Gustav felt terrified and exhilarated at the same time. He’d spent most of his youth in the Wehrmacht-spent it the way a gunner spent shells. He’d never felt so alive as on the Eastern Front, not least because he always knew life could end at any instant. Going back to Fulda was quiet, peaceful…and just a bit dull. All right, nightmares woke him screaming every so often. Did he feel so intensely about anything in the town, even Luisa?
To his own sorrow, he knew the answer. He hoped she was alive. He hoped she was safe. He hoped she was hiding-as the Russians had proved in 1945, they were swine around defeated women.
Hope was all he could do-hope and fight like hell.
“Urra! Urra!” The chant got louder, and higher in pitch.
He knew what that meant. “They’re coming!” he bawled, and peeped out from behind the Mercedes again.
Coming they were, and just as he remembered from the old days: rank after rank of men, arms linked, greatcoat skirts flapping around their legs, the troops in front firing as they ran. Gustav squeezed off a short burst, then scuttled to the far end of the dead car. Other Germans and Americans were also shooting back at the Red Army men.
When he looked out at the Russians again, soldiers were falling like ninepins. The ones who still lived closed up, linked arms, and trotted on. You had to admire courage like that. You also had to wonder what inspired it. Were the Russians more afraid of what would happen to them if they didn’t advance than they were of what happened when they did? God help them if they were, because this was suicidal.
Staying low, he fired at them again. They were close enough now for him to see his burst tear into them again. Then he wished for the Yankee Springfield and a long bayonet, because here they were, right on top of him. He fired till his magazine ran dry, then struck at the Russians with the PPSh’s hot barrel. He waited for someone to shoot him or stab him from behind.
But then the Ivans, the ones who could, were running back as fast as they’d run forward. Even Russian flesh and blood had limits. Sometimes. But you could never count on when or even whether.
Maybe one of the dead Ivans nearby had carried an assault rifle. Gustav wasn’t crazy enough to find out now. Later, when things calmed down a little, though…
–
The tiny, gray-haired Chinese woman sent Vasili Yasevich the fishiest of fishy stares. “You sure you know what you’re doing?” she snapped.
He bowed his head and looked down at the muddy ground. “This person does his humble best to follow the training in compounding medicines given to him by his father, who now, sadly, is among the ancestors.”
“Oh, cut the crap.” Her accent and her manner both shouted that she came from Peking. Her husband was one of the commissars charged with getting Harbin back on its feet as fast as humanly possible-or a little faster than that. Still giving him the fishy eye, she went on, “You can fix something to perk up Wang, keep him going?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said. He didn’t know as much as his father had. He hadn’t listened so hard as he might have. But that one he could handle. “The wise and distinguished lady will have heard of the herb called ma huang?”
“I told you to can the crap,” she said, but Vasili could tell it flattered her at the same time as it annoyed her. The Reds from Peking were often holier-than-thou when it came to aggressive egalitarianism. Almost as often, though, they expected to be treated as rulers. So he wasn’t amazed when she giggled before going on, “Yes, I know about ma huang. I’m surprised a round-eye would.”
“It’s used in our medicines, too,” Vasili said, which wasn’t even a lie. From what his old man had told him, the chemical that gave ma huang its kick was related to benzedrine.
“Ah. That I didn’t know.” The woman’s glare sharpened again. “You can get me some in this miserable, bombed-out, backward province?”
She wasn’t supposed to say things like that. She wasn’t even supposed to think them. He might be able to land her in trouble if he repeated them to the right people. He didn’t want to land her in trouble, though. He just wanted to make some money off of her. He wanted her to pass his name on to her friends, too, so he could also sell them drugs.
And so he nodded. “Yes, great lady. I have been lucky enough to secure a supply of the highest quality…. ”
He’d found some in a wrecked medicine shop. He’d tested it by chewing a little. It sped up his heartbeat and made him lose a night’s sleep no matter how tired he was. That was ma huang, all right.
“Well, what do you want for it?” she demanded.
“You understand how hard it is to bring things in these days-”
She interrupted: “I understand you’re going to gouge me.”
He was, too, but politely. When he told her how much he wanted, she called him some things that weren’t from the Peking dialect of Mandarin at all. He knew most of the insults that one offered. He wondered where the commissar’s wife had grown up, to come out with those catfight-sounding curses. When she ran down, he gave her his politest bow. That inflamed her more, as he’d known it would.
They haggled for a while. He let her beat him down a little further than he’d expected. He didn’t want her leaving angry. If she did, she wouldn’t tell her friends about him.
She paid him. He gave her the ma huang, and told her how much to use. He didn’t want the commissar dying of a heart attack or stroke, either. That would be bad for business. “Don’t think that if a little is good, more is better,” he warned. “Ma huang is strong medicine. You should always respect it.”
“You are not my mother or my father,” she said tartly. A Russian would have told him Don’t teach your granny to suck eggs. They both amounted to the same thing. He bowed again. He’d done his best.
Away she went. It was the first day of spring-Vasili thought it was, anyhow; he’d been too frazzled lately to keep close track-but her breath smoked. In her shapeless trousers, quilted jacket, and cap with earflaps and a red star on the front, she might have been an undersized People’s Liberation Army private-except she carried herself like an empress. He wondered what she would do if he told her so. Probably have him shot. If her husband was who Vasili thought he was, she could arrange that with a word or two.
Instead, she did talk to the wives of other high-powered organizers who’d come into Manchuria. Vasili had to scout around for more ma huang. Luckily, it was easier to come by than he’d made it out to be.
One of the officials went back to Peking very suddenly. People said he suffered from nervous exhaustion. Maybe he did. Certainly, his wife had been one of Vasili’s best customers. If she’d brewed her tea too strong for too long, she was the only one who knew it. Vasili could only suspect-and, since he knew what was good for him, keep his mouth shut.
Railroad workers started rebuilding the line that ran through Harbin. It was one of the most important in China, since it connected North Korea to the Trans-Siberian Railway. Repairing the stretch the atom bomb had destroyed was important. Vasili understood as much. All the same, he was glad he wasn’t spending twelve- or fourteen-hour days breaking rock and laying track right where that bomb had gone off.
He wondered whether the workers knew radioactivity could be dangerous-or that there was such a thing as radioactivity. It made sense for their overlords not to tell them. After all, they wouldn’t pay any price for years.
Some of the railroad workers bought ma huang from him, too, so they could work harder longer. Like the official’s wife, they thought it was funny to be getting a Chinese herb from a Russian. Funny or not, as long as he had it, they wanted it.