Harry Turtledove - West and East

“Fuck ’em all,” he muttered, and his breath smoked around him even though he hadn’t pulled that next Gitane out of its packet. He thought north was that way. If he turned out to be wrong, well, he’d given it his best shot. The Germans might be taking Norway, but they hadn’t taken him. Yet.

* * *

Chaim Weinberg had a new sacred text from which to preach. “Thieves fall out,” he told the Nationalist prisoners in the park in Madrid. “The Germans are fighting among themselves. Some of them can see that Hitler is only leading them into disaster. And if that is true for Germany, isn’t it even more true for Spain?”

He got somber looks from the POWs. German efficiency was a watchword in Spain, especially among the Nationalists. If the gangsters who lined up behind Hitler could go for each other’s throats, what about the goons who said they were for Sanjurjo? What would they do if they saw a better deal in going out on their own? It was something for everybody to think about, not just a bunch of hapless prisoners. It seemed that way to Chaim, anyhow.

Because it seemed that way to him, he said so to anyone who would listen. He had discovered his inner missionary while haranguing the POWs. What he hadn’t discovered was how to make his inner missionary shut up.

He got into arguments in line for meals. He got into arguments in cantinas, and on street corners. He got into fights, too. He won more often than he lost. Few people who hadn’t been to the front wasted less time fighting clean than he did. After he left a couple of loudmouthed Spaniards groaning on cantina floors-and after he discouraged their friends with a foot-long bayonet held in an underhand grip that warned he knew just what to do with it (which he did)-the arguments stayed verbal. He got a name for himself: eso narigon loco -that crazy kike. He wore it with pride.

Of course, by running his mouth he also set himself up for Party discipline. He’d faced Party discipline in the States. They told you to quit doing whatever you were doing that they didn’t like. Either you did or you dropped out of the Party.

Party discipline in Spain was a different business. They told you to quit doing whatever you were doing that they didn’t like. Either you did or they threw your sorry ass into a Spanish jail or a punishment company or they said to hell with it and shot you.

Chaim wasn’t altogether surprised when a scared-looking runner summoned him to appear before a Party organizer and explain himself. He wasn’t altogether thrilled, either, which was putting it mildly. But what choice did he have? He could try going over to the Nationalists, assuming they or the Republicans didn’t shoot him while he was trying to desert. But that would have gagged a vulture. He certainly couldn’t stomach it himself.

And so he reported to the organizer. She had her office in a beat-up building (the most common kind in embattled Madrid) that had housed government bureaucrats before the Spanish civil war got going. That she was a she he’d inferred from the nom de guerre the runner gave him: La Martellita, the Little Hammer (with feminine article and ending). That was a good name-Molotov meant son of a hammer, too.

Sure as the devil, she wasn’t very big. He’d expected that. He hadn’t expected her to be drop-dead gorgeous, but she was: blue-black hair, flashing dark eyes, cheekbones, a Spanish blade of a nose, and the most kissable mouth he’d ever seen. That she looked at him as if he were a donkey turd in the gutter somehow only made her more beautiful. He had no idea how come, but it did.

“Well, Comrade, why are you throwing around such bad ideology?” she snapped, her voice cold as the North Pole.

“I did it so I could meet you,” Chaim answered. Not for the first time in his life, his mouth ran several lengths ahead of his brain. “People said you were very pretty, and they were right.”

“If you think you can flatter me, you had better think again,” La Martellita said, in tones not a tenth of a degree warmer than they were before. “You will only end up digging a deeper hole for yourself-maybe one deep enough to bury you in.” She sounded as if she looked forward to shoveling dirt over him. Odds were she did.

“I have a question for you,” Chaim said.

“Yes?” she asked ominously.

“What’s your real name?”

“None of your business.”

“That’s a funny name,” he said. Her nostrils flared, and not with pleasure. He sighed. “Okay. Um, bueno. I have another question for you.”

“If you keep wasting my time, you’ll regret it.”

“I believe you,” he said… regretfully. “Why is it such a sin to say the Fascists have contradictions of their own, and that we ought to do everything we can to take advantage of them?”

“Because you are only a soldier,” she answered. “Higher-level policy is none of your business-none, do you hear me? For all you know, for all I know, for all anyone knows, we are trying to exploit those contradictions. But soldiers have no business proposing policy.”

“I’m not just a soldier,” he said. “I’m a propagandist, too, trying to bring Nationalist soldiers over to the Republic. If I can’t talk politics with them, I can’t do my job.”

“Did you get your views approved before you presented them?” La Martellita asked.

“Uh-no,” Chaim admitted. He was a Communist, a loyal Communist. But he was also an American. He was used to doing things on his own hook and worrying about consequences later. Well, here it was, later, and here were the consequences. If this stunner in shapeless denim coveralls-a crime, that!-wanted him shot, shot he damn well would be.

She looked through him. “And why not?”

“It didn’t seem necessary,” he answered feebly.

“That was very stupid,” La Martellita said.

“I thought every man was free to be anything he wanted, even stupid, under the Republic.” Chaim threw out the line like a chess player offering a poisoned pawn.

And she took it: “Every man may be stupid under the Republic, Comrade, but you abuse the privilege.”

“Didn’t Trotsky say something like that?” Chaim knew perfectly well Trotsky had. His voice was pure innocence all the same. If you accused somebody of quoting the Red Antichrist, you needed to sound innocent.

La Martellita’s eyes flashed again, terribly. She looked as if she hated him. No doubt she did. But now he had a hold on her. Even if they were dragging him off to the nearest wall, he had a chance of getting her stood up against it right after him. She took out a pack of cigarettes, lit one, and smoked in quick, furious puffs. She didn’t offer it to him.

She stubbed hers out while it was only half done-a rare thing in Spain these days. When she spoke again, she came straight to the point: “What do you want from me?” She knew what she’d done. Oh, yes.

“A little understanding would be nice,” Chaim said.

“What do you mean, ‘understanding’? If you think I’ll be your mattress or suck your stupid cock, I’d sooner cut my throat.” She sure as hell did come straight to the point.

“No, no, no,” Chaim said, thinking Yes, yes, yes! He went on, “I was talking about politics. I didn’t mean any harm when I said what I said, any more than you did just now. I don’t think I should get in trouble for it.”

“Oh. Politics.” The way La Martellita said the word, it sounded more obscene than cocksucking. She drummed her fingers on the rickety little table she used for a desk. “Can you try not to talk about your own so loudly when you’re not reeducating the Nationalists?”

It was like getting sent out of the confessional with a penance of three Our Fathers and five Hail Marys. “I’ll try,” Chaim said. He didn’t even have to promise to do it.