promise.' She nodded to the woman who'd questioned her bill. 'I'm sorry for the delay,Frau Mommsen. What were you saying?'
Frau Mommsen poured out a history of her troubles, most of which had little to do with the twenty-five Reichsmarks she owed Dr. Dambach. Esther listened with half an ear. Most of her attention was on the pediatrician's private office. She hoped Dambach would tell Maximilian Ebert where to go and how to get there. She knew it was a forlorn hope, but she cherished it just the same.
Dr. Dambach didn't even get in there for another ten minutes. Esther could hear the functionary from the Genealogical Office drumming his fingers on Dambach's desk. 'About time,' Ebert said when the doctor finally did appear.
'You're the one who's interrupting my work,' Dambach replied, his voice chilly. 'What do you want?'
Before she could find out what he wanted, someone new to the practice-a woman with a squalling toddler in her arms-came up and had to be guided through Dr. Dambach's paperwork. Because the little boy cried all through the process, Esther caught only brief snatches of conversation from the doctor's office: '…got a lot of nerve blaming me for…' '…put all of us in hot…' '…my fault, when I was only trying to…' '…but this is how it turned…'
Dr. Dambach said something else in response to that. A moment later, Maximilian Ebert stormed out of his office and out of the waiting room, fury on his face. He tried to slam the door that led to the hall, but the shock- absorbing arm at the top of the door thwarted him. The slowly closing door cut off his curses when at last it did swing shut.
'Goodness!' said the woman with the toddler. 'What got underhis skin?'
'I don't know,' Esther answered. 'Whatever it is, I hope it's nothing trivial.' The woman gave her a strange look, then decided she couldn't have meant what she said and forgot about it.
But Esther had meant every word. She stayed busy till noon dealing with mothers, children, and the occasional father. When the office closed for lunch, she went back to bring Dr. Dambach a fresh cup of coffee in the hopes that he might feel like talking. 'Oh, thank you,' he said around a mouthful of sandwich. 'I was just going to get up and pour myself one.'
When he said no more, Esther took the bull by the horns: 'Why did that Ebert fellow storm out of here as though he had a Messerschmitt on his tail?'
'Him?' Dambach gave forth with a dismissive grunt. 'I think we've seen the last of him, and I can't say I'm sorry, either. What he basically told me was that I had done my job too well. I'm sorry,Frau Stutzman, but the only way I know how to do it is as well as I can.'
'Well, I should say so,' Esther said, still wishing he'd been less conscientious. 'What on earth was he talking about?'
'When the Kleins had the Tay-Sachs baby and the altered genealogical chart, they were suspected of being Jews,' the pediatrician answered. 'You know about that.'
'Oh, yes.' Esther nodded. 'I know about that. What has it got to do with you doing your job too well?'
'Everyone in the Reichs Genealogical Office, and, for all I know, the Security Police, too, was all set to make an enormous hue and cry over it, and why not? It's been years since any Jews turned up in Berlin, for heaven's sake.'
Esther nodded again. 'That's true,' she said casually, hiding her fear. 'Why didn't they make their big hue and cry, then?'
'Because it turns out that Lothar Prutzmann's niece, poor woman, has a baby with Tay-Sachs who's three weeks older than Paul Klein,' Dambach said. 'If they accused the Kleins of being Jews on account of this, how could they keep from tarring the head of the SS with the same brush? They couldn't, and they knew it, and so they had to drop the charges against the Kleins.'
'Good Lord!' Esther didn't care to think about what a narrow and dreadful escape that was. She also couldn't help sympathizing with the SS chief of the Greater German Reich, something she hadn't thought she would ever do. She said, 'But how does Reichsfuhrer — SS Prutzmann's misfortune reflect on you?'
'It's simple, for someone with the sort of mind Herr Ebert has.' Dr. Dambach scowled. 'If I hadn't brought the one Tay-Sachs case to his notice, his office wouldn't have got in trouble with Prutzmann for pushing too hard. And what does Ebert do as a result of that? He blames me, of course.'
'I see.' And Esther did, too. 'Well, the other choice would be blaming himself, and that's not likely, is it?'
The pediatrician grunted again. 'Some miracles demand too much of God. But I gave him a piece of my mind before he left. You may be very sure of that.'
'Good for you, Dr. Dambach,' Esther said. He was a good doctor-and, within the limits of his education, a pretty good man.
'I'm sick and tired of getting pushed around by little tin gods in fancy uniforms justbecause they wear fancy uniforms,' Dambach said. 'I think everybody is, don't you? If the new Fuhrer is serious about calling some of those people to account, he'll have a lot of folks on his side, I think. How about you?'
'Me? I never worry about politics,' Esther lied. She had trouble hiding her amazement. Her boss was solid, reliable, conservative. If he said things like that, a lot of people had to be thinking them.
'I try never to worry about politics, either,' he said now. 'Who with his head on straight needs to most of the time? But sometimes politics worry about me, the way they did here this morning. And I'll tell you, Frau Stutzman, I don't care for it. I don't care for it at all.'
'Well, for heaven's sake, Dr. Dambach, who could blame you?' Esther said. Who needed to worry about politics most of the time? People like her, people whom politics constantly affected, did. And the very foundations of Nazi Party politics were built on worrying about Jews. Would Heinz Buckliger think about changing that? Could he think about changing that and hope to survive? Some of the things Walther said he'd talked about in Nuremburg were remarkable. But changing the way Nazis saw Jews would be more than remarkable. It would be miraculous. When Esther saw a miracle, she would believe in it. Till then, no.
'Why don't you go on home,Frau Stutzman?' Dambach said. 'I don't mind answering the telephone till Irma gets here. It should be only a few more minutes, anyway.'
'Thank you very much,' Esther said. 'Let me start a fresh pot of coffee before I leave, though. That should last the two of you most of the afternoon.' If she didn't, he'd fiddle with the coffeemaker while he was in the office by himself. She wanted to do something nice for him in return for his letting her go early-and for the news he'd given her. Keeping him away from the coffeemaker was the nicest thing she could think of.
When Willi Dorsch got on the commuter bus, he wore his uniform as if he'd slept in it. He'd shaved erratically. His hair stuck out from under his cap in all directions, like the hay in a stack made by somebody who didn't know how to stack hay. 'Good heavens!' Heinrich Gimpel exclaimed. 'What happened to you?'
'Another lovely night on the sofa,' Willi answered, plopping his posterior down beside Heinrich. His breath was high-octane. As if to explain that, he went on, 'I took a bottle with me for company last night. It was more fun than Erika's been lately, that's for damn sure.'
'Will you be able to think straight when we get to headquarters?' Heinrich asked. 'Maybe you should have called in sick instead of letting people see you like this.'
'Coffee and aspirins will make a new man of me,' Willi assured him. 'That wouldn't be so bad. I'd say the old one's worth about thirty pfennigs, tops. Besides, if I called in sick I'd have to spend more time with the blond bitch, and I'm not-quite up for that.' He belched softly.
Heinrich wondered if he ought to leave it there. But he and Willi had been friends for a long time. He felt he had to ask the next question: 'If you're so unhappy, why are you still there?'
'The kids,' Willi answered simply. 'Joseph and Magda mean everything to me. If I walk out, Erika will fill their heads full of lies about me. Things are bad enough as is.' He glanced over at Heinrich. 'You're a lucky bastard, you know that? Things go so smooth for you. As far as I can see, you haven't got a single worry in the whole goddamn world.'
That would have been funny, if only it were funny. Instead of shrieking mad laughter, which was what he wanted to do, Heinrich answered, 'Well, I would have said the same about you and Erika till a few months ago.'
'Only goes to show you can't tell from the outside,' Willi said. That was truer than he knew, but Heinrich didn't say so. His friend pointed ahead. 'We're just about to the station.'
'So we are.' Heinrich got ready to hurry to the platform where they'd catch the train from Stahnsdorf up to Berlin's South Station.
