When Heinrich came through the door a few minutes later, Alicia-who hadn't yet started getting rid of the potatoes-Francesca, and Roxane all swarmed downstairs to give him hugs and kisses. He needed a couple of minutes to wade through them and make his way into the kitchen. He hugged Lise and kissed her, then noticed the glass of schnapps on the counter near the sink. "Tough day?" he asked. Lise nodded. Her husband pointed to the glass. "Must have been. You don't usually do that. What happened?"
"Later." Lise nodded in the direction of the children.
"Oh." Heinrich nodded, too. He went to the cabinet for a glass of his own and also filled it full of schnapps. "Well, here's to us."
"To us," Lise agreed. They both drank. Their daughters wandered into the kitchen. Roxane wanted to help. Francesca wanted to tell her father about something that had happened at school. Lise couldn't tell what Alicia wanted-maybe just to remind herself that they were a family. Alicia kept eyeing her little sisters with an expression that said,I know something you don't know.
By what she'd said to Lise a little while before, she wished she didn't.
After a while, the girls went back upstairs. "Make sure you get clean," Lise reminded Roxane-she'd sometimes skip a bath if she saw the chance.
"Well?" Heinrich asked.
Lise sighed. In a low, weary voice, she said, "Alicia said she didn't want to be a Jew. She said maybe the Einsatzkommandos knew what they were doing when they got rid of us."
"Oh. Oh, hell." Heinrich reached for his glass of schnapps and gulped at it. The laugh that burst from him was an ugly sound, one that had nothing to do with mirth. "Well, God knows she's not the first one of us to feel that way."
"I understand that," Lise said. "But still…"
"Yes. But still." Another swig and her husband's glass was empty. He poured it down like that about as often as Lise drank alone. With another ugly laugh, he said, "Did I ever tell you I wanted to be an SS man when I was a little boy? Before I knew, I mean."
"No." Lise shook her head in astonishment. They'd been married almost fifteen years, but startling things still surfaced, like rocks working their way up through thin soil. "No, you never said a word about that."
"Well, I did. I thought the black uniform was the most wonderful thing in the world, and of course this wasn't too long after we beat the United States, so SS men were heroes in all the movies and televisor shows where Wehrmacht men weren't. When my father told me, I didn't want to believe him. For a long time after that-along time, I'm telling you-I thought we had it coming to us."
"You never said anything about that. Never," Lise said.
Instead of answering right away, Heinrich poured himself another glass of schnapps. His back was to her as he said, "It's not exactly something I'm proud of, you know."
"I think we all go through it," Lise said. "You sound like you had it worse than most of us, though."
"I probably did." Her husband shook his head, still not looking at her. "No, I certainly did. Even now, there are days when working at Oberkommando der Wehrmacht seems like a poor second best, and I ought to have the SS runes on my collar tabs."
"Could you have kept up the masquerade if you did?" Lise asked.
"Some people do," Heinrich said, and she nodded. He sighed. "I'm glad-most of me is glad-I didn't have to try, though. Do you want me to talk with Alicia? Is she all right?"
"Maybe don't push it too hard right now," Lise said after a little thought. "You know how, how-overwhelming it can be. I think she'll settle down. She just realized she'll alwaysknow what she is, no matter what she decides to do about it."
"Ah, yes," Heinrich said. "That's another moment we all have, sure enough. The curse of knowledge…"
"Alicia thinks it's a curse right now," Lise said.
"I don't know what to do about it." Heinrich set about emptying that second glass of schnapps. "I wish I did, but I don't think anybody who's…in our boat does."
"We ought to have the Stutzmans over again," Lise said. "Anna's been coping with it for more than a year now. Maybe she can help Alicia-and even if she can't, they can play together. And I was on the phone with Esther this afternoon, and she says Susanna's back from London with all sorts of wild stories."
"Sounds good to me," Heinrich said. "I'm going to have lunch with Walther in the Tiergarten tomorrow. I'll set something up then, and you can call Susanna."
"All right." Lise nodded. "What does Walther want to talk about?" She assumed he wanted to talk about something. People met in Berlin's greatest park to get out in the open air-and also to get away from the possibility of talking where microphones might overhear.
Her husband answered with a shrug. "Don't know yet. I'll find out."
"Fair enough," Lise said. "What's new at work?"
"Not much. We're all waiting to see what sort of Fuhrer Heinz Buckliger makes, same as everybody else." Heinrich held up a hand. "Wait. I take it back. There is one other interesting thing. These past few days, Willi's been very friendly with Ilse, for whatever that may be worth."
"The secretary?" Lise asked. Heinrich nodded. Her next question was obvious: "Is she worth being friendly to?"
"Well, she doesn't do anything for me," he answered. "Of course, I'm not Willi, and I'm not squabbling with my wife. I hope I'm not, anyway." He leaned over and kissed her.
"You'd better not be," Lise said. "How does Ilse compare to Erika?"
"As far as looks go, she doesn't," Heinrich said. "But she's not telling Willi all the different kinds of fool he is every time he turns around, either. That's got to count for something, wouldn't you think?"
"It would with me," Lise agreed. "But with a man, who can say?" Heinrich made a face at that, but he didn't try to argue with her.
Walther Stutzman liked the Tiergarten. He enjoyed eating lunch there, regardless of whether he needed to talk with someone in something approaching privacy. If he brought a sandwich and some fruit and a vacuum flask of coffee to the large park west of the Brandenburg Gate, he could imagine himself in the country-if the country in which he imagined himself included plenty of other people eating, watching birds, strolling hand in hand, walking or running for exercise, or lying around in the sun in any clothing or next to none. The Berlin police did frown on complete public nudity, but more as a matter of excessive zeal than one of criminal intent. And what might go on under cover of the bushes…neither Walther nor the police were in the habit of investigating too closely.
Today he made a point of getting to the Tiergarten early, so he could stake out a bench before the noontime crowd made looking for one a hopeless chore. The grass was long and green. Come fall, a snorting harvester would mow it down and turn it into hay for animal fodder. In the meantime, it grew as it would.
He found a place to sit near the Hubertus fountain and the bronze fox-hunting group at the center of the park. He smiled, pleased with himself; he'd told Heinrich to start looking for him by the fountain. And here came his friend. Heinrich's gangly height and ungainly walk made him impossible to miss. Walther stood up and waved. A couple of beats slower than he should have, Heinrich waved back and came toward him.
"Hello," Walther said. "Nice day, isn't it?"
"Why, so it is," Heinrich said in mild surprise, as if he'd only just realized it. Maybe he had; there were times when Walther wondered how much that went on outside his own head his friend noticed. Heinrich sat down beside him."Was ist los?"
"You know about the Kleins?" Walther said.
"Oh, yes." Heinrich nodded, his long face set in unhappy lines. "I do know about that. What's up with them?"
"I changed their genealogy, to give them a couple of possibly Jewish ancestors," Walther said. Heinrich nodded again. With a sigh, Walther went on, "Their pediatrician is too damned efficient, though. He compared the revised chart with one he had from when their first son was born, and he noticed the changes. He not only noticed, he called in the genealogical authorities."