Weinberg snorted. "Not hardly. But it could be worse. Some people there do hate Jews, yes. But more of them hate Negroes worse. They treat Negroes the way Europeans treat Jews."
"But you would sooner change how Spain does things than how your own country does them, eh?" Joaquin said shrewdly.
The American-the Jew-started to say something. Then he closed his mouth with a snap. When he opened it again, he let out a sheepish chuckle. "Well, you may be right," he said, which surprised Joaquin. He hadn't thought Weinberg would admit any such thing. Weinberg went on, "Other Americans are trying to make things better for Negroes. I thought fighting against the Nazis was more important."
"How many of the Americans working for your Negroes are Jews?" Delgadillo asked.
"Quite a few. Why?"
Now Joaquin found himself surprised again, in a different way. "I would have guessed your Jews would let your Negroes go hang. As long as other Americans have Negroes to hate, most of them leave Jews alone. Isn't that what you said?"
"Yes, I said that, but it doesn't mean what you said it means." On the far side, the free side, of the barbed wire, Weinberg paused to figure out whether that meant what he wanted it to mean. He must have decided it did, because he went on, "Injustice to anyone anywhere is injustice to everyone everywhere. You have to fight it wherever you find it."
"You must enjoy tilting at windmills." Joaquin had never read Don Quixote. He'd read very little. But Cervantes' phrases filled the mouths of Spaniards whether they could read or not.
"Fighting against Fascism isn't tilting at windmills," Weinberg said. "Fascism is the real enemy."
"On the other side of the line, they think the same thing about Communism," Joaquin said.
"On the other side of the line, they're wrong." Weinberg sounded as sure of himself as a priest quoting from the Bible. Delgadillo didn't think that would be a good thing to tell him. The Jew went on, "Communism wants to treat every man and every woman the same way."
"Badly-they would say over there." Joaquin still more than half believed it himself. He couldn't insist on it too strongly, though, not when he depended on good will from these people if he wanted to keep breathing.
"How well did they treat you over there?" the Jew asked. "You were a peasant, and then you were a private. Do you want your son to live the way you used to live?"
Through most of Spain's history, the only possible answer to that would have been Well, how else is he going to live? Things changed only slowly here, when they changed at all. But Joaquin had seen that there were other possibilities. He didn't like all of them-he liked few of them, in fact-but he knew they were there. Stalling for time, he said, "I have no son."
Weinberg snorted impatiently. "You know what I mean."
And Joaquin did. "Well, Senor, I mean no disrespect when I say this-please believe me, for it is true-but I am sure I do not want my son to grow up a Red."
"Why?" Weinberg challenged. "What's so bad about equality?"
"Making everyone equal by pushing the bottom up would not be so bad," Joaquin said slowly. "Making everyone equal by pulling the top down… That is not so good, or I don't think so. And it seems to me that is what the Republic aims to do."
He waited for the top to fall down on him. He'd probably said more than he should have. But the American had asked, dammit. On the other side of the wire, Weinberg paused thoughtfully. "You really are smarter than you look," he said at last. "The only thing I'll say to that is, sometimes you have to tear down before you can build up."
"Well, Senor, it could be," Delgadillo replied, by which he meant he didn't believe it for a minute.
Weinberg wagged a finger at him. "What are we going to do about you?"
"It is your choice. You caught me."
"Maybe I should have shot you when I did."
"Maybe you should have. I thought you would."
"Better to reeducate you," the Jew said. Joaquin wondered if he was right. PETE MCGILL ENJOYED TALKING with officers no better than any other Marine corporal in his right mind. Officers, to him, were at best necessary evils, at worst unnecessary ones. Sometimes, though, you had no choice. Like St. Peter, officers had the power to bind and to loose.
Captain Ralph Longstreet had never said he was related to the Confederate general of the same last name. Then again, he'd never said he wasn't. He did have a drawl thick enough to slice. A hell of a lot of Marines-and even more Marine officers, it seemed-were Southern men. Looking up from his paperwork, he said, "Well, McGill, what can I do for you today?"
"Sir, you may have heard I've, uh, got friendly with a lady here in Shanghai," McGill answered. His own New York accent was about as far from what Longstreet spoke as it could be while remaining American English.
The captain capped his fountain pen and set it on his battleship of a desk. "A dancer named Vera Kuznetsova," he said. "Vera Smith, that would be in English."
"Uh, yes, sir." Pete hadn't known what Vera's last name meant. He hadn't cared, either, and still didn't. But he knew exactly what Longstreet's tone meant. "It's not like she's Chinese or anything, sir. She's as white as you or me."
"White Russian, to be exact," Longstreet said. "What nationality does she have on her passport?"
He had to know the answer before he asked the question. "Sir, her folks got out of Siberia a length ahead of the Reds. She got out of Harbin a length ahead of the Japs. They had papers from the Tsar. I guess she did, too, when she was a baby. Now-" He shook his head.
"Officially, she's stateless, then." Captain Longstreet made it sound like a death sentence. For a lot of people, it had been. The wrong papers or no papers at all could be a disease deadlier than cholera.
"Well, sir-" Pete took a deep breath. "She wouldn't be, sir, not any more, not after she married me."
Longstreet had been about to light up an Old Gold. He paused just before striking the match. "Why don't you shut the door, son, and sit your ass down?" he said. Gulping, Pete obeyed. He didn't think Longstreet sounded friendly all of a sudden-the tone was more like the warden asking a condemned prisoner what he wanted for his last meal. Pete's anxiety only grew when Longstreet offered him a cigarette: it made him think of firing squads. Not knowing what else to do, he took the coffin nail anyhow. Longstreet waited till he'd got halfway down the smoke before continuing, "You've got it bad, don't you?"
"Sir, I'm in love," Pete said. "She loves me, too. Honest to God, she does."
"Well, it's possible. I reckon stranger things have happened," Longstreet said. He was a captain; Pete couldn't bust him in the face. Marrying Vera while he was stuck in the brig would be hard, to say the least. Longstreet went on, "But do you figure she hasn't got you tabbed for a meal ticket, too?"
All of Pete's buddies said the same goddamn thing. He was sick of hearing it. "Well, what if she does, sir? She could've picked other guys to play games with, but she didn't. She does love me, and I-" He stopped, his tongue clogging up his mouth. Talking about what he felt for Vera-even trying to talk about it-was far and away the hardest thing he'd ever done. Charging a Jap machine-gun nest would have been nothing next to it. The Japs could only kill him.
Had Longstreet yelled at him (or, worse, laughed at him), he would have sat there and taken it, but something inside him would have died. He expected one or the other. Looking for sympathy from an officer was a losing game. But the captain said, "Well, your sentiments do you credit. And you aren't going into this with your eyes shut tight, anyhow. That's something."
"How do you mean, sir?" Pete asked.
"If you reckon you're the first Marine to fall head over heels for a Russian dancing girl or a Chinese singsong girl, I have to tell you you're mistaken," Longstreet said. "A lot of 'em think their sweethearts were virgins till they charmed the girls off their feet and into bed. You seem to know better than that."