The telephone rang. "Excuse me," Esther said, glad for an excuse not to have to talk to Frau Bauriedl. She picked up the handset. "Dr. Dambach's office."

"Frau Stutzman?" The woman on the other end of the line waited for Esther to agree that she was herself, then went on, "This is Maria Klein,Frau Stutzman. I'm…I'm afraid I'm going to have to cancel Paul's appointment this morning. You see, we are under investigation for something…something of which we are certainly not guilty. Good-bye." She hung up.

She hadn't let on that she knew Esther in any way except as the pediatrician's receptionist. There in the warm, bright, sterile calm of Dambach's office, Esther shivered as if caught in a Lapland blizzard. Was Maximilian Ebert or some other hard-faced Nazi in the uniform of the Reichs Genealogical Office or the Security Police standing next to Maria, listening to every word she said and how she said it? Or was she just afraid her line was tapped?

Under investigation. How long had it been since the Germans caught a Jew in Berlin? It must have been some time not long after Esther found out she was one. There had been a great hue and cry then. How much more strident would it be now, when the whole Reich was thought to be Judenfrei for years? And if the Kleins were found guilty of such a heinous crime, what else would the investigators be able to tear out of them?

When Esther got to her feet, her legs didn't want to hold her up. She held on to the top of the desk for a moment till she steadied. She made the trip back to Dr. Dambach's personal office more by main force of will than any other way. He looked up from a medical journal, a question on his face. "That telephone call was from Frau Klein," Esther said carefully. She had to watch every word, too, in case her turn came up next. "She won't be bringing Paul in this morning after all."

"No?" Dambach said. "Have she and her husband decided to take him to the Reichs Mercy Center, then? It's the only sensible thing to do, I'm afraid."

Was it? For someone old and in torment from, say, cancer, it might be. For a baby? But, on the other hand, for a baby doomed to a lingering, horrible, certain death? Esther just didn't know. That was beside the point now, though. Shaking her head, she answered, "No, because she and her husband are-under investigation, she said."

"Are they?" Dr. Dambach didn't need to ask why they were being investigated. He was the one to whom the possibility had first occurred. "Well, I'm sure the authorities will get to the bottom of it. If they do turn out to be Jews, who could have imagined such a thing in Berlin in the twenty-first century?"

"Yes, who?" Esther hoped she matched his tone. Feeling spiteful, she added, "And Frau Bauriedl is here with Wilhelmina."

"Is she?" The pediatrician scowled. "It's a shame the powers that be aren't investigating her. The Kleins have always seemed like nice people. But appearances can be deceiving. If they're Jews…" He shook his head. "We certainly can't let that sort of thing go on, can we?"

Before Esther had to come up with a response to that, the telephone rang again. "Excuse me, Doctor," she said, and hurried out to answer it. A worried mother had a three-year-old who was throwing up. Esther fit her into the slot the Kleins had vacated. Even that made her want to cry.

The worst of it was, she didn't dare call people to warn them. If the Kleins were under suspicion, she and Walther might be, too. Her warnings could turn into betrayals. She wouldn't risk that. Even if she called to say she would be dropping by to pass on some news-even that might be too much. She had to assume she was being watched, being listened to. Maybe she wasn't. She hoped-she prayed-she wasn't. But she couldn't take the chance. She had to act as if she were.

And what's the use of praying to a God Who has made us fair game all over the world for a lifetime? That question and others of the same sort floated to the surface like rotting corpses whenever times turned black. Only one answer had ever occurred to Esther. She fell back on it now.If I don't believe, if I turn my back and walk away, then aren't I saying the Nazis were right all along, and we shouldn't go on?

Usually, that was enough to keep her on her course. She could be very stubborn. A Jew who wasn't stubborn these days didn't stay a Jew. When times got uncommonly black, though, she couldn't help wondering,Did I stay on course for so long-for this?

If God couldn't forgive her for wondering…Too bad for Him,she thought.

"Come right in,Frau Bauriedl, Wilhelmina," she said. "I'm sure Dr. Dambach will be so glad to see you again." If Dambach couldn't forgive her for lying…Too bad for him.

A woman brought in a wailing toddler who was tugging at his ear. She looked harried. "I hope the doctor can see me soon," she said. "Rudolf started this at ten last night, and he's been going ever since. My husband and I haven't had much sleep."

"There's only one patient in front of you,Frau Stransky," Esther said. "I'm sure it won't be too long. Would you like some coffee while you're waiting?"

"Oh, please!"Frau Stransky said, as if Esther had offered her the Holy Grail. Esther gave her a cup. By the way she gulped it down, she wished she had an intravenous caffeine drip hooked up instead. Esther had had mornings like that, too, even if her children hadn't had to go through many earaches.

More women came in with children in tow. In the examination room,Frau Bauriedl droned on and on about Wilhelmina's imaginary afflictions. The only thing really wrong with Wilhelmina was that she looked like her mother.

At last, after too long, Dr. Dambach must have got a little more abrupt than he was in the habit of doing. Frau Bauriedl's tones grew shriller and more indignant. "The nerve!" she said as she swept her daughter past Esther. "I think we'll see someone else the next time." She'd made that threat before. Esther wished she would do it, but she hadn't yet.

Whenever the door to the waiting room opened, Esther had to fight against a flinch. Would it be someone in the somber uniform of the Security Police? Whenever the phone rang, her hand wanted to shake as she reached for it. Would someone be warning her of a new disaster?

If the Security Police had operatives in Dr. Dambach's office, they were disguised as worried mothers-one of the most effective disguises Esther could imagine, and also one of the most unnecessary. All the phone calls featured more worried mothers except one. That one had a worried father: a cartoonist who worked out of his house. "Ja, Herr Wasserstein, you can bring Luther in at half past two this afternoon," Esther told him.

As soon as Irma came in during the lunch hour, Esther left. She had one more anxious moment walking out of the building. Would they bundle her into a car and take her away to God only knew where? They didn't. She walked to the bus stop. No one bothered her at all.

But the fear didn't go away. It never would.

Susanna Weiss had lived in fear ever since she was ten years old. Fear made her angry. It always had. She'd been living with rage since she was ten, too. Most of the time, she lived with it by making everyone around her live with it. That had made her more respected-and certainly more feared-than any of the other handful of female professors in the Department of Germanic Languages. "Don't mess with her-it's more trouble than it's worth" was the watchword these days at Friedrich Wilhelm University, not just in the department but also in the administration.

Some things, though, were too big and too strong to fight.

Jews didn't-couldn't-fight the apparatus of the Nazi Party. That was as much an article of faith these days as Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. The Reich bestrode the world like a colossus. And we petty Jews walk under its huge legs, and peep about to escape our dishonorable graves.