Hitler's War (58 page)

If he ever tries rubbing up against me, I’ll break my rifle over his head, by God!
Delgadillo thought. But Uribe never did. Virile machismo virtually defined the Nationalist cause. Major Uribe cared nothing for machismo—unless it made him hot—but in his own strange way he was worth more to Marshal Sanjurjo than a lot of hard-drinking, hardwenching officers.

“We are going back to Madrid,” he told his soldiers, flouncing atop a kitchen table he was using for a podium. “We are. We’ll take it away from the Republican beasts once and for all this time. And do you know what I’ve heard? Have you got any idea, my dears?” He waited expectantly, one hand cupped behind his ear.

“What is it,
Señor
?” the soldiers chorused, Joaquin loud among them.

“I’ve heard the International Brigades are back in Madrid. Isn’t that jolly?” the major shrilled.

“No,
por Dios,”
Sergeant Carrasquel muttered beside Joaquin. “They may be a bunch of fucking Reds, but they can fight. I ran up against those cocksuckers in ‘36, and once was plenty, thank you very much.”

Up on his rickety platform, Uribe turned the sergeant’s argument upside down and inside out: “People say they make good soldiers, and I guess that’s true. But they’re a pack of filthy, godless Communists. They kill priests and they rape nuns for the fun of it. The sooner we kill every one of them, the sooner we make Spain a clean place to live again.”

Some of the Nationalist soldiers cheered. Most of those, Joaquin saw, were men new to the battalion. How much did they know about hard fighting? Sergeant Carrasquel, who knew as much as anybody in the world these days, did some more muttering: “That’s all great, but how many of us are those assholes going to kill?”

“Victory will be ours,” Major Uribe insisted. “Ours! Spain’s! Germany and Italy have other scores to settle. But we—the honest people of Spain, the pious people of Spain—
we
will give the Red Republic what it deserves.
¡Muerte a la República! ¡Viva la muerte!
”

“¡Viva la muerte!”
the troops shouted back.
Long live death!
—the battle cry of the Spanish Foreign Legion—sounded ferocious when they yelled it. In Major Uribe’s full-lipped mouth, it seemed more like an endearment.

Uribe, of course, was not speaking for himself alone. He was passing on orders he’d got from the officers above him. If those officers said the battalion was going to Madrid, to Madrid it would go. The only other
choice was desertion. And if Marshal Sanjurjo’s men caught you after you sneaked away or—ever so much worse—went over to the Republic…They wouldn’t waste a cigarette on you before they stood you against the closest wall. They might not even waste a firing squad’s worth of bullets on you. Why should they, when they could bash in your skull with a brick or hang you upside down, cut your throat, and bleed you like a stuck pig?

Joaquin didn’t want to go over to the Republic. He hated Communists and anarchists and freethinkers, and he had a low opinion of Catalans, too. Even if he hadn’t hated all those people when the war started, all the fighting he’d done would have turned his heart to stone against them. And deserting was too risky. A healthy man of military age, without papers to prove he really ought to be a civilian, wouldn’t last long.

And so, resignedly, Delgadillo climbed aboard a beat-up train with the rest of the men in the battalion and clattered north from Gibraltar. Sergeant Carrasquel checked the soldiers off one by one as they got on in front of him. Trying to skedaddle with the sergeant’s beady black eyes on you was worse than hopeless. If you started thinking about getting out of line, Carrasquel knew it before you did.

Hillsides were starting to turn green. Down in the south, spring came early. The calendar insisted it was still winter. Up on the far side of the Pyrenees—maybe even up in Madrid—it would be. But the warm breezes blowing up from Africa made the southern coast of Spain almost tropical.

“You wait,” somebody said. “When we get over the mountains, it’ll be raining.” Sure as the devil, it was—and a cold, nasty rain at that. Yes, winter still ruled most of Europe.

The closer they got to Madrid, the more Sergeant Carrasquel fidgeted. “Damned Russian planes shot us up last time I was here,” he said. “They shot us and bombed us, and not a fucking thing we could do about it but pray.”

“Will they do it again?” Joaquin asked. Getting attacked from the air
was even more terrifying than moving up under artillery fire. He thought so while no one was shelling him, anyhow.

Sergeant Carrasquel only shrugged and lit a Canaria. Like everything else, the local brand wasn’t what it had been before the war. He blew out a stream of smoke before answering, “I’m sure God knows,
amigo
, but He hasn’t told me yet. When He does, I promise I’ll pass it along.”

Ears burning, Joaquin shut up. The train rattled along. One good thing about the rain: those gray clouds scudding along overhead meant enemy aircraft couldn’t get off the ground no matter how much their pilots might want to. They also meant Marshal Sanjurjo’s planes couldn’t fly, but that didn’t worry Joaquin so much.

The train came in after dark, so it got closer to the city—closer to the Promised Land, so to speak—than he’d thought it could. Rain still pattered down, but it wasn’t the only reason he couldn’t see the great city he’d come to take. Both sides observed a stringent blackout. If anyone showed a light, someone else would fire at it.

Even in the absence of light, the Republicans’ artillery lobbed a few shells at the train. Somebody asked Carrasquel how they could know where it was. He gave the poor naïve fellow the horse laugh. “Did your
mamacita
tell you where babies come from?” he jeered. “They’ve got spies, same as we do. Sometimes I think every fourth guy in Spain is a spy for one side or the other—or maybe both.”

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.