Sarah had to shift mental gears. “That’s… bad, isn’t it?” she managed.
“It’s about as much worse than bad as you can get,” Father said. “Churchill was the main fellow fighting the alliance against Russia. And to die like that-!” He shook his head. “That’s how Hitler or Mussolini-or Stalin-gets rid of people. They don’t play politics like that in England. Or they didn’t… till now.” He stared down at the open pages of Dio Cassius. “Except for the Bentley, Septimius Severus might have handled it the same way.”
“Maybe it really was an accident,” Sarah said.
“Oh, yes. Maybe it was.” But Samuel Goldman laughed harshly. “And maybe Herr van der Lubbe set the Reichstag fire all by himself, too.”
That heated Sarah’s ears again, and not in such a nice way as Isidor had. No one with a pfennig of sense believed the half-witted Dutch Red had torched the German Parliament without plenty of help from the Nazis. But he was the one who’d lost his head for it. And the fire gave the Nazis whatever excuse they needed to go after the Communists inside the Reich for all they were worth.
“What do you think will happen in England now?” she asked in a small voice.
“I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear you, because what I think and what I hope are so different,” Father answered. After that, there didn’t seem to be much point to saying anything more. Besides, she still needed to wash her hands.
“Waffenstillstand!” the French officer shouted across the lines. Willi Dernen supposed that was what he was shouting, anyhow. He had a horrendous accent. But the word for truce wasn’t easy to mistake for any other.
And the poilus around here seemed to think the war was over. The Germans had been shouting at them not to shoot, and they mostly hadn’t. Till now, though, they’d kept out of sight so the Germans couldn’t shoot at them. Willi understood that. He hadn’t shown himself, either. Trust a Frenchman? Not likely!
But it looked as if France and England really were going to join the German crusade against Russia. Willi was just glad he’d stayed on this front instead of getting sent east. Army rumor said the Reds might not be very skillful, but they were goddamn mean.
“Friends!” the French officer yelled. He did a little better with Freunde! Pointing east, he added, “To hell with the Communists!”
“Dip me in shit,” Corporal Baatz said reverently. “The Fuhrer ’s gone and done it again.”
Willi would have been happy to do just what Awful Arno suggested. He wasn’t so sure about the other part of what Baatz had to say. “I wonder what kind of deal we cut to make the enemy go for it,” he remarked.
“Know what I hear?” the corporal said.
“No, but you’re gonna tell me, aren’t you?” If Willi sounded resigned, it was only because he was.
The corporal nodded, not noticing the resignation. Awful Arno failed to notice all kinds of things. Doing his best to sound important, he said, “I heard Rudolf Hess flew to England all by himself to set up the deal, like.”
“Everybody’s heard that.” Willi rolled his eyes in disgust. “It’s been on the news, for crying out loud.”
“Ja, ja.” Awful Arno nodded again. “But I also heard he put the Englishmen up to finally giving Churchill what he deserved.”
“All right. That’s new, I guess.” Willi hated to admit it, but didn’t see that he had much choice.
“And now he’ll come back a hero, and the Fuhrer will pin the fanciest medal in the world on him. The Knight’s Cross with oak leaves, swords, and diamonds.” Baatz sighed. “Can you imagine it? What could be better?”
“I’m not sure he was doing us a favor, you know,” Willi said.
“Huh? What d’you mean?” No, Awful Arno didn’t get it. Willi wasn’t much surprised. Baatz had a great head-for a cabbage.
“The Tommies and the froggies aren’t shooting at us any more, right?” Willi said, trying to see how long the corporal would need to work it out.
“You can see they aren’t,” Baatz answered. “They’re going to join with us against the goddamn Ivans instead.”
Willi made small, soundless clapping motions. “Very good. Very good.”
“You can’t talk to me that way, you pigdog.” Awful Arno turned dull red.
He was already pretty dull, all right, as far as Willi was concerned. “Well, then, take a hint,” Willi said. “They’re going to help us fight the Ivans-you just told me so yourself. That means we’ve got to go fight the fucking Ivans ourselves. Is that what you really want to do?”
“Oh,” Baatz said, his mouth a black circle of dismay. He tried to rally: “They can’t be worse than what we’ve been facing.”
“Oh, no? Since when?” Willi retorted. “You get in trouble here, maybe the Frenchies won’t plug you when you give up. What about the Russians? You want them to get their mitts on your carcass? They’d eat you up, I bet.”
Awful Arno was chunkier than most German soldiers. He was sensitive about the extra kilos he carried, too. His complexion went from dull red to fiery. “They don’t do things like that,” he said, but his voice lacked all conviction.
“They don’t fight fair. They’re Russians. They’re Bolsheviks. I don’t want ’em capturing me, by God,” Willi said.
Instead of arguing any more, Baatz changed the subject. That should have meant Willi had won. He supposed it did, but he still wasn’t happy about it, because Awful Arno said, “If we’re on the same side now, England and France’ll have to give back the German prisoners they took. If your asshole buddy Storch did run over there after all, he can tell the Gestapo all about it.” Now he sounded sure, all right, and full of gloating anticipation.
“Oh, give it a rest. I think that French bombardment blew him right off the map,” Willi said. As a matter of fact, he knew damn well Storch had gone to surrender to the French. The blackshirts would have grabbed him if he hadn’t. So would they get a second crack at him now? That seemed horribly unfair. Fair and unfair, though, had precious little to do with the price of beer.
Another poilu came up out of the French trenches. “Who wants to buy tobacco? Who wants to buy booze?” he shouted. Wherever he’d learned his German, he didn’t speak badly at all.
And he knew what the Landsers wanted, all right. Before long, field-gray and khaki mingled between the lines. Because of the favorable rate of exchange the occupation set, many Germans had more francs in their pockets than French soldiers did. Everybody went away from the deals happy.
Everybody, that is, except people like Arno Baatz. “It’s fraternizing with the enemy,” he fumed. “There are regulations against things like that.”
“There’s a truce,” Willi said. “If they’re going to fight the Russians with us, they aren’t really the enemy any more, are they?”
“Don’t play barracks lawyer with me, Dernen,” Awful Arno snapped. “I’ll have that chickenshit pip off your sleeve so fast, you won’t know which way to look for it.”
“Zu befehl!” Willi said.
“That’s more like it,” Baatz growled. Fortunately for Willi, he completely missed the irony in that At your orders!
After a few days, the cease-fire began to seem more natural. Soldiers from both sides met and tried to talk with one another. They shared smokes and drinks. As best they could in each other’s languages, they swore at the officers who’d set them shooting at one another.
Willi had never particularly hated, or even disliked, France and England. His father came home from the last war with high respect for the poilus he’d fought. Even now, France seemed more… in the way than anything else. And the Tommies were as tough as anybody.
“Be funny, us fighting on same side,” said a French soldier who could muddle along in German. “Take orders from your generals. Funny, ja.” And he stumped around as he imagined a German general would walk.
To Willi, he looked like a self-important rooster. That wasn’t Willi’s take on his own generals, but it was funny. His French was much worse, so he stuck to German: “We’ll all clean out the Russians together.”