In The Presence Of My Enemies

Shaking his head, Heinrich walked over to the corner grocery. He was glad Lise hadn't sent him after potatoes. She inspected every spud he bought, and didn't seem to like about half of them. Harder for him to go wrong with onions and cabbage.I'd never make a Hausfrau,not in a million years, he thought.

BEST VEGETABLES IN TOWN! boasted the sign in Tinnacher's window. "Guten Tag, Herr Gimpel," the grocer said as Heinrich came in. He did have the best vegetables for several kilometers around, and he gave unmatched personal service. Lower prices at bigger stores that sold more kinds of things made staying in business hard for him even so.

With a certain amount of relief, Heinrich skirted the bins of potatoes and headed for the onions. Lise had said she wanted the mild purple ones, not the stronger ones with the yellow-brown outer layer. Intent on the onions, Heinrich almost bumped into Erika Dorsch before he noticed she was there.

If he had noticed her, he might have tried to sneak out of the grocery and buy his vegetables somewhere else. Too late for that now. "Hello, Erika. I didn't mean to run over you there," he said, fearing his smile here was even sicklier than the one he'd given Willi.

Hers, on the other hand, dazzled. She had a stringbag full of mushrooms and garlic and scallions and potatoes and a couple of enormous turnips. "It's all right," she said. "Any attention is better than none."

"Er-yes," he said, feeling as if he were walking into a hornets' nest but unable to escape. He did his best: "Excuse me, please. I need some of those purple onions."

Erika didn't step aside. "Heinrich, why don't you like me?" she asked.

Hornets all around, sure as hell. "I like you fine," he said. "I still need onions, though."

"You don't act like you like me," Erika said.

She said it most pointedly-too pointedly for him to ignore. "I like you fine," he repeated. "I also like your husband. I also like my wife."

"I like your wife, too," Erika said. "So what? As for my husband, you're welcome to him. And if you like him the way you like me, the Security Police will sew a pink triangle on your camp uniform for you."

If he got a camp uniform, it would have a yellow Star of David, not a pink triangle. Would they bother? Or, if they found out what he was, would they just dispose of him like a crumpled-up tissue? He suspected the latter, but he didn't want to find out. He said, "I really do need those onions." He supposed he should have said something about not liking Erika that way, but she would have known he was lying.

"I've never chased a man in my life," Erika said, wonder in her voice. "Up till now, I never had to." Heinrich believed that. She eyed him with genuine curiosity. "What makes you so stubborn?"

I'm a Jew,he thought.Of course I'm stubborn. I have to be. If I weren't stubborn, would I have clung to this? He also had to be stubborn about not revealing what he was to anyone who could harm him with the knowledge. No matter how decorative Erika was, she fell into that group. She wanted him now, or thought she did. Odds were the challenge he represented interested her more than his skinny body did. But if she knew and she decided she didn't want him any more…In that case, he was one telephone call from disaster.

Since he couldn't tell her his first reason, he fell back on the second one: "I told you-I like Lise. We've been happy together for a long time. Why do I want to complicate my life? Life is complicated enough already."

"You make everything sound so sensible, so logical." Erika shook her head. "It isn't, not really."

Part of him knew she was right. But he clung to rationality anyhow-clung to it all the harder, perhaps, because it offered something of a shield against the horrors the German regime had perpetrated. "I try to make it that way for me, anyhow," he said.

She eyed him for a moment, then shook her head. "You'll find out," she said, and pushed past him to give her money to Herr Tinnacher.

Heinrich didn't like the sound of that. He also didn't like her going home with a stringbag full of vegetables. Willi was liable to think they'd arranged a meeting at the grocer's. Heinrich sighed. He couldn't do anything about that. He could get the onions and the cabbage. He took them up to Tinnacher.

The grocer weighed them, told him what they cost, took his five-Reichsmark note, and handed him change. Since Heinrich didn't have a sack of his own, Tinnacher grudgingly pulled one out from under the counter. "Fine-looking woman,Frau Dorsch," he remarked as he put the purple onions in on top of the cabbage.

"Can't argue with you there," Heinrich said.