The Right Thing to Do Read Online Free Page A

and Willy’s suppliers stopped taking his calls.
    Still, the Blausteins, like so many other German Jews, clung to hope. The weasel had been elected democratically and though the first thing he’d done upon assuming the chancellorship was to weaken democracy, perhaps at some point their countrymen would wise up and kick his arse back to jail.
    Encouraging trends, they assured themselves, had already begun down south. Stolid Bavarians realizing the error of their ways and growing disenchanted with Arsehole Adolf. Uncle Doctor Oskar was convinced that was a harbinger of better days to come.
    “That’s good, Uncle,” Sabina had replied. Keeping her true feelings to herself:
Yes, but the supposedly intelligent, liberal northerners up in Hamburg are embracing him with greater enthusiasm. Who next? The Danes?
    Berlin certainly hadn’t seen the error of its ways. Just the other day, thugs had broken six shop windows and looted Otto Kahn’s butcher shop, leaving behind swastika graffiti and a pile of human excrement in the sausage case.
    Some of the Blausteins’ fellow Jews had fled—no, be honest,
many
had fled. One estimate had nearly a quarter million gone, an equal number seeking sanctuary from the few countries that would take them.
    The notion of leaving the homeland was one that Willy and Sabina had finally dared to broach with each other. Even though the sound of that was unreal.
    Three hundred years dissolved like dandelion fluff? What about the house? The business? Where would they go? What would they do? You needed bribe money. Time to begin saving. Though no concrete plans were made.
    In October 1936, Sabina became pregnant for the sixth time and this time the baby stayed with her well past the fifth month. A magical criterion because the previous failures had all occurred by then.
    Barely able to sleep from anxiety and heartburn, she crossed her fingers when month six passed. Then seven, her belly swelling to a level not seen since Siggy.
    She shut herself off from the world. Things were getting worse for the Jews of Germany but
this
Jewish woman had succeeded and soon another tall, gorgeous Blaustein would enter the world and that would, indeed, be a harbinger of better times to come.
    An intelligent woman, Sabina knew her fantasies were fanciful, even idiotic. But so was reading novels, so why not? She was growing tired, lugging that watermelon belly in front of her, needed something to exalt her. Just taking care of the house was a challenge, having to hire another maid, this one a moron, after Helga, who’d been with them for twelve years, left without notice in the middle of the night.
    The once dutiful housekeeper leaving behind a copy of
Mein Kampf
in her nightstand drawer, vile passages underlined, her own crudely drawn cartoons of big-snouted ogres wearing yarmulkes and Jewish stars in the margins.
    All that time, without a hint. So many smiling
Fraus
and
Herrs
uttered over a decade of seemingly cheerful service.
    They’d paid her more than anyone paid help. Treated her with respect—an employee not a serf.
    The woman had seemed to adore Siggy. Meanwhile…
    Sabina would never trust anyone or anything again. Except Willy. And Siggy.
    And, of course, the gorgeous thing fulminating in her womb.
    On the first day of her eighth month, she looked through her bedroom window and yawned like a woman of leisure. Her bedding smelled fresh. Freshly cleaned windows framed a crisp, clear, blue-sky day. Time to put aside fatigue and stretch her legs on their quiet chestnut-lined street.
    She’d made it two blocks, was pausing to catch her breath when a dark mass came dervishing around a corner.
    Dark because they were brown-shirted. As they got closer, she saw that most of them looked too young to shave. Good-looking lads, straight out of a National Socialist poster. Wearing swastika armbands and hideous grins.
    Sabina was the only pedestrian in sight. Had there been some kind of warning? If the rumor mill was