could help catch other Jews," he said. Her mouth fell open. That hadn't occurred to her. He nodded grimly. "Yes, they do things like that."

"They may, but would the Kleins?" Alicia asked.

Her father let out a long, sad sigh. "Sweetheart, I just don't know. How can you tell what anybody will do when someone says to him, 'Do this or else we'll kill you'? You can't know that about anyone else ahead of time. You can't even know about yourself ahead of time."