Harry Turtledove - Striking the Balance

“Yes, Comrade Colonel.” Nussboym sat gratefully. Skriabin was in a good mood; he didn’t offer the chair at every visit, nor did he always speak Polish instead of making Nussboym work through his Russian. “I can report that the new Lizard headmale is cooperative in every way. We should have far less trouble from Barracks Three than we’ve known in the past.”

“This is good.” Skriabin steepled his inky fingers. “Is it the only thing you have to report?”

Nussboym made haste to reply: “No, Comrade Colonel.”

Skriabin nodded-had he been interrupted just for that, he would have made Nussboym regret it. The interpreter went on, “The other matter, though, is so delicate, I hesitate to bring it to your attention.” He was glad he was able to use Polish with Skriabin; he could never have been subtle enough in Russian.

“Delicate?” The camp commandant raised an eyebrow. “We seldom hear such a word in this place.”

“I understand. This, however”-Nussboym looked back over his shoulder to make certain the desk out there remained unoccupied-“concerns your secretary, Apfelbaum.”

“Does it?” Skriabin kept his voice neutral. “All right. Go on. You have my attention. What about Apfelbaum?”

“Day before yesterday, Comrade Colonel, Apfelbaum and I were walking outside Barracks Three with Oyyag, discussing ways the Lizard prisoners could meet their norms.” Nussboym picked his words with great care. “And Apfelbaum said everyone’s life would be easier if the Great Stalin-he used the title sarcastically, I must say-if the Great Stalin worried as much about how much the Soviet people ate as he did about how hard they worked for him. That is exactly what he said. He was speaking Russian, not Yiddish, so Oyyag could understand, and I had trouble following him, so I had to ask him to repeat himself. He did, and was even more sarcastic the second time than the first.”

“Is that so?” Skriabin said. Nussboym nodded. Skriabin scratched his head. “And the Lizard heard it, too, you say, and understood it?” Nussboym nodded again. The NKVD colonel looked up to the boards of the ceiling. “He will, I suppose, make a statement to this effect?”

“If it is required of him, Comrade Colonel, I think he would,” Nussboym replied. “Would it be? Perhaps I should not have mentioned it, but-”

“But indeed,” Skriabin said heavily. “I suppose you now think it necessary to file a formal written denunciation against Apfelbaum.”

Nussboym feigned reluctance. “I would really rather not. As you recall when I denounced one of the zeks with whom I formerly worked, this is not something I care to do. It strikes me as-”

“Useful?” Skriabin suggested. Nussboym looked back at him with wide eyes, glad the NKVD man could not see his thoughts. No, they hadn’t put him in charge of this camp by accident. He reached into his desk and pulled out a fresh form headed with incomprehensible Cyrillic instructions. “Write out what he said-Polish or Yiddish will do. That way, we will have it on file. I suppose the Lizard would talk about this to all and sundry. You would never do such a thing yourself, of course.”

“Comrade Colonel, the idea would never enter my mind.”

Nussboym put shocked innocence into his voice. He knew he was lying, as did Colonel Skriabin. But, like any game, this one had rules. He accepted a pen and wrote rapidly. After scrawling his signature at the bottom of the denunciation, he handed the paper back to Skriabin.

He supposed Apfelbaum would come back with a denunciation of his own. But he’d picked his target carefully. Skriabin’s clerk would have a hard time getting his fellow politicals to back any accusations he made: they disliked him because of the way he sucked up to the commandant and the privileges he got because he was Skriabin’s aide. The ordinary zeks despised him-they despised all politicals. And he didn’t know any Lizards.

Skriabin said, “From another man, I might think this denunciation made because he wanted Apfelbaum’s position.”

“You could not possibly say that of me,” Nussboym answered. “I could not fill his position, and would never claim I could. If the camp functioned in Polish or Yiddish, then yes, you might say that about me. But I do not have enough Russian to do his job. All I want is to let the truth be known.”

“You are the soul of virtue,” Skriabin said dryly. “I note, however, that virtue is not necessarily an asset on the road to success.”

“Indeed, Comrade Colonel,” Nussboym said. Be careful, the NKVD man was telling him. He intended to be careful if he could shake Apfelbaum loose from his job, get him sent off to some harder camp in disgrace, everyone here would move up. His own place would improve. Now that he’d acknowledged he was in effect a political and cast his lot with the camp administration, he thought he might as well take as much advantage of the situation as he could.

After all, if you didn’t look out for yourself, who was going to look out for you? He’d felt miserable after Skriabin had made him sign the first denunciation, the one against Ivan Fyodorov. This one, though, this one didn’t bother him at all.

Offhandedly, Skriabin said, “A train bringing in new prisoners will arrive tomorrow. A couple of cars’ worth, I am given to understand, will be women.”

“That is most interesting,” Nussboym said. “Thank you for telling me.” Women who knew what was good for them accommodated themselves to the powerful people in the camp: first to the NKVD men, then to the prisoners who could help make their lives tolerable… or otherwise. The ones who didn’t know what was good for them went out and cut trees and dug ditches like any other zeks.

Nussboym smiled to himself. Surely a man as… practical as he could find some equally… practical woman for himself-maybe even one who spoke Yiddish. Wherever you were, you did what you could to get by.

A Lizard with a flashlight approached the campfire around which Mutt Daniels and Herman Muldoon sat swapping lies. “That is you, Second Lieutenant Daniels?” he called in pretty good English.

“This here’s me,” Mutt agreed. “Come on over, Small-Unit Group Leader Chook. Set yourself down. You boys are gonna be pullin’ out tomorrow mornin’-did I hear that right?”

“It is truth,” Chook said. “We are to be no more in the Illinois place. We are to move out, first back to main base in Kentucky, then out of this not-empire of the United States. I tell you two things, Second Lieutenant Daniels. The first thing is, I am not sorry to go. The second thing is, I come here to say good-bye.”

“That’s mighty nice of you,” Mutt said. “Good-bye to you, too.”

“A sentimental Lizard,” Muldoon said, snorting. “Who woulda thunk it?”

“Chook here ain’t a bad guy,” Daniels answered. “Like he said when we got the truce the first time, him and the Lizards he’s in charge of got more in common with us than we do with the brass hats way back of the line.”

“Yeah, that’s right enough,” Muldoon answered, at the same time as Chook was saying, “Truth,” again. Muldoon went on, “It was like that Over There, wasn’t it? Us and the Germans in the trenches, we was more like each other than us and the fancy Dans back in Gay Paree, that’s for damn sure. Show those boys a louse and they’d faint dead away.”

“I have also for you a question, Second Lieutenant Daniels,” Chook said. “Does it molest you to have me ask you this?”

“Does it what?” Mutt said. Then he figured out what the Lizard was talking about. Chook’s English was pretty good, but it wasn’t perfect “No, go ahead and ask, whatever the hell it is. You and me, we’ve got on pretty good since we stopped tryin’ to blow each other’s heads off. Your troubles, they look a lot like my troubles, ‘cept in a mirror.”