Child of the Light by Janet Berliner, George Guthridge

and shoulders the way his new Freikorps-Youth leader, Otto Hempel, did when he was about to deliver a speech. Why couldn't his father look like that, Erich thought. Better yet, why couldn't he be like that. While his father was working here in the shop during the war, drinking and playing the horses, Otto Hempel was helping von Hindenburg decimate the Russians at Tannenberg, earning a field commission for gallantry. He had told them about it one night around the campfire, silver hair shining in the firelight. He had commanded the battery that fired those first shells of liquid chlorine in Poland, only to have it fail to volatilize in the frigid conditions. He had helped coordinate the mustard-gas attack at Ypres, only to have the victory that could have won the war snatched away because no one believed him about the new weapon's wonderful potential.
    Now there was a hero--and he looked the part, too. Said his hair had turned silver from the ardors of the battlefield.
    Erich glanced at himself in a cigarette case Herr Freund had left lying on the counter to be polished. He turned it this way and that, imagining himself with a head of silver hair and a row of medals.
    "Give people what they think they want, then make sure they keep wanting what you give them," he said to Sol. "Some cabarets have naked waitresses. Men can touch them...anywhere they want."
    Sol lifted his head and looked at Erich, who quickly put down his makeshift mirror. "Where did you hear that? At one of your stupid campfires?"
    Erich narrowed his eyes. "You watch what you say about my camp."
    "Then you watch what you say about my papa. He knows what he's doing." Sol raised himself to his full height and looked down at Erich.
    Erich clenched his fist. "If you really want to know, Miriam told me." He opened his hand, but kept his fighting stance.
    "I suppose that's what you talked about in front of her uncle and everyone."
    "After you and your squeaky cello disappeared, Miriam walked with me to...to...the Tiergarten and back."
    "Herr Rathenau would never let her walk with you or anyone else unchaperoned. Not at night--"
    Erich gave a derisive snort and leaned back haughtily against the wall. "That's what you think. Go ahead, ask her!   We went for a walk and--"
    "She didn't tell you those things, about the cabarets," Sol said, but in a softer tone.
    "Well, something like that." Erich took a bent cigarette from his pocket. "Want to go outside with me and smoke this?" He straightened the cigarette, then dabbed saliva on the paper to help hold it together where it had torn.
    "You said we wouldn't take any more. Remember, you were the one who got sick--"
    "I took them for Miriam." Erich pulled several more cigarettes from his pockets, most of them damaged.
    "Her parents let her smoke?"
    "They're dead, remember? She lives with her uncle." He thought about the way Miriam had looked, dancing in the lamplight. Funny how he wanted to tell Sol about that and didn't want to, both at the same time. He rolled one of the cigarettes between his fingers and remembered how she had taken his hand, that one, and kissed it. "Boy, I sure would like to do things to her."
    "What things?"
    "You know. Things."
    "She wouldn't even let someone like you hold her hand."
    "Bet she already kissed me."
    "Liar!"
    Erich felt his face redden. He shoved Sol against the wall. Sol swung wildly, managing a glancing blow off Erich's temple before Erich surged in with body punches.
    "Be quiet, children!" Sol's father called out. "Look who has stopped outside. Herr Rathenau himself."
    The boys dropped their guard and started into the shop, but Sol's father shooed them back into the alcove. Sol peeked around the curtain. "To see him twice in two days," he said in awe.
    "Did he come in the limousine or the convertible?" Erich tried to see over Sol's shoulder. "Is Miriam with him? Maybe she suggested he come so she could see me," he whispered excitedly. His heart pounded at the possibility of being with