Harry Turtledove - Tilting the Balance

When he got back to his quarters, he drafted a request to be returned to active duty. On the space in the form that asked his reason for seeking the transfer, he wrote, I am of no use to the physicists here. If confirmation is required please inquire of Professor Heisenberg .

He sent the request off with a messenger and awaited results. They were not long in coming-the application got approved faster than he had thought possible. Diebner and a couple of the other physicists expressed regret that he was leaving. Professor Heisenberg said not a word. He’d no doubt had his say to the office who’d called or telegraphed about Jager.

Maybe he thought he’d had his revenge. As far as Jager was concerned, the distinguished professor had done him a favor.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil, for Thou art with me . Lodz constantly put Moishe Russie in mind of the Twenty-third Psalm, and of that valley. Lodz, though, had only walked into the valley, not through it. The shadow of death still lay over the town.

In Warsaw, thousands in the ghetto had died of starvation and disease before the Lizards came. Starvation and disease had walked the streets of Lodz, too. But the Nazis hadn’t let them work alone here. They’d started shipping Jews off to their murder factories. Maybe the memory of those death transports was what made Lodz still seem caught in the grip of a nightmare.

Russie walked southeast down Zgierska Street toward the Balut Market square to buy some potatoes for his family. Up the street toward him came a Jewish policeman of the Order Service. His red-and-white armband bore a six-pointed black star with a white circle in the center, marking him as an underofficer. He had a truncheon on his belt and a rifle across his back. He looked like a tough customer.

But when Russie tugged at the brim of his hat in salute, the Order Service man returned the gesture and kept on walking. Emboldened, Russie turned and called after him: “How are the potatoes today?”

The policeman stopped. “They’re not wonderful, but I’ve seen worse,” he answered. Pausing to spit in the gutter, he added, “We all saw worse last year.”

“Isn’t that the sad and sorry truth?” Russie said. He headed on down to the market while the Order Service man resumed his beat.

More policemen roamed the Balut Market square, to keep down thievery, maintain order-and cadge what they could. Like the underofficer, they still wore the emblems of rank they’d got from the Nazis.

That helped make Lodz feel haunted to Russie. In Warsaw the Judenrat- the Jewish council that had administered the ghetto under German authority-collapsed even before the Lizards drove out the Nazis. Its police force had fallen with it. Jewish fighters, not the hated and discredited police, kept order there now. The same held true in most Polish towns.

Not in Lodz. Here, the walls of the buildings that fronted the market square were plastered with posters of balding, white-haired Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski. Rumkowski had been Eldest-puppet ruler-of Lodz’s Jews under the Nazis. Somehow, he was still Eldest of the Jews under the Lizards.

Russie wondered how he’d managed that. He must have jumped from the departing train to the arriving one at just the right instant. In Warsaw, there were stories that he’d collaborated with the Nazis. Russie had asked no questions of that sort since he got into Lodz. He didn’t want to draw Rumkowski’s attention toward him and his family. For all he knew, the Eldest would turn him over to Zolraag, the local Lizard governor.

He got into line for potatoes. The lines moved fast; the Order Service men saw to that. They were fierce and fussy at the same time, a manner they must have learned from the Germans. Some of them still wore German-style jackboots, too. As with the ghetto stars on their armbands, the boots raised Russie’s hackles.

When he reached the front of the line, such worries fell away. Food was more important. He held out a burlap bag and said, “Ten kilos of potatoes, please.”

The man behind the table took the bag, filled it from a bin, plopped it onto a scale. He’d had endless practice; it weighed ten kilos on the dot. He didn’t hand it back to Russie. Instead, he asked, “How are you going to pay? Lizard coupons, marks, zlotys, Rumkies?”

“Rumkies.” Russie pulled a wad of them out of his pocket. The fighter who’d driven him into Lodz had given him what seemed like enough to stuff a mattress. He’d imagined himself rich until he discovered that the Lodz ghetto currency was almost worthless.

The potato seller made a sour face. “If it’s Rumkies, you owe me 450.” The potatoes would have cost only a third as many Polish zlotys, the next weakest currency.

Russie started peeling off dark blue twenty-mark notes and blue-green tens, each printed with a Star of David in the upper left-hand corner and a cross-hatching of background lines that spiderwebbed the bills with more Magen Davids . Each note bore Rumkowski’s signature, which gave the money its sardonic nickname.

The potato seller made his own count after Moishe gave him the bills. Even though it came out right, he still looked unhappy. “Next time you come, bring real money,” he advised. “I don’t think we’re going to take Rumkies a whole lot longer.”

“But-” Russie waved to the ubiquitous portraits of the Jewish Eldest.

“He can do what he wants in here,” the potato seller said. “But he can’t make anybody outside think Rumkies are good for anything but wiping your behind.” The merchant’s shrug was eloquent.

Russie started back to his flat with the potatoes. It was on the corner of Zgierska and Lekarska, just a couple of blocks from the barbed wire that had sealed off the ghetto of Lodz- Litzmannstad, the Nazis had renamed it when they annexed western Poland to the Reich- from the rest of the city.

Much of the barbed wire remained in place, though paths had been cut through it here and there. In Warsaw, Lizard bombs had knocked down the wall the Germans made. Of course, that barrier had looked like a fortification and most of this one didn’t. But something else went on here, too. The potato seller had said that Rumkowski could do what he wanted inside the ghetto. He’d meant it scornfully, but Moishe thought his words held a truth he hadn’t intended. He had the feeling Rumkowski liked being a big fish, no matter how small his pond was.

At least there were enough potatoes to go around these days. The Lodz ghetto had been as hungry as Warsaw’s, maybe hungrier. The Jews inside remained gaunt and ragged, especially compared to the Poles and Germans who made up the rest of the townsfolk. They weren’t actively starving any more, though. From where they’d been a year before, that wasn’t just progress. It felt like a miracle.

A horse-drawn wagon clattered up behind Russie. He stepped aside to let it pass. It was piled high with curious-looking objects woven out of straw. “What are those things, anyway?” Russie called to the driver.

“You must be new in town.” The fellow pulled back on the reins, slowed his team to an amble so he could talk for a while. “They’re boots, so the Lizards won’t freeze their little chicken feet every time they go out in the snow.”

“Chicken feet-I like that,” Russie said.

The driver grinned. “Every time I see two or three Lizards together, I think of the front window of a butcher’s shop. I want to go down the street yelling, ‘Soup! Get your soup fixings here!’ ” He sobered. “We were making straw boots for the Nazis before the Lizards came. All we had to do was make ’em smaller and change the shape.”

“Wouldn’t it be fine to make what we wanted just for ourselves, not for one set of masters or another?” Russie said wistfully. His hands remembered the motions they’d made sewing seams on field-gray trousers.