"Don't worry about it." With an expansive wave, Willi brushed aside gratitude.
They walked toward the bus stop. After a few strides, Heinrich asked, "Why didn't you argue with me more?"
"Are you kidding?" Willi said. "You looked like a goose walked over your grave. You were going to get the hell out of there regardless of whether I came along. So I figured I might as well come." He made things sound simple. He usually did-whether they were or not.
"Thanks," Heinrich said again. After another few paces, he added, "It wasn't a goose-but you're close enough."
"Come on, Heinrich!" Lise said. "Do you want to be late for work?" She looked toward the stairway. Alicia, Francesca, and Roxane should have come down for their breakfast. They hadn't, not yet. Lise threw her hands in the air. "Does everybody want to be late this morning?"
"I'm going, I'm going," her husband said. He put down his coffee cup, gave her a quick, caffeinated kiss, grabbed his attache case, and hurried out the front door, calling, "Good-bye, girls!" as he went.
Only silence from the second floor. Two minutes later, though…Lise decided that couldn't possibly be a herd of buffalo on the stairs, which meant it had to be her daughters. They swarmed into the kitchen. By the way they ate, she hadn't fed them for six or eight weeks. Eggs, bacon, sweet rolls-where were they putting it all?
"I ought to make you take off your shoes and see if you're hiding breakfast in there," Lise said. The girls made faces at her. The time they'd spent in that foundlings' home didn't seem to have done them any harm. Francesca and Roxane were still sure they'd gone there by mistake. Alicia knew better, even if she couldn't say so while her sisters were around. But even she was young enough to have a lot more resilience than most grownups would have. And she was young enough for death not to seem altogether real to her, which also helped.
Lise wished she could say the same. She'd died ten thousand times before her husband and children came home.
Then Roxane raced up the stairs with a wail of dismay: "I forgot to do my arithmetic homework!"
Unlike her sisters, she did such things every once in a while. This time, at least, she remembered she'd forgotten. "Work fast!" Lise called. "You still have to catch the bus."
"We could go on, Mommy," Francesca said.
"No, wait for your sister. You've got time." Lise looked at the clock on the range. "I hope you've got time. She'd better not take too long." Another glance at the clock. Why couldn't mornings ever run smoothly?Because then they wouldn't be mornings, that's why.
"She could do some of her homeworkon the bus," Alicia suggested.
"Let her do as much as she can upstairs," Lise said. Roxane liked to chat with friends when she rode to and from school. She was always talking about how they said this to that, or that about this. Once she was out of the house, even the threat of getting in trouble might not hold her to doing what she needed to do. "Hurry up, Roxane!"
"I'm hurrying!" That was a frantic screech.
Just when Lise was about to go upstairs and get her littlest daughter, Roxane came pounding down. "All right. I'm done." She was all smiles again.
"For heaven's sake, try to remember to do your homework when you're supposed to," Lise said. Roxane nodded solemnly. She'd be good now-till the next time she wasn't. Then they would go through this again.Well, so what? Lise thought.Next to getting arrested and killed, forgotten arithmetic isn't so much of a much, now is it?
Kisses all around. If Lise's were more heartfelt than they had been before the girls got taken away-well, then they were, that was all. Alicia, Francesca, and Roxane probably didn't even notice. Good-byes. Out the door the girls went. There was Emma Handrick, just coming out of her house up the street. If she wasn't late, they weren't, either. And she wasn't. So they weren't.
Lise closed the door. Sudden quiet inside the house. Not just quiet-peace. Time seemed to slow down after the frantic jangling of getting her family off to work and school. Now she could fix herself another cup of coffee, sit back, and listen to music for a little while. She could, and she would. After half an hour or so, her own batteries recharged, she could get on with the things she had to do today.
Plenty of cream and plenty of sugar in the coffee, a Strauss waltz coming from the radio, a couple of song thrushes and a blackbird hopping in the back yard hunting for worms…It wasn't bad. It would have been better if she hadn't gone through terror not long before, but it wasn't bad.
And then the waltz disappeared. It hadn't ended; it just stopped, halfway through. Close to a minute of dead air followed.Somebody's going to catch it, Lise thought. Foulups like that didn't happen very often.
Music began again. But this still wasn't the vanished waltz. It was "Deutschland uber Alles." The "Horst Wessel Song" came hard on its heels. Lise's brief sense of peace had shattered well before she heard the second national anthem. There hadn't been a mistake at the radio station. Something had gone wrong, badly wrong, somewhere in the wider world.
The "Horst Wessel Song" ended. After another stretch of silence, a man's voice came on the air: "The following important statement comes to you from the State Committee for the Salvation of the Greater German Reich."
What the devil is the State Committee for the Salvation of the Greater German Reich?Lise wondered. She'd never heard of it. The government had nine million different committees and bureaus and commissions, so she didn't know how much that proved, but if it wasn't important, what was it doing on the air like this?
"the Fuhrer, Heinz Buckliger, has been taken ill on the island of Hvar," the man said. "As a result of this illness, he no longer has the capacity to rule our beloved Reich. Under such emergency conditions, the State Committee will administer affairs."
Lise frowned. That sounded like…But it couldn't be. Nobody since the Night of the Long Knives, more than seventy-five years earlier, had tried to seize power like this.
The announcer went on, "We address you at a great and critical hour for the future of the Vaterland and of our Volk. A mortal danger now looms large over our great Vaterland. The policy of so-called reforms, launched at Heinz Buckliger's initiative and allegedly designed to ensure the Reich 's dynamic development, has in fact gone down a blind alley. This is the result of deliberate actions on the part of those who trample on the laws of the Greater German Reich so they can stage an unconstitutional Putsch and gather all personal power into their hands. Millions of people now demand stern measures against this gross illegality."
"Du lieber Gott!" Lise exclaimed. Whoever was on the State Committee for the Salvation of the Greater German Reich, they really meant it.
"By order of the State Committee, citizens of the Reich are to remain calm," the announcer said-and if that wasn't a command designed to spread panic, she didn't know what would be. The fellow continued, "The holding of meetings, street processions, demonstrations, and strikes isverboten. In case of need, a curfew and military patrols will be imposed. Important government and economic installations will be placed under guard by the SS, which remains loyal to the ideals of the state even in this time of corruption."
Aha!Lise thought. Now she could make a good guess about who was behind the Committee and the Putsch.
"Decisive measures will be taken to stop the spreading of subversive rumors, actions that threaten the disruption of law and order and the creation of tension, and disobedience to the authorities responsible for implementing the state of emergency." What did the announcer feel about the words in front of him? Was he for the Putsch? Did he hate it? He read like a machine, droning on mechanically: "Control will be established over all radio and televisor stations. Now serving as interim Fuhrer of the Reich and of the Germanic Empire is Odilo Globocnik-"