“Thank you very much, sir!” Hans-Ulrich stiffened to attention and saluted. Colonel Steinbrenner’s answer was more a wave than a salute, but that was a superior’s privilege.
Three days later, Hans-Ulrich was back in Poland. It was snowing in Bialystok, too. He didn’t feel so cold there, though. The tavern where Sofia worked wasn’t far from the train station. German and Polish soldiers crowded the place, drinking as if they didn’t want to think about tomorrow-and they probably didn’t.
The bartender stuck his head into the back room and shouted something in Polish that had Sofia’s name in it. She came out a moment later, trim and neat as always. The bartender pointed toward Hans-Ulrich, who sat at a small table against the wall.
She walked over to him. “You again. So they haven’t shot you down yet?”
“As a matter of fact, they did, but I managed to bail out,” he answered, which sobered her. He went on, “Bring me a coffee, will you?”
“You’ll make us rich!” she exclaimed, snippy as ever. Her pleated skirt swished around her legs as she went off to get it.
When she set it-almost slammed it-down on the tabletop, Hans-Ulrich said, “I don’t know how much longer I’ll be able to keep coming back here. We’re liable to get transferred.” He didn’t say anything about the possibility of flying from Germany again. Let her think he was going to the Ukraine or something. He assumed she was no spy, but he took no chances.
He waited for one of her patented zingers to come back at him. She surprised him by gnawing at her lower lip and not saying anything for a little while. Finally, she murmured, “Well, it was fun while it lasted, wasn’t it?”
“It’s not over yet,” he said quickly.
“You want to lay me some more, you mean.” That sounded like her, all right.
He quirked an eyebrow. “You’d be amazed.”
“It’s been more fun than I ever figured it could be, so maybe you’ll get another chance,” she said. “Maybe-if you wait like a good boy till I come off my shift.”
He clasped his hands on the table in front of him, as if he were eight years old and sitting at a school desk. Laughing, Sofia swirled away again.
Carlos Federico Weinberg yowled lustily in Chaim’s arms. The baby had La Martellita’s blue-black hair-a startling amount of it, when so many little tiny guys were bald. Telling who newborn babies looked like was a mug’s game-they mostly looked squashed. Chaim hoped this one would end up taking after its mother.
Carlos screwed up his face and started to cry. “Hey, I’m not that ugly,” Chaim said, first in English and then in Spanish.
La Martellita rolled her eyes. She hardly ever thought his jokes were funny. “Give him to me. He’s hungry,” she said. “When he cries like that, that’s what he means.”
Chaim handed her his son. She handled the baby with practiced efficiency, where he was as careful as if he were taking a detonator out of a land mine. As soon as he settled Carlos in the crook of her left arm, she unbuttoned her blouse and gave the baby her breast.
She saw Chaim eyeing her. He could no more help it than he could help breathing. “They’re for this, too. They were for this before they were for men to stare at,” she said pointedly.
“I guess so.” Chaim didn’t want to argue with her. He just wanted to keep looking. Were women’s tits really for milking before they were for ogling? If men didn’t admire them and grab them and lick them and suck at them, how many babies would get born to nurse from them? Not many, by God!
It was like the chicken and the egg, only a hell of a lot more fun to think about. If he brought it back to the Abe Lincolns, they’d argue about it for days, if not for weeks. It was more interesting than what the lousy Nationalists were liable to try next, no two ways about it.
Deftly, La Martellita switched Carlos from one side to the other. He ate like a pig. If he didn’t know when he had a good thing going, he was no son of Chaim’s. When she put him up on her shoulder and patted his back, he belched as if he’d been drinking Coca-Cola instead of milk.
She reached a finger inside his diaper. “Wet again,” she said resignedly, and set about fixing that. Chaim would have been afraid he’d stick the kid with a pin. La Martellita wasn’t, and she didn’t.
Carlos wasn’t circumcised. Chaim had never seen a Spaniard who was. He felt a pang of tradition flouted. Jews had had that covenant with God for thousands of years. Never mind that the top of Chaim’s mind made a point of not believing in God. He felt the pang even so.
He didn’t say anything about it. If he were going to take Carlos and La Martellita back to the States, he might have. But they’d stay in Spain. Carlos would have to fit in as best he could. A funny-looking cock wouldn’t help.
He tried something less likely to cause trouble: “Thanks for letting me visit you. Thanks for letting me see my son.” Technically, they remained man and wife. She hadn’t divorced him yet. Having a baby probably kept you too busy to worry about something you could take care of any old time. He knew too well the writing was on the wall.
She nodded as she started rocking Carlos in her arms. The baby’s yawn showed off pink, toothless gums. His little crib only cramped her tiny flat even more.
“It’s all right,” she said. “You aren’t the best Communist ever, but it’s not like you’d go over to the other side.”
She really did think that way. Not whether he was a good guy, not whether he’d make a good father, but how good a Communist he was. Chaim admired such dedication without sharing it. He would have wanted to jump on her adorably padded bones if she were Marshal Sanjurjo’s mistress. Hell, he would have wanted to jump on her bones if she headed up Sanjurjo’s General Staff.
She hummed a lullaby to ease Carlos down into sleep. Chaim thought the tune sounded oddly familiar. Was it one American mothers used, too? Then he recognized it and started to laugh.
“ Now what?” La Martellita asked after making sure his silly noises hadn’t bothered the baby.
“Nothing-I suppose. But how many kids go nighty-night to the Internationale?”
“And why shouldn’t he?” La Martellita would have bristled more, but she was easing Carlos down into the crib. He made a little noise as she slid her arm free, but only a little one. Then he kind of sighed and went on sleeping.
“No reason at all,” Chaim said. “It did surprise me, though.”
A soft answer turned away wrath. Sometimes. When La Martellita didn’t feel the overwhelming urge to rip somebody a new asshole. Chaim braced himself for tsuris. It didn’t come. Instead, La Martellita sat down on the edge of the narrow bed where Carlos had got started. A sigh whistled out of her. “You have no idea how tired I am,” she said.
Actually, Chaim thought he did. La Martellita had done a lot for the Republic and the revolution, but he didn’t believe she’d ever fought in the line. When you spent most of a week on a couple of hours’ worth of snatched catnaps… Some battles petered out just because both sides got too goddamn exhausted to keep going any more.
But if, for once, she didn’t feel like squabbling, Chaim wouldn’t go out of his way to provoke her. All he said was, “I know raising kids isn’t easy.”
La Martellita nodded. “It would be harder still if I’d had to invent a last name for Carlos, or if he had to do without one.”
“I’m glad to give him mine,” Chaim said, fearing he knew what was coming next.
“I’ll bet you are.” La Martellita smiled cynically. “You got the fun that goes along with being married.”
Got. Past tense. Chaim’s Spanish wasn’t perfect-nowhere close-but he understood that, all right. He felt as if he were defending the Ebro again, back in the days before England and France went to war with Germany. Not much hope, but he was damned if he’d retreat. “Bits of it,” he said, “when I could come back into Madrid. And if you didn’t have some fun with me, you ought to be in the movies, on account of you sure acted like it.”