which was three doors down from the comer.
Gimpel rode for another few stops, then descended himself. His own house lay at the end of a cul-de-sac, so he had to walk for a whole block. It’s healthy for me, he told himself, a consolation easier to enjoy in spring and summer than in winter.
The snick of his key going into the lock brought shouts of “Daddy!” from inside the house. He smiled, opened the door, and picked up each of his three girls in turn for a hug and a kiss: they ranged down in age from ten by two-year steps.
Then he lifted his wife as well. Lise Gimpel squawked; that was not part of the evening ritual. The girls giggled. “Put me down!” Lise said indignantly.
“Not till I get my kiss.”
She made as if to bite his nose instead, but then let him kiss her. He set her feet back on the carpet, held her a little longer before he let her go. She was a pleasant armful, a green-eyed brunette several years younger than he who had kept her figure very well. When he released her, she hurried back toward the kitchen. “I want to finish cooking before everyone gets here.”
“All right,” he said, smiling as he watched her retreat. While he hung up his greatcoat and took off his tie, his daughters regaled him with tales out of school. He listened to three simultaneous stories as best he could. Lise came out again long enough to hand him a goblet of liebfraumilch, then started away.
The chimes rang before she got out of the front room. She whirled and stared indignantly at the door. “I am going to boot Susanna right into the net,” she declared.
Gimpel looked at his watch. “She’s only ten minutes early this time. And you know she’s always early, so you should have been ready.”
“ Hmp,” Lise said while he went to let in their friend. Meanwhile, the girls started chorusing, “Susanna is a football! Aunt Susanna is a football!”
“Heinrich, why are they calling me a football?” Susanna Weiss demanded. She craned her neck to look up at him. “I’m short, yes, and I’m not emaciated like you, but I’m not round, either.” She shrugged out of a mink jacket and thrust it into his hands. “Here, see to this.”
Chuckling, he clicked his heels. “Jawohl, meine Dame. “
She accepted the deference as no less than her due. “Fraulein Doktor Professor will suffice, thank you.” She taught medieval English literature at Humboldt University. Suddenly she abandoned her imperial manner and started to laugh, too. “Now that you’ve hung that up, how about a hug?”
“Lise’s not watching. I suppose I can get away with that.” He put his arms around her. She barely reached his shoulder, but her vitality more than made up for her lack of size. When he let go, he said, “Why don’t you go into the kitchen? You can pretend to help Lise while you soak up our Glenfiddich.”
“Scotch almost justifies the existence of Scotland,” she said. “It’s a cold, gloomy, rocky place, so they had to make something nice to keep themselves warm.”
“If that’s why people drink it, your boyfriend is lucky he didn’t set himself on fire here a couple of years ago.”
“My former boyfriend, danken Gott daftir,” Susanna said. All the same, she blushed to the roots of her hair; her skin was very fine and fair, which let him watch the blush advance from her throat. “I didn’t know he was a drunk, Heinrich.”
“I know,” he said gently. If he teased her too far, she’d lose her temper, and nothing and nobody was safe if that happened. “Go on; Lise’s trying that recipe you sent her.”
The girls waylaid Susanna before she made it to the kitchen. Though shed never been married, she made an excellent ersatz aunt; she took children seriously, listened to what they had to say, and treated them like small adults. Gimpel smiled. Come to that, she was a small adult herself. He knew better than to say so out loud.
Walther and Esther Stutzman arrived a few minutes later, along with their son Gottlieb and daughter Anna. Anna promptly went off with the Gimpel girls; she was a year older than Alicia, the eldest of the three. Heinrich Gimpel stared at Gottlieb. “Good heavens, is that a mustache?”
The younger male Stutzman touched a finger to the space between his upper lip and his nose. “It’s going to be one, I hope.” At the moment, the growth was hard to see. For one thing, he had only just turned sixteen. For another, his hair was even fairer than his father’s. And for a third, he’d chosen to keep untrimmed only a toothbrush mustache; the first Fuhrer’s style was newly popular again.
Walther Stutzman differed from his son in appearance only by the presence of twenty-odd years and the absence of any vestiges of a mustache. As he handed Gimpel his topcoat, he asked quietly, “Tonight?”
“Yes, I think Alicia’s ready,” Gimpel answered as quietly. “I told her she could stay up late. How has Anna done the past year?”
“Well enough,” her father said.
“We’re still here, after all,” Esther Stutzman put in. A slim woman with light brown hair, she peered at Gimpel through glasses thicker than his own. Somehow, in spite of everything, her laugh managed to hold real mirth. “And if she hadn’t done well, we assuredly wouldn’t be.”
“Wouldn’t be what, Aunt Esther?” Alicia Gimpel asked, a doll under one arm.
“Wouldn’t be standing out here in the hall talking if we expected the curly-haired Gestapo to be listening in,” Esther said. Her grin took all sting from the words.
Imitating her father, Alicia said, “Oh, quatsch!” Anna Stutzman tried to sneak up behind her, but she whirled before she got tickled. Both girls squealed. They ran off together, Alicia’s brown curls bobbing beside Anna’s blond ones. They were very much of a height; though Anna was a year older, Alicia was tall for her age.
“Dinner!” Lise called from the kitchen. Everyone went into the dining room. Heinrich Gimpel and Anna’s brother Gottlieb dropped the leaves on the table to accommodate the unusual crowd. Walther, meanwhile, fetched a couple of extra chairs, while Susanna Weiss arranged them around the table.
They all paused to admire the fragrantly steaming pork roast before Gimpel attacked it with fork and carving knife. With onions, potatoes, and boiled parsnips, it made a feast to fight the chill outside and leave everyone happily replete. Most of the talk that punctuated the music of knife and fork was praise for Lise’s cooking.
Smooth wheat beer mixed with raspberry syrup accompanied the meal. The two younger Gimpel girls, who usually were allowed only small glasses, got grownup-sized mugs. They proudly drained them dry, and were nodding by the time their mother brought out dessert. They munched their way through the little cakes stuffed with prunes or apricots or mildly sweet chocolate, but the filling sweets only made them sleepier. The food slowed Alicia down, too, but she was buoyed by the prospect of sitting up and talking with the adults.
Seeing her daughter’s excitement, Lise Gimpel said, “She doesn’t know yet how boring we can be, with our chatter of children and taxes and work and who’s going to bed with whom.”
“Who is going to bed with whom?” Esther asked. “It’s more interesting than taxes and work, that’s for certain.”
Susanna parodied a Hider Jugend song: “In the fields and on the heath, we lose strength through joy.” Gottlieb Stutzman blushed almost as red as she had before. Teasing him, she said, “Why, Gottlieb, don’t you hope to meet a friendly maiden when you go to work your year in the fields?”
“It is not practical, not for me,” he answered stiffly, rubbing a finger over his peach-fuzz mustache.
“It is not practical for any of us, as Susanna knows.” Walther Stutzman gave her a severe look. “It is also not practical for us to sing that song anywhere but among ourselves. If the Security Police hear it-”
“It’s wiser not to draw the attention of the Security Police in any case,” Lise Gimpel said with her usual solid good sense. “Even children know that.” She looked at her own two younger children, who were valiantly trying not to yawn. “After I get the table cleared away, time for the little ones to go to bed.”
Heinrich Gimpel nodded to Walther and Gottlieb Stutzman. “Nice to have some other men in the house for a change,” he said.
“You are outnumbered, aren’t you?” Walther said. “Me, I kept the numbers even. But then, that’s what they pay me for.” He had a moderately important post with the computer design team at Zeiss.
Everyone, even the men, pitched in to help Lise cart dirty dishes and leftovers (not that there were many of those) back to the kitchen. The two younger Gimpel girls took off their party dresses and put on long cotton nightgowns. They collected kisses from the grown-ups, then went off to their bedroom, not without a couple of sleepily envious glances at Alicia, who got to stay up.
Alicia herself looked curious and excited. She sat on the edge of the couch, her eyes now on her parents, now
