“Ja.” Theo expended a word.
He needed only one; Adi was in a talkative mood: “Some poor, sorry bastards are still in Panzer IIs, for crying out loud! Lord, some poor bastards are still in Panzer Is. How’d you like to take on a T-34 in one of those?”
“No, thanks,” Theo said. A Panzer I mounted a pair of machine guns. Anything heavier than machine-gun bullets would hole its thin armor. But they and the slightly tougher IIs soldiered on because they were better than nothing. The only thing either could do against a T-34 was run like hell.
When the company bivouacked, they were only a few hundred meters from a platoon of the long-snouted Panzer IVs. Naturally, they ambled over to get a closer look at the machines they’d just glimpsed before. As naturally, they carried Schmeissers when they crossed the Russian steppe. Never could tell if a few Ivans hadn’t got cleared out the way they should have.
No trouble like that this time. Ravens and hooded crows rose skrawking from a corpse in khaki, but he was a corpse, not a live Russian with a PPD shamming. The panzer men from the IVs seemed glad enough to talk about their fancy new toys.
“I’d say we’re pretty close to even with the T-34 now,” said a sergeant commanding one of them. “We’re uparmored, too, even if theirs is still thicker. But this is a better gun-higher velocity, way better fire control. You’ll know about that, anyhow.” Damn him, he sounded sorry for them.
“Oh, yes,” Witt said. German sights beat the snot out of what the Ivans used. And a German panzer commander didn’t have to be his own gunner, which made shooting much more efficient. But when all you had was a Panzer III’s popgun, you were too likely to end up efficiently killed.
“Performance is decent, too,” the other sergeant went on. He wore an Iron Cross First Class, the ribbon for the Iron Cross Second Class, and a wound badge, so he’d had enough fun to know what he was talking about. “With the wide Ostketten they’ll issue when the rain starts, we should take mud, mm, almost as well as the Russians do.”
That struck Theo as reasonable. The Red Army designed machinery with these conditions in mind. The Wehrmacht was learning on the fly. It was doing a pretty good job-which was why the Germans were holding on and even still advancing in places even though the war was on two fronts again. Would pretty good prove good enough? Only one way to find out. Theo hoped it wouldn’t be the hard way.
Along those lines, Adi said, “We shouldn’t just be as good as the Reds. We need to be better, ’cause they’ll always have more of whatever they make.”
The Panzer IV commander rubbed his chin. He needed a shave; whiskers rasped under his fingers. “I hear that’s coming. It isn’t here yet, but it’s on the way.” He rubbed his chin again. “You’re Stoss, you said?”
“That’s right,” Adi answered. Theo wondered if he should have. He’d just disapproved of something the Reich did. If this guy wanted to get pissy about it, he could.
But all the sergeant said was, “I’ve heard of you. You’re the footballer, right? I’d like to see you on the pitch.”
“I’m the footballer,” Adi said tightly. He was too good a footballer. People remembered him and noticed him and talked about him, which was the last thing he wanted or needed. He went on, “Haven’t had much chance to play lately, though. Who knows when I’ll get out there again?”
“If you’re as good as people say you are, you could probably get on one of those teams that go around putting on exhibitions.” The Panzer IV commander sounded plenty shrewd. “You’d sure have a better chance of coming out of this in one piece if you did.”
“Fuck it. I signed up to be a soldier, not to run around in short pants,” Adi said.
“All right. All right. Take an even strain, pal. I wasn’t out to piss you off,” the sergeant said. “I mean, I’m halfway decent playing football, but I’m only halfway decent, y’know? I’ve paid my dues up here and then some. If they let me put on shows for the troops instead of getting smashed to blood sausage, I’d do it in a red-hot minute.”
“I kind of like it at the front. I didn’t expect to, but damned if I don’t.” Adi raised an eyebrow. “They say the Fuhrer did, too, don’t they?”
“Yeah, I’ve heard he-” The Panzer IV commander broke off. For the life of him, he couldn’t see why these guys were losing it right in front of him. They didn’t explain, either.
One more appallingly official, eagle-and-swastika-bedizened letter in the mail. To make matters worse-at least as far as Sarah Bruck was concerned-the stamp stuck to this one bore Adolf Hitler’s petulant face. A double dose of Nazism, all to tell her …
She opened the envelope, taking a certain malicious pleasure in tearing the Fuhrer’s face in half. That was the last pleasure she got. When she unfolded the letter, it was just what she thought it would be.
“Scheisse!” she said loudly.
“What is it, dear?” her mother asked from the kitchen.
“They are taking everything the Brucks had-‘in the interest of the welfare of the state,’ they say.” Sarah knew she sounded disgusted. She was. “It doesn’t mean anything but ‘because we can.’ ”
Hanna Goldman sighed. “Well, you’re right. I don’t know what we can do about it, though. Do you want to sue them?”
“Of course I do!” Sarah answered. Her mother let out a yip of alarm. Quickly, she went on, “But I know I can’t.” Making the Nazis notice her was the fastest way she could think of to end up in Dachau or Mauthausen or Theriesenstadt or some other place where she didn’t want to be.
Mother let out a heartfelt sigh of relief. “Oh, good! You do have some sense left after all,” she said. “For a second there, I wondered.”
“Yes, I do,” Sarah agreed, “and I wish to heaven I didn’t. I want to take them on. Of course, the mice wanted to bell the cat, too, and look how much good that did them.”
The mice in the fable would have stood a better chance against the cat than Germany’s Jews did against the government. If a mouse with a bell came up to a cat, the cat would have a snack, wash its face and paws, and curl up somewhere to go to sleep afterwards. But the Nazis wouldn’t content themselves with eliminating the one uppity Jew. They’d make every Jew in the Reich sorry. Chosen People? The Nazis would choose them, all right! Wouldn’t they just?
“What I’m really worried about is getting bread now that the bakery’s gone,” Mother said.
“You bake as well as the Brucks did.” Sarah meant it. She knew more about baking now than she’d ever dreamt she would. Her mother’s loaves were at least as good as any commercial product.
But Mother made an exasperated noise. “I don’t want to do it every couple of days. It’s a lot of work, and it takes a lot of fuel. Our coal ration isn’t very big, and it’s full of shale anyway. They have bakeries so most people don’t need to bake all the time. Only Jews in Munster don’t have a bakery any more.”
Sarah imagined some Nazi functionaries sitting in the Rathaus, hands comfortably cradling their bellies, laughing like brown-shirted hyenas at the Jews’ predicament. She hoped the next time the RAF came over, bombs would rain down on the bureaucrats’ houses. That would give them … some of what they deserved, anyhow.
As if reading her mind, Mother said, “Nights are getting longer now. We may see the bombers more often. Places in the east that haven’t got it for a while may see them, too.”
Father came back that evening with a joke making the rounds among the Aryans. As usual, he told it with a somber relish all his own: “When you see a friend after an air raid, if you say ‘Good morning,’ that means you’ve got some sleep. If you say ‘Good night,’ that means you haven’t. And if you say ‘Heil Hitler!’-well, that means you’ve always been asleep.”