He sipped from the cup Esther had brought him. "This is much better," he told her. "I don't know how you make that miserable thing behave, but you always manage to." Esther only smiled. If the pediatrician wanted to think she was a genius when it came to coffee, she wouldn't complain. He tapped at the papers on his desk. "I've found something interesting-something peculiar, even."
Was he trying to show that he was good for something even if he couldn't make coffee worth a damn? Esther already knew that. She also knew she had to ask, "What is it, Dr. Dambach?" and sound interested when she did.
And then, all of a sudden, shewas interested, vitally and painfully interested, for he said, "Do you remember the case of Paul Klein a few days ago?"
"The poor baby with that horrible disease?" Esther said, doing her best not to think,The poor baby who's a Jew.
"Yes, that's right. I have found a fascinating discrepancy on his parents' genealogical records."
Dear God! Did Walther make a mistake?None of the fear Esther felt showed on her face. If she'd shown fear whenever she felt it, she would have gone around looking panic-stricken all the time. When she said, "Really?" she sounded intrigued, but no more than a good secretary should have.
Dr. Dambach nodded. "I don't know what to make of it, either," he said. "In the records I got from the Reichs Genealogical Office, both Richard and Maria Klein are shown to have distant ancestors who may possibly have been…well, Jews."
"Good heavens!" Esther had had a lot of practice simulating that kind of shock.
"As I say, these were distant ancestors," Dambach went on hastily. "Nothing to involve the Security Police, believe me. I don't care for that business any more than you do."I doubt that, Esther thought.I doubt that very much. The pediatrician, fortunately oblivious, continued. "But the slight Jewish taint would help account for the presence of the Tay-Sachs gene on both sides of the family."
"I see," Esther said. What she didn't see was where the problem lay in that case.
Dambach proceeded to spell it out for her: "While I was going through the Kleins' records, I happened to come across another copy of their family tree, one they'd given me when Paul's older brother, Eduard, was born.Those pedigrees show unquestioned Aryan ancestry on both sides of the family, as far back as can be traced."
"How…very strange," Esther said through lips suddenly stiff with dread. Changing a computer record threw any future hounds off the scent, yes. But compare the change to a printout from before it was made…I should have pulled those records from Eduard's chart,Esther thought. But it had never crossed her mind. Eduard had been born before she came to work at Dambach's office, and she'd forgotten about his files. Guilt made her want to sink through the floor.
"Strange indeed. I've never seen another case like it," Dr. Dambach said. "And what's even stranger is, I called the Reichs Genealogical Office yesterday afternoon, and they said their records show no signs of tampering."
Thank heaven for that,Esther thought.Walther's safe. But were Richard and Maria Klein? "Maybe…I hate to say this of people, but maybe they tried to hide their Jews in the woodpile, and used altered documents to do it," Esther suggested, doing her best for them. "Even if you're not enough of a Mischling to be disposed of, a lot of folks don't care to have anything to do with you if you've got even a trace of Jew blood."
"Altering official documents is illegal," Dambach said severely. But then he paused, a thoughtful expression on his round face. "Still, I suppose it could be. It makes more sense than anything I thought of. I would have hoped, though, that the Kleins might have trusted their children's physician. I am, after all, a man with some experience of the world. I know that a small taint of Jewish ancestry may be forgiven. It's not as if they were half breeds or full bloods, for heaven's sake-as if there were such folk at the heart of the Reich in this day and age."
"Of course not, Doctor. What a ridiculous idea." Esther Stutzman clamped down hard on a scream. Dr. Dambach thought of himself as a man of the world, but he thought-he'd been trained to think-of Jews as different from other people. He thought of himself as tolerant for being willing to ignore some distant trace of Jewish ancestry. And so, for the Greater German Reich, he was…
The pediatrician arranged papers in a neat stack. "As I say, I am a man with some experience of the world. I have seen forged genealogical papers before. You would be surprised how many people want to claim a grander ancestry than they really own. Most of them are crude jobs, though-altered photocopies and such. But what the Kleins gave me with Eduard seems perfectly authentic."
That's because itisperfectly authentic, at least as far as the Reichs Genealogical Office knows. "As long as you have the proper information now, is there really any point to making a fuss?" Esther said. If Dambach said no, she could go out to her receptionist's station and breathe a sigh of relief when he wasn't looking.
But Dambach didn't say anything at all. He just sat there eyeing the different sets of genealogical records. Esther knew she'd pushed things as far as she could. If she said another word, her boss would start wondering why she was sticking up for the Kleins so much.Don't let anyone start wondering about you might have been the eleventh commandment for Jews in the Reich. A smile on her face, she walked out of Dr. Dambach's private office.
She had plenty with which to busy herself out front: filing, billing, preparing dunning letters for people whose payments were late. She bit her lip when the pediatrician used the telephone, even though she couldn't make out whom he was calling.His wife, his brother, his mother, she thought hopefully.
The telephone she was in charge of-not Dambach's personal line-began to ring, too. Patients and their parents-mostly their mothers-started coming in. She scheduled appointments and led children and the grownups with them back to examination rooms. Once, she made a followup appointment with a specialist for a boy whose broken arm wasn't healing as straight as Dambach would have liked.
As noon approached, the flood of people coming in slowed down and the flood of people going out picked up. Dr. Dambach sometimes worked straight through lunch, but this didn't look like a day where he would have to. Esther relaxed a little. She got the chance to look around for things she could take care of before she went home. That way, Irma wouldn't have to worry about them this afternoon, and Esther herself wouldn't have to worry about them tomorrow morning.
The last patient had just left when the door to the waiting room opened again. Esther looked up in annoyance-was someone trying to bring in a child without first making an appointment? Unless it was an emergency, she intended to send anyone that foolish away with a flea in his ear.
But the tall man in the unfamiliar dark brown uniform was not carrying a baby or holding a child by the hand. He nodded to her. "This is the office of Dr. Martin Dambach?" he inquired, his accent Bavarian.
"Yes, that's right," Esther answered. "And you are…?"
"Maximilian Ebert,Reichs Genealogical Office, at your service." He actually clicked his heels. Esther tried to remember the last time she'd seen anyone outside of the cinema do that-tried and failed. The man from the Genealogical Office went on, "Dr. Dambach is in?"
Esther wanted to tell him no. Had she thought that would make him go away and never come back, she would have. As things were, she had to hide alarm and reluctance when she nodded. "Yes, he is. One moment, please." She went back to Dr. Dambach's office. The pediatrician was eating a liverwurst sandwich. "Excuse me, Doctor, but a Herr Ebert from the Reichs Genealogical Office is here to see you."
"Is he?" Dr. Dambach said with his mouth full. He swallowed heroically; Esther thought of an anaconda engulfing a tapir. When Dambach spoke again, his voice was clear: "I didn't expect him so soon. Please tell him he can come in." He stuck the remains of the sandwich in a desk drawer.