but it hadn't been too bad-certainly nothing where she felt she ought to tattle. 'But…' Now she was the one who paused.
'But what?' Herr Peukert asked. 'The charge made against you was serious, but it was false. Now that it's been shown to be false, people have no business-none-throwing it in your face. Do you understand?'
'Ja, Herr Peukert.' Alicia would have let it go at that if her teacher hadn't sounded angry that anybody could still be bothering her. Since he did, though, she added, 'It's not me, sir-it's my sister.'
'Some of the students in your sister's class are giving her trouble?' Peukert sounded angrier still. 'Who is your sister's teacher? We'll deal with this.'
Alicia's heart sank. She wished she'd kept her mouth shut. 'Francesca's in, uh,Frau Koch's class, sir.' She'd almost saidthe Beast's class, but not quite. 'The boys and girls aren't giving her any trouble, though. It's…it's Frau Koch.' She waited to see if the sky would fall.
'Oh.' The word seemed heavy as lead as it came from Herr Peukert's throat. 'That's…very unfortunate, Alicia. I'm sorry. I don't know just what to do about that. I don't know if I can do anything about that. Some people…Some people can't be reasonable about some things. It's…too bad when those people get put in charge of others, but sometimes it happens.'
'It's not fair. It's not right,' Alicia said. 'She shouldn't say those things. Daddy'snot a Jew, and that means my sisters and me-and I — aren't Mischlingen.' Part of that was true, anyhow. She and Francesca and Roxane weren't Mischlingen. They were full-blooded Jews. Alicia knew what she had to say, though.
Herr Peukert looked troubled. 'If you like, Alicia, I will speak to the principal. But I have to tell you, I don't know how much good it will do, or if it will do any good at all. Inside their classrooms, teachers do as they see fit, as long as they teach what they are required to teach. And I know Frau Koch has been at this school a long time, much longer than the principal has.'
He waited. Alicia needed a few seconds to understand what he was saying. If he talked to the principal, the principal might tell the Beast to go easy on Francesca. Because she told her, though, that didn't mean Frau Koch would do it. She might act meaner than ever, to get even with Francesca for trying to land her in trouble. Knowing the Beast, that was just what shewould do.
'Maybe you'd better let it alone, then,' Alicia said reluctantly.
'I think you're being smart.' Her teacher sounded relieved.
Alicia didn't feel smart. She felt shoddy. This was the same as not standing up to somebody on the playground even if you were right, because he'd beat the snot out of you if you tried. Sometimes you had to make choices like that. When you got to be a grownup, from what she'd seen, you had to make choices like that all the time. No matter what you ended up doing, you couldn't be sure it was the right thing. Sometimes therewas no right thing.
Herr Peukert said, 'Why don't you go out and play now, Alicia? This business with your sister will sort itself out sooner or later.'
'Sooner or later,' Alicia echoed in mournful tones. Whenever a grownup said that, he meantsooner. Whenever a child heard it, she heardlater. As far as Alicia knew, there was no bridge across that chasm between the generations.
She went out. Emma Handrick and Trudi Krebs waved to her. She went over to them and started chatting. Everything was pretty much the way it would have been if the blackshirts hadn't taken her away. Pretty much…
Even while she was talking with her friends, though, part of her mind was chewing on something Herr Peukert had said about the Beast.Some people can't be reasonable about some things. It's too bad when those people get put in charge of others, but sometimes it happens.
He'd been talking about Frau Koch. He hadn't meant anything more. Alicia knew that. But she couldn't help thinking the words applied to the first Fuhrer at least as well as they did to the Beast.
'Oh, thank you,Frau Stutzman,' Dr. Dambach said when Esther set a foam cup of coffee on his desk. The pediatrician took a sip, then eyed her. 'You're looking happy this morning.'
'Am I?' Esther said. Her boss nodded. She shrugged and smiled. 'Well, maybe I am. It's a beautiful day, isn't it?'
Dambach nodded again. 'It certainly is. I saw more of it than I really wanted to, as a matter of fact.'
'Did you?' Esther knew she was supposed to say something like that.
'I certainly did,' Dambach answered. 'I wanted to get here early so I could go through some of the medical journals that keep piling up'-sure enough, he had a stack of them on his desk, and a scalpel in place of a knife to open the pages of the numbers that didn't come cut from the printers-'but I got caught in a traffic jam, so I didn't come in more than five minutes earlier than usual.'
'That's too bad,' Esther said. 'What happened? Was anyone badly hurt?'
Dr. Dambach shook his head. 'It wasn't an accident. It was a political parade, if you can believe such a thing.'
Up until very recently, Esther wouldn't have been able to believe it. The only parades allowed would have been those organized by the government, and they would have been publicized in advance. Someone efficient like Dambach would have known one was coming and would have chosen a route it didn't block. Things had changed, though. Esther asked, 'Who was parading?'
'People who like that fat fraud of a Stolle,' Dambach answered. 'The man's out for himself first, last, and always. Anyone who can't see as much needs to go to an optometrist, if you ask me. Or do you think I'm wrong?' He tacked on the last question with the air of a man suddenly realizing the person he was talking to might disagree with him.
'I've told you before, I don't really pay a whole lot of attention to politics,' Esther said. 'I think everybody knows what our problems are. If the election could help get rid of some of them, that would be nice. And if it can't'-she shrugged-'then it can't, that's all.'
'You have a sensible attitude,' the pediatrician said. 'Most people are fools. They expect the sun, the moon, and the little stars from this new Reichstag. Don't they see that most of the members will be the same old scoundrels who've been running things all along? They won't turn into angels just because people were able to write an X beside their names.'
'I suppose not.' Esther paid more attention to politics than she let on. She had more hope for the election than she let on, too. That hope was probably what made her add, 'Isn't conscience supposed to be the still, small voice that says someone may be watching? Maybe the Bonzen will behave better when they knew people can vote them out if they don't.'
'Maybe.' Plainly, Dambach went that far only to be polite. 'My guess is, they'll hold this election and maybe one more, and then they'll forget about them again-and we'll go back to sleep for another seventy or eighty years.'
'Well, you could be right.' Esther retreated to the receptionist's station in a hurry. Her boss's cynicism was like a harvester rolling over the fragile young shoots of her optimism and cutting them down. Maybe Dambach was right. The whole history of the Reich argued that he was. But Esther didn't-wouldn't-like it.
She got busy with the billing. As long as she was thinking about that, she didn't have to worry about anything else. Irma should have taken care of more of it than she had the evening before. Fuming at her also kept Esther from fretting about politics.
And then patients and their parents-as always, mostly mothers-started coming in. Nobody could get excited about Rolf Stolle or Heinz Buckliger or Lothar Prutzmann with toddlers screaming in the background. Today, the racket seemed more a relief than a distraction. Telephone calls kept Esther busy, too. The busier she stayed, the less she had time to wonder if all of Buckliger's reforms were nothing but new makeup on the same old Party face.
Mothers talked in the waiting room, though thanks to their children she could hear them only fitfully. She did prick up her ears when Rolf Stolle's name came up. The woman who mentioned him wasn't talking about politics, though, or not exactly. If what she said was true, Stolle had made a pass at her sister. From everything Esther had heard, her sister was far from unique.
'That's not good,' another mother said. Her toddler made a swipe for her glasses. She blocked the little arm with the practiced ease of someone who'd done it many times before. 'That's not good, either, sweetheart,' she told the boy, and then went back to politics: 'Still, even if he does make passes at everything in a skirt, he won't
