The bartender was Burmese. He’d learned enough of Japanese customs to bow to Fujita as the sergeant approached. Fujita nodded back, superior to inferior. “Biru,” he said gruffly.
“Hai.” The man behind the bar bowed again. He set a bottle of beer and a pint mug-another survival of the vanished English-in front of Fujita. Then he pointed to a price list the noncom hadn’t noticed. It was written in Japanese, and was bound to be as new as the photo of Hirohito.
Fujita pulled occupation money out of his pocket. He paid hardly any attention to how much he slapped down. Anna and rupees were fine for the Burmese. They meant nothing to him. Japan still did business in sen and yen.
As the bartender made the paper disappear, Fujita poured the pint full. He drank. It wasn’t great beer, or even good beer. He hadn’t expected anything different. Where would you get good beer in a third-rate colonial town in the middle of a war? This would keep him drunk and eventually make him drunker. He wasn’t worried about much else.
He got to the bottom of the pint in three long pulls. “Fill me up again,” he told the bartender.
“Nan desu-ka?” the Burmese said, sudden apprehension in his voice. “Wakarimasen, gomen nasai.” What? I don’t understand, excuse me.
“Another. Give me another beer.” Fujita spoke slowly and clearly. You had to make some allowance for stupid foreigners.
“Ah! Hai!” The barkeep bowed in relief. He got that, all right. Another beer appeared as if by magic. Fujita paid for it. He suspected he could have got away with just taking it after he’d scared the native. But it wasn’t worth fussing about. If he’d been paying with real money instead of this meaningless stuff, it might have been. In occupation cash, though, even a miserably paid Japanese sergeant could play the rich man.
He sat down at an empty table. A couple of other sergeants were boozing at the one next to it. They owlishly eyed his collar tabs to see whether he was safe to associate with. They must have decided he was, because one of them nodded and said, “Come join us if you want to.”
“Arigato.” Fujita got up and walked over. He gave his name. One of the other noncoms was called Suzuki; the second was named Ono. Fujita lifted his mug of beer. “Kampai!”
“Kampai!” They both echoed the toast and drank. Sergeant Suzuki was squat and looked strong. Sergeant Ono was thinner and quieter; Fujita guessed he was clever, at least when he wasn’t drinking. Right now, Ono and Suzuki had quite a start on him. He decided he needed to catch up.
After a while, Ono remarked, “Haven’t seen you around here before, I don’t think.”
“Probably not,” Fujita said. “My unit isn’t based in Myitkyina. I just managed to snag some leave.”
“Ah?” Sergeant Suzuki said. “Which unit is that? Where are you stationed?”
Fujita sat there and didn’t answer. Unit 113 not only didn’t advertise what it did, it didn’t advertise its existence. He was already starting to feel his beer, but he knew better than to run his big mouth.
Suzuki scowled. “I asked you a question,” he said, and started to get to his feet. And I’ll knock the crap out of you if you don’t tell me, that meant.
He was welcome to try. Fujita started to stand, too. He wasn’t scrawny himself, and he figured he knew how to take care of himself. The pub might get knocked around, but that wasn’t his worry.
But Sergeant Ono put a hand on his drinking buddy’s arm. “Take it easy, Suzuki-san,” he advised. “There are some units out there where the guys can’t talk about what they do.”
Suzuki grunted. Some people brawled for the fun of it. Fujita mostly didn’t, but he wouldn’t back down, either. Dying was better than losing face that way. Then the burly sergeant grunted again, on a different note this time. “Well, why didn’t he say so?” he growled. He looked right at Fujita. “Why didn’t you say so?”
“Because when you can’t talk about something, you can’t say you can’t talk about it, because that makes people get snoopy about why you can’t,” Fujita answered reasonably.
He thought he was being reasonable, anyhow. Sergeant Suzuki scowled again. Fujita wouldn’t have wanted to serve under him. Sure as sure, he’d be the kind who knocked privates around. “You calling me snoopy?” he rumbled ominously.
“You were snoopy.” Fujita wasn’t about to back down.
And Sergeant Ono nodded. “Hai. You were. Come on. We’re here to relax, not to fight among ourselves.”
“I’ll take you both on.” But Suzuki sat down again and waved to the man behind the bar for another drink. Fujita also waved for a fresh beer. Like Ono, he wasn’t eager to fight, even if he was ready. Getting smashed hurt less-till the next day, anyhow.
Munster’s jewish cemetery was a sad place, and not just because the dead were lain to rest there. Brownshirt thugs had tipped over a lot of headstones and taken sledgehammers to others. Long, dead grass crunched under the soles of Sarah Bruck’s shoes. The trees’ bare branches reminded her of bones.
They’d been alive. Then, like that-she hoped it was like that-they were dead. And now, two days later, graves waited for them. Her husband and his father and mother lay shrouded in cloth inside coffins even a pauper’s family would have been ashamed of before the war started. These days, the Reich felt Jews were lucky to get coffins at all. Of course, the Reich would have been happier if they all went into coffins, or at least into the ground.
Sarah huddled with her own parents near the caskets. A few of the Brucks’ relatives stood with them. Everyone wore the same dazed, shocked expression. Death was never easy. Unexpected death from the air-death at the hands of Hitler’s enemies-where was God, to let such things happen?
What did Elijah say about Baal? Cry aloud: for he is a god; either he is talking, or he is retiring, or he is in a journey, or peradventure he sleepeth, and must be awaked. But Sarah wasn’t thinking about long-forgotten Baal. She aimed her cries at Elijah’s God. And He seemed as silent as the old Canaanitish idol.
A rabbi with a yellow star intoned prayers. Would God be more or less inclined to hear them because he wore the Nazis’ mark? Or was it all just a sham, much sound and fury signifying nothing? Shakespeare knew what he was talking about. Sarah wouldn’t say the same about Elijah.
Into the holes in the ground went the coffins. Sarah and David Bruck’s brother tossed earth onto them. The sound of the clods hitting the coffins’ thin wooden lids seemed dreadfully final.
As the gravediggers got to work to finish covering over the bodies, the rabbi led the mourners in the Kaddish. Sarah had learned little Hebrew and less Aramaic, but she knew the prayer by rote: she’d been saying it since her last grandparent died not long before the Nazis took over. She often thought the old people were lucky because they hadn’t lived to see what Hitler did to the Jews.
After the last omayn, people drifted away from the graveyard. The Brucks’ kin went their way, Sarah and her parents theirs, and the rabbi, his head down, trudged off by himself. Sarah didn’t even want to think about everything he must have put up with since the Fuhrer came to power.
“I’m sorry, dear,” Samuel Goldman said, not for the first time. “Isidor was a good fellow, and too young to be gone.” He set a callused hand on her shoulder. “I know my being sorry doesn’t make you feel any better, but I am anyhow. Your mother is, too.”
“I am,” Hanna Goldman agreed softly.
Father was right, as usual-it didn’t make Sarah feel any better. With a sob that was at least half a hiccup, she shrugged his hand away. His mouth twisted, but he let his arm drop. He’d always believed reason and good sense would prevail against anything. The Nazis provided a horrible counterexample to that. Loss of a loved one gave another.