high, stood a German eagle with a swastika in its claws. And in front of the pedestal lay the mortal remains of Kurt Haldweim.
Floral decorations and shrubbery surrounded the casket of gilded bronze in which the Fuhrer lay in state. SS guards stood on either side of the coffin, displaying the many decorations Haldweim had won in his long, illustrious career as a soldier and National Socialists administrator. Yet try as they would, the wizards of ceremony who had staged this scene could not overcome one basic difficulty: the Great Hall altogether dwarfed the pale, still remains of the hawk-faced man who had ruled the Germanic Empire for a quarter of a century.
Haldweim had been Fuhrer far longer than Alicia had been alive; to her, then, he was as one with the Pyramids of Egypt. But the Pyramids remained, and now he was gone. If anything, his last surroundings stressed how transitory any mere man was. To make any sort of show at all, he would have had to be the size of a Brachiosaurus. Alicia had always imagined the Fuhrer as being more than a man, but here she saw at first hand it wasn't so.
Young mourners went by in a steady stream, almost close enough to touch the nearest wreaths. With a ten- year-old's instinctive love of horror, Alicia wondered what would happen if anybody did. She supposed one of those SS men-each as still now as if himself carved from stone-would suddenly spring to life and shoot the miscreant. Or maybe even that wouldn't be enough. Maybe they would drag him away to SS headquarters and take their time disposing of him.
Then she was past the display, past the coffin, past the wizened corpse inside, and walking quickly towards a door of simply human proportions that led out to Adolf Hitler Platz. The square was already filling with people either in uniform-military, Party, and SS-or in civilian mourning attire. 'We won't be able to see,' Emma whispered in dismay.
'Yes, we will,' Alicia whispered back. 'They wouldn't bring us all the way here and then hide us. Besides, they'll want people to see we're here.' Televisor cameras on platforms stood out from the throng like islands in the sea. More cameras on the Great Hall, on the Fuhrer 's palace to the left, and on the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht building across the street gave broader views. The building where Alicia's father worked seemed like an old friend.
She proved right, too, which always made her feel good. Officials in particularly fancy uniforms shepherded the schoolchildren into reserved spaces right next to the route of the funeral procession, which was marked off by red-and-black tape imprinted with swastikas. There the officials arranged them roughly in order of height, shortest in front, so they could all be seen to best advantage.
'Told you so,' Alicia whispered. Emma stuck out her tongue.Herr Kessler coughed and glared. Emma turned pale. He wouldn't whack her in public, not on this somber occasion, but he wouldn't forget, either. When the bus took them back to Stahnsdorf…
'I have to go to the bathroom!' exclaimed a little redheaded boy who couldn't have been much older than Roxane. One of the officials took him by the hand, led him to a portable toilet, and then brought him back. Alicia giggled-but first she made sure Herr Kessler was looking the other way.
Buses and commuter trains brought more and more mourners into the Adolf Hitler Platz, until the entire immense square was full. Most of the people there wouldn't be able to see much, although the televisor screen mounted on the front of the Fuhrer 's palace showed them what they were missing. A lot of them had doubtless been ordered to come, as Alicia had, but what about the others? Did they want to be a part of history, if only a tiny part?
Alicia looked down at the German flag with the mourning border in her hand. Suddenly she wondered whyshe was supposed to be sorry Kurt Haldweim had died. He'd been Fuhrer of the Germanic Empire, yes. If she'd been all German, that would have made reason enough. A few weeks earlier, she would have thought it did. Now…Now she knew what the Germans had done toher folk.
She still felt like a German. She also felt like a Jew-and wouldn't a Jew be glad, not sorry, the German Fuhrer was dead? Not for the first time lately, she felt very confused.
Funereal music poured from speakers mounted at the edge of the square. 'Everyone keep quiet and look sad,'Herr Kessler hissed.
Next to Alicia, Emma had a good reason for frowning. She just needed to think about what would happen to her when she got back to school. Alicia had to work hard to make the corners of her mouth turn down. She finally managed it the way she had in the game with her sisters: by pretending she was in a play and had to act a part.
Pallbearers wearing Army field-gray,Luftwaffe light blue, Navy dark blue, SS black, and National Socialist brown bore Kurt Haldweim's coffin out of the Great Hall and set it on a wheeled bier drawn by eight black horses that had pulled up in front of the entrance. Every one of the men was blond and handsome and close to two meters tall-and every one of them was made to seem taller still by a high-crowned cap. The pallbearers looked magnificent in closeup shots on the televisor screen at the front of the Fuhrer 's palace. Seen live, they might have been ants in front of the inhuman, overwhelming immensity of the Great Hall.
The bier set out across the Adolf Hitler Platz towards Alicia at a slow walk. It was draped in black velvet, against which the red in the German national flag stood out like blood. The pallbearers goose-stepped behind the bier. Their somber faces might have been stamped from the same mold.
Behind them came visiting heads of state, some in uniform, others wearing dark civilian garb. German military and Party functionaries followed, all in their distinctive costumes. Next came foreign ambassadors, and after them elite units from the military and Waffen — SS, from the National Socialist Party hierarchy, and from the Hitler Jugend.
When the bier was almost directly in front of Alicia, one of the horses did what horses do. Half the sorrowful schoolchildren suddenly snorted and squealed. Half the teachers hastily hissed in horror. The goose-stepping pallbearers couldn't alter their paces, not without looking bad. One of them stepped in it. He marched on past, his expression unchanged no matter what clung to the sole of his gleaming boot.
Most of the heads of states and other dignitaries evaded the unfortunate substance. By the time the soldiers and fliers and sailors and SS men and brownshirts and Hitler Youths had gone by, though, it was quite thoroughly trodden into the concrete of the square.
By then, the teachers had stopped hissing. Once Haldweim's coffin had passed, the cameras turned away from the schoolchildren. They'd served their purpose.Herr Kessler and another teacher started talking in low voices. 'I wonder when we'll have a new Fuhrer, ' the other man said.
'I hope it's soon,' Alicia's teacher answered. 'It wasn't like this when Himmler died. I remember that. Back then, everybody knew we'd stay on a steady course. Nowadays?' He shook his head. Disapproval radiated from him.
'They'll make a good choice, whoever it finally is,' the other teacher said.
Herr Kessler seemed to realize he might have gone too far. 'Oh, I'm sure they will,' he said quickly. You never could tell who might be listening. Alicia had learned that long before she found out she was a Jew.
I could report him,she thought. The news always ran stories about heroic children who turned in evildoers they'd discovered-sometimes even their own parents. Getting rid of her bad-tempered teacher was tempting, too.
But the idea died before it was fully formed, for Alicia's next thought was,If I denounce him, they'll probably investigate me, too. She shook her head in horror of her own. How did the handful of Jews at the heart of the Germanic Empire survive? By never drawing any special notice to themselves. Perhaps someone else would report Herr Kessler, but she wouldn't. She couldn't. She didn't dare.
The last unit of brownshirts left the Adolf Hitler Platz. It began to empty, and did so almost as quickly and efficiently as it had filled. People streamed away to the buses and trains that had brought them to the square. The lines were long, but they were orderly, and they moved fast. There was next to no pushing and shoving and shouting, as Alicia's schoolbooks said there was in less enlightened parts of the world.
Again, she wondered,Are my books telling the truth? If they lied about Jews-and she had to believe they did-what else did they lie about? Had there ever been a Roman Emperor named Augustus? Was Mt. Everest really the tallest mountain in the world? Had Horst Wessel been a hero and a martyr? Were two and two truly four?
She muttered in annoyance. She'd checked her arithmetic lessons before, and they held good. But how could she test what the books said about Mt. Everest, which was far away and hard to get to, or about Horst Wessel and Augustus, who'd lived in the altogether irretrievable past? She saw no simple way.