In The Presence Of My Enemies

Ilse snuggled up to Willi as they walked toward the door. Willi slipped his arm around her waist. Heinrich went back to his paperwork.Would I do something like that if I were having trouble with Lise? he wondered.Who knows? Maybe I would. But he had trouble imagining trouble with Lise.Maybe I don't understand how lucky I am.

The telephone on Willi's desk rang. Heinrich was going to let it keep ringing till whoever was on the other end got sick of it and hung up. But what if it turned out to be somebody with important business? He picked up his own phone and dialed Willi's extension to transfer the call. "Analysis-this is Heinrich Gimpel."

"Oh, hello, Heinrich-I wanted to talk to Willi." That was Erika Dorsch's voice. Heinrich winced. He wished he'd let the phone ring. When he didn't answer right away, she asked, "Where is he?" in a way he didn't like at all.

He responded with the exact and literal truth: "You missed him by two minutes-he just went to lunch."

"And he didn't go with you, obviously," Erika said. Heinrichreally wished he hadn't answered the telephone. Willi's wife went on, "Did he go with the lovely and talented Ilse instead?"

"I, ah, didn't see him leave," Heinrich said, which was true in the highly technical sense that he'd looked down at the papers on his desk before Willi actually opened the door.

"Now tell me another one, Heinrich. You aren't much of a liar, you know," Erika said. The way she meant it, that might have been true. In several ways she knew nothing about, it couldn't have been more wrong. That she knew nothing about those several ways proved how wrong it was.

He said, "Erika, I'm not his father. I'm not his watchdog, either. I don't keep an eye on him every minute."

"Somebody ought to," Erika Dorsch said bitterly. "Is something wrong with me, Heinrich? Am I ugly? Am I unattractive?"

"You ought to know better than that," he said, too surprised at the question not to give her an honest answer.

"Should I?" she said. "If something isn't wrong with me, why have we only made love six or seven times this year? Why is Willi going around with that round-heeled little chippie instead of me?"

"I don't know," Heinrich answered, which was also certainly true. If he'd had a choice between…But he didn't have choices like that, so what was the point of imagining he did? He said, "Don't you think you'd do better asking Willi? He might actually tell you."

"He'd tell me a load of garbage. That's what he's been telling me all along," Erika said. "What's he been telling you? That's probably more garbage."

Heinrich pretended not to hear her. Bad enough to have to listen to both sides in a dissolving marriage. To tell tales from one to the other…He shook his head. No. He didn't know much about such things, but he knew better than that.

"Can you get a little time off?" she asked. "If you come over here, I can tell you how things really are."

What was that supposed to mean? What it sounded like? If it did, would he kick himself for the rest of his days if he said no? Most red-blooded males would. He could arrange things so Lise never knew, and…

"Erika," he said gently, "I don't think that would be a good idea right now."

"No?" She sounded tragic. "You mean you don't want me, either?"

"I-" He stopped. One more question for which there was no safe answer. He did his best: "I'm married to Lise, remember? I like being married to Lise. I want to stay married to her." He looked around to make sure nobody in the big room was paying too much attention to him. He couldn't do anything about anyone who might monitor the call. It wouldn't land him in trouble, anyhow. He consoled himself with that.

A long, long silence followed. At last, Erika said, "I didn't know people talked that way any more. Well." Another silence. "She's luckier than she knows-or else you can't get it up, either." The line went dead.

Heinrich stared at the telephone, then slowly replaced the handset in the cradle. He'd been ready to sympathize with Erika-even if he wasn't ready to go to bed with her-and to think Willi was a louse and a fool for not giving her more of what she obviously wanted. But if she kept making cracks like that, he didn't see how he could sympathize with either one of them-except they were both his friends. He muttered something that didn't help and trudged off to the canteen.

Susanna Weiss loved good food. What she didn't love was cooking. She should have; learning to cook, and to be happy cooking, was drummed into girls in the Greater German Reich in school and in the Bund deutscher Madel. With Susanna, it hadn't taken. With Susanna, the more something was drummed into her, the less likely to take it was.