Moishe Russie shrugged again. “That was a long time ago.”
“Too right it was,” Goldfarb muttered in English; he didn’t seem to notice going back and forth between languages. Still in English, he continued, “We’d all be better off if the buggers had never come in the first place.”
“You might be,” Moishe Russie said. “England might be. But me? My family?” He shook his head. “No. If the Race had not come, we would all be dead. I am sure of it. You saw Lodz. You never saw Warsaw. And Warsaw would only have got worse as the war went on.”
“Warsaw was bad, very bad,” Reuven agreed; he had no happy recollections of the city in which he’d been born. “But what the Nazis did with their killing factories is worse. If they’d stayed in Poland, I think Father is right: we would all have gone through them. Next to Hitler, Haman was nothing much.”
Goldfarb frowned. Plainly, he wanted to argue. As plainly, he had trouble seeing how he could. Before he found anything to say, the twins came out of the kitchen. The scowl disappeared from his face. Grinning, he turned to Moishe. “All right, they’re as cute as their photos. I didn’t think they could be.”
Reuven suppressed the strong urge to retch. The twins stretched like cats, being charming on purpose. As with cats, it struck Reuven as an act. “They’re miserable nuisances a lot of the time,” he said-in Yiddish, of which Esther and Judith had only a smattering: his father and mother often spoke it when they didn’t want the twins to know what was going on.
“Well, I have children of my own, and every one of them thinks the others are nuisances,” Goldfarb said, also in Yiddish. He eyed Judith and Esther, then switched to slow, clear English: “Which one of you is which?”
“I’m Esther,” Judith said.
“I’m Judith,” Esther echoed.
Reuven coughed. So did his father. David Goldfarb raised an eyebrow. He’d had practice with children, all right; his expression was identical to the one Moishe Russie used when he caught Reuven or Judith or Esther stretching the truth.
“Oh, all right,” Esther said. “Maybe it is the other way around.”
“You couldn’t prove it by me,” Goldfarb said. “But your father and your brother have their suspicions.”
“We came out here to say that supper was ready,” Judith said. “Who says that doesn’t really matter, does it?”
“Not if it’s true,” Reuven said. Both his sisters sniffed indignantly at the possibility that he could doubt them. Having failed to doubt them a few times when he should have been wary, he bore up under their disapproval.
Supper was a couple of roasted chickens, with chickpeas and carrots and a white wine that made Goldfarb nod in what seemed surprised approval. “I don’t usually drink wine, except during Pesach,” he said. “This is good.”
“It’s not bad, anyhow,” Moishe Russie said. “When I drink anything these days, it’s mostly wine. I haven’t got the head for whiskey or vodka any more, and the beer you can get here is a lot nastier than what they made in Poland-in England, too, for that matter.”
“If you get used to drinking wine, you won’t want to drink beer, anyhow,” Reuven said. “Beer’s thin, sour stuff by comparison.”
“That only goes to show you’ve been drinking bad beer,” David Goldfarb answered. “From what your father said, I don’t suppose it’s any wonder.”
Rivka Russie brought matters back to the more immediate by softly saying, “It’s good to see you here and safe, David.”
“Omayn,” Moishe Russie added.
Their cousin-Reuven’s cousin once further removed-emptied his wineglass with a convulsive gulp less closely related to how much he enjoyed the vintage than to its anesthetic properties. “It’s bloody good to be here, believe me,” he said, and inclined his head to Reuven’s father. “Thanks again for pulling the wires to help get me out. You did more than the British consul in Marseille. You couldn’t very well have done less, let me tell you, because he didn’t do anything.”
“It was my pleasure, you believe me,” Moishe Russie said, waving away the thanks. Reuven had seen many times that his father had a hard time accepting praise.
“What was it like, there in the Nazis’ prison?” one of the twins asked.
“It was the worst place in the world,” David Goldfarb said. Esther and Judith both gasped. Goldfarb looked at his glass, as if regretting it was empty. Moishe Russie saw that glance and proceeded to remedy the situation. After drinking, Goldfarb went on, “The cell was only a cell, with a cot and a bucket. Not much different to a British cell, I shouldn’t wonder. They fed me-I got a little hungry, but not very. They asked me questions. They didn’t knock my teeth out or hit me very often or very hard. It was still the worst place in the world.”
“Why?” Esther asked, while Judith said, “I don’t understand.”
“I’ll tell you why,” Goldfarb said. “Because even though they didn’t do any of those things, they could have. I knew it, and they knew it, and they knew I knew it. Knowing it did almost as good a job of breaking me as real torture would have done.”
He’d spoken English; word by word, the twins couldn’t have had any trouble following what he said. But they didn’t understand it. Reuven could see as much. He did, or thought he did, though he was just as well pleased not to have had the experience that would have made understanding certain.
His mother asked, “What were you doing there in the first place?”
“Trying to help some of my British… friends,” Goldfarb said. “They did some of their dealings through a Frenchman who had been operating on his own, but they started losing money-or not making so much money, I’m not sure which-when the Germans got their hooks into him. So they sent me down to the south of France to see if I couldn’t persuade him to go back to being an independent operator. Why not?” His mouth twisted; he emptied the wineglass again. “I was just an expendable Jew.”
“Ginger is as bad for the Lizards as cocaine or heroin is for us,” Reuven’s father observed, “maybe worse. I wish you’d never got caught up in that.”
“So do I,” Goldfarb said. “Vey iz mir, so do I. But having dreadful things happen to my family would have been even worse, and so off I went.”
Moishe Russie reached for more wine himself when he heard that, something he rarely did. Nodding heavily, he said, “When I was having trouble with the Lizards in Warsaw, I had help getting Rivka and Reuven to a place where the Race couldn’t get their hands on them, so I understand how you feel.”
“We were in a cellar!” Reuven exclaimed, astonished at how the memory came back. “It was dark all the time, because we didn’t have many lamps or candles.”
“That’s right,” his father said. Reuven shook his head in astonishment; he hadn’t so much as thought of that hideaway for many years. His father looked across the table at Goldfarb. “And the Lizards were trying to put Dutourd out of business while you were trying to set him up again-and the Nazis caught their people, too.”
“If you stick your head in the lion’s mouth, you know there’s a chance he’ll bite down,” Goldfarb said with a shrug. “I gather you got the Americans out of their cells, too?”
“Yes, I managed that,” Moishe Russie said. “Getting them was easier than getting you, in fact. The Germans worry more about offending the Race than they do about offending England.”
“I can understand that, worse luck for me,” David Goldfarb said. “The only one who got left behind was Dutourd. He would have dealt with me, I think. I hope he doesn’t get into too much trouble for that.” He paused. “The Lizards started asking me questions the minute I got on their plane in Marseille. And do you know what? I answered every one of them. If my ‘friends’ back home don’t like it, too bloody bad.”
“Good for you,” Reuven said.
His father nodded and remarked, “My guess is that the Frenchman won’t. He’s useful to the Nazis-he’s not just another damned Jew.”