Harry Turtledove: Two Fronts

After a moment, so did she. What else could she do? But if he took the Nazis’ favorite anti-Semitic slogan and aimed it at their enforcers … If he did that, he couldn’t be the only one thinking such things. Nowhere close, in fact. And if he was nowhere close to the only one thinking such things, well, no wonder the Party needed to flood Munster with SS men and mount machine guns in front of the cathedral.

Could the Reich fight its foreign enemies and its own people at the same time? Wasn’t that how, or part of how, Kaiser Wilhelm’s government came to grief? Whether it was or not, Hitler seemed determined to try. The Fuhrer always seemed determined. Right? If you believed Goebbels, he was. Of course, if you believed Goebbels you were bound to have other things wrong with you as well.

She hadn’t got far past the old man who didn’t like the regime when another blackshirt shouted at her: “Show me your papers, kike!”

“Yes, sir.” Letting them see they’d got your goat meant they’d won a point. She meekly produced her identity card. He scowled at it, but even he didn’t have the gall to claim it was out of order. Scowling still, he thrust it back at her and waved her on.

Clocks rang five throughout the city. The bells in the cathedral tower stayed silent. They’d been silent since the latest riot. The Nazis wouldn’t let anyone in to ring them.

These were the hours when Jews could come out and shop. They couldn’t get much, but they could shop. Not even Aryans could get much. As it had in the last war, the Royal Navy’s blockade squeezed Germany like a python. The coils might not get stronger all the time, but they never got weaker.

Even the mangel-wurzels looked sad. She got some anyway. Mangel-wurzels were what you ate when things like turnips and rutabagas cost too much … or when they were the only vegetables left in the bins. Today, they were. Unless Father had had a good day scavenging, meals for the next little while would be even grimmer than usual.

Sarah managed to get home with only one more SS man swearing at her. The way things had been lately, that counted as a pretty good outing. Father came in not long after she got back. He hid no goodies under his jacket. Spreading his callused hands in apology, he said, “We were repairing a crater in the street today. No chance to go hunting.”

“Too bad,” Sarah said. “Nothing but rubbish in the stores.”

“That is too bad,” Father agreed. “But did you notice the moon’s just about full?”

She shook her head. “I didn’t pay any attention to it.”

“It’s a bombers’ moon, all right.” Father sounded pleased at the prospect. “We’ll see if they come over tonight. We’ll see what they hit if they do. And we’ll see how brave all the heroes new in town are if the RAF does decide to pay us a call.”

“Some of them will come from places like Dresden and Weimar, won’t they?” Sarah said. “Places that don’t get bombed much.”

“That’s what I’m looking at, too.” Yes, Samuel Goldman seemed to be looking forward to the RAF’s arrival. The bombs didn’t care that he was a Jew. They’d kill him as readily as they’d blow up an Aryan-more readily, because Aryans had better shelters. All the same, he went on, “Let’s see how they like it here in the northwest, where we know there’s a war on all the time.”

Sarah told him about the man who’d said what he thought of the SS. “I have no idea who he was, but he knew what I was, sure enough.”

“It’s that intriguing?” Father said. “I wonder how many more there are like him.”

“I was thinking the same thing,” she said. “If the bombers do show up, maybe something will come down in the cathedral square. Wouldn’t it be terrible if that happened?”

“Dreadful,” Father said. They winked at each other. He went on, “And I’ve got a story of my own to tell.”

Before he could, Mother called, “Supper’s ready!” from the kitchen.

She was a good cook. When you were fighting against miserable ingredients, that helped only so much. Cattle ate turnip greens. As with mangel-wurzels, so did people who couldn’t get anything better. It didn’t make them tasty. Sarah didn’t see how anything could.

After a while, she asked her father, “So what’s your story?”

“Story?” Mother said.

“The one I was going to tell before I got invited to this feast,” Father said. Mother looked wounded. He backtracked in a hurry: “I’m sorry, Hanna. It was a joke, but I guess not a good one.”

“No,” she said tightly. “Not. I’m doing the best I can, and I wish someone would notice once in a while.”

“We do,” Father said. Sarah nodded. Mother still didn’t look happy. Father sighed. “Well, I stuck my foot in that. Do you want to hear the story in spite of everything?”

“Please.” Sarah grabbed at anything that might turn the subject.

“All right, then.” Before Father started, he made a small production of rolling himself an after-dinner cigarette. Once he’d taken a puff or two, he said, “I was talking with another guy in the gang-Emil, his name is. He’s a pickpocket-a good pickpocket, too.”

“Not good enough to keep from getting caught,” Sarah observed.

“Nobody’s perfect,” Father said. “Anyway, though, he’s got a cousin who’s a Feldwebel in Holland, and he says his cousin says the Nazis asked the Wehrmacht to sit on Munster because things were getting lively here, and the Wehrmacht flat-out said no. I have no idea whether it’s true, but it makes you think, doesn’t it?”

“How could his cousin know something like that?” Sarah asked.

“Maybe he works the phones at the HQ of a division that would have occupied us. Maybe he plays skat with a lieutenant who’s a general’s son. I can think of ways,” Father said. “Or maybe Emil was making up the whole thing. That wouldn’t surprise me too much, either. So take it for what you think it’s worth.”

Not knowing Emil, Sarah wasn’t sure what it might be worth. But if there was a rift between Party and Army … Father was right. It did make you think.

Nothing in Spain ever happened in a hurry. Vaclav Jezek had had to get used to that, no matter how crazy it drove him. Yes, he was a proud Czech. Yes, he hated Germany and everything Germany stood for these days. But German attitudes had rubbed off on his country, and on him. When a Czech said something would happen today, he meant it would damn well happen today, and not Tuesday a fortnight.

Spain, even Republican Spain (which tried to be efficient but had no idea how), didn’t work like that. The people in Madrid who ran things needed a while to hear that he’d smashed up the Spanish tankettes. They needed a while to decide how excited to get about that-they didn’t have a bounty on tankettes, the way they had on the late, unlamented (on this side of the barbed wire, anyhow) General Franco. And, once they had decided, what they’d decided needed a while to get to Vaclav.

He’d been issued a commendation for a brave and selfless service to the Republic. The gaudy commendation was on paper too thick and too crisp to do duty as either a cigarette wrapper or an asswipe. It was written in a language he couldn’t read; Benjamin Halevy had translated it for him. It was, in other words, almost extravagantly useless.

But it came with a medium-sized wad of pesetas-not nearly so many as he’d got for giving Franco what he deserved, but definitely better than no pesetas-and a week’s leave in Madrid. All things considered, Vaclav wished Sanjurjo’s men would throw tankettes at the Republican line more often.

Instead of staying in a barracks, he’d spent some of the pesetas for a room at a hotel that hadn’t been bombed in a couple of years. He’d spent some more at a different kind of house around the corner. And he’d bought himself a bottle of what claimed to be cognac and was bound to be strong if not smooth.