A cheer rang out, drowning his next few words. Heinrich joined it. He pumped his fist in the air. Willi Dorsch pounded him on the back.
"-wants you to come to the square in front of his residence," Stolle's amateur spokesman said when Heinrich could next hear him over the din. "How can the SS cut him down when all Berlin is watching? It may be dangerous, but-"
Heinrich waited to hear no more than that. He turned around and started swimming upstream against the throngs still battling to get into the cafeteria. "Where are you going?" Willi asked him.
"To Stolle's residence. Weren't you listening?" Heinrich answered. "After what Prutzmann's bully boys just did to me, you think I'm going to let them screw the Reich, too, if I can do anything to stop 'em?" The Reich would be worse off with the SS in charge than with Heinz Buckliger, yes. Jews, he had no doubt, would be disastrously worse off. But his being a Jew played only a small part in this. As he'd said, it was personal.
He didn't look behind him. Suddenly, though, he had help breasting the crowd. "I'm with you," Willi said.
When Esther Stutzman turned the key to the outer door and walked into the waiting room, the radio in Dr. Dambach's office was blaring out patriotic marches. She scratched her head. The pediatrician didn't usually listen to that kind of music. He wanted something soft and calm in the office, something that might soothe both a crying baby and a worried mother.
"Dr. Dambach?" Esther called.
He must not have heard her over the thump of drums and the bronze clangor of bugles. Then the march ended and an announcer said, "Now, here is Reichsfuhrer- SS Lothar Prutzmann to explain the goals of the State Committee for the Salvation of the Greater German Reich."
"Dr. Dambach?" Esther called again, her voice this time rising in astonishment. What on earth had happened while she was coming to work?
Now her boss heard her. "Come in here and listen to this," he said. "I think they've gone right off the deep end."
It sounded that way to Esther, too. She hardly remembered to close the door behind her before hurrying into Dr. Dambach's inner office. In a surprisingly high, thin voice, Prutzmann was saying, "-obvious symptoms of overwork and stress necessitated the Fuhrer 's stepping down for reasons of health. Odilo Globocnik, our interim Fuhrer, has already shown that he is fully up to the demands of the position."
"What the-?" Esther said. Dambach just pointed at the radio and mouthed,Listen.
"We have already outlined the prohibitions necessary for the success of the State Committee for the Salvation of the Greater German Reich." The Reichsfuhrer -SS brought out the cumbersome name without a bobble. He might have been mulling it over in his mind for a long, long time before pronouncing it in public. He went on, "Now we must set forth the goals for which we struggle.
"First, we shall roll back the anti-Germanic, antistate measures Herr Buckliger was unwise enough to introduce. Aryan supremacy must always be the primary objective of the Greater German Reich. We struggle for the richness and variety of the Aryan's life in peacetime. We struggle for man's right to Kultur. This is the basis of the new social order in Europe. The capable individual must be able to occupy by his efforts the place for which he is fitted. And we struggle for the final solution to the question regarding the worker's standing. In the Reich, the path leading the worker to a secure existence has already been trodden. German workers are no longer proletarians. They have a legal claim to work, an adequate wage, medical care, and pensions. All this the so-called reforms of the Buckliger regime have threatened. But we, duty-bound to the highest concept of Aryan blood and honor, have rescued the state from his clutches. Order will soon be fully restored, so long as you obey. Thank you, and good morning.Heil Globocnik!"
The patriotic marches resumed, as loud and bombastic as before. With a gesture of disgust, Dr. Dambach turned the radio way down. "Isn't that a fine kettle of fish,Frau Stutzman?" he said. "They blather about law and order, but what's their blathering worth? I respect law and order. They don't. They throw such things over the side as soon as it'stheir ox being gored. Pah!" For a moment, Esther thought he would spit on the carpet.
"Everything was fine when I left the house this morning," Esther said, still dazed. "Or I thought it was, anyhow."
"Well, it isn't fine now," Dambach said. "Heaven only knows when it'll be fine again. Talk about your hypocrites and whited sepulchers!" He made as if to spit again, and again seemed barely able to check himself.
"What do you mean?" Esther asked.
"Don't you recall?" Dr. Dambach said in surprise. "The whole business with the Kleins and how they escaped the suspicion of being Jews after they had that poor baby with Tay-Sachs disease?"
"Of course I remember that they ended up being set free," Esther answered. "Didn't that nasty man from the Reichs Genealogical Office say they got away because Lothar Prutzmann's niece had also had a Tay-Sachs baby?"
"Maximilian Ebert. A nasty man indeed." Dambach's round face was roundly disapproving. "But you seem to miss the point, or at least part of the point. What is the most likely explanation for the fact that Prutzmann's niece had a baby with Tay-Sachs?"
"I'm very sorry, Doctor, but you're right-I think I am missing the point," Esther said.
The pediatrician clucked reproachfully. "The most likely explanation for the fact that Lothar Prutzmann's niece had a baby with Tay-Sachs disease-not the only explanation, mind you, but the most likely one-is that there is in fact Jewish blood in Prutzmann's family. Jews are the most common carriers of the disease-and who would have a better chance of concealing such an unfortunate pedigree than the Reichsfuhrer -SS?…Yes,Frau Stutzman, you may well look horrified. I don't blame you a bit."
Esther hadn't known she looked horrified, but she supposed she might have. She remembered the hidden Jew, the practicing Jew, in the SS who'd helped Heinrich escape. He wasn't one of the little group of which she was a part. Walther hadn't been able to identify him for sure even after tapping into SS records. Whoever he was, though, he'd preserved his identity. Lothar Prutzmann might have had Jewish ancestors, but he was no Jew.
Dr. Dambach rammed that point home: "Nothing but a damned hypocrite-excuse me, please-as I told you before. 'Duty-bound to the highest conception of Aryan blood and honor,' the Reichsfuhrer -SS claimed, when the odds are he is not fully of Aryan blood himself. Tell me,Frau Stutzman, where is the honor in a lie?"
"I…don't see it, either," Esther said. Her boss nodded. Why not? She'd agreed with him. If that didn't make her a clear thinker, what would? She went on, "Do you mind if I call my husband from here, Dr. Dambach? I'd like to meet him for lunch."
"Go right ahead," Dambach answered. "But would you be kind enough to put the coffee on first? I really would like some, but I held off on making it till you got here. You always have better luck with the machine than I do."
It's not luck. It's following the bloody directions. But Esther said, "I'll take care of it right away." A Putsch might have overthrown the Fuhrer, but Dr. Dambach messing with the coffee machine would have been a real catastrophe…
Susanna Weiss' hand shook as she dialed the telephone. She had both the radio and the televisor going full blast. Lothar Prutzmann talked about duty and Aryan blood on the radio. Odilo Globocnik was speaking on the televisor-rambling, rather, and not making a whole lot of sense. If he wasn't drunk, he could have made money doing impressions of someone who was.
The telephone rang-once, twice, three times. Then a woman picked it up. "Department of Germanic Languages."