“It does look that way,” Chaim agreed.
“I am going to drink wine to restore myself,” the farmer said. “You will allow me to give you some?”
“Try and stop me from allowing you.” Chaim grinned.
When the farmer had worked that through, he allowed himself the ghost of a smile. He led Chaim into the farmhouse. By his limp, they’d kicked him in the thigh, too, probably going for his cojones but missing. The farmhouse didn’t look as if he lived there alone. It was too neat, but not with a stern bachelor neatness.
“My wife is with my daughter, a few kilometers from here,” the farmer explained as he poured red wine into two mugs. “My daughter is having a baby. I am glad Luisa did not see this. She would have tried to stop them, and she had no rifle.” He raised his mug. “¡Salud!”
“¡Salud!” Chaim drank. It was strong and rough. The farmer might have made it himself or traded a couple of chickens to a neighbor for a jug’s worth. You wouldn’t want to pay much for it. For drinking a toast, it was fine.
Cautiously, the farmer held out his hand. “I am called Diego Lopez,” he said.
“Con mucho gusto, Don Diego,” Chaim replied, and gave his own name.
Lopez gamely tried to pronounce it. Having heard before what Spaniards did to Chaim Weinberg, the Abe Lincoln hid a smile. The farmer said, “You told those others you were a foreigner. Your name shows it, and your Spanish. You speak very well, but you are no native.”
Along with being compulsively brave, Spaniards were compulsively polite. They would inquire after your health while they carved up your liver. Laughing, Chaim said, “My Spanish is crappy. I try, and I can make people understand me, but it’s crappy all the same. I know that.”
“I have not seen many foreigners before. Please excuse me for a moment.” Lopez poured water from an earthenware crock onto a rag. He used it to clean more blood from his head. Eyeing the stains on the rag, he sighed. “Is this what we have to look forward to under the Republic?”
“I hope not,” Chaim answered. “There are putos in every army in the world, though, ¿verdad?”
“Yes, that is true,” Diego Lopez said. “Some of them fought for Marshal Sanjurjo, too-it is not to be doubted.”
“Every army, every side,” Chaim said. “They think it’s fun to beat up on people who can’t fight back. And it’s much safer than going after the enemy’s soldiers.”
“I believe that.” Lopez held out the jar of wine. “Would you like me to fill that again for you, Señor?”
“Muchas gracias,” Chaim replied. The farmer also poured more for himself. They wished each other good health before they drank. No, it wasn’t great wine, but any wine was better than no wine at all.
“Ahh,” Lopez said. “Yes, that does take some of the pain away. I have not seen any Nationalist soldiers here lately, not since just after Marshal Sanjurjo, ah, passed away.”
Got his head blown off, Chaim edited. But saying that to his host would have been rude. Lopez might have fed the Spanish Fascists because he had no choice. He might also have sympathized with them. A depressing number of people did, or the fight never could have dragged on so long. That was the sort of thing Chaim didn’t want to know officially. If he didn’t know, he didn’t have to do anything about it.
He said, “The Nationalists seem to be fighting among themselves more than they’re fighting the Republic now.”
“Marshal Sanjurjo was a strong man.” Lopez seemed to pick his words with care. “No one left on the Nationalist side has the power of character to bring everyone else with him.” He didn’t say he approved of the cause under which he’d lived. That would have given Chaim a handle on him. You had to be careful with someone you hadn’t known for a long time, even if that someone had just saved your life.
“You should make friends with the Internationals-bring ’em food or something,” Chaim said. “They’ll keep ordinary tough guys from giving you trouble.”
“I had heard that no one has to do things like that in the Republic,” Lopez said.
“People hear all kinds of things, don’t they?” Chaim replied, his voice bland. “Wherever there are people, it’s a good idea to make friends.”
“So it is things as they are, and not things as the ones in charge wish they were?” the farmer asked shrewdly.
Chaim came to Spain on the strength of his idealism. He still had some: enough to think the Republic was better than the reactionaries who fought against it. He nodded anyhow. “It’s things as they are, all right.”
“Here.” Hermann Witt held out a paper and a pencil. “One more thing for you to sign.”
The form assured Wehrmacht headquarters that everyone in the crew of this particular Panzer IV had been vaccinated against smallpox. Almost of its own accord, the pencil scrawled Adalbert Stoss on the line at which Sergeant Witt pointed.
“Thanks,” Witt said, and went off to bother the couple of men who hadn’t yet done their bit for the Reich’s paperwork.
Saul Goldman looked down at his right hand as if it belonged to someone else. As a matter of fact, it did, or it seemed to more often than not. That hand was convinced he was Adi Stoss, and would scribble Adi’s illegible signature wherever anyone said it needed to go.
He answered to Adi, of course. He had no idea what he’d do if somebody were to call him Saul. That name was gone, forgotten by everyone except his family (if they still lived-he had no idea) and the various Nazi security services. They still lived, and to them he was not just a wanted man but that even more dangerous creature, a wanted Jew.
Saul had done his best to think of himself as Adi so he wouldn’t hang himself by slipping up. In Poland and Russia, days or even weeks could go by without his being reminded of who and what he really was. That he made such a good soldier only showed what rubbish the Führer’s rules against letting Jews into the military were.
But these days the regiment was stationed just outside of Münster. He hadn’t expected to see his hometown again till after the war ended and the Nazis no longer ruled Germany-assuming that happened and assuming he lived to see it, which didn’t seem likely.
Here he was, though. Münster had had a bellyful of National Socialism. And National Socialism had also had a bellyful of Münster. If the SS couldn’t keep the town obedient to the Reich, Hitler was ready to use the Wehrmacht to take care of that.
For now, the panzer regiment remained on the outskirts of town. No self-important officer or politico had ordered in the machines. Maybe the Party Bonzen hoped the threat of armor would keep Münster in line. Or maybe some worried colonel feared that street fighters would chuck a Molotov cocktail through an open hatch from some upper-story window and then get away unpunished.
Staying out of town didn’t break Saul’s heart, not even a little bit. He was glad that, if and when the panzers were ordered into Münster, he’d sit in the driver’s seat, looking out at the world through his vision slits and armor-glass vision blocks. He was even gladder the locals would be looking in on him the same way.
That was what you got for making yourself a reputation on the football pitch. Not just his neighbors would recognize him if he stuck his head out the hatch the way drivers sometimes did when things seemed safe. No. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of people would.
When you were wanted for murder, that wasn’t the ideal situation. His large, callused hands folded into fists. He remembered swinging his shovel at the labor-gang boss who kept yelling that he was a rotten kike and hitting and kicking him every time he got the chance. He remembered the thrill that ran up the shaft when the flat of the blade caved in the bastard’s skull. And he remembered running farther and faster than he ever had on the pitch to get away from all the sons of bitches who were chasing him.