save him now, though. Quickly, desperately, he went on, 'Ask the Fuhrer, if you don't believe me.'
Raucous laughter from the interrogator. 'Tell me another one, Jewboy. As if the Fuhrer cares about the likes of you.'
One of the blackshirts who'd frog-marched him into the room muttered to the man behind the lamps. That man, whom Heinrich still hadn't seen, let out a scornful grunt. Then he shifted gears. He started hammering away at Heinrich's pedigree.
That pedigree was, of course, fictitious from top to bottom. The interrogator would have caught out a lot of Jews, grilling them about ancestors they didn't have. But Heinrich was a meticulous man. He knew the ancestors he didn't have as well as the ones he did-maybe better, since more about the fictitious ones had gone down on paper. He had to remind himself to throw in 'I don't know' s every so often. How many people really could recite chapter and verse about great-great-grandparents off the tops of their heads? He didn't want the blackshirts to think he'd memorized a script, even if he had.
They slapped him a few more times. It stung, but he endured it. They weren't working anywhere near so hard as they might have to break him. Maybe they weren't sure what they had. Heinrich clung to that hope.
At last, after what could have been half an hour or three hours, the head man said, 'Take the kike back to his cell. We'll have another go at him later.'
Back Heinrich went. He could have done without that promise from the interrogator. But he hadn't told the Security Police anything. And they still hadn't roughed him up too badly.It could be worse, he thought. On his way out of an interrogation, that would do.
Alicia Gimpel envied her sisters. No matter what the Nazi matrons asked them, they couldn't give anything away. When they denied they were Jews, they believed those denials from the bottom of their hearts. Some of the blackshirts would remember taking them out of school for a long time.
The matrons called this place a foundlings' disciplinary home. The other children in here were ragged and scrawny, but very clean. The whole building reeked of disinfectant. They'd separated the Gimpel girls, maybe to keep them from coming up with a story together. For Francesca and Roxane, there wasn't any story to come up with. They were genuinely outraged at what was happening to them. Alicia had to pretend she was, too. If she could manage that, she had a chance. She might have a chance, anyway.
They'd put her in a room with a sharp-faced, stringy-haired blond girl named Paula. 'What are you here for?' Paula asked.
'You won't believe it.' Alicia assumed somebody was listening to everything she said.
'Try me.' The other girl's smile showed pointed teeth. 'I burned down my schoolroom.' She spoke with nothing but pride.
'Wow!' Alicia wasn't sure she believed that. Maybe Paula was bragging. Or maybe she was trying to get Alicia to talk big, too, and hang herself. Could an eleven-year-old be an informer? Of course she could.
'So what did you do?' Paula asked.
'They say I'm a Jew-or they say my father is, anyway,' Alicia answered. That was the truth; admitting it couldn't hurt.
Paula's pale blue eyes widened. Now she was the one who said, 'Wow!' and then, 'That's so neat! I didn't think any of you people were left. The way the Nazis go on, they got rid of you. If you stayed ahead of 'em, more power to you.'
She sounded as if she meant it. But then, if she was an informer, shewould sound that way.I can't trust her, Alicia reminded herself. She said, 'That's what they say, but it's a lie. I'm not, and Daddy isn't, either.'
'Sure he's not.' Paula's smile was knowing. 'You've got to say that, don't you? If you say anything else, it's the showers or a noodle, right?'
That was what Alicia was afraid of. But she couldn't even show that the thought had crossed her mind. 'They wouldn't do that to me!' she exclaimed. 'I haven't done anything, and I'm not what they say I am!'
'Maybe you're not,' Paula said. 'What the hell-I don't know. But if they decide you are, you are, whether you are or not. You know what I mean?'
Whether she was an arsonist or not, she was a perfect cynic. How many brushes with the authorities had she had? How many of them had she won? More than a few, or Alicia would have been astonished. But not all, or she wouldn't be here. Alicia knew perfectly well what she meant, too. Here, though, she had to pretend she didn't. If she'd been seized for something she wasn't, none of these dire things would have occurred to her. She said, 'They can't do that! It'swrong! ' Maybe fear sounded like anger. She hoped so, anyhow.
All Paula said was, 'When has that ever stopped them?'
Alicia had no answer, not at first. That had never stopped them. But then hope flared. 'The new Fuhrer won't let them do things like that.'
'Buckliger?' Paula didn't try to hide her scorn. 'You wait till the time comes. Lothar Prutzmann will eat his lunch.' She might have been handicapping a football match, not politics.
'Oh, I hope not!' Alicia said. Even that might have been too much, when Prutzmann's Security Police had her. She said it anyway. She meant it. And she couldn't get in too much trouble for showing she was loyal to the Fuhrer… could she?
Paula only laughed. 'You just watch. You'll find out.' In the hallway, a bell rang. Paula bounced to her feet. 'That's supper. Come on.'
It was a wretched excuse for a real supper: cabbage soup, boiled potatoes, and brown bread without butter. Alicia could see why Paula was so skinny. She looked around for her sisters. Each of them had a matron hovering close. When Alicia looked back over her shoulder, she saw one behind her, too. She decided not to get up and try to see Francesca or Roxane. Why give the matron the pleasure of telling her she couldn't? These women looked as if saying no was their chief pleasure in life.
She did ask her matron, 'When will you let us go back to our mother and father?' She made sure she mentioned Daddy as well as Mommy. Nobody seemed to think Mommy was a Jew. She wondered how that had happened.
The matron frowned. She had a long, sour face, a face made for frowning. At last, after a pause for thought, she said, 'Well, dear'-Alicia had never heard a more insinceredear — 'that depends on what they decide to do with your father, you see.'
Maybe she hoped Alicia wouldn't understand that. And maybe, if Alicia hadn't been a Jew, she wouldn't have. She was, and she did, but she had to pretend she didn't.If they decide Daddy's an Aryan, you'll go home, too. But if they decide he's a Jew, he's dead, and your sisters are dead, and so are you.
Lise Gimpel paused in cleaning up the house to take a pull from a glass of schnapps. The place was an astonishing mess. It might have suffered a visit from an earthquake or a hurricane, not the Security Police. They'd torn the place apart, looking for evidence that Heinrich was a Jew. If she hadn't flushed the photographs, they would have found it, too.
Her brain felt as badly disordered as the house. They'd roared questions at her while they were throwing everything on the floor. Why had she married a Jew? How long had she known he was a Jew? Why was she such a filthy whore? Did she think it was more fun sucking a circumcised cock?
Maybe they'd figured that one would horrify her into spilling secrets. All it did was make her furious. 'You stupid fucking bastards!' she'd screamed. 'You've got him! You know goddamn well he's not circumcised!'
They hadn't arrested her. They'd even been a little more polite after that-not much, but a little. They hadn't got anything out of her, or she didn't think they had. And they'd been in a rotten mood when they finally quit searching the house, so she didn't think they'd come up with anything there, either.
Now…Now all she could do was pick up the pieces. They hadn't smashed things on purpose, anyhow. All they'd done was toss them every which way. Getting them back where they belonged would take time, but she could do it. What else did she have to do, with Heinrich and the girls gone? Work helped hold worry at bay-again, not much, but a little.
The telephone rang. Lise jumped.'Scheisse,' she said crisply. The last thing she wanted to do was talk to anybody right now. But she knew she had to. It might be important. It might-literally-be life and death. Making her way through drifts of things on the floor, she went to the phone and picked it up. 'Bitte?'
'Lise?' It was Willi. 'How are you? Is there any news?'
'News? Well, yes. They've turned the house inside out. They've taken the children. Other than that, everything's jolly.'
