In the Presence of Mine Enemies (74 page)

As soon as she came out of her building, she stopped in surprise. However brisk she'd been, she hadn't been brisk enough. The line for the polling place already stretched around the block and came back toward her. Normally, she hated queuing up. Now she joined the line without a qualm.
Why is this night different from all other nights?
went through her head. The Passover question, the Jewish question, almost seemed to fit the
Reich
today. Germany really might be different after this election. It might. Or it might not. Life came with no guarantees. A Jew surviving in the Nazis' Berlin knew, had to know, as much.

A man in a battered fedora, a windbreaker, and a pair of faded dungarees got into line behind her.
“Guten Morgen,”
he said, scratching his chin. He needed a shave. “Now we get to tell the bastards where to head in.”

He might be a provocateur. Susanna knew that, too. On this morning of all mornings, she couldn't make herself care. “You bet we do,” she answered. “I've been waiting a long time.”

“Who hasn't?” the whiskery man said. “They never wanted to listen before. Now, by God, they're gonna have to.” He cursed the SS and the Party
Bonzen
without great imagination but with considerable gusto.

Up and down the line—which rapidly got longer behind Susanna—people were doing the same thing. They couldn't all be provocateurs…could they? Susanna didn't think so. The SS couldn't arrest everybody in the city. If they did, nothing would get done. And the blackshirts had their own worries at the moment. The
Wehrmacht
was gleefully cutting them down to size, with Heinz Buckliger and Rolf Stolle cheering the soldiers on.

Had Buckliger understood the animosity ordinary people felt toward the state when he ordered these elections? If he had, would he have ordered them? Susanna had trouble believing that. But order them he had, and now he'd be
stuck with the results. Prützmann's failed
Putsch
might have been the best thing that could have happened to reform. It reminded people what they could be in for if they voted to keep the status quo.

The queue snaked forward. The closer to the polling place people got, the nastier the things they had to say about that status quo. Men and women who came out of the veterans' hall strutted and swaggered, proud grins on their faces. Nobody needed to ask how they'd voted.

The hall smelled of old cigars and spilled beer. Helmets were mounted on the wall: big, cumbersome ones with flaring brims from the First World War and the lighter and sleeker models German soldiers had worn during the Second and Third. The uniformed precinct leader stood around looking important. Clerks in mufti did the real work.

“Your name?” one of them said when Susanna came up to him. She gave it. He made sure she was on a list in front of him, then went on, “Your identity papers.” She displayed the card; she would no more leave home without it than she would without a top. Once the clerk was satisfied, he used a ruler to line through her name and address in red. Then he handed her a ballot. “Choose any vacant booth…. Next!”

There were no vacant booths, not with the way people had swarmed to the polls. Susanna waited till a woman came out of one. She ducked into it herself, pulling the curtain closed behind her. She wasn't in Rolf Stolle's district, but she knew which candidate here supported reform and which was a Party hack. She knew which candidate for the Berlin city council was which, too. Voting for candidates had never mattered to her. Voting against them—being able to vote against them—carried a kick stronger than Glenfiddich straight up.

She put the ballot in its envelope, emerged from the booth (a tall man immediately took her place), and handed the envelope to the clerk. He put it in the ballot box, intoning, “
Frau
Weiss has voted.”

“
Fräulein Doktor
Professor Weiss has voted,” she corrected crisply. Every so often, the formidable academic
title came in very handy. Half a dozen people in the veterans' hall looked her way. The clerk stared at her as she walked out.

She wanted to know right away how the election turned out. She couldn't, of course, because the polls were still open. Talking about results till they closed might have influenced those who hadn't voted yet, and so was
verboten
. That made most of Sunday pass in what felt like anticlimax.

She turned on the televisor a few minutes before eight that evening. Watching the end of an idiotic game show seemed a small price to pay for what would follow. At eight o'clock precisely, Horst Witzleben came on the screen in place of the Sunday night film that normally would have run. “Today is a watershed day for the Greater German
Reich,
” the newscaster declared. “In Germany's first contested elections since 1933, candidates favoring the reform policies of Heinz Buckliger and Rolf Stolle appear to be sweeping to victory all across the country.”

Hearing Stolle's name mentioned in the same breath as the
Führer
's was new since the failed
Putsch
. The
Gauleiter
's status had risen as Buckliger's fell. The one was a hero, the other a victim. Even in the
Reich,
it turned out, there was such a thing as moral authority.

A map of Germany appeared in gray on the screen. Here and there, it was measled with green spots. There were also red spots, but far fewer of them. “Green shows pro-reform candidates with substantial leads in their districts,” Witzleben said. “Red shows candidates of the other sort who are in the lead. If we look more closely at Berlin”—the map changed as he spoke—“we see that every district but one in the capital of the
Reich
supports reform. Rolf Stolle himself is being sent to the
Reichstag
by a margin of better than six to one over his foe, building contractor Engelbert Hackmann.”

“Good,” Susanna murmured. That wasn't a surprise, but it was a relief.

The map went back to coverage of the whole
Reich
. More of it had turned green. Some more had turned red, too, but not nearly so much. Then it shifted again, this time
to a detailed look at the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. Most of that area was green, except for a few red patches in the former Sudetenland.

Horst Witzleben continued, “Along with electing delegates to the
Reichstag
, the people of the Protectorate are also voting on a nonbinding referendum concerning their relationship with the
Reich
. Latest returns show that seventy-seven percent favor the declaration of independence proclaimed by the Unity organization in the wake of the
Putsch
, while only twenty-three percent wish to continue as a
Reichs
protectorate—in effect, a province of the
Reich
. Most of the delegates elected are pledged to bring this issue to the attention of the new
Reichstag
, and to seek relief.”

That was pretty dizzying, too. True, the referendum had no official weight, any more than the declaration had. But it wouldn't have been on the ballot if those things didn't count for something. And the Czechs had shown a lot of nerve in reminding the world they hadn't forgotten the freedom they'd known between the first two World Wars. How could a
Reichstag
chosen on the basis of self-determination ignore it once in office?

Maybe they'll say the Czechs are only Slavs, and too ignorant to know what they're talking about,
Susanna thought cynically. But in that case, why give them the chance to speak their minds? Susanna had yet to hear anyone, no matter how radical a reformer, speak up for letting Poles or Ukrainians or Russians tell the world what they wanted. Their opinions didn't matter. Why else had God put them on earth except to be worked to death?

And no one had spoken up for keeping Heinrich Gimpel and his daughters alive when they were arrested. Had the authorities decided he was a Jew and they first-degree
Mischlingen,
they would have been killed, and that would have been that. The
Reich
had come further in the past year than in the previous lifetime. It still had a long way to go. Susanna suspected neither Buckliger nor Stolle realized how far.

Maybe Charlie Lynton did, over in London. He had the British Union of Fascists out several steps in front of
the German National Socialists. That took special nerve in a subject ally. And the white-haired Czech playwright who led Unity seemed to have a good understanding of where the
Reich
needed to go. Whether it would go there was another question.

More and more of the map filled in. There were spots where red predominated over green: Bavaria, parts of Prussia, rural Austria (Vienna was a different story). But it looked as if reformers would have a solid majority. How solid would it have been had Prützmann not tried his
Putsch?
Susanna feared it would have been much less so, but nobody would ever know now.

Then the camera cut away from the map, away from the studio. There was Heinz Buckliger, walking through the little square in front of the
Gauleiter
's residence with Rolf Stolle. Stolle was pointing to the makeshift memorials that had sprung up where SS panzers crushed Berliners: flowers, candles, notes to the dead, and one big sign that said,
FREIHEIT ÜBER ALLES
!

“The two chief architects of this remarkable day confer,” Horst said quietly.

It didn't look like a conference to Susanna. It looked as if the
Gauleiter
was lecturing the
Führer
. And it looked as if Heinz Buckliger was taking it. He would nod whenever Stolle stuck out a finger and made a point. Once, Stolle laughed at something and slapped him on the back, hard enough to stagger him. Buckliger took that, too, though it was anything but the gesture of a subordinate to a superior. Despite their titles, it didn't seem as if the
Gauleiter
were the
Führer
's subordinate.

Stolle pointed to the
FREIHEIT ÜBER ALLES
!
sign. Buckliger earnestly nodded again. Stolle didn't really understand what the sign meant, either. Susanna had already realized that. But if you said the words often enough, didn't you sooner or later have to go where they led you?

Didn't you?
We'll find out
, Susanna thought.

 

Francesca came bounding up to Alicia at lunchtime. “Guess what!” she cried.

“I don't know,” Alicia said. “What?”

“
Frau
Koch is gone!” her sister caroled. “Gone, gone, gone! We've got a new teacher. His name is
Herr
Mistele. He smiles at people like he means it. Smiles! The Beast is gone. Gone, gone, gone!”

“That's wonderful. Too bad it didn't happen sooner,” Alicia said, and Francesca's head bounced up and down in unreserved agreement. Alicia asked, “Did he say why the Beast left?” With
Frau
Koch not there, Alicia came out with the nickname without looking over her shoulder first to see whether any other teachers could hear.

Francesca frowned. “He said…” She paused, trying to make sure she got the words just right. “He said, with the political something the way it was—”

“The situation?” Alicia broke in.

“That's right. That's the word I couldn't come up with.” Francesca started over: “He said, with the political sit-u-a-tion the way it was, it was better if
Frau
Koch did something else for a while. As far as I'm concerned, she can do something else forever.”

“Maybe she will,” Alicia said. “She liked Lothar Prützmann a lot, didn't she?” Francesca nodded again. Alicia continued, “Well, with Prützmann dead and gone and with the
Putsch
down the drain, naturally they're going to get rid of people like that. She's probably lucky she's not in jail. Or maybe she is.”

“Ooh!” her sister said. “Ooh! I
hope
she is. She said Daddy deserved to be, back when they grabbed him and us. I hope she finds out what it's like.” Francesca liked revenge.

“It could happen.” Alicia didn't mind the idea of the Beast behind bars, either—far from it. And when one side won a political fight, the other side suffered. That had been true in the
Reich
ever since the Night of the Long Knives. Sooner or later, though, didn't revenge have to stop, or at least slow down? If it didn't, who'd be left after a while? That made more sense than Alicia wished it did. All the same, she couldn't help hoping vengeance wouldn't stop till
Frau
Koch got what was coming to her. She waved and called, “Hey, Trudi! Listen!”

“What's up?” Trudi Krebs called.