thing.
Because the first three rubbers had gone briskly, they decided to play another one. Lise, who drank the least of the four of them, broke out another bottle of wine. However much Heinrich wanted to, he couldn't yell,My God, what are you doing? Since he couldn't, he waited numbly-quite numbly, since he'd had a good bit himself-to see what happened next.
What happened next was that Willi went down three on a hand he should have been able to make with his eyes closed. Considering the way he played it, he might have had them closed all through it. When it was finally over, he looked at his tricks and the defenders' like a man contemplating a traffic accident he'd caused. 'Well,' he said in tones of rueful surprise, 'thatdidn't work.'
'I'll tell you why it didn't work, too,' Erika said. 'It didn't work because you're an idiot.'
'I don't know what I could have-' Willi began.
She told him. She told him in great detail. And she was quite obviously right. Then she said, 'If you can't hit the target any better with Ilse, she's got an-'
Heinrich and Lise both said something, anything, to keep Erika from finishing that sentence. Afterwards, Heinrich never could remember what had burst from his lips, or from his wife's. Erikadidn't finish, either: a triumph of sorts. But only of sorts, for enough of the damage was already done. Willi went a hot crimson color; his skin might have belonged to a perfectly ripe apple.
'You've got a lot of damned nerve complaining about me,' he said, his voice low and rough and furious. 'You're the one who wants to-'
'Enough!' That wasn't Heinrich but Lise. She rarely raised her voice. When she did, as now, surprise made everyone pay attention to her. She went on, 'There's a time and a place for everything, and this isn't the time and the place for that.'
The Dorsches could easily have erupted. If they had, the friendship probably would have exploded right there at the bridge table. Heinrich waited. The shrapnel from that explosion would tear into him, not into his wife. But it didn't come. Erika and Willi kept on glaring at each other, but neither one of them said anything new and inflammatory.
After a long, long moment, Erika turned to Lise and said, 'You make good sense. I see where Heinrich gets it.'
'Oh,Quatsch, ' Lise said. 'Now I have to figure out which one of us you just insulted.' She gathered up the cards. 'In the meantime, can we play some bridge? Hitting each other over the head with rocks is a different game, and it shouldn't be a spectator sport.'
'What do you know about it?' Willi asked, half blustering, half amused. 'You and Heinrich never do it.'
She and Heinrich both laughed raucously. Heinrich knew their marriage had its creaks and strains, as what marriage does not? He could put his finger on four or five without even thinking. No doubt Lise could do the same. And no doubt some of his wouldn't be the same as some of hers, which was in itself a strain. But none of that was anybody's business but his and Lise's.
That thought led him to the next one: 'We just try not to do it when other people are watching.'
'Oh, but having other people watch is half the fun,' Willi said. Erika nodded. There, for once, she agreed with her husband.
Heinrich, on the other hand, did his best to hide a shudder. Little green men from Mars could have had no more alien an attitude. Put your life on display, as if you were characters on a daytime televisor drama? He couldn't imagine living like that. One of the reasons he and Lise got on so well was that she was as intensely private a person as he was.
'Whose deal is it, anyhow?' Willi asked, as easily as if he and Erika hadn't been shelling each other a couple of minutes before. 'Let's see if I can butcher another one, eh?' Erika stirred. Suddenly, she jerked in surprise. Had Lise kicked her under the table? Heinrich had trouble imagining his wife doing such a thing. He also had trouble finding any other reason Erika would have jerked like that.
Willi did win the contract, at three diamonds. He made it. Heinrich hadn't been sure he would, but he did. If anything, that left Heinrich relieved. He wasn't used to rooting for the opposition. He didn't much like it. It took the competitive edge off the bridge.
The Dorsches won the rubber. Again, Heinrich wasn't sorry, and wished he were. Usually, they would have talked and drunk for a while after they set down the cards-or maybe they just would have played some more. Tonight, Willi and Erika got up and left with only the most perfunctory good-byes. Heinrich and Lise didn't ask them to stay longer, even in the most perfunctory way.
'Are we going to be able to have them over any more, or to go to their place?' Lise asked once they'd gone. 'The bridge is all very well, but some things are more trouble than they're worth.'
'Yes, I know,' Heinrich said. He also feared he knew what Willi had been about to say when Lise forestalled him. After Erika jabbed him about Ilse, he would have jabbed her about making a play for Heinrich. If things had been bad, had been ugly, before then, how much worse and uglier would they have got afterwards?
Heinrich was a man who thought in quantitative terms. If he couldn't put numbers to something, it didn't feel real to him. He couldn't put numbers to this, but, for once, he didn't need to. It would have been about as bad as it could get.
Alicia Gimpel didn't like December. The sun rose late and set early, and clouds and fog were so thick you mostly couldn't see it when it did sneak into the sky. It rained a lot of the time. When it didn't rain, sometimes it snowed. Some people said they liked having seasons-it made them enjoy spring and summer more. Alicia couldn't fathom that. She wished she lived somewhere like Italy, where it was warm and nice almost all year round.
The only thing December had going for it was Christmas. She liked the tree and its spicy smell and the ornaments and gifts. She liked the fat roast goose her mother cooked every year. She liked the break from school she got at Christmas and New Year's. And, of course, she liked the presents.
This year, though, she looked at Christmas in a new way. Up till now, it had always beenher holiday. If she was a Jew, though, it was someone else's holiday. Her family would still do the same things: she was sure of that. They would have to; if they didn't, people would wonder why not. But what they did wouldn't feel the same.
Then something else occurred to her. Jews had their own New Year's Day. They had other holidays of their own, too. She remembered Purim, when she'd found out she was a Jew. She asked her mother, 'Do we have a holiday of our own that's like Christmas?'
Lise Gimpel was frying potato pancakes fragrant with onion in a big pan of hot oil. 'Where are your sisters?' was the first thing she asked.
'They're upstairs,' Alicia answered.
Her mother looked around to make sure Alicia was right. Then she answered. 'We have a holiday at this time of year. It's called Chanukah.' She told of Antiochus' war against the Jews more than 2,100 years before, and of the oil that burned for eight days instead of just one.
Alicia listened, entranced. Then, as was her way, she started thinking about what she'd heard. 'The Persians wanted to get rid of us,' she said. Her mother nodded. 'And these Syrians or Greeks or whatever they were wanted to get rid of us.' Mommy nodded again. Alicia went on, 'And the Nazis wanted to get rid of us, too.'
'You know that's true,' her mother said. 'They still do. Never forget it.'
'I won't. I can't,' Alicia said. 'But what did we ever do to make so many people want to wipe us out?'
'I don't think we ever tried to do anything,' her mother replied. 'We just tried to live our own lives our own way.'
'There has to be more than that,' Alicia insisted. Her mother shook her head. She asked, 'Well, why is it just us, then?'
'It's notjust us,' her mother answered. 'The Turks did it to the Armenians; the Germans did it to the gypsies, too; the Americans did it to their blacks. I think it's happened to us so much because we're stubborn about being what we are. We didn't want to worship Antiochus' gods. We had our own God. We didn't think Jesus was anything special. People made us pay for that, too. We want to do what we do, that's all-do it and not be bothered. We don't bother anybody else.'
'It seems like…an awful lot of trouble,' Alicia said hesitantly.
'Well, yes.' Her mother managed a smile. 'But we think it's what God wants us to do, too, you know.'
'I suppose so.' Alicia frowned. 'How do we know that's what God wants us to do, though?'
'I didn't say we knew. I said we thought so.' Her mother sighed. 'I could tell you that's what the Bible says,
