Shells didn't care. Neither did machine-gun bullets. She'd seen things at Marianske Lazne she wouldn't forget as long as she lived. (And she wouldn't call the place Marienbad any more, even if that was easier to say. The Germans used the old name anew. If they did, she wouldn't.)
Not all of what she wished she could forget came during the bombardment, or when she was bandaging wounded afterwards.
Quite a few Jews had been stuck in the resort with everybody else. The ones who were foreign nationals aimed their passports at the Nazis the way you'd aim a crucifix at a vampire. Peggy had no idea whether crucifixes worked; in that part of Europe, some people might. But the passports did. By their growls, the German soldiers and the SS men who followed them into Marianske Lazne might have been Dobermans brought up short by their chains. However much they growled, though, they treated Jews who weren't from Czechoslovakia no worse than any other foreign nationals they'd nabbed.
Jews who were from Czechoslovakia…Peggy shuddered at the memories. Jews from Czechoslovakia were basically fair game. It wasn't so much that the Blackshirts kicked some of them around for the fun of it. It wasn't even that the soldiers set others to scrubbing sidewalks with toothbrushes.
No. It was the way the Germans grinned when they did it. Peggy had had the misfortune to watch several SS men surround a plump, dignified, bearded, middle-aged Jew. The Jew wore ghetto attire: black trousers, long black coat, broad-brimmed black hat. In color, his clothes matched the Nazis' uniforms.
Which did him less than no good at all. One of the Blackshirts grabbed his hat and scaled it. He might have been a nasty kid on a schoolyard flinging another boy's cap. He might have been, yes, if he and his buddies didn't carry pistols and have the might of a mechanized army behind them. A schoolboy could punch another schoolboy in the nose. The Jew would have been committing suicide if he tried.
He just stood there, hoping they'd go away now that they'd had their sport. No such luck. A different SS man pulled out a big pair of pinking shears. He went to work on the Jew's beard. If he got some cheek or nose or ear while he did his barbering, that was part of the fun.
And the Jew just went on standing there. The look in his eyes was a million years old. It said his ancestors had been through this before, again and again. It said he hadn't done anything to deserve it, but deserving had nothing to do with anything. It said…It said Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do. Yes, that was from the New Testament, but so what? After all, what was Jesus to the Romans? Just another goddamn Jew.
Later, Peggy wondered why she didn't charge the SS bastards. I should have, she thought bitterly. Most of the time, she was somebody who went ahead first and worried about it later. Here, she only stood and watched. Maybe horror froze her. Maybe it was sheer disbelief. Could this really be happening right here before her eyes, here in Europe, cradle and beacon of civilization, here near the middle of the twentieth century?
It could. It was.
The Jew didn't say a word as he was shorn. He didn't flinch-much-whenever the shears drew blood. He just…looked at the SS men with those ancient, pain-filled eyes. And that didn't do him any good, either. When the barber was satisfied with his handiwork, he hauled off and slapped the Jew, hard enough to turn his head around. Another Nazi kicked the man in the ass. That got a groan from him and doubled him over.
"Enough for now," said the SS noncom with the shears.
"Ja. Let's find a fresh kike," another Blackshirt replied.
Peggy didn't speak a lot of German-her French was much better. She understood them, though. Off they went, laughing and joking. The worst of it was, they didn't act like men who'd just done something evil and cruel. As far as they were concerned, this was what they'd come to Czechoslovakia to do, the same way she'd come here to take the waters.
God help them, she thought. God help us all. But God didn't seem to be listening. Maybe He was out taking the waters somewhere Himself, or maybe He was off playing golf in Florida. He could do whatever He pleased. His Chosen People didn't look to be so lucky.
Even after the SS men went away, Peggy'd needed all of her nerve to go up to the poor Jew they'd abused. "Can I help you?" she'd asked hesitantly-in French, thinking more German was the last thing the man would want to hear then.
He'd straightened when she spoke to him. She remembered that, and the way he'd reached up to touch the brim of his hat, only to discover it wasn't there. Where blood running down his face and dripping from one ear didn't, the missing hat made him grimace.
Sadly, he'd answered, "Madame, do you truly imagine anyone could help me now?" His French was gutturally accented, but at least as fluent as hers.
She hadn't answered him. What could she have said? Yes would have been a lie, no too bitter to bear. She'd turned away instead.
And then, poor devil, he'd tried to comfort her. "When you are of my folk, Madame, you learn to expect such things now and again," he'd said.
Again, she hadn't answered. If he was right, that only made things worse. If he was wrong…But he wasn't wrong, dammit. You didn't have to like Jews-and Peggy didn't, not especially-to know they'd been getting the shitty end of the stick for the past 2,000 years. Had they ever got so much of it as the Nazis seemed to want to dish out, though?
People here in this camp claimed the Luftwaffe made a point of pounding Jewish districts in Prague and Brno and other Czech cities. Others said that was a bunch of hooey-nothing but stale propaganda. Peggy didn't know for sure; she hadn't been in any of those places while German bombers flew overhead. But she had no doubts at all about which way she'd bet.
One day, a uniformed German official-was there any other kind these days?-assembled the interned neutrals and harangued them in his language. Even though Peggy spoke some German, she couldn't follow word one. The big, beefy fellow had an accent she'd never heard before and hoped she never heard again.
"He has to come from somewhere near the Swiss border," a man standing near Peggy said to his wife. Peggy had guessed they were Belgians, but maybe they were from the French-speaking part of Switzerland.
Then the official switched to French. He had a devil of an accent there, too, but Peggy could understand him: he slowed down to speak a language foreign to him. "Now that the fighting is over, we are arranging transport to neutral destinations for you all. There will be railroad service into Romania in the near future, as soon as lines through Slovakia are repaired."
Quite a few people looked happy: Romanians, Bulgarians, Yugoslavs, Greeks. A lot of wealthy Balkans types came up to Czechoslovakia for the waters. It was the kind of thing their parents would have done in 1914. Some of those parents would have been citizens of Austria-Hungary Even the ones who weren't, even the ones who hated it, would have been cultural satellites of the Hapsburg empire. That ramshackle state was twenty years dead now, carved up like a Christmas goose. But its influence lingered even though it was gone.
The Nazi official started over one more time, in what he fondly imagined to be English. Peggy raised her hand, then waved it. "Question, please!" she called in French.
"Yes?" The German didn't looked pleased at being interrupted.
"Suppose we don't want to go to Romania?"
"It is being arranged that you should go there," he replied, as if her desires were as distant and unimportant as the canals of Mars.
"But I don't want to." Peggy never liked it when anybody tried to arrange her life for her. One reason she loved her husband was that he had sense enough to stay out of her way. She went on, "I'm an American. I want to go up to Poland or Sweden or Norway, where it's easier to find a ship for the United States."