The Right Thing to Do Read Online Free

flash. Maybe it had never been real.
    Willy’s forebears and those of Sabina, his wife, had lived in Berlin for three centuries. They’d served in the German army and the navy, in some instances, with distinction. The Blausteins and the Sellingers considered the Fatherland the ablest, most intelligent, most creative civilization the world had ever witnessed and had no problem rationalizing the current financial mess as foisted upon Germany by its enemies in revenge for the Great War.
    For three hundred years, the Blausteins and the Sellingers nurtured themselves with the milk of patriotism. Neither Willy nor Sabina nor their parents and grandparents spoke a language other than German, if you didn’t count Sabina’s semi-familiarity with the English she’d learned at gymnasium.
    “So simple, the grammar’s almost crude,” she’d informed Willy. “For a simple people.”
    Neither Willy nor Sabina had much use for any culture that wasn’t German—why bother, when you had Bach and Beethoven and Goethe and Kant? That included avoiding the religion into which they’d been born. The last time either of them had crossed a synagogue threshold was in 1930, for the circumcision of their only child, Siggy. A ritual they considered unnecessary but went along with because everyone, even the irreligious Jews, did it and because Sabina’s doctor uncle, Oskar, assured her it was healthy.
    Siggy’s solitary status didn’t result from Sabina’s lack of effort. She’d suffered four miscarriages since the birth of her gorgeous, towheaded, maddeningly mischievous son.
    Each failure—that’s how she viewed it—gnawed a chunk out of her soul. She knew she was an inadequate woman. She’d never say so to Willy, of course. Why trouble him? He’d never been anything but comforting and loving each time the cramps took hold and she knew another bad end was coming. Of course he’d try to dispel the notion of failure, but what else could you call it when you’d flunked the basic female assignment?
    Sabina comforted herself by thinking of childless women who had it worse. Was sensible enough to recognize that the crucial difference was between zero and one. And what a singleton she had: tall and strong, gregarious, gorgeous.
    Everyone said Siggy looked more German than an Aryan.
    Everyone said the apple didn’t fall.
    Sabina was a good-looking woman, blond and dark-eyed, and at five nine the tallest female in every grade from kindergarten through gymnasium. That mandated a tall husband, and Willy at six foot one filled the bill. Their parents knew each other and arranged the first meeting. Sabina didn’t need to be convinced; Willy was dark-haired and blue-eyed, hardworking, good at math, and built like a mountaineer. Though his most strenuous exercise since marriage had been toting spools of copper wire from his warehouse to a waiting delivery van.
    She found it easy to learn to love him, believed he loved her, and, more important, they both adored Siggy beyond imagination. Though his activity level and refusal to learn the word “no” sometimes tried them.
    Life was good.
    Then came January 30, 1933, and the mustachioed lunatic weasel had somehow—unbelievably—come to power.
    Almost immediately people the Blausteins had considered their friends turned into strangers and business deals outside the Jewish district dried up. Like a cancer, it spread, subtle resentment blossoming into sneers, gibes, overt resentment.
    Then vicious periodic aggression inflicted by roving gangs of young brown-shirted thugs.
    Siggy’s pediatrician, a smiling, red-haired man named Professor Alois Wasser, suggested she find another doctor for her boy. When Sabina asked why, Wasser blushed and turned away, muttering, “It’s called for.” Then he left the examining room. Not neglecting to have the nurse hand Sabina a bill marked
Final.
    It kept getting worse, the newspapers whipping up Jew-hatred. Soon, their lawyer expelled them from his practice,