'I wish I could tell my sisters,' Alicia said.
Her father and Walther Stutzman smiled at each other. A moment later, Alicia discovered why, for Anna said, 'When I found out last year, I said, 'I wish I could tell Alicia.''
Uncle Walther said, 'It's new, little one. It's a shock. I remember how confused finding out what I was made me.'
'But you can't say anything to Francesca and Roxane, you know-not anything at all,' Alicia's father told her. 'They're too little. It would be very dangerous. They'll learn when the time comes, the way you have now. If this secret gets to the wrong ears, we're all dead. Just because there aren't many Jews left doesn't mean people won't start hunting us. We're still fair game.'
'Are we-the people in this room-all the Jews who are left?' Alicia asked.
'No,' her father said. 'There are others, all through Greater Germany and the rest of the Empire. Sooner or later, you'll meet more, and some of them will surprise you. But for now, the fewer Jews you know, the fewer you can give away if the worst happens.'
Who?Alicia wondered. Her eyes went far away.Which of our friends are really Jews? She never would have guessed about the Stutzmans, who with their blond good looks seemed perfect Aryans, not in a million years. Her teachers went on and on about how ugly Jews had been, with fat, flabby lips and grotesque hooked noses and almost kinky hair. It didn't seem to be true. What else had they told her that wasn't true?
Her mother said, 'Even though we have our own holidays, sweetheart, we can only celebrate them among ourselves. The little three-cornered cakes we had tonight are special for Purim-they're called Hamantaschen.'
''Haman's hats,'' Alicia echoed. 'I like that. Serves him right.'
'Yes,' her mother said, 'but that's why you won't be taking any of them to school for lunch. People who aren't Jewish might recognize them. We can't afford to take any chances at all, do you see?'
'Not even with something as little as cakes?' Alicia said.
'Not even,' her mother said firmly. 'Not with anything, not ever.'
'All right, Mama.' The warning impressed Alicia with the depth of the precautions she would have to take to survive.
'Isit all right, Alicia?' Her father sounded anxious. 'I know this is a lot to put on a little girl, but we have to, you see, or there won't be any Jews any more.'
'It really is,' Alicia answered. 'It…surprised me. I don't know if I like it yet, but it's all right.' She nodded in a slow, hesitant way. She thought she meant what she said, but she wasn't quite sure.
She and Anna yawned together, then giggled at each other. Aunt Susanna got up, grabbed her handbag, walked over to Alicia, and kissed her on the cheek. 'Welcome to your bigger family, dear. We're glad to have you.'
My bigger family,Alicia thought. That, she did like. Aunt Susanna and the Stutzmans had always been like family to her. Finding out they reallywere a family of sorts-or at least part of the same conspiracy of survival-was reassuring, in a way.
Susanna turned to Alicia's father. 'I'd better get home. I have to teach an early class tomorrow.'
'We ought to go, too,' Esther Stutzman said. 'Either that or we'll wait till Anna falls asleep-which shouldn't be more than another thirty seconds-bundle her into the broom closet, and leave without her.' Her daughter let out an irate sniff.
Alicia's mother and father passed out coats. The friends stood gossiping on the front porch for a last couple of minutes. As they chattered, a brightly lit police van turned the corner and rolled up the street toward the end of the cul-de-sac. 'They know!' Alicia gasped in horror. 'They know!' She tried to bolt inside, away from the eagle and swastika that had suddenly gone from national emblem to symbol of terror.
Her father seized her arm. Alicia had never thought of him as particularly strong, but he held on tight and made sure she couldn't move. The van turned around and went back up the street. It turned the corner. It was gone.
'There. You see?' her father said. 'Everything's fine, little one. They can only find out about us if we give ourselves away. Do you understand?'
'I-think so, Father,' Alicia said.
'Good.' Her father let go of her. 'Nowyou can go on in and get ready for bed.'
Alicia had never been so glad to go into the house in all her life.
Susanna and the Stutzmans walked off toward the bus stop. Heinrich and Lise Gimpel went back inside the house. Once he closed the door, he allowed himself the luxury of a long sigh of mingled relief and fear. 'That damned police van!' he said. 'I thought poor Alicia would jump right out of her skin-and if she had, it might have ruined everything.'
'Well, she didn't. You stopped her.' His wife gave him a quick kiss. 'I'm going to make sure she's all right now.'
'Good idea,' Heinrich said. 'I'll start on the dishes.' He rolled up his sleeves, turned on the water, and waited for it to get hot. When it did, he rinsed off the plates and silverware and glasses and loaded them into the dishwasher. The manufacturers kept saying the new models would be able to handle dishes that hadn't been rinsed. So far, they'd lied every time.
Heinrich was still busy when Alicia came out for a goodnight kiss. Usually, that was just part of nighttime routine. It felt special tonight.
He said, 'You don't have to be frightened every second, darling. If you show you're afraid, people will start wondering what you have to be afraid of. Keep on being your own sweet self, and no one will ever suspect a thing.'
'I'll try, Papa.' When Alicia hugged him, she clung for a few extra seconds. He squeezed her and ran his hand through her hair. 'Good night,' she said, and hurried away.
He let out another sigh, even longer than the first. Finding out you were a Jew in the heart of the National Socialist Germanic Empire was not something anyone, child or adult, could fully take in at a moment's notice. A beginning of acceptance was as much as he could hope for. That much, Alicia had given him.
His own father had shown him photographs smuggled out of the Ostlands and other, newer, ones from the USA to warn him how necessary silence was. He still had nightmares about those pictures after more than thirty years. But he still had the photos, too, hidden in a file cabinet. If he thought he had to, he would show them to Alicia. He hoped the need would never come, for her sake and his own.
Lise walked into the kitchen a couple of minutes later. She dragged in a chair from the dining room, sat down, and waited till the sink was empty and the washer full. Then, as the machine started to churn, she got up and gave him a long, slow hug. 'And so the tale gets told once more,' she said.
As he had with his daughter, Heinrich hung on to his wife. 'And so we try to go on for another generation,' he said. 'We've outlasted so much. God willing, we'll outlast the Nazis, too. No matter what they teach in school, I don't believe the Reich can last a thousand years.'
'Alevaiit doesn't.' Lise used a word from a murdered language, a word that hung on among surviving Jews like the ghost of Hamlet's murdered father. 'But, of course, now that the tale is told, the risk that we'll get caught also goes up. You did just right there, keeping her from running when the police van came by.'
'Couldn't have that,' Heinrich said gravely. 'But she'll be nervous for a while now, and she's so young…' He shook his head. 'Strange how the worst danger comes from making sure we go on. No one would ever suspect you or me-'
'Why else buy pork?' Lise broke in. 'Why else have a Bible with the New Testament in it, too? Because we'd have to want to commit suicide if we used one that didn't, that's why.'
'I know.' Heinrich knew more intimately than that: he still had his foreskin. He took off his glasses, wiped his forehead with his sleeve, and set the spectacles back on his nose. 'We do everything we can to seem like perfect Germans. I can quote from Mein Kampf more easily than from Scripture. But it's not so easy for a child. I remember.'
Lise nodded. 'So do I.'
'And we still have two more to go.' Heinrich let out yet another sigh. He hugged her again. 'I'm so tired.'
'I know,' she said. 'It must be easier for me, staying home with the Kinder like a proper Hausfrau. But you have to wear the mask at the office every day.'
'Either I pretend to others I'm not a Jew or I pack it in and pretend the same thing to myself. I can't do that,
