While Sarah got the dishes as clean as she could with cold water, her mother cut out the yellow stars and started sewing them onto clothes. After Sarah got done washing and drying, she sat down to help. The radio blared out insipid music, and then stories about how German bombers were pulverizing Paris and the Luftwaffe was singlehandedly driving the Communist hordes out of Poland.
Pausing for a moment, Sarah's mother said, "If things were going as well as the newsmen say, we wouldn't be sitting here doing this."
"You think Father's right, then?" Sarah asked.
"Your father is right most of the time," Hanna Goldman answered. "The trouble is, he thinks that ought to do him some good."
Samuel Goldman had already headed for bed. Sarah shut up and went back to sewing. Her mother didn't usually sound so cynical; that was more her father's style. But people who'd been married a long time did have a way of growing together. And if sewing yellow Jewish stars onto clothes wasn't enough to turn a saint cynical, what would be? How could you sink lower than this?
Sarah found out how the next afternoon, when she went out shopping. It was a mild, even a balmy, spring day. She wore a white linen blouse, probably the best one she owned. Or it had been the best one, anyhow, till the yellow star with the big black letters went onto her left breast.
People stared at her as she walked by. Of course they did. She would have stared herself if someone else had put on anything that ugly. It wasn't my idea! she wanted to shout. You're the ones who voted for the Nazis. You did this. Not me! But that wouldn't have done her any good. Chances were it would have got her locked up. At least she had the sense to realize as much.
She saw a few other Jews out and about. They had to be, to get what they could in the scant time German regulations grudged them. Most looked as embarrassed as she felt. A few wore the star with dignity. And one or two might not have had it on, not by the way they acted. Sarah envied them their coolness, knowing she couldn't come within kilometers of matching it.
Nobody pointed at her and jeered. She didn't see Germans pointing and jeering at other Jews, either. She didn't hear anybody yelling Lousy kike! or something filthier yet. Had even the Aryans had all the anti-Semitic propaganda they could stomach? She wouldn't have imagined such a thing possible.
She wouldn't have imagined it, but maybe it was. A fiftyish man with a double chin-he looked like a mason, or perhaps a plumber-walked down the street toward her. As they passed, he gravely tipped his hat and went on.
She almost tripped over her own feet in astonishment. Had someone from the SS seen him do that, he might have wound up in a concentration camp. At the least, he would have got a stern talking-to. It hadn't stopped him. What was the world coming to? Sarah walked a little straighter after that.
Another man-this one an obvious veteran of the last war-tipped his hat to her before she got to the grocer's. She bought what vegetables she could and waited for the clerk to serve her. As long as any Aryans were in the shop, he was supposed to take care of them, even if they'd come in after she did.
But one of the women who had come in after her waved her forward, saying, "Go on, dear. You were next."
"Are you sure?" Sarah feared a trap. When ordinary politeness could scare you… you were a Jew in the Third Reich. But the Hausfrau took two steps back and waved her to the counter. The clerk took her money and her ration coupons. She got out of the grocery as fast as she could.
On the way home, a middle-aged man-another obvious veteran, with a bad limp and a scarred face-nodded to her and said, "Congratulations on your medal, sweetheart."
"Medal?" Sarah wished she hadn't echoed it. That only gave him the chance to let fly with whatever nastiness bubbled inside of him.
He pointed to the yellow star. "Your Pour le semite there." He too tipped his hat, then stumped down the sidewalk.
Sarah needed a few seconds to get it. When she did, her jaw dropped. The highest German decoration in the last war-the equivalent of the modern Knight's Cross with oak leaves, swords, and diamonds-had the simple French name of Pour le merite. For merit, it meant. And this stranger had punned off it, inventing a medal called For the Semite. That took brains. It also took nerve. Suppose someone other than a Jew had heard. What would have happened to him then? Nothing good.
To her amazement, at supper her father reported the same joke from his labor gang. "It must be all over town, then!" she exclaimed.
"All over the country, I'd guess," Father said. "Things like that, they spread faster than the grippe."
"Why bother with the stupid stars, then, if they only make people laugh at them and treat us better instead of worse?" Sarah said.
"You're asking the wrong person. You need to talk to the Fuhrer, not me," Samuel Goldman said. "But one thing did occur to me."
"What's that?" Sarah wondered if she really wanted to know.
"If the Party ever decides it wants to round up as many Jews as it can, we're a lot easier to spot wearing our yellow stars."
"Oh." In a way, that made sense. In another… "Why would they want to do such a meshuggineh thing?" Sarah asked.
"Because they're Germans, and they're convinced we're not," her father said sadly. "If there's more bad news from the front, who knows what they'll do?"
No one knew. Even the Nazis didn't, not yet. That was the scariest part about it. PETE McGILL WAS IN LOVE. This was his first time-the crushes he'd had on girls before he dropped out of high school to join the Corps didn't count. So what if she was a White Russian taxi dancer who'd turned tricks on the side before Pete got to know her? If anything, that only made him burn harder.
His Marine buddies in Shanghai thought he'd gone round the bend. "Hey, man, don't you think she still sleeps around for cash while you ain't looking?" Herman Szulc asked in what were no doubt intended for reasonable tones.
Whatever they were intended for, they didn't fly with Pete. "Watch your mouth, Shultzie, or I'll rearrange your face for you," he growled.
"You and who else?" Szulc didn't back down from anybody. He was a leatherneck, too.
More Marines had to grab them and hold them back, or they would have gone for each other. "This sucks," Pooch Puccinelli said. "I like drinking with both of you assholes, but now we can't go out together. Soon as we all try it, you'll have a couple and do your best to knock each other's brains out."
"He ain't got no brains," Szulc said.
"Fuck you, you dumb Polack," Pete said. "Fuck your-" Somebody clapped a hand over his mouth before he could come out with anything irrevocable.
He went to see Vera whenever he got off duty. When he couldn't see her, he thought about her. The touch of her, the scent of her, the taste of her… He had it bad, so bad he had no idea how bad it was. None so blind as he who will not see.
Vera, on the other hand, could see very clearly. She could see she had a meal ticket here. If things went the way she wanted them to, she wouldn't have to sell her time and her body any more. She didn't do it because she enjoyed it; she did it for the same reason a man built chairs: to make a living. She'd always hoped someone would fall for her so she wouldn't have to any more. She hadn't really expected it-it seemed like something out of a soppy movie. But she had hoped.
And now it had happened! A rich American, no less! (To Vera, all Americans were rich, even a Marine Corps corporal.) The rest of the girls at the Golden Lotus were madly jealous of her. In a different way, so was Sam Grynszpan, the Jew who owned the place. Like her, though for different reasons, he was what was bloodlessly called a stateless person. No rich American was likely to fall in love with him: he was short and squat and had a wide mouth and bulging eyes that made him look like a toad with five o'clock shadow.
Jealous or not, he gave good advice: "Don't let this one get away." His office was tiny and cramped and stank of stale cigar butts.