Which meant… what? Weinberg went on and on about how stupid it was to take anything on faith. Unless you had a reason to think this, that, or the other thing, why do it? He would ask that over and over, and nobody had a good answer for him.
Joaquin had had a question that gave the Jew pause, though: "Why do you think Stalin is so wonderful? Have you met him? Have you gone to Russia?"
"No," Weinberg said slowly. "But I have seen the bad things Hitler and Mussolini are doing. There's a saying in English. It goes, The enemy of my enemy is my friend. Hitler and Mussolini are the enemies of the workers and peasants. Stalin has to be their friend, then."
"We think Stalin is Spain's enemy," Joaquin said. "Where is Spain's gold? In Moscow, that's where. Stalin stole it."
"No, he didn't." Weinberg shook his head. "The Republic bought weapons from Russia. Nobody else would sell to us, but Stalin did."
Maybe that was true, maybe it wasn't. Joaquin realized he shouldn't argue. He believed some of what the guy who'd captured him came out with. If he tried to convince Weinberg and the other Reds on the far side of the barbed wire that he believed all of it, maybe they'd turn him loose. Once he was on the far side of the wire himself…
Well, what then? Would they hand him a rifle and send him to a trench somewhere to fight against the men for whom he'd formerly fought? If they did that, he might be better off staying right where he was. Some people did switch sides. About half of them fought harder for the side they chose themselves than for the one where they'd started. The rest were spies or worthless for some other reason. Sorting out who was who got… interesting.
Then again, it was also possible that a distant trench was a better place than a POW camp in the middle of Madrid. Nationalist bombers still visited the capital. Joaquin had cheered them on when they flew over the lines. He'd wanted the Republicans to get what was coming to them. Now there was a chance that some of what was coming to them would land on him instead.
Before, they'd unloaded on Madrid in broad daylight. They mostly came at night these days. The more modern fighters the Republic had got from France and England made day bombing too costly to try very often any more. Even coming by day, the bombers weren't very accurate; the craters pocking the park proved as much. Flying by night did nothing to improve their aim.
Pounding guns and wailing sirens woke Joaquin from a fitful sleep. It was cold. It had been bitterly cold lately-this was going to be a winter to remember, and in no fond way. The drone of engines overhead penetrated the rest of the din.
"Fuck 'em all," somebody in the big tent said, and promptly started snoring again.
Joaquin envied him without being able to imitate him. Too much racket, and too much in the way of nerves, too. Swearing under his breath, Joaquin went outside to watch the show.
The sky was black as a sergeant's heart. The stars seemed even farther off than usual-grudging little flecks of light. The blue ones might have been cut from ice; the red ones didn't feel warm, either.
Searchlights darted and probed. Antiaircraft tracers and bursts were beautiful, but they didn't make Joaquin think of celebrations, the way they usually did. He knew too well that this was war, and all the bright lights intended nothing but death.
A searchlight speared a three-engined bomber-an Italian plane-in its glare. Antiaircraft fire from half a dozen guns converged on the machine the gunners could see. The bomber twisted and jinked, writhing like a stepped-on bug. The searchlight hung on to it. Others also found the bomber. Fire licked along its right wing. It tumbled toward the ground.
Bombs whistled down. Not all the sirens that screamed belonged to the warning system. Some came from ambulances and fire engines. Joaquin wondered if he should jump into a trench. The POWs had dug them to try to stay alive through air raids. But the show in the sky held a horrid fascination. He didn't want to miss any of it.
He could have been smarter. He could have done a better job of gauging the screams of falling bombs. One went off close enough to knock him ass over teakettle. Fragments shouted and screamed past him. Once bitten, twice shy-he stayed flat as a run-over toad.
He did, anyhow, till he saw prisoners joyously running out through a big hole blasted in the wire. Then he scrambled to his feet and ran with them. No guards shouted warnings or opened fire. Had they been blown to hell? Or were they just cowering in their own foxholes, the way any men with a gram of sense would? Joaquin didn't care. As soon as he got out into Madrid in these overalls, he'd look like anybody else. And, thanks to Chaim Weinberg, he knew how to sound like a Republican, too. They'd never catch him once he got loose. Then he could…
What? he wondered. What could he do? Something. Anything! As long as he was doing it for himself, who cared? If somebody needed him to haul sacks of shit, he'd do that. He'd like it, too. He'd never been afraid of work. Nobody who grew up on a Spanish farm could possibly be afraid of work.
Another bomb whistled down. Joaquin flattened out again. This one was going to be even closer. Maybe he should have waited before he
Chapter 26
Snow. Wind. Cold. Gloom. Sergei Yaroslavsky took them for granted in wintertime. He could think of very few Russians who didn't-the lucky handful who lived on the Crimean coast, perhaps. The bad weather was settling in earlier than usual, but even ordinary winters were long and hard.
By contrast, Anastas Mouradian gave forth with a melodramatic shiver. "Bozhemoi, this weather's beastly," he said in his accented Russian. He swigged from a bottle of vodka and passed it to Sergei. Nobody would fly today: not the Red Air Force, not the Poles, not the Luftwaffe. Nobody. By all the signs, nobody would get off the ground any time soon, either.
"It's winter, Stas," Sergei answered. "You got out of Armenia a while ago now. You know what winters are like once you come north."
"Like hell. Like Dante's hell in the Inferno," Mouradian said. "He put Satan in ice, not in fire."
"Either one would work, if I believed in God or Satan or hell." Mouradian tacked on the coda to keep the other officers sitting around there getting drunk because there was nothing more interesting to do from thinking him a believer. He wasn't, or not much of one. Believing in God and worshiping weren't illegal, but they wouldn't do your career any good.
Another bottle came by. Sergei swigged, then passed it on to Mouradian. The Armenian said, "What do you suppose the other ranks are doing now?"
Overhearing that, Colonel Borisov laughed raucously. Everybody'd put away a good deal by then. "Those motherfuckers? They're already under the table-you can bet your balls on it. When they settle in with the popskull, they don't dick around," the squadron commander said.
Maybe he'd poured down enough vodka to leave his tongue loose at both ends. Or maybe he was just using mat to tell the truth as he saw it. Either way, Yaroslavsky thought he was bound to be right. "I hope Sergeant Kuchkov doesn't get into a brawl," Sergei said. The liquor was making him fussily precise instead of careless and sloppy.
Even Mouradian smiled at the way he spoke. "The Chimp will do whatever he does," he said. "He proves Darwin was right-if we still have ape-men among us, we must have come from them a long time ago."
Kuchkov's reputation had spread through the whole squadron. "Better not let him hear you talk like that," a pilot warned. "He'd tear your head off and piss in the hole. He'd be sorry afterwards, but-"
"So would I," Mouradian broke in, and got a laugh.
"You bet you would be," the other officer said. "Wouldn't do you a kopek's worth of good, though."