Her thought must have shown on her face, for her father reached out and tousled her hair. "You see?" he asked gently.
Alicia gave back a reluctant nod. "I guess I do." Then a really nasty thought occurred to her, one that made her gasp with fright. "What if the Kleinsare doing that now? What if they're helping to catchus?"
"It's possible," her father admitted. All the terror Alicia had felt when she first found out she was a Jew, terror that had eased a little with the passage of time, came flooding back. But he went on, "It's possible, but I don't think it's true. If they were only pretending everything was all right last night, they could have been movie actors, they were doing such a good job. And besides, if the Security Police squeezed our names out of them, they wouldn't need to play games. They'd just break down the door in the middle of the night and take us away."
"Ja,"Alicia said, more than a little relieved. That was what the Security Police did, all right. Everybody knew it. Her heart stopped thumping quite so hard.
Her father laughed. "Funny, isn't it, that they're always such bastards that knowing they haven't been mean shows they really did let the Kleins go free?"
"That's just what I was thinking!" Alicia exclaimed. "How did you know?"
"Because I was thinking the same thing," he answered, "and I'm just as happy about it as you are, believe me." Alicia did.
Esther Stutzman was trying to juggle three phone calls, two mothers who needed to make return appointments, and another mother who was arguing about her bill when the door to Dr. Dambach's waiting room opened. Instantly, all the women with squalling children in the waiting room tried to shush them. The sight of a stern-faced man in a uniform did that to people, even if the dark brown outfit wasn't one most men and women in the Reich recognized at sight. Who wanted to take a chance?
Maximilian Ebert strode up to the receptionist's station. Ignoring mothers and children, the man from the Reichs Genealogical Office clicked his heels, as he had the first time he visited the pediatrician's office. " Guten Tag, Frau Stutzman," he said. "I need to see Dr. Dambach right away."
Esther wished he hadn't remembered her name. There were several reasons he might have, and she liked none of them. She took what revenge she could by answering, "I'm very sorry, but he's with a patient at the moment. If you care to sit down and wait, I'm sure it won't be too long." By the way she said it, she might have been sure he'd wait for weeks.
But Ebert wasn't about to inconvenience himself like an ordinary person. "Please tell him I am here," he said. "I'm sure he will see me immediately."
"The nerve!" said a woman from behind his back. He stiffened, but did not turn.
"One moment, please," Esther told him; the request was too reasonable for her to refuse outright. When she went back to talk to Dr. Dambach, she found him poised with a hypodermic needle above a baby's round bare bottom. She waited till he gave the shot and the baby yowled. Then she said, "Excuse me, Doctor, but Herr Ebert is here. He needs to see you right away, he says."
"Herr Ebert?" Dambach looked blank.
"From the Reichs Genealogical Office," Esther said, wishing Ebert had never had any reason to visit the pediatrician.
"Oh. Him." Memory jogged, Dr. Dambach nodded. "What the devil does he want now?" Esther only shrugged. Dr. Dambach muttered. Before answering her, Dambach turned to the baby's mother. "Dora may be cranky and run a small fever for a day or two. Acetaminophen syrup should relieve most of the symptoms. If she's in more distress than that-which is very unlikely-bring her back in."
"Thank you, Doctor. I will," the woman said.
Still muttering, Dambach gave his attention back to Esther. "I suppose I'd better see him. Bring him to my private office, and I'll be there in a few minutes. I have another patient to see first."
"All right, Doctor." Esther went out and delivered the word to Maximilian Ebert.
"Thank you very much," he said, and then, once she'd taken him into the office, "Have you got a telephone number, my sweet?"
She'd thought he was unduly attentive the last time he came in. This…"What I have,Herr Ebert, are two children and a husband."
He stared at her in what looked like honest bewilderment and asked, "What's that got to do with anything?"
"I'm fond of all of them, thank you very much," she said. "And now, if you'll excuse me…" She went back out to the receptionist's station, where she announced, "Dr. Dambach has a visitor. He'll be with you as soon as he can, I promise." She nodded to the woman who'd questioned her bill. "I'm sorry for the delay,Frau Mommsen. What were you saying?"
Frau Mommsen poured out a history of her troubles, most of which had little to do with the twenty-five Reichsmarks she owed Dr. Dambach. Esther listened with half an ear. Most of her attention was on the pediatrician's private office. She hoped Dambach would tell Maximilian Ebert where to go and how to get there. She knew it was a forlorn hope, but she cherished it just the same.
Dr. Dambach didn't even get in there for another ten minutes. Esther could hear the functionary from the Genealogical Office drumming his fingers on Dambach's desk. "About time," Ebert said when the doctor finally did appear.
"You're the one who's interrupting my work," Dambach replied, his voice chilly. "What do you want?"
Before she could find out what he wanted, someone new to the practice-a woman with a squalling toddler in her arms-came up and had to be guided through Dr. Dambach's paperwork. Because the little boy cried all through the process, Esther caught only brief snatches of conversation from the doctor's office: "…got a lot of nerve blaming me for…" "…put all of us in hot…" "…my fault, when I was only trying to…" "…but this is how it turned…"
Dr. Dambach said something else in response to that. A moment later, Maximilian Ebert stormed out of his office and out of the waiting room, fury on his face. He tried to slam the door that led to the hall, but the shock-absorbing arm at the top of the door thwarted him. The slowly closing door cut off his curses when at last it did swing shut.
"Goodness!" said the woman with the toddler. "What got underhis skin?"
"I don't know," Esther answered. "Whatever it is, I hope it's nothing trivial." The woman gave her a strange look, then decided she couldn't have meant what she said and forgot about it.
But Esther had meant every word. She stayed busy till noon dealing with mothers, children, and the occasional father. When the office closed for lunch, she went back to bring Dr. Dambach a fresh cup of coffee in the hopes that he might feel like talking. "Oh, thank you," he said around a mouthful of sandwich. "I was just going to get up and pour myself one."
When he said no more, Esther took the bull by the horns: "Why did that Ebert fellow storm out of here as though he had a Messerschmitt on his tail?"
"Him?" Dambach gave forth with a dismissive grunt. "I think we've seen the last of him, and I can't say I'm sorry, either. What he basically told me was that I had done my job too well. I'm sorry,Frau Stutzman, but the only way I know how to do it is as well as I can."
"Well, I should say so," Esther said, still wishing he'd been less conscientious. "What on earth was he talking about?"
"When the Kleins had the Tay-Sachs baby and the altered genealogical chart, they were suspected of being Jews," the pediatrician answered. "You know about that."
"Oh, yes." Esther nodded. "I know about that. What has it got to do with you doing your job too well?"
"Everyone in the Reichs Genealogical Office, and, for all I know, the Security Police, too, was all set to make an enormous hue and cry over it, and why not? It's been years since any Jews turned up in Berlin, for heaven's sake."