changes in the structure of the government are deemed necessary. If you feel that way, as I must confess I do myself, you will also be able to find candidates who support a similar point of view.'
Puff, puff, puff. 'Change for the sake of change is no doubt very exciting, very dramatic. But when things are going well, change is also apt to be for the worst. Some of you are younger than I. Many of you, in fact, are younger than I.' Oppenhoff chuckled rheumily. That was about as close to anything resembling real humor as he came. 'You will, perhaps, be more enamored of change for the sake of change than I am. But I tell you this: when you have my years, you too will see the folly of change when the German state has gone through the grandest and most glorious period in its history.'
With a wheeze and a grunt, he sat down. His chair creaked as his bulk settled into it. Susanna couldn't have said why she was so disappointed. She'd known Oppenhoff was a reactionary for years. Why should one more speech make her want to cry-or, better, to kick him where it would do the most good?
Maybe it was because, in spite of everything, she'd let herself get her hopes up. Heinz Buckliger had done more to open the Reich than his three predecessors put together. He seemed intent on doing more still-and if he didn't, Rolf Stolle might. Some of the folk the Wehrmacht had conquered were reminding Berlin that they still remembered who they were, and that they'd once been free-and they were getting away with it.
Yes, the Security Police had grabbed Heinrich Gimpel and his children, but they'd let them go. The accusation that he was a Jew hadn't come from anyone who really knew, but from, of all things, a woman scorned. Susanna had trouble imagining anyone chasing Heinrich hard enough to want him dead when she didn't get him. It only went to show, you never could tell.
The point was, though, that theyhad let him go. In a world where that could happen, what couldn't? Heinrich's release only made Franz Oppenhoff's comfortable, complacent words seem all the worse.
Susanna almost burst with the temptation of throwing that in Oppenhoff's face. She'd sometimes morbidly wondered which of the Jews she knew was likeliest to get caught. She'd thought she herself topped that list, just because she had the most trouble keeping her mouth shut when she ran into something wrong. Heinrich and Lise were almost stoic in the way they refused to let what went on around them bother them. Susanna was a great many things, but not a stoic. And yet here she sat, as safe and free as a Jew in the Reich could be. No, you never could tell.
'Herr Doktor Professor?' That was Konrad Lutze, who'd gone to the Medieval English Association meeting in London with Susanna-who'd almost gone instead of Susanna.
'Yes?' Oppenhoff smiled benignly.Of course he does, Susanna thought.Lutze pisses standing up. How can he do anything wrong, with an advantage like that?
And then Lutze said, 'Herr Doktor Professor, shouldn't we return to the first principles of National Socialism and let the Volk have the greatest possible say in the government of the Reich? Please excuse me, but I don't see how this could do anything but improve the way the Reich is run.'
Professor Oppenhoff looked as if he'd just taken a bite out of a hot South American pepper without expecting it. Susanna stared at Konrad Lutze, too, but with a different sort of astonishment. He was an indifferent scholar. Everyone in the department except possibly Oppenhoff knew that. She'd always figured him for more of a careerist than someone who truly loved knowledge. He was the last man she would have imagined sticking out his neck.
And he'd just thrown reform in the department chairman's face. What did that say? That Oppenhoff's politics were even more dinosaurian than Susanna had thought? What elsecould it say?
Back to work. Heinrich Gimpel climbed onto the bus that would take him to the Stahnsdorf train station. While he sat in prison, he'd wondered if he would have a job if he got out. It hadn't been his biggest worry. Next to a noodle or a shower, being alive and unemployed didn't look so bad.
But he still had his place. Nobody at Oberkommando der Wehrmacht headquarters had said so out loud when he called to inquire, but he got the feeling his superiors there enjoyed putting him back in that slot, because it gave the armed forces a point in their unending game against the SS.
Three stops later, Willi Dorsch got on the bus. His face brightened when he saw Heinrich. Then, almost as abruptly, it fell. The seat next to Heinrich was empty. Willi hesitantly approached. Heinrich patted the artificial leather to show he was welcome. (Back when Heinrich was a boy, people had called the stuff Jew's hide. You didn't hear that much any more. Till the reform movement started, Heinrich hadn't thought about it one way or the other. Now he dared hope it was a good sign.)
'It's damn good to see you,' Willi said, shaking his hand. With a wry smile that twisted up one corner of his mouth, he added, 'You'd probably sooner knock my block off than look at me.'
'It's not your fault,' Heinrich said, and then, cautiously, 'How's Erika?'
'She's…better. She's glad the girls are all right. She's glad you're all right, too.' That wry smile got wrier. 'She wanted to find out just how good you could be, didn't she?'
'Well…yes.' Dull embarrassment filled Heinrich's voice.
'I never would have figured that,' Willi said. 'And I really never would have figured that she'd go and call the Security Police. Sometimes I wonder if I know her at all. Now I suppose telling you I'm sorry is the least I can do.'
Being sorry wouldn't have mattered if the blackshirts had got rid of Heinrich-and of Alicia, Francesca, and Roxane. Still…'It's over,' Heinrich said. 'I hope to God it's over, anyhow.'
'Erika's sorry, too. If she weren't, she wouldn't have swallowed those stupid goddamn pills.' Willi shook his head. 'She swears up and down she didn't think they would go after you and the girls the way they did.'
Heinrich only grunted. When she picked up the phone, whathad Erika thought the Security Police would do? Invite him up for coffee and cakes? Plainly, she'd regretted what she did afterwards. At the time? At the time, she'd no doubt wanted him dead.
He asked a question of his own: 'Are the two of you really going to patch things up now, or will you go on squabbling?' And cheating on each other, he added, but only to himself. He always tried to stay polite-maybe even too polite for his own good.
Willi answered with a shrug. 'I don't know what the hell we're going to do. If it weren't for the kids…But they're there, and we can't very well pretend they're not.' How much did he worry about his son and daughter when he took Ilse out for lunch and whatever else he could get away with? Maybe some. He did love them. Heinrich knew that. Love them or not, though, he went right on doing whathe wanted to do.
At the train station, Heinrich shelled out fifteen pfennigs for a Volkischer Beobachter. So did Willi. As Heinrich carried the paper toward the platform, a sudden thought made him glance toward the other man. 'When they grabbed me, did it make the news?' he asked.
'Ja,'Willi answered uncomfortably. 'A Jew in Berlin-I mean, somebody they thought was a Jew in Berlin- isnews.'
'Did anybody say anything when they let me go?'
Now Willi looked at him as if he'd asked a very dumb question indeed. And so he had. 'Don't be silly,' Willi said. 'When was the last time the SS admitted it made a mistake? The twelfth of Never, that's when.'
The train rumbled up. Doors hissed open. Heinrich and Willi fed their cards into the fare slot, then sat down side by side and started reading their papers. The upcoming election dominated the headlines. Rolf Stolle had given another speech calling on the Fuhrer to move harder and further on reforms. The Volkischer Beobachter covered it in detail, quoting some of the juiciest bits. A year earlier, even if the Gauleiter of Berlin had presumed to give such a speech, the Beobachter would have pretended he hadn't.
Out of the commuter train. Up the escalators. Onto the bus. Into downtown Berlin traffic. Willi looked out the window and shook his head. He said, 'I'm glad I'm not driving in this.'
'You'd have to be crazy to want to,' Heinrich agreed. But the swarms of cars clogging every street argued that a hell of a lot of peoplewere crazy.
Out of the bus. Up the steps to Oberkommando der Wehrmacht headquarters. Nods to the guards. Identification cards. One of the guards nudged his pal. 'Hey, look, Adolf! Here's Gimpel back.'
Adolf nodded. 'Good. I didn't figure you were really a kike,Herr Gimpel. The Security Police couldn't grab their ass with both hands.'
'I'm here.' Heinrich pocketed his card once more. What would Adolf have said, knowing he was a
Jew? That seemed only too obvious. But they'd decided he wasn't, or at least decided they couldn't show he was. There was an improvement in the way things worked. When Kurt Haldweim was Fuhrer, suspicion alone would have earned him a trip to the shower.
