Blood and iron ae-1

by Harry Turtledove

  "Stop that!" Hal Jacobs said sharply, and, for a wonder, Clara stopped it. She listened to her father more often than to her mother, perhaps because Hal gave her fewer orders than Nellie did.

  Nellie sighed. "I wish Edna would pay as much attention to you as Clara does." She sighed again. "I wish anyone would pay attention to me."

  "I always pay attention to you, my dear," Hal said.

  That was true. It was so true, Nellie had come to take it for granted in the years since she and Hal got married. Because she took it for granted, it no longer satisfied her. She said, "I wish Edna would pay attention to me."

  "She is a grown woman," Hal said. "With a little luck, she is paying attention to her own husband now."

  "It's not the same," Nellie replied in a sulky voice.

  "No, I suppose it is not," Hal admitted. "But it is good that she should pay attention to someone, I think. And Merle Grimes is a young man worth paying attention to."

  "I know he is. I was thinking the same thing myself earlier today," Nellie said. "But he's not her mother, and I am." She shook her head, discontented with the world and with Edna. "That's probably why she doesn't pay attention to me."

  "Yes, it probably is," Hal said. "When I was becoming a man, I paid as little attention to my mother and my father as I could get away with."

  Nellie had hardly known her own father. When she'd got away from her mother at an early age, it was to go into the demimonde. Hal didn't need to know any more about that than whatever he'd already found out. Nellie said, "But Edna isn't becoming a woman. By now, she is one, like you said. Shouldn't she have figured out that I know what I'm doing by now?"

  "Maybe," Hal said. "But maybe not, too." He looked at Nellie with amused affection. "She has a stubborn streak as wide as yours. I wonder where she could have gotten it"

  "Not from me," Nellie said automatically. She needed a moment to recognize the expression on her husband's face. Hal Jacobs was doing his best not to laugh out loud. Again, Nellie spoke automatically: "I'm not stubborn!" Hal let the words hang, the most devastating thing he could have done. Nellie's face went hot. She said, "I'm not that stubborn, anyway."

  "Well, maybe not," Hal said; he should have been a diplomat in striped trousers, not a cobbler and sometimes spy. He went on, "You are my dear wife, and I love you exactly the way you are."

  "You're sweet." That was usually another automatic reply. This time, Nellie listened to what she'd just said. "You really are sweet, Hal. I'm glad I married you. I was scared to death when you asked me, but it's worked out pretty well, hasn't it?" If she sounded a little surprised, she could hope her husband didn't notice.

  If he did, he was too much a gentleman to show it. "The best five years of my life," he said. "Being here with you, and being here to watch Clara grow up…" His face softened. "Yes, the best years of my life."

  With more than a little surprise, Nellie realized the years since the war had been the best of her life, too. She'd made more money when the Confederates occupied Washington, but she'd been worried and afraid all the time: worried about what Edna would do, afraid Bill Reach would tell the whole world what he knew, worried and afraid the U.S. bombardment would blow her and Edna and the coffeehouse to hell and gone.

  Now Edna was married, Bill Reach was dead, and the country was at peace. And living with Hal Jacobs hadn't proved nearly so hard as she'd feared. "I love you, Hal," she exclaimed.

  Saying it surprised her: it seemed an afternoon for surprises. And discovering she meant it surprised her even more. Hearing it made her husband's face light up. "I love it when you tell me that," Hal said. "I did not know I could be more happy than I already was, but now I am."

  "I'm happy, too," Nellie said. By the way all the stories were written, she should have been in love with her husband before she married him, instead of finding out she was five years later. Well, she thought, it's not like I've lived a storybook life. She tried to remember if she'd ever told Hal she loved him before. Once or twice, maybe, in a dutiful fashion, as she occasionally gave him her body. But the words hadn't come from her heart, not till today.

  Perhaps Hal sensed something of the same thing. He walked up to her and gave her a kiss a good deal warmer than the pecks that usually passed between them. She returned it with more warmth than usual, too. For once, she didn't mind the gleam that came into Hal's eye. The idea of making love while kindled suddenly struck her as delicious, not disgusting.

  But Clara was still playing not far from one of the tables, and a customer chose that moment to come in. Can't have everything, Nellie thought as she walked over to ask the man what he wanted. She looked around. No, she couldn't have everything- she wouldn't be rich as long as she lived, for instance. What she had, though, was pretty good.

  XX

  As Hosea Blackford did whenever he came up to the Lower East Side of New York City, he looked around in astonishment. Turning to his wife, he said, "I can't imagine what growing up here would have been like, with the buildings blocking out the sky and with swarms of people everywhere."

  Flora Blackford-after being married for a year, she hardly ever signed her name Flora Hamburger any more-shrugged. "It's all what you're used to," she answered. "I couldn't imagine there was so much open space in the whole world, let alone the USA, till I took that train trip out to Dakota with you this past summer. I felt like a little tiny bug on a great big plate."

  Up till 1917, New York City was all she'd ever known. Up till the train trip to Dakota, all she'd known were New York City, Philadelphia, and the ninety-odd built-up miles between them. Endless expanses of grass waving gently in the breeze all the way out to the horizon had not been part of her mental landscape. They were now, and she felt richer for it.

  A boy in short pants ran by carrying a stack of the Daily For-ward. "Buy my paper!" he yelled in Yiddish. "Buy my paper!"

  "I understood that." Blackford looked pleased with himself. "The German I took in college isn't quite fossilized after all- and being around your family is an education in any number of ways."

  "I'll tell my father you said so," Flora said. She walked up the stairs of the apartment house that seemed so familiar and so strange at the same time.

  Following her, Blackford said, "Go ahead. He'll take it the right way. He has better sense than half the people in the Cabinet, believe you me he does."

  "Considering what goes on in the Cabinet, that's not saying so much," Flora answered. Her husband rewarded her with a gust of laughter. She laughed, too, but a little ruefully: the scent of cooking cabbage was very strong. "I don't think this building is ready for the vice president of the United States."

  "Don't worry about it," he said, laughing again. "Compared to the farm I grew up on, it's paradise-a crowded paradise, but paradise. It's got running water and flush toilets and electricity. The farm I grew up on sure didn't, not that anybody had electricity back then."

  "This building had gas lamps up until a few years ago," Flora said. It did not have an elevator; she and Blackford walked upstairs hand in hand.

  Knocking at the door to the flat where she'd lived so long seemed strange, too, but it also seemed right: she didn't live here any more, and never would again. When the door swung open, David Hamburger was the one with his hand on the latch. His other hand held the cane that helped him get around.

  Flora embraced her brother carefully, not wanting to make him topple over. David shook hands with Hosea Blackford, then shuffled through a turn and walked back to the kitchen table. Each slow, rolling step on his artificial leg was a separate effort, each a silent reproach against the war that, though more than six years over, would echo through shattered lives for most of the rest of the century.

  Blackford shed his coat; the October evening might have had a nip to it, but the inside of the flat was warm enough and to spare. "Here, I'll take that," Flora's younger sister Esther said, and she did.

  "Chess?" David asked. He pulled out the board and pieces even before Blackford could nod
.

  "I'll take on the winner," Isaac said. The younger of Flora's brothers wore in his lapel a silver Soldiers' Circle pin inscribed 1918-the year of his conscription class. She thanked heaven that he, unlike David, hadn't had to go to war… and wished to heaven he wouldn't wear that pin. Soldiers' Circle men could be almost as goonish as the Freedom Party's ruffians down in the Confederate States. But he did as he pleased in such things. He was a man now, and let everyone know it on any excuse or none.

  "Hello, Aunt Flora!" Yossel Reisen said. Coming home so seldom, Flora was amazed at how much her older sister's son grew in between times. He'd been a baby when she went off to Congress, but he was in school now. He added, "Hello, Uncle Hosea!"

  "Hello, Yossel," Hosea Blackford answered absently, most of his attention on the board in front of him. He played well enough to beat David some of the time, but not too often. He'd already gone down a pawn, which meant he probably wouldn't win this game.

  Abraham Hamburger came in from the bedroom, puffing on his pipe. He hugged Flora, then glanced at the chess board. Setting a hand on Blackford's shoulder, he said, "You're in trouble. But you knew that when you decided to marry my daughter, eh? If you didn't, you should have."

  "Papa!' Flora said, indignation mostly but not altogether feigned.

  "He's not kidding, dear," Blackford said. "You know he's not." Since Flora did, she subsided. Her husband started a series of trades that wiped the board clear like machine-gun fire smashing a frontal assault. By the time the dust settled, though, he was down two pawns, not one. Stopping David from promoting one of them cost him his bishop, his last piece other than pawns. He tipped over his king and stood up. "You got me again."

  David only grunted. He grunted again when Isaac took Blackford's place. Before he and his brother could start playing, Sophie stuck her head out of the kitchen and announced, "Supper in a couple of minutes."

  "We'd better wait," David said then.

  "Ha!" Isaac said. "You're just afraid I'd beat you." But he scooped his pieces off the board and put them in the box. He and David had been giving each other a hard time as long as they'd been alive.

  Sophie came out with plates and silverware. Behind her came Sarah Hamburger with a platter on which rested two big boiled beef tongues. While Sophie and Esther and Flora set the table, their mother went back into the kitchen, returning with another platter piled high with boiled potatoes and onions and carrots.

  "Looks wonderful," Hosea Blackford said enthusiastically. "Smells wonderful, too."

  Isaac gave him a quizzical look. "When I was in the Army, a lot of… fellows who weren't Jews"-he'd caught himself before saying goyim to his brother-in-law-"turned up their noses at the idea of eating tongue."

  "All what you're used to, I suppose," Blackford said. "When I was growing up on a farm, we'd have it whenever we butchered a cow-or a lamb, for that matter, though a lamb's tongue has a skin that's tough to peel and so little meat, it's almost more trouble than it's worth. I hadn't eaten tongue for years before I first came here."

  "I knew then you liked," Sarah Hamburger said, "so I make." Her English was the least certain of anyone's there, but she made a special effort for Blackford.

  Over supper, Esther said, "What is it like, being vice president?" She laughed at herself. "I've been asking Flora what it's like being in Congress ever since she got elected, and I still don't really understand it, so I don't know why I should ask you now."

  "Being in Congress is complicated, or it can be," Blackford answered. "Being vice president is simple. Imagine you're in a factory, and you have a machine with one very expensive part. If that part breaks, the whole machine shuts down till you can replace it."

  "And you're that part?" Esther asked, her eyes wide.

  Blackford laughed and shook his head. "I'm the spare for that part. I sit in the warehouse and gather dust. President Sinclair is the part that's hooked up to the machine, and I hope to heaven that he doesn't break."

  "You're joking," David said. He studied Blackford's face. "No, I take it back. You're not."

  "No, I'm not," Blackford said. "Flora has heard me complain about this for as long as I've had the job. I have the potential to be a very important man-but the only way the potential turns real is if something horrible happens, the way something horrible happened to the Confederate president last year. Otherwise, I haven't got much to do."

  Abraham Hamburger said, "This Mitchel, down in the Confederate States, seems to be doing a good job."

  "He does indeed," Blackford said. "I'm not telling any secrets when I say President Sinclair is glad, too. If the regular politicians in the Confederate States do a good job, the reactionaries don't get the chance to grab the reins."

  "A kholeriyeh on everybody in the Confederate States," David muttered in Yiddish. Blackford glanced at Flora, but she didn't translate. She didn't blame her brother for feeling that way. Because of what the Confederates had done to him, she could hardly keep from feeling that way herself.

  Her father nodded at what Blackford had said. "These Freedom Party mamzrim remind me of the Black Hundreds in Russia, except they go after Negroes instead of Jews."

  "Not enough Jews in the Confederate States for them to go after," Isaac said. "If there were more, they would."

  "That's probably true," Flora said, and Blackford nodded. Flora's laugh sounded a little shaky. "Funny to think of anybody going after anyone instead of Jews."

  "It is, isn't it?" Isaac said. "People do it here, too, even though there are more Jews than Negroes in the USA. It makes life easier for us than it would be otherwise."

  Hosea Blackford looked around the crowded apartment. Flora knew what was in his mind: with so many people in so small a space, Jews still didn't have it easy. She hadn't been able to see how crowded the flat was, how crowded the whole Lower East Side was, till she moved away. Before, they'd been like water to a fish. Only going to Philadelphia had given her a standard for comparison.

  But that standard for comparison didn't mean her brother was wrong. Easier and easy weren't the same thing. She said, "Wherever we end up, no matter how hard things are for us, we manage to get by."

  "That spirit is what made this country what it is today, no matter who has it," Hosea Blackford said. He stopped with a bite of tongue halfway to his mouth and an astonished look on his face. "Will you listen to me. Will you listen to me? If you didn't know better, wouldn't you swear that was Teddy Roosevelt talking?"

  "He's set his mark on the country for a long time to come," David said. He rapped his own artificial leg, which sounded of wood and metal. "He's set his mark on me for the rest of my life. Having the Socialists running the country has turned out better for the country and better for us"-he grinned at Flora and at Hosea Blackford-"than I thought it would. I admit it. But I still think TR deserved a third term in 1920."

  Flora knew her brother's opinion. She had never understood it, and still didn't. But she refused to let him get her goat. "Now we'll see how many terms President Sinclair deserves," she said, which seemed to satisfy everyone. As her husband had, she heard what she'd said with some surprise. Will you listen to me? Will you listen to me? If you didn 't know better, wouldn 't you swear that was a politician talking?

  Someone had plastered two-word posters-VOTE FREEDOM! — on every telegraph pole and blank wall in the Terry. As Scipio walked from his roominghouse to Erasmus' fish store and restaurant, he wondered if all the Freedom Party men had gone round the bend. Only a handful of Negroes in Augusta, Georgia, were eligible to vote. Even if they'd all been eligible, the Freedom Party wouldn't have picked up more than a handful of their votes.

  When Scipio came up to the fish store, Erasmus was scrubbing a Freedom Party poster off his door. "Mornin', Xerxes," he said. "I don't need me no extra work so early in the mornin'."

  "Crazy damnfool buckra," Scipio said. "Ain't nobody here got no use for no Freedom Party."

  "Freedom Party?" Erasmus exclaimed. "That whose poster this here is?" He
was a clever man, and sharp with figures, but could hardly read or write. At Scipio's nod, he scrubbed and scraped harder than ever. "Mus' be try in' to make us afraid of 'em."

  "Mebbe so," Scipio said; that hadn't occurred to him. "I was feared o' they befo', but I ain't now. They shoots theyselves when they shoots de president."

  Erasmus didn't answer for a moment; he was busy getting rid of the last bits of the offending poster. "There-that's better." He kicked shreds of wadded-up paper across the sidewalk and into the gutter, then glanced over at Scipio. "Them bastards ain't even collectin' 'taxes' no more. You reckon they's goin' anywheres now?"

  "Pray to Jesus they ain't," Scipio answered with all his heart. He still didn't believe prayer helped, but the phrase came automatically to his lips.

  "Amen," Erasmus said. Then he reached into a pocket of his dungarees and pulled out a one-dollar banknote. "And I reckon this here hammers some nails in the coffin lid, too. Give 'em one big thing less to bellyache about."

  "Yeah." Again, Scipio spoke enthusiastically. The Freedom Party hadn't been alone in bellyaching about the inflation that had squeezed the CSA since the end of the Great War. He'd done plenty of that himself. "Been a year now, near enough, an' the money still worth what it say. Almost done got to where I starts to trust it."

  "Wasn't all bad." Erasmus chuckled. "Still recollect the look on the white-folks banker's face when I paid off what I owed. Thought he was gonna piss his pants. Money was still worth a little somethin' then, so they couldn't pretend it weren't, like they done later. An' now I got my house free an' clear. Wish more niggers woulda did the same."

  Scipio shared that wish. Most of the Negroes in Augusta hadn't been alert enough to the opportunity that had briefly glittered for them. "Reckon mos' of the buckra don' think of it till too late, neither," he said.

  "You right about that," Erasmus answered. "Some folks is jus' stupid, an' it don't matter none whether they's black or white." Before Scipio could say anything about that, his boss went on, "We done spent enough time chinnin'. Got work to do, an' it don't never go away."