Read Online In the Presence of Mine Enemies by Harry Turtledove - Free Book Online
Authors: Harry Turtledove
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to appear. Soon the trees would be gloriously green, with birds singing and nesting in them. For now, Susanna could see down to the garden and the bronze statues of the great scholars there: Wilhelm von Humboldt, the founder of the university; his brother, Alexander; Helmholtz; Treitschke; Mommsen; and Hegel.
Towering above all the other statues was a colossal bronze of Werner Heisenberg. Arno Breker, Hitlerâs favorite sculptor, had commemorated the physicist at the first Führer âs personal request. Susanna had seen photos of Heisenberg. He was tall, yes, but on the scrawny side, almost as much so as Heinrich Gimpel. Breker had turned him into one of his countless Aryan supermen: broad-shouldered, deep-chested, with a narrow waist and thighs like a draft horseâs. The usual heroic Breker nude struggled to burst forth from the suit in which the sculptor had reluctantly had to drape his subject.
Susanna sighed. If Heisenberg and the other Germanscientists hadnât been so quick to see the implications of atomic fissionâ¦She sighed again. The world would be different, but who could guess how? One of the things sheâd seen was that different didnât necessarily mean better.
A swarthy young man who wore a neat black beard and had a turban wrapped around his head hurried past Susanna. âPlease to excuse me,â he said in musically accented German.
âAber natürlich,â she replied with regal politeness. The beturbaned young man went up the stairs two at a time and into the east wing of the university building. The Department of Germanic Languages shared the wing with the German Institute for Foreigners, which since 1922 had been instructing those from abroad on the German language and German culture, and the more recent Institute for Racial Studies, which helped decide which foreigners deserved to survive and be instructed about the blessings of German culture.
The fellow whoâd gone past Susanna in such a rush had to be from Persia or India, probably the latter. Despite their complexions, folk from those lands got credit for being Aryans, and so lived on as subjectsâsometimes even privileged subjectsâwithin the Germanic Empire.
Had the young man been born farther west, had he been an Arab rather than an Aryanâ¦As far as the Institute for Racial Studies was concerned, anti-Semitism extended to Arabs as well as Jews. Some of the things the Reich had done, and had browbeaten the Italians into doing, in the Middle East were on a scale to rival the destruction of the Slavic Untermenschen in Eastern Europe.
We arenât the only ones, Susanna thought with a shudder. We remember better than most of the others, though. That is one thing we have always done: we remember. But so do the Nazis. Can we really hope to outlast them? Heinrich and Walther think so, or say they do, but do they believe it when a noise outside wakes them up in the middle of the night?
She didnât know how they kept from screaming when they heard a noise like that. She had no idea at all how she kept from screaming when she heard a noise like that. Even fourth-generation Nazis whoâd never had anideologically impure thought in their lives started sweating at noises in the night. They might know their thoughts were unsullied, their bloodlines uncontaminated. Yes, they might know, but did the Security Police? You never could tell.
And if you really had something to hideâ¦
So far, though, all the noises Susanna had heard in and around her block of flats were those of everyday life: neighbors trying to go in and out quietly or sometimes too drunk to bother, a tree branch scraping on her window, traffic swishing by outside, once in a great while the trashcan-rattle of an accident. No men in high-crowned caps and black trenchcoats pounding on the door and roaring, âJüdin, heraus!â
Not yet. Never yet. But the fear never went away, either.
With another shiver, Susanna
Towering above all the other statues was a colossal bronze of Werner Heisenberg. Arno Breker, Hitlerâs favorite sculptor, had commemorated the physicist at the first Führer âs personal request. Susanna had seen photos of Heisenberg. He was tall, yes, but on the scrawny side, almost as much so as Heinrich Gimpel. Breker had turned him into one of his countless Aryan supermen: broad-shouldered, deep-chested, with a narrow waist and thighs like a draft horseâs. The usual heroic Breker nude struggled to burst forth from the suit in which the sculptor had reluctantly had to drape his subject.
Susanna sighed. If Heisenberg and the other Germanscientists hadnât been so quick to see the implications of atomic fissionâ¦She sighed again. The world would be different, but who could guess how? One of the things sheâd seen was that different didnât necessarily mean better.
A swarthy young man who wore a neat black beard and had a turban wrapped around his head hurried past Susanna. âPlease to excuse me,â he said in musically accented German.
âAber natürlich,â she replied with regal politeness. The beturbaned young man went up the stairs two at a time and into the east wing of the university building. The Department of Germanic Languages shared the wing with the German Institute for Foreigners, which since 1922 had been instructing those from abroad on the German language and German culture, and the more recent Institute for Racial Studies, which helped decide which foreigners deserved to survive and be instructed about the blessings of German culture.
The fellow whoâd gone past Susanna in such a rush had to be from Persia or India, probably the latter. Despite their complexions, folk from those lands got credit for being Aryans, and so lived on as subjectsâsometimes even privileged subjectsâwithin the Germanic Empire.
Had the young man been born farther west, had he been an Arab rather than an Aryanâ¦As far as the Institute for Racial Studies was concerned, anti-Semitism extended to Arabs as well as Jews. Some of the things the Reich had done, and had browbeaten the Italians into doing, in the Middle East were on a scale to rival the destruction of the Slavic Untermenschen in Eastern Europe.
We arenât the only ones, Susanna thought with a shudder. We remember better than most of the others, though. That is one thing we have always done: we remember. But so do the Nazis. Can we really hope to outlast them? Heinrich and Walther think so, or say they do, but do they believe it when a noise outside wakes them up in the middle of the night?
She didnât know how they kept from screaming when they heard a noise like that. She had no idea at all how she kept from screaming when she heard a noise like that. Even fourth-generation Nazis whoâd never had anideologically impure thought in their lives started sweating at noises in the night. They might know their thoughts were unsullied, their bloodlines uncontaminated. Yes, they might know, but did the Security Police? You never could tell.
And if you really had something to hideâ¦
So far, though, all the noises Susanna had heard in and around her block of flats were those of everyday life: neighbors trying to go in and out quietly or sometimes too drunk to bother, a tree branch scraping on her window, traffic swishing by outside, once in a great while the trashcan-rattle of an accident. No men in high-crowned caps and black trenchcoats pounding on the door and roaring, âJüdin, heraus!â
Not yet. Never yet. But the fear never went away, either.
With another shiver, Susanna
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