Quietly, Samuel Goldman said, “I never had to wonder about that, thank God. The last time around, the civil war didn’t start till after the regular fighting ended, and I managed to stay out of it.”
“We got your letter,” Sarah said. “We knew you got into the Wehrmacht. After that, all we could do was hope.”
“And pray,” her mother added. People were rarely as secular as they thought they were before hard times hit.
“You got it? That’s good. I figured writing the Breisachs across the street was a better bet than sending it straight to you-as long as they didn’t turn me in,” Saul said. “And a lot of Aryans just went with the Jew-baiting because the Nazis told ’em to. They didn’t all enjoy it.”
“We’ve seen the same thing,” Sarah agreed.
“How did you get to be Adalbert the panzer man?” Father asked. “How did you get papers that said you were?”
“I owe one of the guys I played football with for that-owe him more than I can ever pay back, I guess. He knew people who took care of it for me,” Saul said. “These days, I think of myself as Adi more than I do by my real name. Unless you called me Moses, you couldn’t have stuck me with a more Jewish handle.”
“It wasn’t a problem at the time,” Father said stiffly.
“I suppose not,” Saul allowed. “And it may not be a problem any more. The Rathaus and all the paperwork in it are up in smoke. I ought to know-my panzer helped blast it.”
“My marriage certificate.” Sarah sounded sadder than she’d dreamt she would.
Her brother stared at her. “Your what?” He shook his head. “I guess I’m not the only one who had a life while I was in the Wehrmacht. Who is he? Where is he? What’s he do?”
“He’s dead.” Even now, Sarah started to puddle up when she said that. “He was Isidor Bruck, from the baking family.”
“I know him. Uh, I knew him. I played football against him. Uh, I’m sorry,” Saul said. “Too much, too quick. And now I’ve got to get out of here. I’m not supposed to be here at all, which is putting it mildly.” He hugged and kissed Sarah and her mother and father once more in turn. Then he slipped out the door and vanished into blacked-out night. Sarah stared after him. Only the remembered feel of his arms around her made her doubt she’d dreamt the whole thing.
CHAPTER 23
Vaclav Jezek had fought in the slag piles of France’s industrial northeast before. Crossing over the border into Belgium didn’t change the way the landscape looked by one iota. But now the forces of the Czechoslovakian government-in-exile weren’t fighting, even if they had come up to the front.
Not fighting ate at Vaclav. “What are we doing here?” he demanded of, inevitably, Benjamin Halévy.
“That’s a big question, isn’t it?” Halévy said. “Wouldn’t you do better talking about it with a priest?”
“Oh, fuck yourself!” Vaclav exploded. “God damn it to hell, I want to kill Nazis. I feel like an atheist in a coffin, all dressed up with no place to go.”
“Cute. Definitely cute.” The Jew mimed applause. “They should put you on the radio. You’d have people in stitches.”
“If you don’t quit acting like a wise guy, you’ll need stitches,” Jezek said. “What are we supposed to do when they won’t let us fire at the Germans? I can see the bastards over there, going about their business.” He pointed to the Nazis’ field fortifications. Sure as hell, the Germans in them didn’t bother keeping their heads down. The ceasefire was holding as what they called the Salvation Committee slowly gained the upper hand on the loyalists or diehards or whatever name you wanted to stick on them.
“It was like this on the Western Front for a while right after the war started, too,” Halévy said.
“When England and France stuck their thumbs up their asses while Hitler raped my country, you mean,” Vaclav glossed bitterly.
“That’s right.” Benjamin Halévy admitted what no one could possibly deny. The Jew went on, “Next thing we knew, we were trying to keep the Feldgrau bastards from sticking a swastika flag on top of the Eiffel Tower.”
“Served you right, too.”
“I guess it did.” Again, Halévy seemed to hope a soft answer would turn away wrath. “But I don’t think that’ll happen this time around. The Germans have seen they can’t conquer the world. Now they’re hoping like hell the world can’t conquer them.”
“Everybody’s crazy to let ’em get away with a peace that doesn’t knock the snot out of them,” Vaclav said. “I mean, crazy. You think they won’t try this shit again as soon as they patch things up at home? Third time lucky, some general will think, and maybe he’ll be right.”
“Maybe he will,” Benjamin Halévy said with a somber nod. “It doesn’t look like anyone’s going to make Germany spit out Austria, does it? She’s the biggest, richest country in Europe even without it. With it, she’s the same thing only more so. But it seems as though most Austrians would just as soon be Germans, so there you are.”
“Austria? Fuck Austria! Fuck Austria in the neck!” Vaclav said. “It looks like those shitheeled Slovak bumpkins will get to keep their own country, too, and the Fritzes will get to keep mine.”
“If somebody called me a shitheeled bumpkin, I don’t know that I’d want to stay in the same country with him,” Halévy observed.
“Oh, for Christ’s sake!” Like most other Czechs, Vaclav knew in his bones that his Slovak cousins damn well were hayseeds straight off the farm. Anyone who listened to their back-country accent for longer than five seconds would say the same thing. Anyone who knew how the Hungarians sat on them for generations and didn’t let them even learn to count further than they could on their toes would, too. Benjamin Halévy didn’t know any of that, as Vaclav pointed out: “You grew up in Paris.”
“Why don’t you say ‘You damned Jew’ and hand me my yellow star, too?” Halévy asked, a sardonic glint in his eye.
“That’s not what I was talking about. I know what you’re worth. I’ve seen it.” Vaclav turned his head, hawked, and spat. “I know what Father Tiso’s worth, too-not even that much.”
“All right.” Halévy stopped. He shook his head. “No. It’s not all right. I’m sorry, Vaclav, but it’s not. I know what you’re worth, too. You’re a hell of a good man. But when you start telling me that anybody-anybody at all-is this, that, or the other thing because he’s a Slovak or a Jew or a German or a Chinaman or a Mexican or, or anything, you know what you’re doing? You’re doing Hitler’s work for him, that’s what.”
Vaclav chewed on that for a few seconds. He found he didn’t much care for the taste. He tried to spread it around by sharing it: “Tell me you never made fun of the Spaniards that way.”
“Oh, I’m as bad as the next con,” Halévy said. “We all are. People need other people to make fun of. I try not to be too much worse than the next con, though. I can shoot for that much.”
Vaclav did some more chewing. Once he’d swallowed his next cud of thought, he said, “I guess it’s like trying to live a Christian life but not trying to be just like Jesus. That’s too much to ask of anybody.”
“I expect it would be something like that.” The Jew grinned crookedly. “Not that I’d know personally, you understand.”
“Sure,” Jezek said. They both chuckled. Vaclav lit a Gauloise. After a thoughtful puff, he went on, “You know what? Next to what they smoke in Spain, these fuckers are mild. Who would have imagined that?”
“Let me have one,” Halévy said. After Vaclav did, he made his own comparison. “Damned if you’re not right. I always used to think Gauloises were two parts phosgene and one part mustard gas. Now they don’t seem so bad.” He stuck out his tongue and tried to stare down at it. The effort made his eyes cross. “I must have had all my taste buds shot off.”
“Wouldn’t be surprised.” But the jokes went only so far. After Vaclav had tossed away the butt, he said, “I’m still going to end up a man without a country. All of us here in the line are. You can see that coming, sure as shit. We’ve been fighting the goddamn Germans since 1938. Even if we promise to be nice boys, you think any German government’ll let us back in?”