Outside, the applause went on and on, though the Fuhrer didn't say anything more. Susanna concluded he was leaving the platform, leaving the university. Pretty soon, the coast would be clear. She could look out her window again without worrying about trigger-happy SS sharpshooters.
In the meantime…In the meantime, she still had her essays to grade. They would have been there even if Kurt Haldweim were still Fuhrer. In a lot of ways, life went on in spite of politics.
And, in a lot of ways, it didn't. How many lives had the politics of the Reich snuffed out? Too many. Millions and millions too many. What did undergraduate essays matter, with that in the back of her mind?
But her life had to go on, no matter what the Reich had done. Shaking her head, she picked up a red pen and got back to work.
A day like any other day. That was how Heinrich Gimpel remembered it afterwards. It could have been any Tuesday. The kids were running around getting ready for school. Francesca was still grumbling about some new idiotic project Frau Koch had inflicted on the class. Roxane was spelling words out loud; she was going to have a test. And Alicia had her nose in a book. Lise had to yell at her to get her to put it down and do the things she needed to do. Yes, everything seemed normal as could be.
Blackbirds on lawns tugged at worms as Heinrich walked up the street toward the bus stop. The sun shone brightly. Spring was really here now. He couldn't recall any other spring that had seemed so hopeful, so cheerful. Was that Mother Nature's fault or Heinz Buckliger's? Heinrich didn't know. He didn't much care, either. He would enjoy the moment for as long as it lasted.
He waited at the bus stop for a few minutes, then got on the bus for the Stahnsdorf train station. Three stops later, Willi Dorsch got on, too. He sat down next to Heinrich."Guten Morgen," he said.
"Same to you," Heinrich answered."Wie geht's?"
"It's been better," Willi said. "I have to tell you, though, it's been worse, too. Erika's been…kind of cheerful lately." He looked this way and that, a comic show of suspicion. "I wonder what she's up to."
"Heh," Heinrich said uneasily. As far as he could tell, Erika had never said anything to Willi about what had happened at her sister's house on Burggrafen-Strasse-or about any of the several things that might have happened there but hadn't. He supposed he should have been grateful. Hewas grateful. But he was also suspicious, and his suspicion had no comic edge to it.
When the bus got to the Stahnsdorf station, he and Willi bought their copies of the Volkischer Beobachter and carried them out to the platform. They climbed aboard the train up to Berlin, sat down together, and started reading the morning news. Almost as if they'd rehearsed it, they simultaneously pointed to the same story below the fold on the front page.
STOLLE ANNOUNCES CANDIDACY, the headline said. There was a small head shot of the Gauleiter of Berlin just below the line of big black type. The story, as bald as any Heinrich had ever seen in the Beobachter, announced that Rolf Stolle was indeed running for the Reichstag.
"Can he do that?" Heinrich said, and then, "How can he do that? He's already Gauleiter." The puzzle offended his sense of order.
But Willi had the answer: "Gauleiter's a Party office.Reichstag member would be a state office. He could hold both at once."
"You're right," Heinrich said wonderingly. The National Socialist Party and the Reich were as closely intertwined as a pair of lovers-or as a tree and a strangler fig. But they weren't quite one and the same.
"I wonder how the Fuhrer will like that," Willi said.
"Stolle trying for a national forum?"
Willi nodded. "Ja. And Stolle trying for votes in general." He lowered his voice. "I mean, who ever voted for Buckliger for anything? Party Bonzen and Wehrmacht bigwigs, sure, but nobody else."
"You're right." Again, wonder filled Heinrich's voice. Till Buckliger's speech at Friedrich Wilhelm University, that wouldn't have mattered. Who'd voted-really voted-for anyone who mattered in the Reich? No one. Elections had been afterthoughts, farces. This one felt different. Stolle must have sensed it, too. He might well have been a clown. Several of the moves he'd made lately convinced Heinrich he was anything but a fool.
And Willi, when it came to politics if not to women, was also anything but a fool. "I wonderwhy the Fuhrer 's not running for a seat in the Reichstag, " he said thoughtfully.
That was an interesting question, too. Heinrich said, "Maybe he's worried he'd lose."
"Maybe," Willi said. "It's the only thing I thought of that made any sense at all, too. But it doesn't make a whole lot of sense, if you know what I mean. He can find a district full of Prussian cabbage farmers or Bavarian beer brewers that would elect him no matter what."
"You'd think so, wouldn't you?" Heinrich agreed. The more they talked about it, the more normal their tone became. The more freedom all the people of the Reich got, the more they seemed to take it for granted. The more they got, the more they craved? Was that true, too? Could that be true? Maybe it could. Maybe it really could. But who would have believed it a year before?
Willi suddenly looked sly. "The other side of the coin is what happens if Buckliger doesn't run for the Reichstag. If he doesn't, he's still Fuhrer. He's still got all the Fuhrer 's powers. He can tell it what to do."
"That's the way things work, all right," Heinrich said. But then he did a little more thinking of his own. "That's the way things worknow, all right. If the Volk chooses the Reichstag, though, will it be so easy to ignore? What's the point to having a real election if right afterwards you go and pretend you never did?"
"You're right there," Willi admitted. "I don't see the point to that, either. Maybe Buckliger does."
"Who knows?" Heinrich said. "Who knows for sure about anything that's going on these days? We'll just have to wait and see."
"Sounds like traffic through Berlin, doesn't it?" Willi said as the commuter train came into South Station. "Of course, there's usually a lot more waiting than seeing with that."
"Maybe it won't be so bad," Heinrich said. Before Willi could say anything sardonic, he forestalled him: "Maybe it'll be worse."
As a matter of fact, they got to Oberkommando der Wehrmacht headquarters fifteen minutes early. Had they been fifteen minutes late, they both would have cursed and fumed. Early they took for granted. Heinrich looked out across Adolf Hitler Platz toward the Fuhrer 's palace. Aside from a few joggers and a gaggle of early-rising Japanese tourists snapping photos, the vast square was echoingly empty. No Gauleiter growling out a speech this morning. No thumping, swaggering SS band trying to drown him out. No Dutch demonstrators, either.
Willi was looking across the square, too. "Almost gets boring to see it this quiet, doesn't it?" he remarked.
"It does," Heinrich said in bemusement. "It really does."
They went up the stairs and, after getting their identities confirmed, into the headquarters building. Heinrich sat down at his desk and immediately yawned. He got up and went to the canteen with Willi to fortify himself with a cup of coffee. He squirted some hot chocolate into the cup, too, from the machine next to the coffeemaker. "Viennese today, aren't we?" Willi said.
"Oh, but of course." Heinrich put on an Austrian accent. Willi laughed.
A Viennese aristocrat-even a Viennese headwaiter-would have turned up his nose at the concoction Heinrich had put together. But it was hot and it was sweet and it had plenty of caffeine. With all that going for it, Heinrich wasn't inclined to be fussy. After he finished it and tossed the cup in the trash, he thought about going back for another one. But his brains were moving a little faster, so he buckled down and got to work instead.