Departures (33 page)

Willi said, “We aren’t the men our grandfathers were. In those days they thought big and weren’t ashamed to be flamboyant.” He sighed the sigh of a man denied great deeds by the time in which he chanced to live.

“Poor us, doomed to get by on matter-of-fact competence,” Gimpel said. “The skills we need to run our empire are different from those Hitler’s generation used to conquer it.”

“I suppose so.” Dorsch clicked his tongue between his teeth. “I envy you your contentment here and now, Heinrich. I almost joined the
Wehrmacht
when I was just out of the
Hitler Jugend
. Sometimes I still think I should have. There’s a difference between this uniform”—he ran a hand down his double-breasted greatcoat—“and the one real soldiers wear.”

“Is that your heart talking, or did you just all of a sudden remember you’re not eighteen years old any more?” Gimpel said. His friend winced, acknowledging the hit. He went on, “Me, I’d fight if the Fatherland needed me, but I’m just as glad not to be carrying a gun.”

“We’re all probably safer because you don’t,” Dorsch said.

“This is also true.” Gimpel took off his thick, gold-framed glasses. In an instant, the street outside, the interior of the bus, even Willi beside him, grew blurry and indistinct. He blinked a couple of times, returned the glasses to the bridge of his nose. The world regained its sharp edges.

The neon brilliance of the street outside dimmed as the bus passed by the theaters and shops and started picking up passengers from the ministries of the Interior, Transportation, Economics, and Food.
More uniforms that don’t have soldiers in them
, Gimpel thought. The buildings from which the new riders came were shutting down for the day.

Two of those ministries, though, like the
Oberkommando der Wehrmacht
, never slept. A new shift went into the Justice Ministry to replace the workers who left for home. German justice could not close its eyes, and woe betide the criminal or racial mongrel upon whom their omniscient gaze lighted. Himself a thoroughly law-abiding man, Gimpel still shivered a little every time he passed that marble-fronted hall.

The Colonial Ministry was similarly active. Much of the world, these days, fell under its purview: the agricultural towns of the Ukraine, the mining colonies in central Africa, the Indian tea plantations, the cattle herders on the plains of North America. As if picking that last thought from Gimpel’s mind, Willi Dorsch said, “How many Americans does it take to screw in a light bulb?”

“The Americans have always been in the dark,” Gimpel answered. He clucked sadly. “Your father was telling that one, Willi.”

“If he was, he sounded more relieved than I do. The Yankees might have been tough.”

“Might-have-beens don’t count, fortunately.” Isolation and neutrality had kept the United States from paying heed as potential allies in Europe went down one after another. It faced the Germanic Empire and Japan alone a generation later—and its oceans were not wide enough to shield it from robot bombs.

Just ahead lay another monument to German victory: Hitler’s Arch of Triumph. Gimpel had been to Paris on holiday and seen the Arc de Triomphe at the end of the Champs Elysées. It served as a model for Berlin’s arch and was a model in scale as well. The Arc de Triomphe was only about fifty meters tall, less than half the height of its enormous successor. The Berlin arch was almost a one hundred seventy meters wide and also a one hundred seventeen meters deep, so that the bus spent a good long while under it, as if traversing a tunnel through a hillside.

When at last it emerged, South Station lay not far ahead. The station building made an interesting contrast to the monumental stone piles that filled the rest of the avenue. Its exterior was copper sheeting and glass, giving the traveler a glimpse of the steel ribs that formed its skeleton.

The bus stopped at the edge of the station plaza. Along with everyone else, Gimpel and Dorsch filed off and hurried across the plaza toward the waiting banks of elevators and escalators. They walked between more displays of weapons that had belonged to Germany’s fallen foes: the wreckage of a British fighter, carefully preserved inside a Lucite cube; a formidable-looking Russian tank; the conning tower of an American submarine.

“Into the bowels of the earth,” Dorsch murmured as he reached out to grab the escalator handrail. The train to Stahnsdorf boarded on the lowest of the station’s four levels.

Signs and arrows and endless announcements over the loudspeaker system should have made it impossible for anyone to get lose in the railway station. Gimpel and Dorsch found their way to their commuter train almost without conscious thought. So did most Berliners. The swarms of tourists, however, were grit in the smooth machine. Uniformed youths and maids from the
Hitler Jugend
helped those for whom even the clearest instructions were not clear enough.

Even so, the natives grumbled when foreigners got in their way. Dodging around an excited Italian who had dropped his cheap suitcase so he could use both hands to gesture at a Hitler
Youth in brown shirt, swastika armband, and
lederhosen
, Dorsch growled, “People like that deserved to be sent to the shower.”

“Oh, come on, Willi, let him live,” Gimpel answered mildly.

“You’re too soft, Heinrich,” his friend said. But then they rounded the last corner and came to their waiting area. Dorsch looked at the schedule board on the wall, then at his watch. “Five minutes till the next one. Not bad.”

“No,” Gimpel said. The train pulled into the station within thirty seconds of its appointed time. Gimpel thought nothing of it as he followed Dorsch into a car; he noticed only the very rare instances when it was late. As the two men had in the bus, they put their account cards into the fare slot and then took their seats. As soon as the computer’s count of fares matched the car’s capacity, the doors hissed shut. Three more cars filled behind them. Acceleration pressed Gimpel back against the synthetic fabric of his chair as the train began to move.

Twenty minutes later the engineer’s voice came over the roof-mounted speakers: “Stahnsdorf! All out for Stahnsdorf!”

Gimpel and Dorsch were standing in front of the doors when they hissed open again. The two commuters hopped off and hurried through the little suburban station to the bus stop outside. Another five minutes and Dorsch got up from the local bus. “See you tomorrow, Heinrich.”

“Say hello to Erika for me.”

“I’m not sure I ought to,” Willi said. Both men laughed. Dorsch got off the bus and trotted toward his house, which was three doors down from the corner.

Gimpel rode for another few stops, then descended himself. His own house lay at the end of a cul-de-sac, so he had to walk for a whole block.
It’s healthy for me
, he told himself, a consolation easier to enjoy in spring and summer than in winter.

The
snick
of his key going into the lock brought shouts of “Daddy!” from inside the house. He smiled, opened the door, and picked up each of his three girls in turn for a hug and a kiss: they ranged down in age from ten by two-year steps.

Then he lifted his wife as well. Lise Gimpel squawked; that was not part of the evening ritual. The girls giggled. “Put me down!” Lise said indignantly.

“Not till I get my kiss.”

She made as if to bite his nose instead, but then let him kiss her. He set her feet back on the carpet, held her a little longer before he let her go. She was a pleasant armful, a green-eyed brunette several years younger than he who had kept her figure
very well. When he released her, she hurried back toward the kitchen. “I want to finish cooking before everyone gets here.”

“All right,” he said, smiling as he watched her retreat. While he hung up his greatcoat and took off his tie, his daughters regaled him with tales out of school. He listened to three simultaneous stories as best he could. Lise came out again long enough to hand him a goblet of liebfraumilch, then started away.

The chimes rang before she got out of the front room. She whirled and stared indignantly at the door. “I am going to boot Susanna right into the net,” she declared.

Gimpel looked at his watch. “She’s only ten minutes early this time. And you know she’s always early, so you should have been ready.”

“Hmp,” Lise said while he went to let in their friend. Meanwhile, the girls started chorusing, “Susanna is a football! Aunt Susanna is a football!”

“Heinrich, why are they calling me a football?” Susanna Weiss demanded. She craned her neck to look up at him. “I’m short, yes, and I’m not emaciated like you, but I’m not round, either.” She shrugged out of a mink jacket and thrust it into his hands. “Here, see to this.”

Chuckling, he clicked his heels. “
Jawohl, meine Dame.
”

She accepted the deference as no less than her due. “
Fräulein Doktor Professor
will suffice, thank you.” She taught medieval English literature at Humboldt University. Suddenly she abandoned her imperial manner and started to laugh, too. “Now that you’ve hung that up, how about a hug?”

“Lise’s not watching. I suppose I can get away with that.” He put his arms around her. She barely reached his shoulder, but her vitality more than made up for her lack of size. When he let go, he said, “Why don’t you go into the kitchen? You can pretend to help Lise while you soak up our Glenfiddich.”

“Scotch almost justifies the existence of Scotland,” she said. “It’s a cold, gloomy, rocky place, so they had to make something nice to keep themselves warm.”

“If that’s why people drink it, your boyfriend is lucky he didn’t set himself on fire here a couple of years ago.”

“My
former
boyfriend,
danken Gott dafür
,” Susanna said. All the same, she blushed to the roots of her hair; her skin was very fine and fair, which let him watch the blush advance from her throat. “I didn’t know he was a drunk, Heinrich.”

“I know,” he said gently. If he teased her too far, she’d lose
her temper, and nothing and nobody was safe if that happened. “Go on; Lise’s trying that recipe you sent her.”

The girls waylaid Susanna before she made it to the kitchen. Though she’d never been married, she made an excellent ersatz aunt; she took children seriously, listened to what they had to say, and treated them like small adults. Gimpel smiled. Come to that, she was a small adult herself. He knew better than to say so out loud.

Walther and Esther Stutzman arrived a few minutes later, along with their son Gottlieb and daughter Anna. Anna promptly went off with the Gimpel girls; she was a year older than Alicia, the eldest of the three. Heinrich Gimpel stared at Gottlieb. “Good heavens, is that a mustache?”

The younger male Stutzman touched a finger to the space between his upper lip and his nose. “It’s going to be one, I hope.” At the moment, the growth was hard to see. For one thing, he had only just turned sixteen. For another, his hair was even fairer than his father’s. And for a third, he’d chosen to keep untrimmed only a toothbrush mustache; the first
Führer’s
style was newly popular again.

Walther Stutzman differed from his son in appearance only by the presence of twenty-odd years and the absence of any vestiges of a mustache. As he handed Gimpel his topcoat, he asked quietly, “Tonight?”

“Yes, I think Alicia’s ready,” Gimpel answered as quietly. “I told her she could stay up late. How has Anna done the past year?”

“Well enough,” her father said.

“We’re still here, after all,” Esther Stutzman put in. A slim woman with light brown hair, she peered at Gimpel through glasses thicker than his own. Somehow, in spite of everything, her laugh managed to hold real mirth. “And if she hadn’t done well, we assuredly wouldn’t be.”

“Wouldn’t be what, Aunt Esther?” Alicia Gimpel asked, a doll under one arm.

“Wouldn’t be standing out here in the hall talking if we expected the curly-haired
Gestapo
to be listening in,” Esther said. Her grin took all sting from the words.

Imitating her father, Alicia said, “Oh,
quatsch
!” Anna Stutzman tried to sneak up behind her, but she whirled before she got tickled. Both girls squealed. They ran off together, Alicia’s brown curls bobbing beside Anna’s blond ones. They were very
much of a height; though Anna was a year older, Alicia was tall for her age.

“Dinner!” Lise called from the kitchen. Everyone went into the dining room. Heinrich Gimpel and Anna’s brother Gottlieb dropped the leaves on the table to accommodate the unusual crowd. Walther, meanwhile, fetched a couple of extra chairs, while Susanna Weiss arranged them around the table.

They all paused to admire the fragrantly steaming pork roast before Gimpel attacked it with fork and carving knife. With onions, potatoes, and boiled parsnips, it made a feast to fight the chill outside and leave everyone happily replete. Most of the talk that punctuated the music of knife and fork was praise for Lise’s cooking.

Smooth wheat beer mixed with raspberry syrup accompanied the meal. The two younger Gimpel girls, who usually were allowed only small glasses, got grownup-sized mugs. They proudly drained them dry, and were nodding by the time their mother brought out dessert. They munched their way through the little cakes stuffed with prunes or apricots or mildly sweet chocolate, but the filling sweets only made them sleepier. The food slowed Alicia down, too, but she was buoyed by the prospect of sitting up and talking with the adults.

Seeing her daughter’s excitement, Lise Gimpel said, “She doesn’t know yet how boring we can be, with our chatter of children and taxes and work and who’s going to bed with whom.”

“Who
is
going to bed with whom?” Esther asked. “It’s more interesting than taxes and work, that’s for certain.”

Susanna parodied a Hitler Jugend song: “In the fields and on the heath, we lose strength through joy.” Gottlieb Stutzman blushed almost as red as she had before. Teasing him, she said, “Why, Gottlieb, don’t you hope to meet a friendly maiden when you go to work your year in the fields?”

“It is not practical, not for me,” he answered stiffly, rubbing a finger over his peach-fuzz mustache.