"And the Japanese, of course, are not Aryans,"Herr Kessler said. "Because of this, they have no true creativity of their own. Already they have fallen behind us in technology, and they will fall further behind with each passing year. Our triumph may not come soon, but it is sure." The children nodded solemnly. They knew how important being an Aryan was. Alicia did-all the more so now that she realized she wasn't one.
Math came next. They passed in their homework and did problems on the blackboard. Alicia got hers right. Emma botched hers.Herr Kessler frowned. He flipped through papers. "You were correct on your homework," he rumbled ominously. "Why do you fall down here?"
"I don't know,Herr Kessler," Emma said. "I'm sorry,Herr Kessler." She sounded sorry, too-sorry about what would happen to her when her mother found out she wasn't doing so well.
"Your paper from last night is as good as Alicia Gimpel's," the teacher said, and Alicia's heart leaped into her mouth. Had he realized Emma was copying? But he only set the homework down and went on, "Now you must learn to follow through, as Alicia has done."
"Jawohl, Herr Kessler!" Emma didn't seem worried about cheating. How many times had she copied work before, and from how many different students? Enough to take it for granted-that was plain.
Oddly, Emma's matter-of-factness helped Alicia at lunch. If Emma could keep the teacher from suspecting she was a cheater, why couldn't Alicia keep anyone from suspecting she was a Jew? Emma left evidence, if only Herr Kessler had looked more closely. Alicia didn't: no Hamantaschen in her lunch pail, no mark of Cain on her forehead.Father was right, she thought with enormous relief.If I don't make a silly mistake, no one will think I'm anything but what I've always seemed to be. And one of the things she'd always been was somebody who despised mistakes of any kind, and especially silly ones.
The afternoon turned out to be a snap. She was good in science, and good enough at the computer keyboard-like her father, she was less than graceful, and couldn't type as fast as some of her classmates, but she was accurate. No one gave her any trouble going home, either. Her first day knowing she was a Jew, and she'd got away with it.
A three no-trump contract. Three tricks to play. Heinrich Gimpel needed to take all three to make it. No help in the dummy. Lise sat across the table from him, but they'd got where they were largely out of his hand. He didn't needmuch help; he held the ace and queen of spades and the ace of diamonds. But the king of spades remained unaccounted for. Did Willi Dorsch have it on his right, or did Erika on his left?
Willi had taken the last trick, so it was his lead. He grinned at Heinrich, who smiled back. They both knew what was what. Grinning still, Willi flipped out the jack of spades.
Heinrich kept smiling, too, as much by main force as anything else. Now he had to choose. If he played the queen and Erika had the king, he'd go down. If he played the ace and the king didn't drop, he'd also go down, because he'd have to lead the queen for the last trick, and the king would clobber it.
He glanced at Willi, who chuckled, enjoying his perplexity. Then he looked at Erika. She was worth looking at: heart-shaped face; blue, blue eyes; a wide, generous mouth; gilt hair that hung to her shoulders. However much he enjoyed the excuse to study-hell, to ogle-his friend's wife, though, all the study told him nothing about her hand. Erika took bridge seriously.
The ace or the queen? The lady or the tiger? The devil or the deep blue sea? Heinrich looked back at Willi Dorsch. "You like to lead away from kings," he remarked, and played the queen.
Erika sluffed a heart.
"Ha!" Heinrich said in triumph. He laid down the last two aces. "Made it!"
"Dammit!" Willi said. He laid down the king of spades and the king of diamonds.
"That's the rubber," Erika said sadly. She wrote in the scorebook.
Lise said, "Willi, if you'd led the diamond we would have gone down. Heinrich would have had to take. Then he would have led the ace of spades, and you would have dropped the jack-and had the king waiting for the queen."
Willi thought for a couple of seconds, then said, "Dammit," again, on a different note this time.
"I've spent the last fifteen years trying to teach him not to do things like that, and I haven't had any luck," Erika said. "I don't think you will, either."
"I'm a stubborn goose," Willi remarked, with a certain amount of pride. He gathered up the cards and swept them into a neat pile. "Have we got time for another rubber?"
"What timeis it?" Heinrich looked at his watch. "A quarter past twelve." He raised his eyes to Lise. "What will your sister say?"
"That we're pushing it," she answered. She turned to Erika Dorsch and spread her hands. "You know how it is. You don't want to get your best babysitter mad at you, because if you do you'll never get out of the house again."
"Oh, yes." Erika nodded. The Dorsches' son and daughter were asleep in their bedrooms.They hadn't had to worry about babysitters tonight. And Heinrich hadn't had to worry about bringing Alicia along. Maybe she'll talk to Katarina about things, if her sisters give her the chance, he thought.That will help. She thinks Aunt Kathe's interesting. Lise and I are just-Mama and Papa.
Willi got to his feet. "Don't disappear quite yet. I'll fix one for the road." He headed off into the kitchen.
"Oh, good heavens. My back teeth are already floating." Lise headed off, too, in the direction of the bathroom.
That left Heinrich briefly alone with Erika Dorsch. In a film, he would have run a finger around the inside of his collar. He'd never quite figured out whether she knew how provocative she was. Had things been otherwise, he might have been tempted to find out. As they were…every once in a while, he was tempted to find out anyhow. He'd never yielded to temptation. Too much rode on it.
All she said was, "You played that well," which hardly encouraged fantasies.
Heinrich shrugged. "I thought it was the best chance I had to make. And the four of us have been playing bridge a long time. I know how Willi's beady little mind works." He grinned to make sure Erika didn't take him seriously.
She smiled, too, but only for a moment. "You think about things," she said in musing tones. "And you think other people-even women-can think about things, too." She paused, then added, "I wonder if Lise has any idea how lucky she is." She eyed him speculatively.
Not knowing what to say to that, he didn't say anything.And does Willi have reason to worry about me? he wondered. The mere idea made him nervous for all sorts of reasons, of which temptation was among the least important. When he was tempted by a woman like Erika Dorsch, that showed how urgent the other reasons were.
Not saying anything proved a good idea on general principles, for Lise and Willi both came back into the dining room at the same time. Willi carried a tray with four glasses of Kirsch on it. He couldn't resist doing a little routine with the tray, as if he were one of the English butlers in such demand among wealthy German families. Lise laughed. Erika rolled her eyes up to the ceiling. Plainly, she found her husband less than amusing tonight.
Willi handed everyone a glass of cherry brandy, then raised his own in salute."Sieg heil!" he said.
"Sieg heil!"The others echoed the words. Erika sounded subdued. Heinrich made sure he seemed enthusiastic. So did Lise. If they were the good National Socialists and Aryans they pretended to be, they had to sound that way when they hailed victory…didn't they? All at once, Heinrich wondered. Erika really was an Aryan and, he presumed, a good Nazi. She didn't worry about sounding indifferent. But, being who and what she was, she could afford to slack off on small things. The Gimpels couldn't afford to slack off at all. Like Caesar's wife, they had to be above suspicion, for suspicion meant disaster.
"That's quite a nightcap," Heinrich said, and mimed being hit over the head with a club.
"You can sleep late tomorrow," Willi Dorsch said, knocking back his own Kirsch.