Looking Inward

by Merrie Haskell

Bagels are being sold in New York again, the radio says, announcing today's headline stories. I think that's what it says. The German of the reader is quite rapid, and the wind is whistling into the car rather loudly at 45 miles per hour.

The car is going much too fast, as far as I'm concerned, although there is no immediate danger from it. The speed is not outrageous, but it makes the trip to the dreaded destination of the county courthouse altogether too short.

I know intellectually there is nothing but a notary clerk and a Justice of the Peace at the courthouse. I know this, and I am afraid to arrive. The ironic thing is that the cause of my terror is not what awaits me in the brown brick building in the county seat, but what is traveling with me. And yet, here and now, I am not afraid of him-though I cannot bring myself to look at him. I couldn't bear it if he spoke. He watches the road with the same intensity he uses on me, and he concentrates on the radio broadcast. For the moment, I have escaped his attention.

I use the moment to breathe. Since I cannot turn my head to the left, I look instead out the window. It is a fine day, and we are driving through a summer wonderland of fresh greenery. There is no pleasure, though, in watching the pines and oaks fly past, and I have little interest in noting the location of the few small stands of elderberries that I have spotted.

We're thirty minutes from town still, and I wish the ride were over, or else we were driving in a city. Country roads are good for thinking, but thinking right now isn't good; too much more thinking, and I will scream. Rather than think anymore, I lean forward in my seat, taking care that I do not look at Hesse, and I turn up the radio.

The radio is tuned to the Armed Forces Station and it's now the middle of the news hour. I can barely understand the quick German, but it seems that the story is about a tax reform, but the technicalities of the language elude me. The story changes, then, and it's the full story about the bagels, and how Krüdener has announced that they are to be sold in New York again.

I heard about this a couple of days ago. The vine creeps slowly, but it goes a little faster than our Nazi overlords would like to believe. Anyway, the vine said that it's a ploy, that Krüdener is allowing the sale of bagels in New York again to draw any lingering Jews out of hiding. Anyone buying bagels will be watched-- more so than they were before, that is. The neighbor who told me this thought it was funny, that Krüdener was going to such lengths, when it was obvious that anyone who had hidden this long was going to stay hidden forever, and likely, if they wanted bagels badly enough, could boil their own batch at home, away from the eyes of the stormers. We both nodded then, sagely and wisely, as if we knew for a fact that there were still whole groups of people who manage to thwart the Nazis on a daily basis, and we nodded sagely and wisely, because we, like everyone else, understand that the vice-Führer has lost his mind.

Echoing my thoughts dangerously, Hesse bangs the steering wheel and gestures broadly with one hand. "This, this is just one more example of the vice-Führer's madness!" he says. "He perhaps thinks this will help him catch more Jews? Bah. We have caught them all." Then, in case I live without the benefit of neighbors on the vine, in case I am not quite smart enough to understand that the vice-Führer's behavior is irrational, he proceeds, very calmly and patiently, to explain to me a situation I already understand. I sit still, looking out the window, nodding silently, and marveling at the deep game that Hesse plays. There is a logic behind criticizing the vice-Führer in a car that belongs to the Party, that is very likely bugged by the Party. The vice-Führer must be on his way out if a colonel of non-Germanic origin can insult him without fear. And Hesse must know this, as he knows also that the people who are listening to his grand-standing at this moment are going to rise in the event of the vice-Führer's downfall. Hesse must intend to rise with them.

I abandon this line of thought to wax nostalgic. It is sad for a North American like myself to think that our dictator, that sad and crazy little man, appointed by an even sadder and crazier and littler man, is going to be deposed-- and not through the workings of the Resistance. This great wish of the people will be granted by the man we most assuredly fight against, the despot back Home.

It seems another proof that the Reich could easily continue for the promised millennium. Another proof that the Nazis have won. Another proof that the Resistance is nothing more than a barely reliable grapevine.

The stories of the European Resistance in the old days put us to shame, but of course, in the early days, they had hope. Hold out 'til the Allies come. We have no such hopes. We dare not look towards the distant mountains of South America, where we our shadow governments still eke out an existence. We have no belief that Spanish America will unite and liberate us. So, we sit and we wait; no real Resistance have we, though each day we resist in a thousand personal ways.

I shall be glad to see Krüdener go. His departure means that we get to take the ugly little swastika off of our elderberry jam. There is joy in that. And the government inspectors will stop coming, though I suppose it is far too late on that front. I shall be breeding government inspectors soon.

Hesse is silent, listening to a report on the rising numbers of the ideal population. Outside, the country continues to roll by. I see a place where wild huckleberries grow; I know it well. My sister and I visit every year.

My sister and I raise berries on the land left to us by our parents, and with the berries we make jam. Our strawberry is the best jam, but since there is no other major producer of elderberry jam in the country, we are famed for that instead. Ginny, my sister, has a talent for cultivating elderberry bushes.

Our special jam one day made it to the breakfast table of the vice-Führer in burned-out Washington. He wrote us a lovely letter praising our work, and told us that it would be the official

White House jam from then on, and that were to have the privileged use of the swastika stamp as a seal of his approval.

If we had had any courage, we would have poisoned it. We should have. Elderberry-arsenic jam for the vice-Führer of the Americas, tied with a red ribbon. Happy Kristalnächt Anniversary.

Since then, however, we have been honored yearly by a visit from a slack-jawed government inspector and a pair of bored-looking German army officers, for whom this task must be some kind of punishment. The officers were there to arrest us, question us and then execute us if their commanding idiot saw anything suspicious. The official word was that the inspector was making sure nothing unnatural-meaning poison-marred the quality of the jam. The first two years, the inspectors were too stupid to know the difference between cyanide and almond extract.

This year someone wised up. This year, they sent an almost important colonel and a detachment of twenty fresh-faced young men who got underfoot and stuck their noses into every vat and jar. The colonel and the two other top-ranked officers were to sleep in our house, while the others bunked down in the barn. They intended to stay a week and to observe the entire elderberry jam-making process, from picking to shipping.

We served them dinner on the first night on rough planks set across saw-horses in the barn, since the table in the house isn't big enough. We offered a simple meal of chicken and dumplings, with berries as dessert. We had planned to withdraw and leave the soldiers at their meal, but Colonel Hesse adamantly bade us sit down and break bread with them.

The Colonel initiated his dinner conversation with: "You are both attractive young ladies, though not in the ideal." True. Ginny and I are both red-headed and brown-eyed. "A mating with a good Aryan youth could produce some beautiful children-mate those children properly, and you might erase your genetic flaws in two generations. Young Ericson there, he is in the ideal-

though he is an American of an adulterated background-and very good-looking, yes, Miss Hart?" He directed this question towards Ginny, though he watched me out of the corner of his eye. He himself is in the ideal, very blond, though up close one can see some gray, and his fine blue eyes are rimmed with lines from squinting. It must be squinting. I cannot imagine that he laughs that often.

He turned those eyes on me when he got no answer from Ginny. "You are what, twenty-six?" he assessed shrewdly. "You should have had your first child years ago! Imagine if all girls did as you do!"

"Most girls do not," I reminded him, trying to keep the edge out of my voice. Most girls do not; most girls are so desperate for that which the wars took from us, that they'll take anyone, anything, any arrangement. "I want a marriage as well as a mating, Herr Colonel."

His smile was everything charming. "Ah, Miss Hart, I am a physician in our Medical Corps, and I find that I much prefer the title of Doctor to my army title." I wondered why, given is said about Nazi doctors.

"Of course, Herr Doctor," I managed. "And have you, sir, become a father?"

Hesse's smile became a little icy. "I have deposited my seed with a bank, Miss Hart. I thank you for your concern."

My face grew red at that, but I went on. "Do you not wish to know your child?"

"Naturally, I would like to oversee the raising of my child, but the life of an army doctor requires a wife to see to the day to day needs of a baby. I, as of yet, have no wife." His look, at this point, was subtly insidious, and I blushed more deeply.

The evening promised to continue in this embarrassing vein, until, quite suddenly, Ginny fell into one of her fits, and gently slid off the chair to twitch dramatically at the floor for a few seconds. I ran around the make-shift table to help her, but Dr. Hesse was already kneeling beside her. A few minutes later, she opened her eyes and said, "It's all right, Caro, just another little moment."

"This has happened before?" the doctor questioned. She nodded, and explained the way her vision blacked out, while I went to the intercom to call the hired girls for help. I had ordered them to stay out of sight of the soldiers for their protection. Dr. Hesse asked Ginny about

headaches and blurred vision, and about the frequency of the incidents. Then Margaret and Eden came, and we helped Ginny to the house and up to her room.

Dr. Hesse went in with her, and came out after she answered all of his questions twice. He offered me his arm to accompany me back to the barn to finish our dinners, now cold. "I should like to examine your sister, Miss Hart. We can drive into town tomorrow and use the medical facilities there. If by some chance your sister suffers from a malady of the brain… well, let us just say that I am uniquely qualified to help her. I have spent years studying that most important organ." I had a sudden vision of hundreds of Jews and blacks slaughtered and laid out on stone slabs… their heads shaved and skulls cracked open, in this way forced to reveal the secrets of their inner selves to Hesse's dispassionate eyes. I shivered, made suddenly cold by what I imagined.

"Are you chilly, Miss Hart?" he asked solicitously. He stopped and stripped off his jacket and draped it across my shoulders. I looked down at the swastika worked in black over the silver caduceus, and shuddered again. Though I had watched similar scenes in movies before, with the shivering young lady and the gallant man who offers his jacket, this felt wrong, perverse. Everything is wrong, though, everything in the world has been perverted-healing and courting, having children, and even elderberry jam.

Dr. Hesse was looking off to the east, where the full moon, half-risen, appeared to be caught in the branches of the old dead oak. Dark clumps in the branches stood in silhouette against the moon. "I do believe that is mistletoe, Miss Hart," he said in an unfathomable tone, and when I made to turn away and continue walking, he grabbed my shoulders and pressed his mouth to mine. I felt then what a mouse must feel in that suffocating moment of pain and gratification, when it has gained the morsel of cheese it has long hungered for, when it knows the waiting and wondering and fear of being trapped is over, when the trap crashes down around it for the eternal moment before death. I could not breathe or think in the warm trap of Hesse's arms. There was only the devastating mixture of terror and longing chasing around in my belly. Hesse deepened the kiss, and I felt the bile rise in my throat. I gagged and broke away from the embrace, to retch violently in the bushes.

Hesse said nothing for a long moment while I trembled and attempted to stand straight. "I think, Miss Hart, that you are a hypocrite," he said at last in a very cold voice. "I think that as much as I disgust you, you want me, and I think your feelings about Nazi American are just the same. There is a secret Nazi inside of you, Miss Hart, that relishes the thought of never being forced to deal with people unlike you again. It likes that the trains run on time, and it likes that you can have children by any man you want without being married to him, and it likes to be a part of an empire that will last a thousand years." He stepped closer, his teeth gleaming in the moonlight. "It is the part of you that does not like to think, that is glad someone is there to make decisions for you. It is the part that likes the thought of a me taking you here, on the ground."

I wiped my hand across my mouth, trembling still from that strange reaction of fear and desire. My voice wavered, and it seemed to me that I spoke through a hollow tube. "A secret Nazi?" I said. "If that is so, then in you there must be a secret Jew. There must exist in you someone who wants a place to live away from the eyes of the SS, who wants the love of God again. A part of you that will keep you from rape though it does not hold your hand from killing in the name of science."

He seized me then, his hands curling around the back of my neck like claws, his eyes dark and glittering above me. I fell silent quickly. He held us both still for a long moment. I stood before his hard gaze, weak but pliant. He stared down at me, not speaking, strong and rigid. I thought then: it is his kind that breaks eventually. It is mine that bends before the prevailing winds and it is mine that emerges from the storms, twisted and unrecognizable, but intact.

I felt then as I feel now. I sit beside him. His hand rests on my knee, a casual reminder

of who is owned by whom. I shall be forced into many unnatural positions in the long years that I must wait for him to break.

"You know nothing," he said fiercely, sternly, his fingers tightening convulsively on the back of my neck before he dipped his head and rammed his mouth into mine, bruising me.

What happened next is properly called rape, except that I knew he possessed me already, mind and soul. The surrender of my body then seemed inconsequential, really, and perhaps Hesse spoke the truth to some degree when he made reference to my secret self. Something terrible is inside me. I went to a book burning once. Just as with Hesse, I had trembled with a strange emotion, caught in the fervor and the passion of those around me. I hated them and feared them, and I wanted the Devil himself to appear and drag them all down to hell, I wanted to see his blunt, bestial paws tear the silky neat hair of the women, to claw the fresh young faces of the ideal boys. And I enjoyed this feeling, and wished it to never end. It is the kind of feeling that those who conquer nations must feel.

And I tremble now, a little, thinking about how Hesse claimed me as his possession. It's all the same feeling-- terror and rage, and desire.
#

Afterwards, I picked the sticks out of my hair and went swimming in the pond. The water was cool and the air soft. The mosquitoes were out in force, but I shed my clothes and entered the water anyway. The secret emotion, the Nazi emotion, went away after a while, and summer again took my soul. I stared at the moon, which had risen clear of the trees.

There is that within me that is capable of murder, I thought. So distant from the euphoria of my passion and hatred, I was horrified by this feeling. I wanted to be eleven years old again. I wanted to go back, to live again my life before the invasion.

Then I stopped wishing, and climbed out of the pond to go see Ginny. She greeted me fearfully, and said in a low voice, "Caroline, we must flee."

"Flee?" I asked.

"Leave America. Go to Peru. Join the others there."

"Go to Peru!" I said. "That's impossible. We don't have the connections-it is too dangerous."

She said slowly: "I have-taken steps."

I moved close to her and whispered in her ear, afraid, desperately afraid that Hesse could

somehow hear us. "What steps? Oh, Virginia, I hope you have not killed us."

"Tomorrow afternoon, by the oak tree, at three o'clock."

I pretended not to hear. I leaned away and said in a loud voice, "The colonel wants to take you to town in the morning and examine you in the hospital."

"Hesse," she smirked. "He's no more German than you or I."

"We're all German now," I reminded her.

"He's Russian!" she laughed. "Oh, how it must gall them-- their finest neurosurgeon, and he's a bloody Slav. That's why he's only a colonel. If he were even French, he'd be a general by now." She laughed again.

"How could he be Russian?" I asked, perplexed. "And how could you possibly know?"

"Oh, we moles know these things." She let loose a giggle and sank back onto her pillow, closing her eyes. I wondered if she realized that she had just revealed herself as an Underground agent to a very stupid woman who was at the very least owned by a Nazi, even if she was not one herself, even secretly. I stood up to leave. "Three o'clock. Bring nothing," she said, without opening her eyes.

I went out into the hall. Hesse was standing beside the narrow window at the end of the hall, looking out at the farm. He did not beckon or command, but I went to him, and stood close by him. It seemed natural. "We should go to bed," he said. "There is a long day ahead."
#

At three o'clock, I met my sister at the oak tree. We set out without a word, down the dirt

road that winds past our house. I gave one glance to the dead tree behind us, but did not look up towards the mistletoe. As we passed the greenhouse at the edge of our property, two of the uniformly blond, handsome soldiers from Hesse's lantern-jawed entourage came out and fell in step behind us. Hesse himself was back at the house waiting for a phone call. I had checked.

"Hello there, going for a walk?" the younger of the two soldiers said affably.

Ginny said, "Going to buy eggs from the Amish." No one spoke another word until we reached the paved road. From there it was only a mile to the highway. I looked to Ginny for some sign, but she would not meet my eyes.

"Good Germanic folk, the Amish," the younger soldier said. I cast an irritated glance at him. Why was he still talking?

The older soldier whipped his head around to glare at his companion. Cautiously I said, "They are good."

Suddenly, the soldier walking beside me grabbed my hand and said desperately, "We're not soldiers-not anymore. We are your contacts," he added significantly.

Ginny turned her head half-way to speak to him over her shoulder. "The car is at the corner?"

"Yes. Oh, God, yes!" he said, and squeezed my hand tightly.

"¿Hables espagnol, señor?" Ginny asked him.

"No, no hablo mucho-yet," he appended. He let go of my hand.

We walked on in silence, looking always to the hill that obscured the crossroads where our salvation lay. Before we even reached the foot of the hill, however, there was the rumble of a car motor behind us. Panic caught at my throat like a small clawing animal, and then my fears crystallized when I saw the face of the driver.

Hesse stopped the car and got out, looking into our faces one by one with a bland expression. "Miss Hart-Virginia-the tests came back. They all indicate that you have a serious

problem, most likely an abnormal growth on your brain. We must get you into town, to the hospital. Immediately."

"We were going to buy eggs," the young soldier said in a weak voice.

Hesse managed somehow to look amused and immeasurably bored at the same time. "Go buy them, then. The ladies will come with me."

#

Ginny took the explanations calmly, more calmly than I did. She seemed perfectly in accord with all the proposed procedures until later, when the nurse came in to shave her head. Then Ginny struggled and kicked and scratched at the woman's face, and when two large orderlies came in to restrain her, she wailed and writhed. They held her head still, and the nurse began to first cut and then shave the hair. When the nurse applied the razor to her scalp, Ginny somehow knew exactly where the hold on her head was weakest, and jerked away, such that the razor made a deep gash up above her right eye. Blood began pouring down into her face and ears, and her screams became even more piercing and desperate.

Herr Doctor came in and tried to calm her, but it was to no avail. Finally, he turned to where another of the burly orderlies was holding me back from going to her, and ordered me to calm her. I went to my sister, and took her hand. "Virginia," I said in a low voice. "You must be brave. You must be still." I trailed off and looked bemusedly at the ideally handsome man who was my lover and my death, and could not for the life of me remember his name. At last I gave up the struggle and said, "This good man will help you."

She eventually quieted down, and I stared at my nemesis in silence. He looked down at me, equally nonplused. Ginny clutched my hand and sobbed quietly as the nurse tried to mop up the flow of blood. Then I looked at the blood in her eyes and on my hands, and had to hunch down on the floor with my head between my knees to fight off the blackness.

The operation took quite a long time. I fell asleep in the waiting room, and woke to a silent and darkened hospital, with Hesse leaning over me, stroking my hair. I shook beneath his

hand like a scared rabbit. "The night we burned Washington, the flames were the color of your hair," he said softly. He sat on the sofa, and moved in close to kiss me. "I am a good man, hmm?" he breathed into my ear. "Why were you running then?"

"I wasn't running," I said, trying to catch my breath, trying not to taste ashes in my mouth

when I thought of the car waiting at the corner. It had been a mere mile out of our reach. "Why did you let those other two go if you think we were running?" I asked, looking away.

"Why were you running?" he repeated.

I plunged into the lie headfirst. It was easy, for there was much truth to it. "I wanted you to come with us," I said flatly. "I was holding us back, waiting, hoping… I wasn't going to get in that car at the corner. I can't leave my farm for a refugee camp. I can't leave my heart behind to live a life among strangers."

"Your heart?" he asked, twining the greater portion of my hair around his hand like yarn.

"Yes," I said, and hesitated. "I-I would have left that with you."

He tugged my hair sharply, so that my chin jerked up and I looked directly at him. I sucked in my breath sharply. I watched him watch me.

"You seem to be in a constant state of fear when I am around," he said at last, his voice silken and cold.

"I am," I said. The words were out before I could stop them. I should have denied the fear, called the trembling a product of excitement at being near him. What would I have called the retching, though? I wondered. I decided that speaking the truth on this matter was the safest course. "You terrify me," I confessed.

He was, of course, pleased by this admission. Dawn came soon, and he let me see Ginny when she woke. Then we went home and slept, and now we are on our way to the Justice of the Peace.

I have admitted my fear of him, and have at least hinted at my love-or whatever you might call this desperate and passionate feeling. I've admitted that there may be a secret Nazi inside of me. Hesse recognized it early on, though he has yet to recognize the secret Jew in

himself-that part of him that allowed two young men to at least try to run away to Peru. Since I found that secret seed of humanity within him, I fear him a little less.

Hesse has told me that Ginny will probably recover completely from the operation, though she may have to relearn certain things, like jam-making and recent history. For a while, though, she will live in a time where our parents have just bought a berry farm and are trying out different recipes for elderberry jam. For a while she will not know what it means for me to be married to Hesse, and she will look at the swastika on our labels as simply an icon for a squashed spider. I envy her that.

Ginny will no longer be a mole, either, and I am not about to take her place on the Underground. The plans I make, I make in my head, and I will not let them out… soon.

Hesse drives onward to the courthouse. From there it's back to the hospital. There is a pot of blackberry jam on the seat between us. It is a present for Ginny, because she doesn't like elderberry.

The radio breaks into my thoughts with an announcement in five different languages, to report that Caracas has fallen. "Lima cannot be far behind," Hesse smiles. More words for the bug as far as I'm concerned, even if Hesse does believe them.

Long before the Stormers reach the Andes, vice-Führer Krüdener will have fallen, and Hesse will have risen enough that somewhere have the opportunity to meet the Great Führer himself.

When that day comes, I will have decided how I shall strike the killing blow. Perhaps I should be obvious and shoot him. More likely, I will hand him a pot of elderberry-hemlock jam tied with a gingham ribbon. For your breakfast table, sir.

Eventually, everyone who hopes for rescue stops looking to outside forces for help, and looks into the self. I don't even think of Spanish American when making my new plans. I have finally been forced to look inward. And when I look inside, I see the secret Nazi that Hesse first pointed out to me.

What Hesse doesn't realize about we secret Nazis is that we are as paranoid as the real ones, and as ruthless.