Heinrich Gimpel shook his head, too, to contradict her. “You are a Jew, Alicia. Your sisters are Jews, too. So is Susanna. So are Esther and Walther and Gottlieb and Anna. And so are your mother and I.”
The color slowly drained from Alicia’s cheeks as she realized her father meant what he said. “But-but,” she faltered, and then rallied: “But Jews were filthy and wicked and diseased and racially impure.” All the textbook lessons; Heinrich remembered how he had learned them, too. Perhaps trying to convince herself, Alicia went on. “That’s why the wise Reich got rid of them. That’s what my teacher says.”
“One of the hardest lessons anyone learns is that not everything your teacher tells you is true,” Walther Stutzman said. “For us, it’s doubly hard.”
“Is Anna filthy?” Lise Gimpel asked.
“Of course not,” Alicia said indignantly. She looked to her friend as if wanting Anna to tell her this was all just a game. But Anna looked back with impressively adult solemnity; she knew what rode on holding this secret close.
“Are your father and I wicked?” Lise persisted. “Is Susanna diseased?”
“I can get to feel that way, the morning after too much Scotch,” Susanna said.
“Hush, Susanna,” Lise said.
“But-what happens if anyone else finds out I’m-I’m a Jew?” Alicia said. She pronounced the name with difficulty; it was too strong a curse to find in the mouth of a well-brought-up ten-year-old. “If my friends at school know, they won’t like me anymore.”
“It will be worse than that, dear, if your friends at school find out,” Heinrich Gimpel said. “If anyone learns you’re a Jew, the Einsatzkommandos will come for you, and for your sisters, and for your mother and me, and for the Stutzmans, and for Susanna.” He made his voice hard and implacable, impressing on his daughter that he meant exactly what he said.
Lise tried to soothe Alicia. “No one has to find out, my little one. No one will unless you give yourself away, and us with you. We are well hidden these days, those few of us who are left.” Even her sunny spirit was not proof against the memory of the millions who had died, first in Europe and then, a generation later, in the Vernichtungslagers outside New York and Los Angeles. Shaking her head, she repeated, “We are well hidden.”
“My father helped there,” Walther said. “He altered the Reich’s genealogical data base to show us all to be of pure Aryan blood. No one looks for us any more, not here in the heart of the Germanic Empire. No one thinks there is any reason to look. We are safe enough unless we give ourselves away. One day, maybe, not in our time but when your sons or grandsons have grown up, Alicia, it may be safe for us to live openly as what we are once more. Till then, we go on.”
Alicia tossed her head wildly back and forth; her eyes were wide and staring, like those of a trapped animal. “It will never be safe! Never! The Reich will last for a thousand years, and how can there be room in it for Jews?”
“Maybe the Reich will last a thousand years, as Hitler promised,” Heinrich said. “No one can know that until it happens, if it does. But there have been Jews, Alicia, for close to three thousand years already. Even if the Germanic Empire lives out its whole time, it will still be a baby beside us. One way or another, as Uncle Walther said, we go on. It’s hard to pretend not to be what we really are-”
“I hate it,” Susanna Weiss broke in.
“We all hate it,” Gimpel continued. “But when times are dangerous for Jews, as they are now, what other choice do we have?”
“This isn’t the first time Jews have had to be what they are only in secret,” Esther Stutzman said. “In Spain a long time ago, we pretended to be good Catholics. Now we have to pretend to be good National Socialists. But underneath, we still are what we are.”
“I don’t want to be a Jew!” Alicia shouted, so loud that Heinrich looked nervously toward the windows. If one of the neighbors heard, the Security Police were only a phone call away.
He took a deep breath. “You have a way out, Alicia.” She stared at him, tears and questions in her eyes. He said, “You can just pretend this night never happened. You know we will never betray you, no matter what you decide. If you choose not to tell your husband one day, if he is not one of us, and if you choose not to tell your children, they will never know you-and they-are Jewish. They’ll be just like everyone else in the Germanic Empire. But one more piece of something old and precious will have gone out of the world forever.”
“I don’t know what to do,” Alicia said, the most adult sentence that had ever crossed her lips.
“It’s not so bad, Alicia,” Anna Stutzman said. “I cried, too, when I found out.”
“So did I,” Gottlieb added, which made Alicia’s eyes widen; he was so much older than she that she thought of him as practically a grownup.
Anna went on. “But it’s special in a way, like being part of a club that won’t take just anybody. And it’s not like what we are is written on our foreheads or anything like that, even though it does feel that way at first. But if we keep the secret, no one will find out what we are. We even have our own special holidays-today is one.”
“What’s today?” Alicia asked.
“Today is the festival of Purim,” her father answered. “The Germans and the Spaniards Aunt Esther was talking about were not the first people to want to get rid of the Jews. We’ve always stood out a little because we’re different from the other people in a country. And a long time ago, in the Persian Empire-”
He got out the Bible to help tell Alicia the story. It had both Old and New Testaments, of course; keeping one that didn’t would have been suicidally dangerous. Having a Bible at all entailed a certain small risk, although the National Socialists, having won their wars, were more inclined to tolerate quiet Christianity these days.
“And so,” Heinrich finished, “King Ahasuerus hanged Haman on the very gallows he had built for Mordecai, and Mordecai and Queen Esther lived long, happy, rich lives afterward.” Alicia, caught up in spite of herself by the ancient tale, laughed and clapped her hands.
Very softly, Susanna Weiss said, “I wish someone had built a gallows for Hitler and Himmler. So many of our people gone.” She stared down into her snifter of Scotch. Sometimes Gimpel thought she felt guilty for living on where millions had died.
“I wish I could tell my sisters,” Alicia said.
Walther Stutzman grinned at Heinrich, who smiled back. The year before, Anna had said, I wish I could tell Alicia. Gimpel knew more than a little relief that his daughter was beginning to adjust to the new and shocking knowledge; he remembered his own confusion when he’d learned of his heritage.
But what Alicia had just said was also dangerous. He told her, “You can’t tell them yet-they’re too little. They’ll learn when their time comes, just as you have now. But if the secret reaches the wrong ears, we’re all dead. Just because there aren’t many Jews left doesn’t mean people have stopped hunting us. We’re still fair game.”
“Are we-the people in this room-are we all the Jews who are left?” Alicia asked.
“No,” her father said.’ “There are others, all through Greater Germany and the rest of the empire. In time you’ll meet more, and some may startle you. But for now, the fewer Jews you know, the fewer you can give away if-if the worst happens.”
Alicia’s eyes went far away. Gimpel knew what she was doing: thinking about family friends and wondering which were of her own sort. He’d done the same thing himself. Finding out about Walther Stutzman had been his biggest surprise. The Stutzmans looked like perfect Aryans, and, a generation before, much more had been made of Jews’ allegedly grotesque features.