“As long as he doesn’t blab to the SS,” Willi said. He scowled at Anton. “You and your big yap.”
“Me? What did I do? I was only looking at the military possibilities,” the other soldier said.
“That’s what you thought,” Willi said. “Don’t ask questions, man. Keep your trap shut and do your job. After the war’s over, we’ll straighten out whatever’s gone wrong.”
Anton eyed him. “Aren’t you the guy who…?” He paused, not sure how to go on.
“The guy who what?” Willi growled, though he didn’t have to be a bright boy himself to know.
“The guy whose buddy ran off,” Anton said.
“I don’t know what happened to Wolfgang. I wish I did.” Willi wasn’t lying. He’d warned Wolfgang Storch to run off because the SS was about to grab him. And run Wolfgang had-toward the French lines. Willi hoped he was sitting in a POW camp somewhere in southwestern France. He would be… if the poilus hadn’t plugged him instead. No way to know, not for Willi. Guys who tried to give up did get plugged sometimes, no matter what the Geneva Convention ordained.
“You clowns should put a cork in it, too,” another Landser said. “Or take it outside, anyway.”
Willi wanted to listen to the music, so he shut up. Anton left in a huff. Some people didn’t even know when they were getting themselves in trouble.
When the song ended, somebody sighed and said, “That’s not bad, but it isn’t jazz, either.”
All the other German soldiers in the battered parlor edged away from the music critic. In his own way, the fellow-Willi thought his name was Rolf-was as naive as poor dumb Anton. The way things worked in the Reich these days, your taste in records was a political choice. National Socialist doctrine branded jazz as degenerate music, nigger music. If you liked it, maybe you were a degenerate or a nigger-lover yourself. The Gestapo would be happy to find out.
As a matter of fact, Willi was fond of jazz, too. But he liked his own skin even better. He wouldn’t tell anybody he didn’t trust about anything that might be dangerous. If you wanted to get along, you had to think about such things. Or, better, you had to tend to them so automatically, you didn’t need to think about them.
He sat there, listening and smoking, for another hour. After a repeat of the news, an opera tenor started blasting out an aria. He got up and left then. The Fuhrer loved Wagner. It put Willi in mind of cats being choked to an overwrought musical accompaniment.
For the time being, the Germans had the village pretty much to themselves. Only a few French families had stayed behind when the Wehrmacht rolled through. The rest packed up whatever they could and ran. Now they were stuck somewhere on the wrong side of the line… if they hadn’t got bombed or machine-gunned from the air while they were on the road.
Off to the west, French 75s barked: a very distinctive sound. The shells didn’t come down on the village, for which Willi thanked the God in Whom he had more and more trouble believing. It wasn’t as if plenty hadn’t already landed here. One of these days before too long, the Germans would fall back some more. Poilus in khaki would take the place of Landsers in field-gray. And German 105s would kill a few French soldiers, mutilate a few more, and knock down some houses that had stayed lucky so far.
And then, maybe, the people who’d run for their lives would come back to see what was left of the things around which they’d built their civilian existence. And they would cry and wail and swear at the Germans and shake their fists… and somebody would yank on a booby-trap left behind for the poilus and blow off her hand. Then the crying and wailing and cursing would start all over again, louder than ever.
“War is shit,” Willi muttered, sincerely if with no great originality. He started to cross the main street, the only one in town you couldn’t piss across. Then he stopped. The main drag ran east and west, straight enough to let somebody out there look a long way down it. If the froggies had posted a sniper, he’d be looking this way through a rifle-mounted telescope. Willi had done a little sniping, enough to start to get the feel for it.
He didn’t know the French had put a guy with a rifle out there. No far-off rifleman had punched Anton’s ticket for him. No sniper had got rid of Awful Arno, either. Too bad, Willi thought.
Rolf came out, too, a minute or so behind Willi. No surprise: if you liked jazz, dark deeds on the Rhine wouldn’t be your cup of tea. Rolf crossed the street without hesitation. “You might want to watch-” Willi began.
He couldn’t even finish the sentence before Rolf fell over, shot through the head. The distant report arrived after the bullet. Rolf didn’t even twitch. He just lay there, bleeding. He must have died before he hit the ground. Willi shuddered. It could have been him. Oh so easily, it could have been him.
Going with Pete McGill. had done wonders for Vera’s English. The White Russian girl hadn’t known much before they hooked up with each other. Now she was pretty fluent. Half the time, she even remembered not to roll her r’s. Pete was proud of her-it showed how smart she was. She was a good deal smarter than he was, but that hadn’t occurred to the Marine yet.
If Vera was really smart, her being smarter than Pete never would occur to him. Worrying about whether the girl you love loves you back or is calculating the best way to use you to get what she wants is not likely to make an affair last.
At the moment, Pete wasn’t worrying about anything. He’d just got what he wanted, and his heart was still beating like a drum. Shanghai had any number of places where a man and a woman could walk in together, sign the guest book as Mr. and Mrs., and be asked no questions. This was one of them. The room was small, but the mattress was fairly new and the sheets were clean. He wouldn’t have fussed if they weren’t, but Vera might have. Women are picky, he thought.
He rolled half away from her and turned on the lamp on the nightstand. With a little startled squeak, she made as if to cover herself. “Don’t do that, babe,” he said. “I love to look at you.”
When he did, his manhood stirred again. Before long, they’d start another round. In the meantime, a different urge seized him. He rummaged in the trousers of his civilian slacks (till midnight tomorrow, he didn’t have to look like a leatherneck) till he found his Luckies.
As he tapped one against the nightstand, he held out the pack to Vera. “Want one?”
“Sure,” she said. The word came out just like that-perfect. She might have been born in the States. She took a cigarette, tapped it down on her nightstand, and waited for a light. Pete had to dig out his matches. If he’d been thinking, he would have grabbed them with the butts. If he’d been thinking, he would have been someone else altogether.
He lit a match. His cheeks hollowed as he applied the flame to the tip of the cigarette. Smoke filled his mouth, then his lungs. He dropped the match in the glass ashtray next to the lamp.
Vera leaned close for a light from the hot red coal at the end of his Lucky. As she too sucked in smoke, he cupped her breast with his free hand. She made a little noise that might have been a purr or a laugh. Once she had the cigarette going, she said, “You!”
She didn’t say Men! That would have reminded Pete there’d been others-and how many others?-before him. She was more than smart enough to steer clear of that kind of tactical error.
She did say, “I like your American tobacco.”
The way she said it made Pete feel he’d grown the weed, harvested it, and cured it himself. “Yeah, it’s good, isn’t it?” he said. He’d smoked Chinese tobacco every now and then. It was like inhaling a blowtorch flame. Any smokes were better than none, but still…
After she’d leaned across him to grind out her cigarette (the room had only the one ashtray, and was lucky to have that), and after he’d taken more friendly liberties with her person while she did it, she asked, “How much longer will the Marines stay in Shanghai?”
“I’ve got no idea,” he said, and he might have been proud of having no idea. As a matter of fact, he was. Like any well-trained hunting dog, he went where he was told and did what he was told. He didn’t need to worry about that kind of thing for himself, and so he didn’t. The question did provoke a little more response in him, though: “How come?”