"Why would they stop you?" Sarah asked.
"Why?" Her brother snorted. "I'll tell you why. They're liable to realize we're having fun in spite of everything, that's why. And if they do-" Saul made that chopping motion again.
"Oh." Sarah left it right there. Saul's words had a horrible feeling of probability to them. The Nazis ruined things for Jews just to be ruining them. That was how they had fun. And since they had the Gestapo and the ordinary police and the Wehrmacht on their side, they could have fun any way they wanted.
One of Saul's teammates called to him. The older man thumped the hero of the match on the back and handed him a bottle of beer. Saul swigged from it. He made a face. "Even the beer's gone downhill since the war started," he said. "It tastes like…lousy beer."
What did he almost say? Horse piss? Goebbels piss? Whatever it was, it didn't come out. As Father had driven home to them again and again, you couldn't get in trouble for what you didn't say. Nobody could inform on you for what you were thinking. That might save your life.
Or it might not. If the Nazis decided to do something to the Jews, or to a particular Jew, they'd just go ahead and do it. They didn't need any excuses, the way they would have in a country where laws counted for more than the Fuhrer's will. On the other hand, if a Jew was dumb enough to give them an excuse, they'd grab it in a heartbeat.
Sarah often wondered what she would do if Hitler or Himmler or Goring or Heydrich or one of those people came to Munster. If she had a chance…If she had a rifle…If she knew how to use a rifle…If pigs had wings…
Even if she did exactly what she dreamt of doing, what kind of revenge would the Nazis take? Would more than three or four Jews be left alive in the Reich a day after a Jewish girl shot somebody like that? Odds were against it. Too bad. The whole folk were a hostage.
In small groups, people started walking off toward their houses. No bus or trolley line ran close to this pitch-what a surprise! Buses had almost disappeared since the war started anyhow; whatever fuel Germany had went to the Wehrmacht and the Luftwaffe and the Kriegsmarine. The only private cars that still got gasoline belonged to doctors.
Well, walking a couple of kilometers was supposed to be good for you. Saul didn't seem to fret about it. But Sarah was tired by the time she got home. Put together more exercise than she was used to and tight wartime rations-all the tighter because she was a Jew-and she felt as if she were walking uphill both ways.
There wasn't much hot water, either. Saul complained loudest about that-after ninety minutes of running up and down the pitch, he needed hot water most. Or he thought he did, anyhow. Staring at his grass-and mud-stained soccer togs, Mother only sighed. Those wouldn't come clean in cold water, either.
Staring glumly at black bread and cabbage and potatoes on her supper plate, Sarah asked, "What are we going to do?"
"If we get through this alive, we're ahead of the game," her father said, eyeing his supper with similar distaste. Sarah started to cry. She'd wanted reassurance, but all she'd got was something she had no trouble seeing herself. A RUNNER BROUGHT SERGEANT HIDEKI FUJITA'S squad the news: "Radio Berlin says Russia bombed East Prussia last night," the man reported. He stumbled a little over Russia and Prussia, but Fujita followed him. The sergeant had studied a map. East Prussia was the part of Germany the Reds could reach most easily.
Fujita glanced west, toward the Halha River and the high ground on the far side. He would have been happy had only Mongol troops prowled there. But, without a doubt, Russians were peering at the Japanese positions through field glasses and rangefinders. Were they listening to some incomprehensible Soviet broadcast telling them that, 10,000 kilometers off to the west, their vast country had just given another punch in the European war?
If they were, what did they propose to do about it? Would they send more men out to this distant frontier to strengthen their Mongolian puppets? Or would they think the fight against Germany-which was, after all, much closer to their heartland-counted for more than this distant skirmish?
"Any intercepts?" Fujita asked the runner. The Russians were tough bastards-at least for Westerners-but they had horrible radio security. Half the time, they'd send in plain language what they should have encoded.
But this time the lance corporal shook his head. "Not that I heard about, anyhow," he answered.
"All right," Fujita said. "Any gossip about what we'll do on account of this news?"
"Not that I heard about, Sergeant-san," the runner repeated.
"Too bad." Fujita made himself shrug. "One way or another, we'll find out sooner or later."
Whatever Japan did, the sergeant suspected it wouldn't happen at once. Fall and winter weren't the best time for campaigning up here. As if to prove as much, the wind swung around to blow out of the west the next morning, and carried choking clouds of yellow-brown dust from the Mongolian heartland with it.
It blew hard for three days. Dust from Mongolia blew all the way down to Peking and beyond. So close to the source, the storm was appalling. When the sky finally cleared, when the sun no longer seemed to shine through billowing smoke, the whole landscape had changed. Dunes had shifted. Some had grown, others disappeared. Dust buried the scraggly patches of steppe grass.
Captain Hasegawa, the company commander, shook his head after coming by to survey the outpost. "Can you imagine living your whole life in country like this? Turn your back on it, and half of it blows away."
The mere thought was enough to make Sergeant Fujita shudder. "Sir, as far as I'm concerned, the Mongols are welcome to it." Then he corrected himself before Hasegawa could: "Well, they're welcome to all of it that doesn't belong to Manchukuo, anyhow."
"Hai. To that much and not a centimeter more," Captain Hasegawa said. Fujita let out a small sigh of relief-he wasn't in trouble, anyhow. Hasegawa looked out over the altered countryside. "At least the Russians will have as much trouble seeing what we're up to as we do with them."
"Yes, sir." Fujita didn't care to argue, even if he wasn't one hundred percent convinced. Oh, the captain was right-the Russians wouldn't be able to operate as usual during dust storms, either. But what about the Mongols themselves? The Japanese in this miserable place were probably lucky the natives hadn't sneaked through the dust and slit all their throats.
"You heard the Russians are really going after the Germans?" Captain Hasegawa asked.
"Oh, yes, sir," Fujita said. "The runner got here the day before the storm started."
"All right," the company commander said. "Well, you can bet we'll take advantage of that. We'd have to be idiots not to."
And so? Officers are idiots all the time. Fujita didn't say that. Sergeants might take it for granted, but somebody with more gold and less red on his collar tabs wouldn't. Fujita rubbed at his eyes, which still felt gritty. His teeth crunched every time he closed his mouth. He found something safe: "Whatever they want us to do, we'll do it. You know you can count on that, sir."
Of course we'll do it. If we disobey the orders, they'll kill us. And our families back in the Home Islands will be disgraced. Sergeant Fujita knew exactly how things worked. For common soldiers and noncommissioned officers, the army was a cruel, harsh, brutal place. Officers didn't have it so bad-but they necessarily looked the other way while noncoms kept privates in line.
Many Japanese soldiers began coming up toward the front a few days later. Sergeant Fujita would rather have seen them move up during the dust storm, too. Pointing in the direction of the high ground on the other side of the Halha, he complained, "The Russians can watch everything we do."