The Security Police officer turned redder. 'It is our duty.'
'God help you, in that case,' the principal told him.
He turned his back on her, the way a petulant second-grader might have. Unlike a petulant second-grader, he didn't get a swat for being rude. Alicia wished he would have. He deserved one. But nobody was paying any attention to what she wished. The officer with the mustache nodded to his men. 'Take them away.'
They had their orders. They carried them out. It was their duty.
Lise Gimpel had just got back from the drugstore when the telephone rang. She muttered to herself. She'd been about to make a fresh pot of coffee. The ringing phone didn't magically shut up, the way she wished it would. She went over and picked it up.'Bitte?'
The first thing she heard was a car horn blaring. Was somebody playing a practical joke? Then, as traffic noises continued, she realized the call was from a pay phone on a busy street. 'Lise, is that you?' a man asked.
'Ja. Willi?' she answered doubtfully.
'Dammit, I wish you hadn't said my name.' Yes, that was Willi. But why was he calling from a pay phone and not from his desk? No sooner had the question formed in her mind than she found out, for he went on, 'Listen, they've just arrested Heinrich for-for something completely ridiculous. I've got to go. 'Bye.' He slammed the phone down in its cradle. The line went dead.
As if moving in a dream, Lise hung up, too. But it wasn't a dream. It was a nightmare, the worst nightmare she could have.Something completely ridiculous could mean only one thing, and it wasn't ridiculous, not to her. Like any Jew in Berlin, she'd rehearsed this disaster in her mind, hoping and hoping she would never have to use the plans she'd made. So much for that hope. She might not have long. They might be coming for her right now.
She reached for the telephone. It rang again before she could pick it up. She almost screamed. 'Bitte?' she snapped. If it was some idiot salesman trying to get her to buy carpets…
'Frau Gimpel?' A woman's voice this, not a familiar one.
'Yes. What is it, please?'
'Frau Gimpel, this in Ingeborg Fasold, the principal at your daughters' school. I don't know how to tell you this, but…the Security Police have taken your daughters. They accuse them of being-forgive me for saying this-they accuse them of being part Jew… Are you there,Frau Gimpel?'
'I'm here.' In her own ears, Lise's voice sounded far away, eerily calm. 'They've arrested my husband, too. It's all a lie, a mistake, of course.' She had to say that. She remembered she had to say that. Somebody might be- probably was-listening.
'Of course.' To her amazement,Frau Fasold sounded as if she meant it. She added, 'I think it's a shame and a disgrace that they should take children, no matter what. How can a child have done anything bad to anyone? Even if the childwere a Mischling, how could it? Nonsense. Pure Quatsch. Good luck to you.'
'Thank you,' Lise said in that same strange, calm voice. Her mind was racing a million kilometers a second.Mischlingen. They thought the girls were Mischlingen. She was pretty sure they'd arrested Heinrich as a Jew. That should mean they still believed she was an Aryan herself. If they kept on believing that, it might give her the chance to save everyone.
Or it might not help at all. She couldn't tell till she tried.
'If there's anything I can do,Frau Gimpel, please don't hesitate to ask,'Frau Fasold said.
She really did sound as if she meant that. Lise's eyes filled with tears. 'Danke,' she whispered. 'This is a false accusation. We will beat it.'
'I hope so,' the principal said. 'Again, good luck.' She hung up.
So did Lise. Maybe people were more decent than she'd ever dared dream. Willi,Frau Fasold…Neither had had to say a word. Both had taken a chance in picking up the phone. But they'd done it.
Lise had her own ideas about how and why Heinrich had been arrested. But finding out if she was right would have to wait. It didn't make any difference, not when she had no time to lose. The blackshirts were liable to come here next, to see what evidence they could dig up against her husband. Or they might not worry about evidence, and simply act. If they did that, Heinrich and the girls were lost.
So they won't do that. You have to think they won't. And if they come looking for evidence, they'd better not find any. There wasn't much to find: nothing printed in Hebrew, no Sabbath candlesticks, nothing like that. She had pork ribs in the freezer right now.
But there were those pictures, the ones that had come down from Heinrich's father. Lise had never looked at them, but she knew what they were. They recorded the murder of a people, first on this side of the Atlantic and then, a generation later, on the other. They would have been illegal any time. Now they were worse than illegal- they were incriminating. Heinrich had kept them to show the girls if the time ever came, to remind them what the Nazis did to Jews who revealed themselves.
Well, the girls wouldn't need that kind of reminder any more. Now they had a better one.
She knew which filing cabinet in the study held the photographs. She didn't know which drawer they were in, or which folder. Would the knock on the door come before she found them? That would be the cruelest cut of all.
Here they were! She started to carry the manila folder to the fireplace, then hesitated. They might wonder why she had a fire going, or find the remnants of photos in the ashes. Lise knew she wasn't thinking too clearly. She also knew she couldn't afford to take any chances at all.
She brought the folder into the downstairs bathroom instead. She started tearing the photos into little bits and flushing them down the commode. She couldn't help seeing some of what she destroyed. Here was the raw stuff of history, disappearing one flush at a time. Part of her thought that wasn't right-there should be some record of the Germans' crimes. The rest…She was shaking and in tears by the time the job was done. Heinrich would have shownthat to little girls? The medicine was strong-too strong, she thought.
And she couldn't keep on shaking and crying. Even though this part of the job was done, she still had more to do. She went to the telephone and dialed. It rang six or seven times before a man said, 'Bitte?' in a sleepy voice.
'Richard?' she said. 'Richard, this is Lise Gimpel.'
'What do you want? You woke me up,' Richard Klein grumbled.
Woke you up? In the middle of the afternoon?Lise blinked at that. Then she remembered he was a trombone player. Musicians kept strange hours. 'Richard, I need the name and number of that lawyer you used last year. You're not going to believe it, but Heinrich has the same problem you did.'
'Gott im Himmel!' Klein exploded. He didn't sound sleepy any more. 'Hang on. I'll get it for you.' He came back on the line a minute later. 'He's Klaus Menzel. Here's his phone number. Have you got something to write with?'
'Yes.' Lise took down the number.
Richard said, 'Good luck. Take care of yourself. Let us know what happens.' Those were all things one friend could say to another without giving anything away to anyone tapping the line.
'Thanks,' Lise said, and hung up. She could have made other calls: to her sister, to the Stutzmans, to Susanna Weiss, to a few-so few! — other people she knew. She could have, but she didn't. She had a plausible reason for calling the Kleins' house. She couldn't bring them under greater suspicion by doing so. That wasn't true of the others. She didn't want the Security Police wondering about her side of the family and her friends. Even if the worst happened to her, they could go on.
Besides, they would hear soon enough, one way or the other.
She called the lawyer and set up an appointment first thing in the morning-and got his promise to try to make sure nothing drastic happened before then. She'd just hung up the phone there when someone started banging on the front door.
She didn't need three guesses to know who that was. The banging went on and on. As she walked out to get the door, she wondered if she would be able to keep that appointment after all.
Susanna Weiss sat on her couch, a glass of Glenfiddich in her hand. The news was on, but she couldn't pay attention to Horst tonight. She took a long pull at the scotch. It wasn't the first one she'd had. It wouldn't be the last one she intended to have, either. If she felt like hell in the morning-and she probably would-well, that was why God made aspirin.
'Heinrich,' she muttered, and shook her head in wonder mingled with despair. When Maria Klein asked her to
