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."
"Er-yes, sir." Pete's ears heated. He'd wished he might have been Vera's first, but he hadn't been able to imagine he really was. He mumbled, "She never tried to pretend anything different."
"One for her, then," the captain said. "You've got it bad, but you could have it worse."
"All I want to do is make it legal. She does, too."
"I'm sure she does." Longstreet's voice was dry as dust. "The advantages for her are obvious. I'm sure the advantages for you are obvious, too, but they aren't the kind that's got anything to do with what's legal and what isn't."
Pete's ears caught fire again. "Well, sir, what the… dickens am I gonna do?"
"It's not a simple question. First, there's the issue of whether you ought to marry the, mm, the young lady." Captain Longstreet raised a hand. "I know you think so now, but whether you will a year from now may be a different story. Like I said, you aren't the first Marine I've seen in this boat."
"Yes, sir," Pete muttered. As far as he was concerned, whatever Longstreet knew about love he'd got out of books. You could read about bar brawls, too, but reading about them wouldn't tell you what getting into one was like.
"And I hate to have to remind you of it, but you are a Marine on active duty," Longstreet added. "You can't just go marrying somebody, the way you could if you were a couple of civilians back in the States."
"I understand that, sir. That's how come I came to see you."
"Okay. Now we get down to the really hard part. It's not easy for a Marine on active duty to get married. He's supposed to be a Marine first, not a husband first. The country does expect that of him." Longstreet sighed. "And if you reckon it's hard for a Marine to get hitched in a regular way, it's at least five times as hard for him to tie the knot with a stateless person. At least." He spoke with a certain somber satisfaction.
"Tell me what I've got to do. Whatever it is, I'll do it," Pete declared.
To his surprise, the captain smiled. It was a wintry smile, but it was a smile even so. "You sound like a Marine, all right," Longstreet said.
"Sir, I am a Marine, sir!" Pete sprang to his feet and came to rigor mortis-like attention.
"At ease, son," Longstreet told him. "At ease. Sit down. Relax. Take an even strain. This may happen. I won't tell you it's impossible. But it won't be easy, and it won't be quick. If you think it will, you'll burn out your bearings and you won't get anything for it but heartache."
"Tell me what to do," Pete repeated.
"You've done the first thing you needed to do: you've brought it to my attention. Now I'm going to have to talk to the judge advocate. He'll tell me where the mines are, and how you can go about sweeping them." Longstreet must have had a lot of sea duty, to think of mines in the water instead of mines buried under the ground. Well, he wasn't old enough to have gone Over There in 1918.
"When will you talk with him, sir? When will he figure out what needs doing?" Pete was all eagerness.
It was his life, of course. It was only Ralph Longstreet's job, and a small, annoying part of his job at that. "I see Herb every day, of course," he answered. "I'll fill him in on what's troubling you, and after that it's in his hands. He may have to talk with some other people, too."
Pete had thought-had hoped-this might be a matter of days. Now he saw all too plainly that it would be weeks or months if not the threatened year. His shoulders lost the iron brace they'd kept even while he sat in the hard wooden chair in front of Longstreet's desk. "Well, thanks for starting things, anyway, sir."
"You did that," the officer said. "And if you're still as ready to go through with it by the time we're all done as you are now, I'd say your chances with this girl will be a lot better than they are today." He picked up the fountain pen. "Anything else on your mind as long as you're here?"
"Uh, no, sir."
"Okay. Dismissed." Longstreet went back to work. Pete stood up, saluted, and left the captain's office. He wondered if he'd done himself and Vera more harm than good. WILLI DERNEN DIDN'T KNOW where the hell he was. Somewhere in France-somewhere between where he had been and the border with the Low Countries. He couldn't smell Paris, couldn't taste victory, any more. All he smelled was trouble.
He shivered under his summer-weight tunic. It was cold as a witch's tit. If the winter was as bad as it gave signs of being, it'd freeze his balls off. His breath smoked. That was bad. An alert enemy soldier could spot the fog puffs rising into the chilly air and lie in wait to pot the poor bastard who was making them. But he didn't know what he could do about it. Stop breathing? No, thanks!