Only one thing was left for Sergei to do then: swear at the Japanese. He did it, with a flair and verve that made even the Chimp eye him in surprised admiration. With any luck at all, it would satisfy NKVD informers, too-assuming Ivan Kuchkov wasn't one. SARAH GOLDMAN STARED at the rectangle of yellow cloth her mother held. It had crudely printed, fist-sized Stars of David on it. Each six-pointed star bore four black, Hebraic-looking letters: Jude. The Jews of Munster, the Jews of Germany, were going to have to put the stars on their clothes and announce to their Aryan neighbors what they were.
But that wasn't the worst part. Oh, no. The worst was that the Goldmans, like every other Jewish family in Germany, had to give up clothing ration points to get the cloth with which to mark themselves. Whoever'd come up with that masterpiece of bureaucratic chutzpah must have won himself a commendation from Himmler, or even from Hitler himself.
"They aren't just nasty," Sarah said. "They're ugly." She tried to imagine wearing a yellow star on the breast of a jacket or blouse. She'd been shabby before-Jews got far fewer clothing points than Aryans. But her mother was good at mending and making do. Come to that, she wasn't bad herself. How were you supposed to make do with a star that shrieked JEW! at the world?
"I might have known it would happen. I should have known," her father said when he came back from his work on the labor gang that night. He was thinner than Sarah ever remembered seeing him; he did more than the food he got could support. Most nights, he fell asleep like a dead man right after supper. But he somehow seemed to limp less than usual, and his eyes were clear and bright.
"What do you mean, you should have known?" Hanna Goldman demanded. "Who do you think you are, Heydrich or somebody?"
"God forbid," Sarah's father answered. Sarah nodded and shivered at the same time. Heydrich might have been the scariest Nazi in business, not least because he looked like such a perfect Aryan. Samuel Goldman went on, "But when the Wehrmacht didn't roll into Paris, Hitler and Goebbels needed something to take people's minds off the war. Jews are perfect for that: the Nazis can jump all over us, and how are we going to hit back?"
No one said anything for some little while. The words held painfully obvious truth. Jews had always been scapegoats in Germany, the same way they had in Russia. When things went wrong somewhere else, you could set people banging on the kikes. Then you'd feel better, and the people would feel better, and if the Jews didn't feel better, well, who cared about them? Banging on Jews was the national equivalent of kicking your cat after a cop gave you a ticket.
While Sarah got the dishes as clean as she could with cold water, her mother cut out the yellow stars and started sewing them onto clothes. After Sarah got done washing and drying, she sat down to help. The radio blared out insipid music, and then stories about how German bombers were pulverizing Paris and the Luftwaffe was singlehandedly driving the Communist hordes out of Poland.
Pausing for a moment, Sarah's mother said, "If things were going as well as the newsmen say, we wouldn't be sitting here doing this."
"You think Father's right, then?" Sarah asked.
"Your father is right most of the time," Hanna Goldman answered. "The trouble is, he thinks that ought to do him some good."
Samuel Goldman had already headed for bed. Sarah shut up and went back to sewing. Her mother didn't usually sound so cynical; that was more her father's style. But people who'd been married a long time did have a way of growing together. And if sewing yellow Jewish stars onto clothes wasn't enough to turn a saint cynical, what would be? How could you sink lower than this?
Sarah found out how the next afternoon, when she went out shopping. It was a mild, even a balmy, spring day. She wore a white linen blouse, probably the best one she owned. Or it had been the best one, anyhow, till the yellow star with the big black letters went onto her left breast.
People stared at her as she walked by. Of course they did. She would have stared herself if someone else had put on anything that ugly. It wasn't my idea! she wanted to shout. You're the ones who voted for the Nazis. You did this. Not me! But that wouldn't have done her any good. Chances were it would have got her locked up. At least she had the sense to realize as much.
She saw a few other Jews out and about. They had to be, to get what they could in the scant time German regulations grudged them. Most looked as embarrassed as she felt. A few wore the star with dignity. And one or two might not have had it on, not by the way they acted. Sarah envied them their coolness, knowing she couldn't come within kilometers of matching it.
Nobody pointed at her and jeered. She didn't see Germans pointing and jeering at other Jews, either. She didn't hear anybody yelling Lousy kike! or something filthier yet. Had even the Aryans had all the anti-Semitic propaganda they could stomach? She wouldn't have imagined such a thing possible.
She wouldn't have imagined it, but maybe it was. A fiftyish man with a double chin-he looked like a mason, or perhaps a plumber-walked down the street toward her. As they passed, he gravely tipped his hat and went on.
She almost tripped over her own feet in astonishment. Had someone from the SS seen him do that, he might have wound up in a concentration camp. At the least, he would have got a stern talking-to. It hadn't stopped him. What was the world coming to? Sarah walked a little straighter after that.
Another man-this one an obvious veteran of the last war-tipped his hat to her before she got to the grocer's. She bought what vegetables she could and waited for the clerk to serve her. As long as any Aryans were in the shop, he was supposed to take care of them, even if they'd come in after she did.
But one of the women who had come in after her waved her forward, saying, "Go on, dear. You were next."
"Are you sure?" Sarah feared a trap. When ordinary politeness could scare you… you were a Jew in the Third Reich. But the Hausfrau took two steps back and waved her to the counter. The clerk took her money and her ration coupons. She got out of the grocery as fast as she could.
On the way home, a middle-aged man-another obvious veteran, with a bad limp and a scarred face-nodded to her and said, "Congratulations on your medal, sweetheart."
"Medal?" Sarah wished she hadn't echoed it. That only gave him the chance to let fly with whatever nastiness bubbled inside of him.
He pointed to the yellow star. "Your Pour le semite there." He too tipped his hat, then stumped down the sidewalk.
Sarah needed a few seconds to get it. When she did, her jaw dropped. The highest German decoration in the last war-the equivalent of the modern Knight's Cross with oak leaves, swords, and diamonds-had the simple French name of Pour le merite. For merit, it meant. And this stranger had punned off it, inventing a medal called For the Semite. That took brains. It also took nerve. Suppose someone other than a Jew had heard. What would have happened to him then? Nothing good.
To her amazement, at supper her father reported the same joke from his labor gang. "It must be all over town, then!" she exclaimed.
"All over the country, I'd guess," Father said. "Things like that, they spread faster than the grippe."
"Why bother with the stupid stars, then, if they only make people laugh at them and treat us better instead of worse?" Sarah said.
"You're asking the wrong person. You need to talk to the Fuhrer, not me," Samuel Goldman said. "But one thing did occur to me."
"What's that?" Sarah wondered if she really wanted to know.
"If the Party ever decides it wants to round up as many Jews as it can, we're a lot easier to spot wearing our yellow stars."
"Oh." In a way, that made sense. In another… "Why would they want to do such a meshuggineh thing?" Sarah asked.