German soldiers appeared in the distance. Field-gray blended in about as well as khaki, but the Nazis’ black helmets stood out on the horizon. The Germans had tanks along: three Czech machines, either captured or newly built in conquered factories. They were better than Panzer Is and IIs, not so good as IIIs: about like any Soviet tanks this side of the KV-1.
Cautiously, the tanks with the white-edged black crosses on them advanced. Foot soldiers loped between them. A Soviet mortar started thumping. Earth fountained up as the bombs hit. The Nazi infantrymen dove for cover. One of them was blasted off his feet. Ivan didn’t think he’d get up again.
A tank crew thought about crossing a ditch, but the obstruction proved too wide and too deep. The machine came straight toward the village, then, as the defenders had planned. A hidden antitank gun opened up on it. The gunners needed several shots before they scored a hit, but the tank stopped and began to burn when they did.
That told the other enemy tanks where the gun was, though. They shelled it into silence, then rolled forward with greater confidence. Another antitank gun knocked one of them out in nothing flat. The last tank scuttled back out of range.
Red Army men with rifles fired at their German counterparts. A machine gun in a tavern opened up on the Fritzes, too. The Germans hit the dirt and started digging foxholes. They were veteran troops. They weren’t about to make things easy for their foes.
“Well, we’ve stopped ’em,” the scout said. Neither he nor Ivan had fired a shot. The Fascists hadn’t drawn close enough to turn their submachine guns deadly.
“For now, yeah. Right here, yeah,” Ivan said. The Red Army could usually stop the Germans right here, and for now. Then, somehow, they’d break through a little later somewhere else, and stopping them right here for now wouldn’t matter any more. You’d have to retreat, or else they’d close the ring behind you and grind you to pieces at their leisure.
Lieutenant Obolensky and the politruk wanted to make the Germans fight a regular battle for Old Pigshit. Unfortunately, the officers in charge of the advancing Nazis had too much sense to bang their heads into a stone wall. They were like water; they slid around obstructions. Before long, their 105s started pounding the Red Army men who held the woods a few kilometers south of the village. Ivan could follow the fighting to the south by ear. The Russians in the woods gave way. The Germans pushed through. That meant Old Pigshit would start flying the swastika pretty soon.
Maybe the place would have held if troops from here had helped the handful of Russians in those woods. Maybe not, but maybe. No one thought to weaken the strongpoint, though. And so, instead of weakening it, the company had to abandon it.
They retreated in good order. They’d be ready to fight again somewhere else before long. The Soviet Union was vast. It could afford to trade space for time. But you couldn’t win a war with endless retreats… could you?
Chapter 12
Something in the mail for you, dear.” Sarah Goldman’s mother handed her an envelope.
“For me?” Sarah couldn’t remember the last time she’d got a letter. It wasn’t as if Saul could write, after all. Not having any idea where her brother was, she had to hope he was all right.
This was no letter. The envelope bore an appallingly official eagle holding a circled swastika in its claws. The eagle’s tiny printed eye caught and held hers, as if commanding her to obedience. One of the things that made the Nazis so scary was the attention they gave even such picayune details: German thoroughness run mad and in power.
“You’d better open it,” Mother said.
“I suppose so,” Sarah agreed insincerely. Attention from the Reich was the last thing she or any Jew wanted. The best you could hope for, most times, was to be overlooked.
But the envelope in her hand wouldn’t go away if she didn’t open it. Whatever the Nazis were telling her they would do, they would do whether she read about it first or not. Better to know ahead of time. Well, it might be, anyhow.
A reluctant fingernail slid under the flap. The envelope opened easily-almost too easily. Even mucilage was of an inferior grade these days. She unfolded the notice inside and read it.
“Nu?” Hanna Goldman asked. “If you open your mouth any wider, a bug will fly in, or maybe a bird.”
Sarah hadn’t noticed her jaw drop. She wasn’t surprised it had, though. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been so astonished. She held up the document as if it were a bream she’d just hauled out of a creek. “It’s-” She had to try twice to get the words out: “It’s my permission to get married. They’ve-they’ve approved it.”
She’d shivered in line more than once, waiting to duel with the Nazi bureaucrats at the Munster Rathaus. Back then, her breath had smoked. She’d worn her shabby old coat, which didn’t do nearly enough to hold out winter. Nevertheless, she’d wear it again when frost came back. A Jew’s meager clothing ration wouldn’t stretch to getting her another one.
No need for a coat now. Spring burgeoned outside. Birdsong sweetened the air. Grass was green. Flowers bloomed in perfumed rainbow profusion. Butterflies flitted from one to another to another. Bees buzzed. The sun blazed down from a blue, blue sky dotted with friendly little white clouds.
Mother rushed up and hugged her. “Oh, sweetheart, that’s wonderful! You see? Even they couldn’t say no in the end.” If she didn’t want to name the Nazis, who could blame her?
“Took them long enough to say yes,” Sarah answered tartly.
“They’re… what they are,” her mother said. Sarah couldn’t imagine a worse thing to say about Germany’s masters. Mother went on, “It doesn’t matter any more, though. You have their permission. They can’t take it away again.”
Of course they could, if they decided they wanted to. But even Sarah saw no reason that they should. She smiled a secret smile. It was a good thing permission had come when it did. She wasn’t in a family way, but not because of lack of effort. She and Isidor spun the roulette wheel every time they lay down together-rubber was a war material, too important for much to be allotted to prophylactics. They also made some of sheep’s gut, but so few that Jews had no chance of getting their hands on any.
You could do other things in bed besides that. You could, and they did. But the other things, however good they felt, also felt like substitutes. Ersatz filled life in Germany. How could anybody not want the original here? If you took a chance-well, fine, you took a chance.
Her mother’s smile, seen from a few centimeters away, seemed uncommonly soft and tender. “Grandchildren,” Hanna Goldman murmured. Did she know she might have had one sooner than she would have wished? If she did, she’d never said anything about it. That was as much discretion as a daughter could hope for.
Sarah wasn’t sure she wanted babies, not in this day and age. Hostages to fortune… Were truer words ever spoken? Was this world, and this particular part of the world, a fit place for bringing up little Jews? Not likely! But that coin had two sides. If you didn’t want children, if you decided to let things end with you, the Nazis won by default. They wouldn’t hate Jews any more if they had no Jews left to hate.
She hadn’t talked about any of that with Isidor. They’d worried about her getting pregnant before they could marry, not afterwards. All the same, she had a good notion of how she’d feel. He was more down-to-earth about such things than she was. Like her father, she pondered and worried before she acted. Isidor just went ahead. Chances were he’d go ahead with a family, too, and then see if he could get it through the war in one piece.