When the panel ended, the audience applauded politely. Buckingham turned to Susanna. 'I thought that went off rather well,' he said. His breath was formidable, no doubt because of those mottled teeth.
'Not bad.' Susanna still thought his interpretation naive, but she wasn't inclined to argue-not at close range, anyhow. A paper in a learned journal would offer her a more impersonal way to stick a knife in his scholarship, and would also give her something she could show her department chairman.
'Would you care to discuss things further over a drink?' he asked. The way he smiled said scholarship wasn't the only thing on his mind.
I don't want to be within three meters of you, let alone closer. The retort hovered on the tip of Susanna's tongue. Not without regret, she let it die there. She said, 'Not now, thanks. I have no more discussions until the evening session, and nothing on the program really draws me, so I am going to go across the street. The British Union of Fascists' meeting has turned out to be fascinating, don't you think?'
'Fascinating. Indeed.' Professor Buckingham departed with marked haste. At first Susanna thought that meant he had no use for fascists, which got him a point in her book despite his bad breath. Then she realized another explanation was more likely. To him, she was a German, nothing else. She knew otherwise, but he didn't. And what did a German interested in the congress of the British Union of Fascists add up to? Someone with connections to a security bureau.
Under different circumstances, that might have been funny. As things were…Susanna sighed. Buckingham would talk-what else did academics do? If the other professors at the Medieval English
Association didn't start sidling away from her, it would be a miracle, and God was depressingly stingy with miracles these days.
She went across the street to the Crown Hotel anyhow. She'd never been able to resist political drama. This was the genuine article-what Americans called, for no reason she could fathom,the real Mc Coy. On the surface, everything seemed exactly as it should have. Union Jacks and BUF flags with lightning bolts that resembled the SS runes flew at half-staff in commemoration of Kurt Haldweim. English and Scottish fascists had praised the departed Fuhrer to the skies. They'd also spent at least as much time patting one another on the back as the scholars of the MEA had done.
That was the surface. Underneath, and sometimes not so far underneath, things were different. Susanna hadn't even got into the Crown when a parade came up the street toward her. Nothing out of the ordinary there; British fascists were no less enamored of public display than their German counterparts.
But these tough-looking men in uniforms and shiny jackboots carried signs that said: REMEMBER THE FIRST EDITION! The mere idea was enough to make Susanna want to hug herself with glee. Political action mixed with textual analysis? The earnest academics at the Medieval English Association didn't know what they were missing.
To make sure their British colleagues and, more to the point, the National Socialists in Germanydid remember, other paraders carried banners that stretched from one side of the street to the other, with the relevant passages spelled out in English andauf Deutsch. The English read: IN LITTLE AS WELL AS BIG THINGS,THE MOVEMENT ADVOCATES THE PRINCIPLE OF A GERMANIC DEMOCRACY: THE LEADER IS ELECTED,BUT THEN ENJOYS UNCONDITIONAL AUTHORITY. Other banners declared,THE FIRST CHAIRMAN OF A LOCAL GROUP IS ELECTED,BUT THEN HE IS THE RESPONSIBLE LEADER OF THE LOCAL GROUP AND THE FIRST PRINCIPLE APPLIES TO THE NEXT HIGHER ORGANIZATION — THE LEADER IS ALWAYS ELECTEDand AND FINALLY,THE SAME APPLIES TO THE LEADERSHIP OF THE WHOLE PARTY.THE CHAIRMAN IS ELECTED,BUT HE IS THE EXCLUSIVE LEADER OF THE MOVEMENT. And, at the very tail of the procession, another big banner proclaimed, MEMBERS OF THE MOVEMENT ARE FREE TO CALL HIM TO ACCOUNT BEFORE THE FORUM OF A NEW ELECTION,TO DIVEST HIM OF HIS OFFICE IN SO FAR AS HE HAS INFRINGED ON THE PRINCIPLES OF THE MOVEMENT OR SERVED ITS INTERESTS BADLY.
British policemen in their blue uniforms and tall helmets stood on the sidewalk watching the fascists' procession. They didn't seem to know what to make of it. Neither did the German occupation authorities. Ifthey had decided to come out and quash it, they would have used panzers and rocket-firing fighter jets. They'd done that more than a few times in the earlier years of the occupation, though not so often lately.
As for Susanna, she marveled that the British Union of Fascists, or at least one wing of the party, had managed to find a way to call for democracy without immediately getting lined up in front of a wall and shot. How could you give a man a cigarette and a blindfold for quoting Adolf Hitler, whose words were close to Holy Writ all through the Germanic Empire? You couldn't possibly.
Susanna rapidly discovered the marchers represented one wing of the BUF, not the entire organization. More men in uniform swarmed out of a side street and attacked the men in the parade with clubs and brass knuckles. The marchers fought back with similar weapons. Other fascists rushed out of the Crown to join in the melee, on whose side Susanna wasn't sure. She had all she could do to keep from getting bowled over.
Whistles shrilling, the British bobbies waded into the fray. They flailed away with their truncheons, whacking brawlers on both sides with fine impartiality. 'Break it up!' they bawled. 'Break it up, you bloody sods!' But nobody on either side seemed to want to break it up.
Even as the men who extolled the first edition fought, they raised a chant in English: 'The whole world is watching! The whole world is watching!'
Odd sort of battle cry,Susanna thought. But maybe it wasn't. Sure as the devil, televisor cameras from the BBC and the German RRG were filming the clash. The marchers must have known the cameras would be there; otherwise, they wouldn't have quoted from Mein Kampf in both English and German.
Police cars raced up, sirens screeching. The men inside them wore pig-snouted gas masks. They shot tear- gas canisters into the riot. Where nothing else had worked, that did. Fascists for and against the first edition fled.
So did Susanna, not quite soon enough. Her eyes were streaming and her stomach twisting with nausea when she made it back into the lobby of the Silver Eagle. The academics in there were fleeing, too, for fresh wisps of gas came in every time the doors opened.
Susanna repaired to the bar, which seemed a popular port in the storm. Of course, the bar was a popular port in the storm at every academic conference she'd ever attended. She took off her glasses and dabbed at her eyes with a tissue. It didn't help much. The single-malt Scotch she ordered didn't help her eyes much, either, but it made the rest of her feel better.
'Dear God in heaven,' said a British professor who also staggered in weeping like a fountain, 'whatis going on out there?'
Susanna eyed him-blurrily. 'Literary criticism,' she said.
'Achtung! Form your lines!' Herr Kessler shouted as the schoolchildren got off the bus to one side of the Great Hall. He sounded more like a Wehrmacht drill sergeant than a teacher-but then, that was true a lot of the time. 'Take your partner's hand! Hold your flag in your free hand! Now-forward to the end of the queue!'
Alicia Gimpel took Emma Handrick's hand. The alphabet made them line partners, as it made them sit close together. Alicia wished she were paired with someone else. Emma had cold, sweaty palms. Nothing Alicia could do about it. She imagined complaining to Herr Kessler. Imagining the paddling she would get for trying it immediately squelched the idea.
The swastika flag she held in her left hand was bordered in black, a token of mourning for the departed Fuhrer. Kurt Haldweim lay in state under the monstrous dome of the Great Hall. Along with other children from all over Berlin-from all over Germany-Alicia and her school-mates would file past his body and then line the parade route as his funeral procession went past.
'This way!' Herr Kessler shouted.
'No-over here,' a uniformed attendant said, pointing in the opposite direction. 'Your group is to take its place behind those bigger children.' Fuming, his face beet red, the teacher led them to the right place.
'He doesn't know everything,' Emma whispered, and smiled maliciously. For that, Alicia forgave her her sweaty palm.
The line moved forward with what the world had learned to call Germanic efficiency. Not even Herr Kessler could find anything to complain about there. Within twenty minutes, Alicia and her classmates had entered the Great Hall. The space under that unbelievable dome seemed even vaster within than without. The interior appointments had a simple grandeur to them. A recess clad in gold mosaic opposite the entrance broke a circle of a hundred marble columns, each twenty-five meters tall. In front of the recess, on a marble pedestal fourteen meters
