Her husband shrugged. "Beats me. They have the vote last summer to back up their declaration of independence. And if anybody can outfinagle the Foreign Ministry, it's the fellow they've got leading Unity. He can make you feel ashamed when you do something that isn't on the up-and-up, and how many people are able to do that? But…"
"Yes. But." Lise knew why Heinrich hesitated. The Czechs were Slavs, and Slavs, even Slavs like the Czechs who'd been entangled in German affairs since time out of mind, were in the National Socialist way of thinking Untermenschen. If you once started making concessions to Untermenschen, didn't you acknowledge they might not be so inferior after all? And if you acknowledged that, how did you justify the massacres and the slave labor that had filled the last seventy years?
Even more to the point, if you acknowledged that Slavs-or some Slavs-might not be Untermenschen, didn't you take a step towards acknowledging that Jews also might not be Untermenschen?Could a National Socialist government take a step in that direction?
"the Fuhrer has said mistakes were made in years gone by," Heinrich said; if the Fuhrer said it, it couldn't possibly be treasonous-as long as he stayed Fuhrer. "If we decide to set some of those mistakes to rights, that wouldn't be so bad."
"No. Of course it wouldn't," Lise answered. Even though the Czechs were doing most of the agitating these days, they'd got off relatively easy. How could the Reich make amends to the relative handful of Poles and Russians and Ukrainians who still survived?
And, for that matter, how could the Reich make amends to the handful of Jews who, in spite of everything, still survived? Lise knew an impossibility when she saw one. Come to that, she didn't want a parade of blackshirts and Party Bonzen clicking their heels and apologizing to her. That sort of spectacle might appeal to Susanna, but then Susanna reveled in opera. All Lise wanted was to be left alone, to get on with her life regardless of what she happened to be.
"We're asking questions we couldn't even have imagined a couple of years ago," Heinrich said. "Next to the questions, the answers don't seem quite so important."
"Says who?" Lise inquired sarcastically. "If the Security Police had come up with a different answer to their question a few months ago, you wouldn't be here trying to come up with answers to yours."And the girls wouldn't be here, either, she thought,and it wouldn't matter whether I was here or not because I'd be dead inside.
After a brief pause, her husband nodded. "Well, you're right," he said. One of the reasons they'd stayed pretty happily married the past fifteen years was that they were both able to say that when they needed to.
"Politics!" Lise turned the word into a curse. "I wish politics never had anything to do with us. I wish we could just go on about our business."
"Part of our business is making the Reich better. That's part of everybody's business right now, I think," Heinrich said. "If we don't make it better, what'll happen? We saw before the election-other people will make it worse, that's what."
Lise wanted to quarrel with him. But she remembered too well the horror that had coursed through her when Lothar Prutzmann's tame announcer started going on about the State Committee for the Salvation of the Greater German Reich. And, remembering, she too said those three little words almost as important as I love you: "Well, you're right."
Heinrich, Lise, and the girls closed their umbrellas when they came up onto the Stutzmans' front porch. The walk from the bus stop had been wet, but not too wet. Winter was thinking about making way for spring. It hadn't got around to doing it yet; still, the worst of the nasty weather was probably past. Heinrich dared hope so, anyway.
All three Gimpel girls raced for the doorbell. Francesca rang it a split second before Alicia or Roxane could. Heinrich and Lise smiled over the girls' heads. They would do that at elevators, too, which made their parents require that they take turns pressing those buttons.Anyone would think they're children or something, went through Heinrich's mind. He smiled again.
Esther Stutzman opened the door. "Come in! Come in! Welcome! Welcome!" she said, and stood aside. Delicious odors wafted out of the doorway: cooking meat, new-baked bread, and something else, something spicy, Heinrich couldn't quite place.
"Oh, good-you've got a mat out," Lise said. "We don't want to drip all over your front hall." She wagged a warning finger at the girls. "Don't you go running all over till you get out of your raincoats, do you hear me?" The warning came just in time. Alicia was trembling with eagerness to charge up to Anna's room.
"Is Susanna here?" Heinrich asked.
"She got here twenty minutes ago," Esther answered. Now she and Heinrich were the ones who smiled. Susanna always showed up early. Esther turned to Alicia, Francesca, and Roxane. "Why don't we hang those coats on the bar for the shower curtain in the downstairs bathroom here? That way, they won't get anything else wet." Heinrich and Lise followed so they could hang their coats in the bathroom, too.
Lise asked, "Did Gottlieb get leave from the Hitler Jugend?"
Esther shook her head. "I'm afraid not. He's stuck somewhere out in the provinces, communing with his shovel." Heinrich's laugh wasn't far from a giggle. He hadn't been ideal material for the Hitler Jugend; he was slow and ungainly and nearsighted and none too strong. But, by God, his spade had always gleamed, blade and handle both. He'd seen at once that survival lay in that direction, and he'd been right. He hadn't been an analyst yet, but he'd already thought like one.Communing with his shovel. He'd have to remember that. He could tell it at the office. Who hadn't gone through the Hitler Jugend?
"Come on," Anna said, appearing behind Esther as if by magic. The Gimpel girls were off like three brown-haired shots.
Esther nodded to Heinrich and Lise. "Here we are," she said.
"Yes." Heinrich nodded, too. "Here we are. There were times this past year when I wouldn't have given a pfennig for our chances, but here we are."
"What can I get you?" Esther asked.
"Beer will do," he answered.
"For me, too, please," Lise said.
They followed Esther toward the kitchen. Susanna sat on the sofa, scotch on the table in front of her. She got up to hug Heinrich and Lise. She and Heinrich each raised an eyebrow at the other. They were, in a way, veterans of the same campaign. It hadn't lasted long and there hadn't been many casualties, but it could have been much worse, and they both knew it.
"Did you ever find new bridge partners?" Susanna asked him.
"We play every now and then, but not regularly, not the way we used to," he replied. "Willi and I still get along fine at work, but…"
"Yes. But," Lise said pointedly. "It's hard to play cards with somebody who tried to seduce your husband and then tried to kill him." Heinrich wondered which of Erika's transgressions his wife resented more. Since asking would have landed him in hotter water than knowing was worth, he expected he'd go right on wondering.
Esther came back with two steins of pale gold pilsner. "Here you are." She gave Heinrich one and Lise the other.
"Thanks." Heinrich sipped. He nodded appreciatively. "Is that-?"
"Pilsner Urquell?" Esther said it before he could. She nodded, too. "It's good beer. And besides, buying it sends the Czechs a little money. They deserve all the help we can give them." Her usually sunny face clouded for a moment. "Anyone who wants to get away from the Reich deserves all the help we can give them."
"Omayn,"Lise said softly. She and Heinrich and Esther and Susanna all smiled. That particular pronunciation of the word ordinary Germans said asamen was one Jews could only use among themselves, which meant it was one they couldn't use very often. Hearing it reminded Heinrich he was part of a small but very special club.
"Where's Walther?" he asked, at the same time as Lise was saying, "What smells so good?"
"I'm carving the goose," Walther called from the kitchen, answering both questions at the same time. He added, "It probably won't be the neatest job in the world, because the joints aren't quite in the same places as they are on a capon. But the taste won't change. Esther's responsible for that."