“It’ll be Heydrich,” Joe said.
“I wish it would be that big blond fellow, that Schirach,” she said. “Christ, so he finally died. Do you think Schirach has a chance?”
“No,” Joe said shortly.
“Maybe there’ll be a civil war now,” she said. “But those guys are so old now. Göring and Goebbels—all those old Party boys.”
The radio was saying, “…reached at his retreat in the Alps near Brenner…”
Joe said, “This’ll be Fat Hermann.”
“… said merely that he was grief-stricken by the loss not only of a soldier and patriot and faithful Partei Leader, but also, as he has said many times over, of a personal friend, whom, one will recall, he backed in the interregnum dispute shortly after the war when it appeared for a time that elements hostile to Herr Bormann’s ascension to supreme authority—”
Juliana shut the radio off.
“They’re just babbling,” she said. “Why do they use words like that? Those terrible murderers are talked about as if they were like the rest of us.”
“They are like us,” Joe said. He reseated himself and once more ate, “There isn’t anything they’ve done we wouldn’t have done if we’d been in their places. They saved the world from Communism. We’d be living under Red rule now, if it wasn’t for Germany. We’d be worse off.”
“You’re just talking,” Juliana said. “Like the radio. Babbling.”
“I been living under the Nazis,” Joe said. “I know what it’s like. Is that just talk, to live twelve, thirteen years—longer than that—almost fifteen years? I got a work card from OT; I worked for Organization Todt since 1947, in North Africa and the U.S.A. Listen—” He jabbed his finger at her. “I got the Italian genius for earthworks; OT gave me a high rating. I wasn’t shoveling asphalt and mixing concrete for the autobahns. I was helping design. Engineer. One day Doctor Todt came by and inspected what our work crew did. He said to me, “You got good hands.” That’s a big moment, Juliana. Dignity of labor; they’re not talking only words. Before them, the Nazis, everyone looked down on manual jobs; myself, too. Aristocratic. The Labor Front put an end to that. I seen my own hands for the first time.” He spoke so swiftly that his accent began to take over; she had trouble understanding him. “We all lived out there in the woods, in Upper State New York, like brothers. Sang songs. Marched to work. Spirit of the war, only rebuilding, not breaking down. Those were the best days of all, rebuilding after the war—fine, clean, long-lasting rows of public buildings block by block, whole new downtown, New York and Baltimore. Now of course that work’s past. Big cartels like New Jersey Krupp and Sohnen running the show. But that’s not Nazi; that’s just old European powerful. Worse, you hear? Nazis like Rommel and Todt a million times better men than industrialists like Krupp and bankers, all those Prussians; ought to have been gassed. All those gentlemen in vests.”
But, Juliana thought, those gentlemen in vests are in forever. And your idols, Rommel and Doctor Todt; they just came in after hostilities, to clear the rubble, build the autobahns, start industry humming. They even let the Jews live, lucky surprise—amnesty so the Jews could pitch in. Until ‘49, anyhow… and then good-bye Todt and Rommel, retired to graze.
Don’t I know? Juliana thought. Didn’t I hear all about it from Frank? You can’t tell me anything about life under the Nazis; my husband was—is—a Jew. I know that Doctor Todt was the most modest, gentle man that ever lived; I know all he wanted to do was provide work—honest, reputable work—for the millions of bleak-eyed, despairing American men and women picking through the ruins after the war. I know he wanted to see medical plans and vacation resorts and adequate housing for everyone, regardless of race; he was a builder, not a thinker… and in most cases he managed to create what he had wanted—he actually got it. But…
A preoccupation, in the back of her mind, now rose decidedly. “Joe. This Grasshopper book; isn’t it banned in the East Coast?”
He nodded.
“How could you be reading it, then?” Something about it worried her. “Don’t they still shoot people for reading—”
“It depends on your racial group. On the good old armband.”
That was so. Slavs, Poles, Puerto Ricans, were the most limited as to what they could read, do, listen to. The Anglo-Saxons had it much better; there was public education for their children, and they could go to libraries and museums and concerts. But even so… The Grasshopper was not merely classified; it was forbidden, and to everyone.
Joe said, “I read it in the toilet. I hid it in a pillow. In fact, I read it because it was banned.”
“You’re very brave,” she said.
Doubtfully he said, “You mean that sarcastically?”
“No.”
He relaxed a little. “It’s easy for you people here; you live a safe, purposeless life, nothing to do, nothing to worry about. Out of the stream of events, left over from the past; right?” His eyes mocked her.
“You’re killing yourself,” she said, “with cynicism. Your idols got taken away from you one by one and now you have nothing to give your love to.” She held his fork toward him; he accepted it. Eat, she thought. Or give up even the biological processes.
As he ate, Joe nodded at the book and said, “That Abendsen lives around here, according to the cover. In Cheyenne. Gets perspective on the world from such a safe spot, wouldn’t you guess? Read what it ways; read it aloud.”
Taking the book, she read the back part of the jacket. “He’s an ex-service man. He was in the U. S. Marine Corps in World War Two, wounded in England by a Nazi Tiger tank. A sergeant. It says he’s got practically a fortress that he writes in, guns all over the place.” Setting the book down, she said, “And it doesn’t say so here, but I heard someone say that he’s almost a sort of paranoid; charged barbed wire around the place, and it’s set in the mountains. Hard to get to.”
“Maybe he’s right,” Joe said, “to live like that, after writing that book. The German bigwigs hit the roof when they read it.”
“He was living that way before; he wrote the book there. His place is called—” She glanced at the book jacket. “The High Castle. That’s his pet name for it.”
“They won’t get him,” Joe said, chewing rapidly. “He’s on the lookout. Smart.”
She said, “I believe he’s got a lot of courage to write that book. If the Axis had lost the war, we’d be able to say and write anything we wanted, like we used to; we’d be one country and we’d have a fair legal system, the same one for all of us.”
To her surprise, he nodded reasonably to that.
“I don’t understand you,” she said. “What do you believe? What is it you want? You defend those monsters, those freaks who slaughtered the Jews, and then you—” Despairing, she caught hold of him by the ears; he blinked in surprise and pain as she rose to her feet, tugging him up with her.
They faced each other, wheezing, neither able to speak.
“Let me finish this meal you fixed for me,” Joe said at last.
“Won’t you say? You won’t tell me? You do know what it is, yourself; you understand and you just go on eating, pretending you don’t have any idea what I mean.” She let go of his ears; they had been twisted until they were now bright red.
“Empty talk,” Joe said. “It doesn’t matter. Like the radio, what you said of it. You know the old brownshirt term for people who spin philosophy? Eierkopf. Egghead. Because the big double-domed empty heads break so easily… in the street brawls.”
“If you feel like that about me,” Juliana said, “why don’t you go on? What are you staying here for?”
His enigmatic grimace chilled her.
I wish I had never let him come with me, she thought. And now it’s too late; I know I can’t get rid of him—he’s too strong.