"Jesus!" said a blackshirt behind Alicia. "She's even worse than the other two brats. Maybe that son of a bitch really isn't a goddamn sheeny."
"Why'd they grab him, then?" asked the one at the desk. "If they grab you, you bet your ass you deserve it." He glowered at Alicia. He had a red, beefy face, with black-heads on his nose and between his eyebrows. His teeth were yellow; his breath stank of old cigars. "If you don't tell us the truth, you'll be sorry."
"Iam telling the truth," Alicia lied. "Why don't you believe me? All I want to do is go home." She sure told the truth there. She wanted to cry, but held back her tears. When she did cry, it felt as if the Security Police had won something from her.
The blackshirts hadn't slapped her or hit her or done anything worse than that. As far as she knew, they hadn't hurt her sisters, either. Maybe even the Security Police didn't like the idea of torturing little girls. Alicia had her doubts about that. If you joined the Security Police, you had to want to hurt people, didn't you? More likely, they weren't sure enough about Daddy to have too much of that kind of fun.
They won't find anything out from me,Alicia vowed.And they really won't find anything out from Francesca and Roxane.
Scowling, the blackshirt who smelled like cigar butts said, "What do you know about"-he looked down at some notes on the desk-"Erika Dorsch?"
"Frau Dorsch?" Alicia said in surprise-this was a new tack. "The Dorsches are Daddy and Mommy's friends, that's all." This fellow couldn't think she was a Jew…could he?
With a leer, the man from the Security Police asked, "Is this Dorsch galreal good friends with your old man?" The other blackshirts laughed.
Most of that went over Alicia's head. "I don't know," she answered. "They all play bridge together and they talk till it's late."
"Bridge?" The blackshirt threw back his head and snorted in contempt. He needed to blow his nose. Alicia fought against revulsion. The man asked, "Whatother games do they play?" His pals laughed again.
Still out of her depth, Alicia only shrugged. "I don't know about any other games. I don't know what you're talking about."
"Forget it, Hans," said one of the fellows behind Alicia. "If this Gimpel bastard is fooling around with her, the kid doesn't know about it."
That was plain enough for Alicia to understand. She gasped at the very idea. "Daddy wouldn't do any such thing!" she exclaimed. "Not ever!"
All the blackshirts laughed at that. "No, eh?" said the one who was questioning her. "I sure as hell would. She's a piece and a half." He looked past her to his buddies. "You guys seen a picture of this broad? She's a blonde, good looking, built…" His hands described an hourglass in the air. "Hell, I'd crawl through a thousand kilometers of broken glass just to let her piss on my toothbrush."
"Ewww!" Alicia's voice rose to a thin squeak. "That's disgusting!" The men from the Security Police thought her horror was funnier than their friend's joke.
The interrogator thought revolting her was pretty funny, too. He kept on asking her questions after that, but he didn't seem so mean and threatening any more. It wasn't much worse than getting grilled by Herr Kessler.He taught me all kinds of things-including some he probably didn't intend to, she thought.
Even so, she knew she'd never be able to look at Frau Dorsch the same way again.
Finally, the man from the Security Police turned off the desk lamp. "Well, kid, that's enough of that for a while," he said in oddly intimate tones, as if what they'd been doing together had somehow made them friends. Maybe he thought it had. He stepped back, straightened up, and stretched. Trying to get her to say things that would kill her father-and, incidentally, herself-was all in a day's work for him. "Go on, Ulf. Take her back with the rest of the snotnoses."
You should talk,Alicia thought. They'd made her miss supper. This wasn't the first time that had happened. She knew the staff at the foundlings' home wouldn't give her anything till breakfast. If you weren't there when they dished out a meal, that was your tough luck. They weren't actively cruel, but they had no give whatever in them.
She lay down on her cot. Even if the blackshirts hadn't beaten her, she felt trampled and miserable. For Hans and Ulf and the others, this was all just a game, a game they'd played hundreds or thousands of times before. Alicia's life was on the line, and her father's, and her sisters', and she knew it. And she didn't see how she could win.
Paula came into their room. In a practically inaudible whisper, she said, "Here. When I saw they weren't going to let you go, I swiped these for you." Like a magician pulling a rabbit out of a top hat, she produced two hard rolls from under her dress and tossed them to Alicia.
Alicia blinked. "If they caught you, you'd get in big trouble."
"Well, then, you'd better destroy the evidence, eh?" Paula wasn't especially smart, not in the way that got you good grades at school. Alicia could tell. But the other girl had a feel for whatneeded doing, one that Alicia couldn't begin to match. She took Paula's advice. The rolls quickly disappeared. They tasted like sawdust. Empty as Alicia was, she didn't care. "Better?" Paula asked when she was done.
"Ja,"Alicia said. "Thank you!"
"For what?" Paula waved it away. "Those shitheads are giving you a hard time. Anybody can see that. If they were giving a vulture a hard time, I'd try and get him some dead, smelly meat."
Springs squeaked as Alicia shifted on the cot. One of them poked at her, too, so she shifted again. She stuck her head out and flapped her arms as if she were a vulture. Paula thought that was so funny, she buried her face in her pillow to muffle her laughter. Alicia watched her out of the corner of her eye. The other girl acted like somebody who hated the Reich and the Nazis and everything they stood for. But if it was an act and Alicia fell for it, she'd ruin herself and her whole family. And so she wouldn't fall for it.
If Paula really did hate the Reich and the Nazis…then she did, that was all. Alicia couldn't afford to let on that she did, too, except for arresting her when they had no business to. And that, maybe, was the hardest, the saddest, thing of all.
Heinrich Gimpel sat in his cell, waiting for whatever happened next. That was all he could do. Boredom mixed with occasional terror-that was what his life in prison had been. He could see how the blend was in and of itself part of what broke prisoners down. As he sat on the cot, he could practically feel his mind slowing down, slowing down, slowing…
And he was better equipped than most to fight boredom. He had a fine memory. He could call up books and plays and films in his mind, trying to squeeze out every last detail. He could set up complicated accounting problems and solve them in his head instead of with a calculator. He could remember the last time he'd made love with Lise, and the time before that, and the quickie they'd sneaked in, and…
He could worry. He spent a lot of time worrying. That was part of leaving him here by himself, too. He knew as much, and tried to fight against it. There, he didn't have much luck.
He was brooding and wishing he weren't when guards clumped up the hallway toward his cell. One opened the door while two others pointed assault rifles at him. He couldn't understand why they thought he was so dangerous. Under different circumstances, it might have been flattering.
"Come on, you," growled the guard with the key. "Your mouthpiece is waiting."
As Heinrich rose, he got a whiff of himself. His nostrils curled. He'd done his best to stay clean, but his best wasn't very good. And he was still wearing the uniform in which he'd been arrested. It was ranker than he was.