Hitler's War (41 page)

“I see,” Sarah’s father replied, as coolly as if the man had explained how a new phonograph operated.

“Think you’ve got nerve, do you?” the
Gestapo
man growled. “You know what happens to assholes with nerve? They scream as loud as anybody else once we get to work on ‘em. Maybe louder, on account of we don’t fuckin’ like tough guys.”

Sarah and her mother listened from the kitchen, doing their best to keep quiet so they didn’t remind the goon they were there. Her mother’s face went pale as skimmed milk. Sarah’s own face was probably the same color, but she couldn’t see herself.

Out in the front room, her father stayed calm. “Nerve? Not a bit of
it,” he answered. “It’s slang we didn’t use in the trenches, that’s all. You’ll know that’s true—you’re the right age.”

“Ja, ja,”
the officer said impatiently. “You were in France. I fought in the East, against the Russians.”

“Ach so,”
Samuel Goldman said. “Well, that was no fun, either. I had two friends who went to the Eastern Front and didn’t come back.”

“Kaupisch and Briesen,” the
Gestapo
man said. It wasn’t a question—he
knew
. Sarah asked her mother with her eyes how the officer knew something like that. Hanna Goldman shrugged helplessly.

“That’s right,” Sarah’s father said, his voice soft and sad.

“Both Aryans,” the officer said. “Not
good
Aryans, or they wouldn’t have made friends with a goddamn sheeny. Besides, I’m not here to talk about them. I’m here to talk about your stinking, murdering turd of a son.”

If he’d said anything like that to Sarah, she thought she would have tried to brain him with an ashtray. Her father only sighed and said, “I don’t know any more than you do. I probably know less than you do, because you’ve been chasing him ever since the tragedy took place.”

“Why shouldn’t we just kill you or take you off to a camp because of what that little cocksucker did?” the
Gestapo
man snarled.

Had he seen Saul? Sarah had her doubts. He wouldn’t have called him
little
if he had. Saul was one meter eighty-eight centimeters tall; he weighed ninety kilos. You could say a lot of things about him, but not
little
, not if you wanted to stay within shouting distance of the truth.

As if the
Gestapo
cared! Or had to care.

Samuel Goldman sighed. “Because we had nothing to do with anything Saul may have done?” he suggested. Saul had done it, all right. Sarah would never forget the sound that shovel blade made smashing into the side of the work-gang boss’ head. Saul had had plenty of provocation, but he’d done it.

The
Gestapo
man snorted. “You aren’t even citizens of the
Reich
, only residents. I can do whatever I want with you. To you.”

“Yes, sir. I know you can,” Father said mournfully. “You asked why you shouldn’t. I gave you the best answer I could.”

“Are you playing games with me, Jewboy?” demanded the officer in the black uniform with the shiny metal buttons.

Sarah would have killed him for that, too, if she could. Her father didn’t even flinch. “Games? No, sir,” he replied. “All I’m doing is the best I can for my family and me. Wouldn’t you do the same in my place?”

“Like you’d catch me in a kike’s place! Fat chance!” the
Gestapo
man said. Sarah might have guessed he’d have no fellow-feeling. If you did, how could you do a job like his? Then he added, “If you see him, if you hear anything from him, you are to report it to us immediately. If you don’t, you’ll pay for it. Understand me?”

“Yes, sir,” Samuel Goldman said. “I understand.”

The
Gestapo
man stormed into the kitchen. “You’re in there listening!” he yelled. “Think I don’t know? You understand me, too?” He glared at them till they both nodded, too. Then he stomped out of the house. He might have suddenly remembered he had other Jews in Münster to terrorize. Chances were he did.

“As if we’d really tell on Saul!” Sarah exclaimed as soon as he slammed the door. “I don’t think so!”

“But we will,” her father said. She stared at him, wondering if her ears were working right. He nodded. “
Ja
. We will.”

“But—why? How?” That wasn’t Sarah. It was her mother, who sounded as bewildered as she felt.

“I’ll tell you why.” And Samuel Goldman did: “They’re liable to cook something up and send it to us, that’s why. Then, if we don’t report it, they can arrest us for protecting a fugitive. So chances are we have to play the game by their rules—and we have to hope Saul has the good sense to know we might be under this kind of pressure.”

Sarah was sure Saul would. Her father sounded anything but. She knew why, too. Devoted to the life of the mind, Samuel Goldman had never known what to make of his big, muscular son. Saul hadn’t done
badly in school, but it wasn’t what he cared about. Father had to wonder whether somebody like that had any brains at all.

“Saul will do fine.” Mother had confidence in him, too, which made Sarah feel better. Hanna Goldman went on, “And if they didn’t catch him right away, they’ll have a harder time of it now. Harder and harder the longer he stays free.”

“I hope so,” Father said, but, again, he sounded far from certain.

This time, Sarah was inclined to agree with him, however little she wanted to. Germany was a land that ran on forms and papers. Food was rationed. So was clothing. Everyone had an identity card and had to show it a dozen times a day. How could a Jew on the run
not
get caught in the spiderweb of officialdom and bureaucracy? Sarah couldn’t imagine.

But so far Saul hadn’t. And if he hadn’t so far, maybe he could keep on doing whatever he was doing and stay free. Maybe. Sarah could hope so, anyhow. She could even pray, and she did, though she didn’t think she was very good at it. Maybe God valued sincerity over style. She could hope that was true, too—and she did.

A FEW KILOMETERS UP AHEAD
lay a railway-junction town called Hirson. Willi Dernen did his best not to care. Northeastern France had winters almost as beastly as the ones he’d grown up with in eastern Germany. Willi was holed up in a village called Watigny, east of the place that mattered to the fellows with the fancy shoulder straps.

One of these days, they’d order him to go forward. And he would. He wasn’t thrilled about it, but he would. What they’d do to him if he didn’t was certain, and dreadful. What the Frenchmen would do to him after he did might not be so bad. If he was lucky.

For the moment, even the generals could see that advancing through waist-deep snowdrifts was asking to get your dick shot off. German guns pounded Hirson. The French replied, but not many shells
came down on Watigny. There were German batteries north and south of the village, but none close by.

About half the people who’d lived here fled before the
Wehrmacht
arrived. Not all those houses were vacant. French refugees from farther north and east—to say nothing of Belgians and even Dutchmen—squatted in some of them. The Germans took the rest. Before long, they’d probably throw out the squatters, too. For the time being, the officers in charge of security were still sorting out who was who.

People from the older generation remembered the last time soldiers in
Feldgrau
came through these parts. Some of them were among the folks who’d run away. Others seemed gruffly tolerant of the occupiers. Their attitude said this was nothing new to them. They’d done it once, and they could do it again.

By order of the divisional commander, the local tavern stayed open. The exchange rate was pegged at ten francs to the mark. That made even privates like Willi rich men—or as rich as they could be in a place like Watigny, where getting by was as much as anyone could hope for.

The tavern still had beer and wine, as well as brandy that came in china crocks and was probably homemade. It got you crocked, all right. Willi had found that out by experience. It also left you with a mother of a hangover. Strong French coffee and strong German aspirins blunted a
Katzenjammer
, though.

Willi and Wolfgang Storch slogged through the snow toward the oasis. Orders were that no German soldier could go in alone. Nobody’d got knocked over the head here. Maybe it had happened somewhere else. Or maybe the High Command was scared of its own shadow. That was how it looked to Willi.

He opened the door. Both he and Wolfgang hurried inside. Then he closed the door again to block the cold wind whining through the streets.

It was gloomy inside, but the fire gave some warmth. Frenchmen sat at a couple of tables, drinking, smoking, murmuring in the language
Willi didn’t speak. Corporal Baatz and a couple of other noncoms occupied another. They didn’t try to keep their voices down—they were the winners, after all.

Winners or not, Willi wanted nothing to do with them. A glance from Wolfgang said he didn’t, either. They walked past the underofficers and up to the bar. The man behind it was big, broad-shouldered, and fair. He looked much more like a German than a Frenchman. But a photo on the wall behind him showed him in the uniform of a French soldier in the last war. The patch he wore over one eye didn’t hide all the scarring around the socket. It did explain why he hadn’t got mobilized this time around.

“Guten Tag
, Claude,” Willi said, more respectfully than not.

“Guten Tag,”
the tapman answered. After he got wounded, he’d spent two years in a POW camp. He’d picked up some German there, and hadn’t forgotten all of it. Other people of his generation had learned it from the Kaiser’s soldiers who’d occupied the area. They still knew bits and pieces, too. “What you want, eh?” Claude went on.

“Beer,
bitte,”
Willi said.

“Brandy for me, please,” Wolfgang added. They both laid money—German money—on the zinc bar.

Claude sighed, but he took it. What choice did he have? “Go and sit,” he said, pointing to an empty table—shrewdly, the one farthest from where Baatz and his buddies were. “Michelle, she bring.”

“Now you’re talking!” Wolfgang radiated enthusiasm…or something related to it, anyhow. A grin also stretched across Willi’s face. Claude’s daughter was about their age. Like her father, she was large and solid and fair. On her, it looked good.

She came out from a back room. Claude gave her the drinks. She carried them over to the soldiers. “Thank you, dear,” Willi said
auf Deutsch
. He trotted out one of his handful of recently acquired French words:
“Merci.”

“Pas
d
e quoi,”
she answered gravely, and went away. As far as anybody knew, she didn’t sleep with soldiers. Everybody thought that was too damn bad.

Arno Baatz waved his mug. “Fill me up over here!” he called. Claude brought a pitcher of beer to his table and poured the mug full. That didn’t satisfy Baatz. “How come those no-account lugs get the pretty girl and I get you?” he demanded.

Claude’s one eye skewered him like a lepidopterist’s collecting pin. “Because they is—are—polite,” the tapman answered, and he walked back to the bar.

“What? I’m not?” Corporal Baatz yelled, beer-fueled outrage making him even shriller than usual. “You take that back!”

“Nein,”
Claude said with dignity.

Baatz jumped to his feet. “I’ll show you, then, you stinking pigdog! Come fight like a man!”

Claude turned around and took one step back toward him: giving himself room to maneuver. Baatz rushed him. Willi wanted to avert his eyes. He couldn’t stand the
Unteroffizier
, but no denying he was a rough man in a rough trade. He gave Claude one that should have dented a Panzer II. The barman blinked his good eye. Then he swung. His fist caught Arno Baatz right on the button with a noise like a cleaver smacking into a frozen side of beef. Baatz went straight over backwards. The back of his head smacked the stone floor. He didn’t move. He didn’t even twitch.

“Holy Jesus!” Willi said. “Did you kill him?”

Claude took the question seriously. He felt for the noncom’s pulse. “He lives,” he said laconically, and dropped Baatz’s wrist. It fell back limply. Baatz might be alive, but he sure wasn’t connected to the real world. The tapman looked to the other Germans at the corporal’s table. “He hit me first. Please take him away. He is no more welcome here.”

They didn’t argue with him. Nobody in his right mind would have
argued with Claude then—not without a Schmeisser in his hands, anyhow. Arno Baatz was as boneless as an octopus as they dragged him out of the tavern.

One of the Frenchmen drinking there sent up smoke signals from his pipe. He said something in his own language. Claude shrugged a massive shrug, as if to say,
Well, what can you do?
Willi guessed the customer had warned him he would get in trouble.

“We’ll say he started it,” Willi volunteered.

“It’s the truth,” Wolfgang agreed.

“Danke,”
Claude said. “For official business, this is good. For not official business…” He spread his hands and let his voice trail away.

Willi understood that. If Arno Baatz and his friends—assuming he had any, which struck the biased Willi as improbable—decided to come back with weapons, what would the officers set over them do about it? Anything? Even if they did, how much would that help Claude after the fact?

“Maybe we’ll go forward again soon. Blizzards can’t last forever—I don’t think,” Wolfgang said. “Then Awful Arno will be out of your hair.”

“
Ja
. Maybe,” Claude said. It was the first time Willi had heard him even slightly enthusiastic about the prospect of a German advance. He was a Frenchmen. The Germans had maimed him in the last war. You couldn’t blame him for not wishing them well. But you also couldn’t blame him for wanting Corporal Baatz the hell out of Watigny, even if that meant the
Wehrmacht
went forward.

The tapman ducked into the back room for a little while, then came out again. A couple of minutes later, so did Michelle. She brought Willi a beer and Wolfgang a brandy they hadn’t ordered. When they tried to pay for them, she wouldn’t take their money.