After that, home-front reports took over. Then the radio started playing Tristan und Isolde. David Bruck smiled. He liked Wagner. He hadn’t quit liking the composer because the Nazis liked him, too, the way Sarah’s father had. She wondered what that said. Most likely, no more than that he liked Wagner even better than Samuel Goldman did.
Isidor said, “I bet the Wehrmacht is jumping up and down with joy because they get to fight a two-front war again.”
“Bet you’re right,” his father agreed. “They’ve already tried to toss out our beloved Fuhrer ”-he laced that with sarcasm, not the newsreader’s schmaltz — “a couple of times. How long before they take another shot at it?”
Sarah looked from one of them to the other. No, they weren’t sophisticates like her father. But, as she was coming to realize, that didn’t make them dummies, either. They could see what was going on in the world.
Hitler would be able to see it, too. How far could he trust the Wehrmacht? If he didn’t trust it, what would keep the French and English out of Germany? For that matter, what would keep the Russians out of the Reich? There was a thought to make any good National Socialist’s blood run cold!
Sooner or later-probably sooner, the way Isidor grabbed her every chance he could steal-she was going to have a baby. What kind of world would it grow up in? In a world that didn’t look a whole lot like this one? In a world without Nazis? A few weeks earlier, that would have looked impossible. Now? Now she could hope, anyhow.
“ You can go home again, ” Vaclav Jezek said, contradicting the title of a new novel he’d never heard of.
Benjamin Halevy shrugged. “Yeah, I guess so. But unless we all go back to France to fight the Germans, I’m staying right here with you guys.”
“You’re a French citizen. You’re a French soldier,” Vaclav said. “What if your government orders you back?”
Halevy told him what the French government could do about it. Vaclav didn’t think governments were equipped to do such things, especially not sideways. He laughed all the same.
“One thing,” he said when he got done laughing. “Now that France and Germany are on the outs again, they’ll open up the supply spigot here.”
“There you go. That is something.” Halevy sounded enthusiastic all at once. “Let the fucking Fascists get thirsty for goodies for a change. With France and England back in the war, I’d like to see Hitler and Mussolini ship Sanjurjo any toys.”
“It’s funny. The Nationalists are Fascists, and I can’t stand them on account of they’re dumb enough to be Fascists, but I don’t hate them the way I hate Germans,” Vaclav said. “I wonder why.”
“All the Spaniards have done is try to kill you,” Halevy said. “They haven’t raped your country and stolen it from you. Besides, I bet you didn’t have much use for Germans even before the war. What Czech does?”
“You are a smart Hebe,” Vaclav said, less ironically than he’d intended. Every word of that rang true.
“Hey, I love you, too.” Halevy made as if to kiss him.
Laughing some more, Jezek pushed him away. “Leave me alone, you fairy!” he said, and laughed again.
“Not guilty.” Halevy shook his head. “I’m a French Jew fighting for the Czechoslovakian government-in-exile in Spain. I’ve got to be normal some kind of way. I like girls. They don’t always like me, but I like girls.”
“Girls don’t always like anybody,” Vaclav said. He and Halevy went on from there. When everything else failed, you could always talk about women.
Vaclav slipped out through the wire before dawn the next morning. If you were in place by the time the sun rose, the bastards on the other side wouldn’t notice you moving. The Nationalists’ would-be sniper had discovered the error of his ways about that, but he’d never get the chance to do it over and do it right, not now he wouldn’t.
The Czech crawled into a shell hole whose forward lip helped shield him from the prying eyes of Sanjurjo’s men. They wouldn’t find him easy to spot any which way. Twigs and branches torn off bushes broke up his helmet’s outline. More camouflaged the antitank rifle’s long barrel. His greatcoat was dun-colored to begin with, and muddy on top of that. He’d smeared streaks of mud on his face, too. They had chameleons in the far south of Spain. He did his best to impersonate one of the goggle-eyed lizards.
Since he lacked goggle eyes of his own, he peered through the scope on his rifle instead. The Nationalists behind the lines seemed busier than usual, hustling here and bustling there. He wondered if they were getting ready to attack in this sector. That wouldn’t be so good, neither for the Republic nor, more relevantly, for his life expectancy.
After a while, though, he decided it wasn’t that kind of hustle and bustle. It seemed more as if they were getting ready to receive a VIP. In spite of himself, excitement coursed through him. People had been telling him to blow Marshal Sanjurjo’s head off ever since he crossed the Pyrenees. What if he really got the chance?
Don’t blow it, that’s what, he thought. One shot, probably out close to 2,000 meters. He could hit at that range. He’d done it before. He’d missed, too, but he refused to dwell on that. Footballers missed all the time, but they kept playing even so. And strikers shrugged off misses and put the ball in the net the next time. Without false modesty, Vaclav knew he was one of the best strikers in this game. He was still here, wasn’t he?
He’d smoked a cigarette just before he emerged from the Republican trenches. The next one would have to wait. As usual when he was out between the lines, he didn’t want to do anything that might give him away.
Time dragged on. If you didn’t know how to wait, you had no business sniping. He ate some sausage. He took a leak. He’d improved the bottom of the shell hole by digging a little trench so he could deal with such things without needing to lie in a puddle of piss afterward.
A Nationalist officer in one of those almost-German helmets surveyed no-man’s-land through field glasses. The nerve of the son of a bitch! Vaclav almost killed him to discourage the Fascists from doing that kind of thing again. They knew that he was out here, or that he was liable to be, anyhow.
He would have disposed of the officer had those binoculars paused while they were pointed his way. He might have done it on general principles if he weren’t after bigger game. He’d never known the Nationalists to do that kind of thing before. Maybe they were trying to make sure their precious big shot would be safe.
Vaclav ducked down before he shook his head. Sorry, boys, he thought. I’m here, whether you see me or not.
He waited some more. Clouds rolled in and turned the day gloomy. He hoped it wouldn’t rain. That would screw up everything. He needed a clear shot if he ever got a target.
A few drops fell. “Come on, God! Quit screwing around!” Vaclav grumbled. “Whose side are you on, dammit?” The rain stopped. Either God was on his side or the rain just stopped. He remembered a day when he would have figured it was God. Now he would have bet it just happened.
Any which way, after a while he spotted a Nationalist general haranguing a bunch of assembled officers. It wasn’t Marshal Sanjurjo. Vaclav knew what he looked like; the Fascists slapped posters of his jowly mug on anything that didn’t move. This guy was younger and skinnier. A good thing, too: if you were fatter than Marshal Sanjurjo, you were too fat to be a general, and probably too fat to live.
Well, this shithead was too Fascist to live. He had an oval, rather disapproving face and a neatly trimmed dark mustache. By the way he gestured, he wasn’t the most exciting speechifier God ever made, no matter on whose side God turned out to be.