taught medieval English literature at Friedrich Wilhelm University. Suddenly abandoning her imperial manner, she started to laugh, too. 'Now that you've hung that up, how about a hug?'
'Lise's not watching. I suppose I can get away with it.' Heinrich put his arms around her. She barely came up to his shoulder, but her vitality more than made up for lack of size. When he let go, he said, 'Why don't you go into the kitchen? You can pretend to help Lise while you soak up our Glenfiddich.'
'Scotch almost justifies the existence of Scotland,' Susanna said. 'It's a cold, gloomy, rocky place, so they had to make something nice to keep themselves warm.'
'If that's why people drink it, your boyfriend is lucky he didn't set himself on fire here a couple of years ago.'
'Myformer boyfriend,danken Gott dafur.' All the same, Susanna blushed to the roots of her hair. Her skin was very fine and fair, which let Heinrich watch the flush advance from her throat. 'I hadn't found out he was a drunk yet, Heinrich.'
'I know,' he said gently. If he teased her too hard, she'd lose her temper, and nothing and nobody was safe if that happened. 'Go on. Lise's trying that recipe you sent her.'
The girls waylaid Susanna before she got to the kitchen. Though she'd never been married, she made an excellent ersatz aunt. She took children seriously, listened to what they had to say, and treated them like small adults. Heinrich smiled. Come to that, she was a small adult herself. He knew better than to say so out loud.
Walther and Esther Stutzman arrived a few minutes later, along with their son, Gottlieb, and daughter, Anna. Anna promptly went off with the Gimpel girls; she was a year older than Alicia, the eldest of the three. Heinrich Gimpel stared at Gottlieb. 'Good heavens, is that a mustache?'
The younger male Stutzman touched a finger to the space between his nose and upper lip. 'It's going to be one, I hope.' At the moment, the growth was hard to see. For one thing, he'd only just turned sixteen. For another, his hair was even fairer than his father's. And, for a third, he'd chosen to keep untrimmed only a toothbrush mustache; the first Fuhrer 's style was newly popular again.
Walther Stutzman differed from his son in appearance only by the presence of twenty-odd years and the absence of even the vestiges of a mustache. As he handed Heinrich his topcoat, he asked quietly, 'Tonight?'
'Yes, I think Alicia's ready,' Heinrich answered, as quietly. 'I told her she could stay up late. How has Anna done, the past year?'
'Well enough,' her father said.
'We're still here, after all,' Esther Stutzman put in. A slim woman with light brown hair, she peered at Heinrich through glasses thicker than his own. Somehow, in spite of everything, her laugh held real mirth. 'And if she hadn't done well, we wouldn't be, would we?'
'Wouldn't be what, Aunt Esther?' Alicia Gimpel asked, a doll under one arm.
'Wouldn't be standing out here in the hall if we expected the curly-haired Gestapo to listen in.' Esther's grin took all sting from the words.
Imitating her father, Alicia said, 'Oh,Quatsch! ' Anna Stutzman tried to sneak up behind her, but she whirled before she got tickled. Both girls squealed. They ran off together, Alicia's brown curls bobbing beside Anna's blond ones. They were very much of a height; though Anna was older, Alicia was tall for her age.
'Dinner!' Lise called from the kitchen. 'Dinner, dinner, dinner!' Everyone trooped into the dining room. Heinrich Gimpel and Gottlieb Stutzman dropped the leaves on the table to accommodate the unusual crowd. Walther, meanwhile, fetched in a couple of extra chairs, and Susanna Weiss placed them around the table.
They all paused to admire the fragrantly steaming pork roast before Heinrich attacked it with fork and carving knife. With onions, potatoes, and boiled parsnips, it made a feast to fight the chill outside and leave everyone happily replete. Most of the talk that punctuated the music of knife and fork was praise for Lise's cooking.
Smooth wheat beer mixed with raspberry syrup went with the meal. The two younger Gimpel girls usually got only small glasses. Tonight, they found grownup-sized mugs in front of them. Francesca and Roxane proudly drained them dry, and were nodding by the time their mother brought out dessert. They munched their way through the little cakes stuffed with prunes or apricots or mildly sweet chocolate, but the filling sweets only made them sleepier. The food and beer slowed Alicia down, too, but she was buoyed by the prospect of sitting up and talking with the adults.
Seeing her daughter's excitement, Lise said, 'She doesn't know yet how boring we can be, with our chatter of children and taxes and work and who's going to bed with whom.'
'Whois going to bed with whom?' Esther asked. 'It's more interesting than taxes and work, that's for sure.'
Susanna parodied a Hitler Jugend song:
'In the fields and on the heath, We lose strength through joy.'
Gottlieb Stutzman blushed almost as red as she had before. She teased him: 'Why, Gottlieb, don't you hope to meet a friendly maiden when you go to work your year in the fields?'
'It is not…not practical, not for me,' he answered stiffly, rubbing a finger over his peach-fuzz mustache.
'It is not practical for any of us, as Susanna knows.' Walther Stutzman gave her a severe look. 'It is also not practical for us to sing that song anywhere but among ourselves. If the Security Police hear it-'
'It's wiser not to draw the attention of the Security Police, anyway,' Lise Gimpel said with her usual solid good sense. 'Even children know that.' She looked at her own two younger children, who were valiantly trying not to yawn. 'After I get the table cleared away, time for the little ones to go to bed.'
Heinrich nodded to Walther and Gottlieb Stutzman. 'Nice to have some other men in the house for a change,' he remarked.
'You are outnumbered, aren't you?' Walther said. 'I kept the numbers even. But then, that's what they pay me for.' He held a moderately important post with the computer-design team at Zeiss.
Everyone, even the men, pitched in to help Lise cart dirty dishes and leftovers (not that there were many of those) back to the kitchen. The two younger Gimpel girls exchanged their party dresses for long cotton nightgowns. Francesca and Roxane collected kisses from the grownups, then went off to the bedroom they shared-not without a couple of sleepily jealous glances at Alicia, who got to stay up.
Despite being sleepy, Alicia Gimpel felt about to burst from curiosity and excitement. She sat on the edge of the couch. Her eyes flew from her parents to Aunt Susanna or Aunt Esther or Uncle Walther or Gottlieb. As her mother had said, Alicia didn't know what the grownups talked about after she went to sleep, and she could hardly wait to learn.
Her gaze swung to Anna. She stuck out an accusing forefinger. 'You've found out what this secret is.'
'Yes, I have.' Anna sounded serious enough to startle Alicia. She looked back to her father. Behind his glasses, he was blinking quickly, as if fighting back tears. Alicia saw that, but had trouble believing it. She couldn't imagine her father crying. And she couldn't imagine Anna keeping a secret from her. Her mouth twisted down. Her eyes narrowed. It was what her family called her Angry Face. Her father started to raise a hand. Before he could say anything, Anna, who also recognized it, hastily went on, 'After tonight, you'll know, too.'
'All right,' Alicia said, partway mollified. But it wasn't all right. She could tell. 'Why are you all staring at me like that? I don't like it!' She twisted around to press her face against a sofa cushion.
'It's an important secret, sweetheart,' her mother said. 'Come out, please. It's such an important secret, you can't even tell your sisters.'
That got through to Alicia. She did pull away from the pillow and stared at her mother, her eyes wide. Her father said, 'You can't tell anyone. Not anyone at all, not ever. We've waited till you got old enough so we could tell you, because we wanted to be sure, or as sure as we could be'-sometimes he was maddeningly precise-'you wouldn't give us away by telling somebody you shouldn't.'
'I've known for a year now, and I didn't even tellyou, ' Anna said. 'See how important it is?' She sounded proud of herself. Alicia looked over to Aunt Esther and Uncle Walther. They looked proud of Anna, too. And they also looked frightened. Alicia had never seen them frightened before, but she couldn't mistake it. Seeing that frightened her, too.
'What's going on, then?' she asked. 'You're right, Anna-I never knew you had a secret, and we're best friends.' She still sounded hurt, but only a little now: whatever it was, her time to learn it had come. She repeated, 'What's going on?'
Her father and mother didn't answer, not right away. They looked frightened, too, which alarmed Alicia far more than the fear on the Stutzmans' faces. Whatever this was, it had more weight than anything she could have
