In The Presence Of My Enemies

"Sehr gut,"Kessler said again. "Then let us go on with the day's lesson." He spoke with a certain amount of relief, or so it seemed to Alicia. Did he sometimes think, as she did, that too much talk of politics might be dangerous? If students got answers wrong, they got paddled. What happened to teachers who got answers about politics wrong? Maybe Herr Kessler didn't want to find out. He nodded. "Arithmetic, then. Pass in your homework. At once. No talking."

Behind Alicia, Emma Handrick let out a soft gasp of dismay. Kessler's head swung toward her. But he couldn't decide who had made the sound. Sometimes he punished everyone in the neighborhood if he didn't know just who had got out of line. Maybe he still felt on unsafe ground today, for he looked away.

But then he said, "We will do some of the problems at the blackboard." He called on Alicia and several children who sat near her. She knew what he was doing. If one of them had no idea what to do, he would decide that was the person who'd made a noise. It wasn't a bad ploy in the unending war between teachers and students-except that he didn't summon Emma to the board.

Alicia got her problem right. She stood in front of the blackboard till Kessler nodded and sent her back to her seat. One boy made a mistake, but it was a careless, obvious kind of mistake: he multiplied seven by four and got thirty-five early in the problem, which naturally made his answer wrong. Other than that, he knew what he was doing.Herr Kessler corrected him, but didn't haul out the paddle.

Balked, the teacher went on with the lesson. Alicia hated these problems. If the German fighter plane flew forty kilometers an hour faster than the American one, started from a base sixty kilometers behind it, and took off fifteen minutes later, how far would it have to go to catch up? You had to keep track of everything at once. She was good at that kind of thing, but even she found it hard. She wondered how poor Emma, who wasn't any too bright, was faring.

After arithmetic came grammar.Herr Kessler passed out worksheets where the student had to identify parts of speech and the cases of nouns and adjectives. While they slaved away on those, he graded their arithmetic papers.

Alicia was good at arithmetic, but she was very, very good at grammar. She zipped through the paper, and finished well ahead of anybody else. Of course, all that got her was the chance to sit quietly till the other children finished, too. She watched the teacher correcting papers. Every so often, he would look up to see if anyone was getting into mischief, and she would have to look away. But then he would go back to arithmetic, and she would go back to watching him.

She knew when he got to Emma's homework. She'd got a glimpse of it as they passed papers forward, and it was truly hopeless.Herr Kessler's head came up. He stared towards Emma. He might have been a cat spotting a juicy mouse.

"Emma Handrick!" he roared.

Emma squeaked in terror. She'd been intent on her worksheet, and hadn't paid attention to what the teacher was doing. "Jawohl, Herr Kessler!" she said, springing to her feet.

"What is the meaning of this-this Dreck you turned in?" Kessler waved the offending paper for everyone to see.

"I'm very sorry,Herr Kessler," Emma babbled. "I tried as hard as I could, but I really didn't understand. Please excuse me. Please."

"A Jew could have done better work than this. Jews were vile and wicked, but they were supposed to be clever. You, on the other hand…" The teacher let that hang in the air, then added two more words: "Come here."

He applied the paddle with vigor. Emma came back to her desk biting back the tears that would have landed her in more trouble. She sat down gingerly. No one said anything at all.

At lunchtime, Trudi Krebs sidled up to Alicia and whispered, "When the new Fuhrer changes things, do you think he'll change school, too?"

"Gott im Himmel,I hope so," Alicia exclaimed. "It's probably too much to ask for, though." She hoped Trudi would argue with her, but the other girl only nodded.

When the bus out of the Stahnsdorf train station pulled up to Willi Dorsch's stop, Heinrich Gimpel got off, too. "What are you doing?" Willi said. "You don't live here-or if you do, Erika hasn't told me."

"Heh." Heinrich smiled what he was sure was a sickly smile. "Lise wanted me to pick up some onions and a head of cabbage at Tinnacher's grocery." He pointed toward the store, which, fortunately, lay in the direction opposite Willi's house.

"A likely story," Willi said, but he didn't sound as if he meant anything by it. With a sour laugh, he went on, "Hell, the way things are, why would I care if you were living there instead of me?" He didn't wait for an answer, but headed up the sidewalk toward his house.