Sarah and her mother both giggled in delicious horror. “People say those things?” Sarah exclaimed. “Aren’t they afraid the blackshirts will haul them away and start hitting them with hoses?”
Samuel Goldman’s mouth twisted in amusement-wry amusement, but amusement nevertheless. “If the Gestapo grabbed everybody who told jokes like that, the Reich wouldn’t be able to make bobby pins any more, let alone rifles and planes and panzers. People aren’t happy. Everybody keeps wondering how long the war can go on.”
“We did that the last time around, too,” Mother said. “We thought it had to end pretty soon. But it just dragged on and on.”
“Tell me about it,” Father said. “In the trenches, we used to look forward to raiding the Tommies’ lines even if we were liable to get killed doing it. If we lived, we’d eat their bully beef and smoke their tobacco. They had so much more than we did, especially toward the end …” As if reminded, he rolled a cigarette from newspaper and dog-ends scrounged in the gutter. That was how Jews got their cigarettes these days; their ration had been cut off a long time ago. He smoked the nasty stuff with as much enjoyment as if it were a blend of the best Virginia and Turkish.
“I wonder if it’s that bad this time around,” Sarah said.
“Probably not quite,” Father answered judiciously. “We’re still living off what we’ve taken from places like Holland and Denmark. And most of what we’ve got goes to the soldiers. If they can’t fight, everything falls apart.” He grimaced. “Everything may fall apart no matter how well they fight.”
“No Americans this time around,” Hanna Goldman observed.
“That’s true.” Now Father spoke in musing tones. “I don’t think I ever came up against them-I was farther north. But people I know who did say they took a lot of needless casualties. They didn’t quite know what they were doing, not like our old sweats. They were brave, though. Everybody says that. And there were more and more of them, and we knew there’d be more still the longer we kept fighting. Ludendorff saw when to make terms, all right.”
“No ‘stab in the back’?” Sarah sounded more malicious than curious.
“No, of course not.” Her father waved the idea away. “We were whipped no matter what Hitler says. One Landser was worth more than one Tommy or one poilu or one doughboy, but so what? We weren’t worth two enemy soldiers apiece, or three, or five. If we’d kept going, they’d have steamrollered us in 1919-and don’t forget, the Austrians and the Turks had already given up and started falling apart. Stab in the back!” He snorted.
“Can we fight to a draw if the Americans stay out of Europe?” Mother asked.
Samuel Goldman rolled his eyes. “What am I? A prophet out of the Old Testament? I don’t know, but I don’t see Russia going out of the fight this time. The Tsar didn’t really believe his people would rise up against him if he gave them half a chance. Stalin’s like Hitler-he doesn’t trust anybody. Anyone who tries to overthrow him will have his work cut out. So the two-front war will go on. What comes of that …”
Sarah had a different question: “Will anything be left of us by the time the war finally ends, if it ever does?”
By us she meant us Jews. She would have explained that at need, but Father understood right away. He rolled his eyes again. “You really want me to play the prophet, don’t you? I think we’d all be dead if Poland were on Stalin’s side. Poland’s full of Jews. If they’re with the enemy, that would only make the Nazis go after us even harder than they already do.”
“Like stealing the Brucks’ estate.” Sarah didn’t bother hiding her bitterness.
“It could be worse,” Father said. “Most of the time, they have to think we did something before they throw us in a camp. They aren’t doing it just for the fun of it or throwing everybody in no matter what. Not yet they aren’t, anyway. And, alevai, they won’t start.”
“Alevai omayn,” Sarah echoed. The Yiddish reminded her what she was. Could things really get worse? She supposed they could-and maybe that was the scariest thought of all.
They’d stuck Aristide Demange up at the front again, the worthless cons with the fancy embroidery on their kepis. He would have been more disgusted were he less surprised. He was a damn nuisance. Worse, he was proud of being a damn nuisance. Of course his superiors wanted him dead. They lacked the balls to take care of it themselves. That being so, they had to hope the Boches would do the job for them.
The Boches hadn’t managed to tend to it in the last war, or in this one, either. The Reds also hadn’t done it this time through, when the rich guys decided they were even more trouble than the Nazis. So now Hitler’s boys got another crack at him. Happy fucking day, Demange thought.
“Lieutenant?” One of the poilus in his company broke into his gloomy reflections.
“Waddaya want, Francois?” Demange had no trouble learning his soldiers’ names. Sounding as if he gave a damn about them came harder, especially since he didn’t.
“Lieutenant, shouldn’t we attack the Nazis?” Francois must have found some raw meat somewhere.
“Go ahead.” Demange pointed northeast, toward the Franco-Belgian border. “They’ve spent the last year digging in, but don’t let that stop you. Be my guest, in fact. Then I won’t have to put up with your bullshit any more.”
Francois turned red. He was a new recruit. He hadn’t gone to Russia; he had no idea what combat was like. He’d find out pretty soon any which way. Then Demange-and he himself-would see what he was worth, and whether he was worth anything. In the meantime, he complained: “No, Lieutenant, I mean the whole army!”
“Oh, you can’t kill all of them by yourself?” Demange sounded amazed. “Listen to me, you … you bedbug, you. When we get orders, we move. Till we get orders, we sit tight. That will keep you alive for a while, probably longer than you deserve. Got me?”
“Got you,” Francois answered. Demange’s Gitane sent up angry smoke signals. Hastily, Francois changed his tune: “I understand, Lieutenant!”
“Good. Marvelous. Wunderbar.” Demange used the German word with an irony so savage, it almost turned unironic. And he was altogether serious when he jerked a thumb toward the tents where Francois’ comrades were huddling. “Now fuck off.”
Francois stayed out of his hair after that. Only an idiot would have gone on messing with a lieutenant who still behaved like the bad-tempered top sergeant he had been. While Francois-to Demange, at least-was definitely a moron, he wasn’t (quite) an idiot.
A couple of poilus in the company damn well were. Jean and Marcel were both Communists, which-to Demange, again-merely gave a name to the kind of idiot they were. Like Francois, they were hot to storm after the Nazis right away. Unlike Francois, they didn’t want to take no for an answer.
One of them was tall and skinny, one short and kind of plump. They looked like a bad comedy team, in other words. Demange didn’t bother remembering which was which. He did hope one of them would stick a finger in the other one’s eye. That was always good for a laugh.
“We must slay the Fascist hyenas!” the tall one gabbled. “The safety of the world proletariat depends on it.”
Demange’s Gitane twitched. “Oh, yeah?” he replied. “Says who?”
The Reds looked at each other. He’d seen before that Communists were as bad for that as fairies. After a pregnant pause, the short one said, “It is a well-known fact, Lieutenant.”
“Well known to who?” Demange didn’t bother with grammar.