He was kidding on the square. When the civil war broke out, how many Spaniards had ended up stuck behind the lines in a part of the country ruled by the faction they despised? Millions, surely. And lots of them would do what they could for their side when they found the chance. Early on, General Mola had bragged that he had four columns moving on Madrid and a fifth inside the city ready to help as soon as the Nationalist troops got closer. The same held true all over the country. When the Republicans advanced, as they sometimes did, they could find traitors to help them, too.
General Mola’s four columns hadn’t taken Madrid. The fifth column inside hadn’t given enough help. And the Reds who held the city had massacred all the Nationalist sympathizers they could get their hands on—thousands of them, people said. It wasn’t as if the Nationalist martyrs hadn’t been avenged, either.
Marshal Sanjurjo’s authorities here must have known reinforcements were coming up from the south. Odds were the reinforcements had come because authorities here asked for them. Joaquin was no marshal, but he could see that plain as day. He’d figured the authorities would have barracks ready for the newcomers, or at least tents pitched in a field.
The muddy field was here. So was the dripping night. Along with all his buddies, Joaquin got to wrap himself in a blanket and try to stay dry. “This is an embarrassment,” Major Uribe said angrily. “On behalf of my superiors, men, I apologize to you.”
He apologized because his superiors never would. Joaquin could see that, too. Sergeant Carrasquel said, “This is the kind of shit that makes people go over to the other side. They ought to whale the stuffing out of whoever couldn’t be bothered to take care of us.”
Joaquin whistled softly. Anybody who opened his mouth that wide was liable to fall right in. Carrasquel had to know as much, too. But he didn’t keep quiet. You had to admire him for that.
Rain or no rain, mud or no mud, Joaquin fell asleep. When he woke up, the clouds had blown away and the sun was shining brightly. And he could see Madrid. He took a good look…and winced, and turned away. It was too much like looking at the half-rotted corpse of what had been a beautiful woman. Two and a half years of bombing and shelling left Madrid a skeletal wreck of its former self.
Guns boomed, there in the ruins. A salvo of shells screamed toward the Nationalists’ miserable encampment. They burst well short, but even so…Madrid might not be alive any more, but, like some movie monster, it wasn’t dead, either. Marshal Sanjurjo’s men had to take it and drive a stake through its heart. If they could…
SAMUEL GOLDMAN STARED MOROSELY AT the bandages across the palms of his hands. He was a wounded war veteran. He walked with a limp because he was a wounded war veteran. Except during the last war, he’d never done hard physical labor.
None of that mattered to the Nazis who ran Münster. Jews went into work gangs. That was what they were for. It was so mean, so unfair, it made Sarah Goldman want to grind her teeth and scream at the same time.
You couldn’t scream very well while you were grinding your teeth, but that was beside the point. Instead of letting out a shriek that would have brought the neighbors and the police, she asked, “Do you want to put on more ointment, Papa?”
He shook his head. “No. I need to toughen up my hands. Pretty soon, they’ll have calluses. Then everything will be all right.”
“No, it won’t!” Sarah exclaimed.
Her father’s chuckle was also a wheeze. “Well, you’re right, sweetheart. But it will as far as that goes, anyhow. I can’t do anything about the rest.”
“Somebody should be able to,” she said.
“What do you want me to do?” Samuel Goldman asked. “Write a letter to the Führer?”
“Why not? What have you got to lose? You were a front-line soldier, just like him. Maybe he’d listen to you. You’ve said it yourself: things aren’t as bad for veterans as they are for other Jews.”
“Mm…That’s true.” For a moment, Sarah thought her father would pull out a piece of paper and start writing. But he shook his head instead. He looked even older and more tired than he had when he first came home from the labor gang. “What have I got to lose? If I were just any Jewish veteran, I think I would send him a letter, because I wouldn’t have anything. But with Saul…With Saul, I would do better not to remind the authorities about us. Or do you think I’m wrong?”
He meant the question seriously. Sarah respected him for that. If she could find a reason to make him change his mind, he would. She respected him for that, too. But she saw at once that she couldn’t find a reason like that. “No. I just wish I did,” she said sadly. “Everything’s gone wrong, and we can’t do anything about it.”
“Not everything,” her father said. “We’re all still here, and three of us are together. And if Saul isn’t, he isn’t anywhere the Nazis are likely to look for him, either. I’ll tell you something else, too.”
“What?”
“The Führer isn’t the first ruler who hardened his heart against the Jews. Pharaoh did the same thing in Egypt more than three thousand years ago, and look what it got him. Pesach isn’t far away, you know.”
Sarah eyed him in something not far from astonishment. She didn’t think she’d ever heard him call the holiday Pesach before; when he said anything, he said Passover. And it wasn’t as if they were a religious or an observant family. They ate pork. They’d never bothered with matzoh during Passover. They didn’t go to the synagogue even on the High Holy Days.
Her surprise must have shown. Samuel Goldman laughed softly. “You’re right,” he said. “I never cared much about being a Jew before. So I was Jewish and Friedrich Lauterbach was Lutheran. So what? We were both Germans, weren’t we?”
“As a matter of fact, no,” Sarah said.
“As a matter of fact, yes. As a matter of policy, no.” Even now, Father was relentlessly precise. “But if, as a matter of policy, the Nazis won’t let me be a German, what else can I be? Only a Jew. And do you know what else?”
“What?” Sarah whispered again, fascinated and intrigued.
Her father smiled a sad, crooked smile. “I find I rather like it, that’s what. I wish I’d been more of a Jew when I had more of a choice. I wish we’d raised you and Saul more in the faith. Hitler made me less assimilated than I thought I was, and part of me wants to thank him for it. Isn’t that funny?”
Sarah bent down and kissed him on the cheek. He needed a shave; his beard was rough under her lips. “Oh, good!” she exclaimed.
“Good?” He looked at her over the tops of his spectacles. “Why?”
“Because that means I’m not the only one who feels the same way,” she said.
“Very often, you don’t understand what something is worth till you run into someone who tries to tell you it isn’t worth anything,” Samuel Goldman said. “And, very often, that turns out to be too late. I can only hope it won’t here. If I thought it would do any good, I would pray, but”—he spread his hands in apology to her, or perhaps to God—“I still can’t make myself imagine it helps.”
“Make yourself believe it helps,” Sarah corrected.
He smiled again, more broadly this time. “Make myself believe it helps,” he agreed. “That’s what I meant to say. I believe I am a Jew, all right. Whether I can believe I am a believing Jew…I am the kind of Jew who enjoys making paradoxes like that, which is probably not the kind of Jew God had in mind when He made us.”
“Well, why did He make us the way we are, then? Why did He make so many of us like that?”
“Stubborn and cross-grained, you mean?” Now Father was grinning from ear to ear, something he hardly ever did. “He made us in His own image, didn’t He? No wonder we’re this way.”
“You’re having more fun playing with this than you ever did with the Greeks and Romans.” Sarah made it half an accusation.
And her father, to her astonishment, went from grinning to blushing like a schoolgirl. “I sure am,” he said. “I didn’t know it showed so much. I’ve
even started brushing up my Hebrew, and I haven’t cared a pfennig for it since my father and mother made me get bar-mitzvahed. Know what I’m thinking of trying next?”
“Tell me,” Sarah urged. She was fascinated in spite of herself, and had the feeling her father felt the same way.
“Aramaic,” Samuel Goldman said in a low voice. He might have been someone who dabbled in drugs confessing that he planned to start shooting morphine into his veins.
All Sarah knew about Aramaic was that it was an ancient language. Growing up in a family that prided itself on its secularism, on its Germanness, she hadn’t learned much more about Hebrew. Maybe that was why she blurted, “Teach me!”
“Teach…you?” her father echoed. The idea might never have occurred to him before. No, no might about it: plainly, the idea never had occurred to him before.
But she nodded. “I’m not a blockhead, you know. I could learn it. And you taught from the end of the last war till the Nazis wouldn’t let you do it any more. You liked doing it, too, and everybody always said you were good at it.”
“What on earth would you do with Aramaic, dear?” Samuel Goldman asked. “Or even Hebrew, come to that?”
“Beats me,” Sarah said cheerfully. “What’ll you do with them?”
Father blinked. Then he started to laugh. “To tell you the truth, I don’t know, either. I just thought learning something new would help me pass the time. Of course, pick-and-shovel work is liable to take care of that.”
Sarah nodded. “If you’re able to go on with it yourself. If you’re not too tired.”
“A bargain.” Her father held out one abused hand. She solemnly clasped it. He hesitated, then went on, “I have found one possible use for all this.”
“Oh?” Sarah couldn’t see any, not at first. Then she thought she did: “You mean going to Palestine, if we ever got the chance?”
“Mm, that, too, for Hebrew—if we ever got the chance.” By the way Father sounded, he didn’t think they would. “But that isn’t what I meant. I was thinking that, if I asked God in one of His own languages why He was doing this to us, I might possibly get an answer.” With a sigh of regret—or exhaustion—he shook his head. “Too much to hope for, isn’t it?”
She wished she could tell him no. But, almost of its own accord, her head bobbed up and down. “I’m sorry, but I’m afraid it is.”
PETE MCGILL LISTENED TO MAX WEINSTEIN spit out singsong syllables at Wang. Wang answered; damned if he didn’t. McGill stared at Max. Like most of the Marines at the American Legation in Peking, he’d picked up a few Chinese words and phrases himself, most of them foul. But he’d never imagined he’d be able to sling the lingo the way Max did. He’d never imagined he would want to, either.
“What are you going back and forth with him about?” he asked. “Has he got a nice, clean sister?”
“Shit, McGill, drag your mind out of the gutter, why doncha?” Max said. “Me and Wang, we were talking about Mao Tse-tung.”
“About who? About what?” For a second, the name was just another singsong noise in Pete’s ears. Then it rang a bell. He looked disgusted. He sounded that way, too, as he went on, “Jesus Christ on a fuckin’ pogo stick! You go to all the trouble of learning that dumb language, and what do you want to talk about? A lousy Red! My aching back, man! Worry about the important stuff first.” As far as he was a concerned, women and food topped the list, with weapons running a strong third. He was a Marine’s Marine.
Nobody ever said Max couldn’t hold his own in brawling and drinking. He wasn’t big, but he didn’t back away from anybody. “Mao’s no lousy Red,” he said. “Mao’s the straight goods. If anybody in this crappy country can give the Japs grief, Mao’s the guy.”
“Chiang Kai-shek—” Pete McGill began.
“My ass,” Weinstein said, and then, “‘Scuse me. My ass, Corporal. See, the difference is, Chiang’s all about Chiang, first, last, and always. Mao’s about China instead. Ain’t that right, Wang?”
“What you say?” Wang wasn’t about to admit he understood enough English to make sense of that. But Max started spouting Chinese and waving his arms. Even in his own language, Wang answered cautiously. Pete knew why: if Wang sounded like a Red, he’d lose his cushy post at the Legation. He’d have to try to make an honest living instead, if there was any such thing in China these days.
“He’s not telling me everything he’s thinking,” Max complained.
“He’s smarter’n you are, that’s why,” Pete said, and explained his own reasoning.
“Oh.” Max grunted. “Yeah, I bet you’re right. That’s just how the reactionaries who run the Corps would respond to constructive, class-centered criticism.”
“Give it a rest, willya?” Pete said, rolling his eyes. “I bet you even sound like a Communist recruiting pamphlet when you’re getting laid.” He did his best to imitate a pompous Red proselytizer: “The triumph of the waddayacallit, the proletariat, cannot be denied—and wiggle your tongue a little over to the left, sweetheart.”
He laughed himself silly. He thought that was funny whether Max did or not. After a second, the Jewish Marine laughed, too. “Ah, fuck you, McGill,” he said between chuckles. Then he got serious again. “You ever hear of a hooker in the States or here who wasn’t from the proletariat? Gals who can find any other way to make a living…well, they do.”
“You get an extra charge out of feeling guilty when you screw ‘em?” McGill asked. Max couldn’t claim he didn’t lay Chinese whores. If he tried, Pete would call him a liar to his face, even if that started a fight. Weinstein was one of the horniest Marines in Peking, and that was saying something.
He gave Pete the finger. Aside from that, he didn’t try to answer. Wang said something in Chinese. Max replied in the same language. Pete didn’t know just what he said, but it sounded like a phrase that was definitely raunchy. Whatever it was, Wang giggled. Then he said something that set Max snickering.
“C’mon, man—give,” Pete urged.
“He says Mao’s the really horny son of a bitch,” Max answered. “Mao’s gotta be up near fifty, but he likes his broads young—eighteen, twenty, twenty-two, like that. Wang says he likes a bunch of ‘em in bed with him all at the same time, too.”
“What a dirty old man!” Pete said. It wasn’t that that didn’t sound like fun, and it wasn’t that he didn’t like young women, either. But he was young himself. Imagining a Chinaman old enough to be his father in the middle of an orgy made him want to puke, or at least to trade places. After a few seconds, he asked, “Does Captain Horner know about this shit?” Then he started laughing again, this time on account of the captain’s name.
“Well, I never told him—I know that,” Max got out between snickers of his own. He went back and forth with Wang in Chinese again. “Wang says he never talked about it with any other round-eye. I believe him. He doesn’t know enough English to do it, and how many leathernecks speak Chinese?”
“You make one, and everybody knows you’re a queer duck,” McGill said. Max flipped him off again. Ignoring that, Pete went on, “You really ought to pass this stuff to the captain. He picks up as much intelligence as he can on the Chinese and the Japs.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Max said.
Pete knew what that meant, or thought he did. “Listen, I don’t care if you don’t feel like telling ‘cause it’ll make one of your precious Red heroes look bad. But I don’t give a shit about that, so if you don’t pass it on, I damn well will.”
“All right, already. Shut up,” Weinstein said.
Shut up Pete did—then. Three days later, he quietly went up to Captain Horner. The officer listened, then nodded. “I heard some of this from Weinstein, but not all of it,” he said. “It’s interesting. I’m not sure what I can do with it—hell, I’m not sure what the United States can do with it, assuming it’s true—but it is interesting.”
“Yes, sir.” Pete had hoped to get a bigger rise out of him. Maybe what Horner had already heard from Max took th
e edge off of it.
And maybe the captain had other things on his mind. That didn’t occur to Pete till the following Wednesday, when a bombshell hit the American Legation: more than half the Marines in the garrison would be transferred to Shanghai, effective immediately.
“There are many more foreigners—not just Americans, but also Europeans—in Shanghai than in Peking,” Horner told the assembled leathernecks. “We can be more useful there. Also, Shanghai is a port, with direct connections to the United States.” He paused, looking unhappy. “If the war between Japan and China keeps getting worse, moving our men between here and the coast may prove neither easy nor safe. Better to reduce our presence in Peking now, when we don’t lose face by doing it under duress.”
That sounded to Pete as if the United States had to react to what was going on around it—as if the country had little choice. He would rather the USA dictated circumstances and didn’t have to respond to them. Sometimes, though, you had to play the hand you were dealt even if it was a bad one.
Captain Horner displayed a couple of typewritten sheets of names, several columns’ worth on each. “I shall post these as soon as we finish here,” he said. “If your name is on the list, pack your kit and be ready to move tomorrow. The Japanese authorities have promised there will be no difficulties as we march to the train station.” He looked as if he were biting down on something nasty as he spoke. That American Marines should need Japanese permission to move through Peking—! But they did. At least they had it. “Questions?” the captain asked.
Nobody had any. If the other Marines were anything like McGill, their only question was whether their name had made the list. As soon as Captain Horner posted it, everybody swarmed forward to see.
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