scream at him in something resembling privacy.
“And don’t call me by that name!” she told him, still at top volume. “Don’t you dare call me by that name! You’ve got no business knowing that name! I’m the Little Hammer! Do you hear me?”
“ Si, Magdalena,” Chaim answered easily. If she was going to work like a Stakhanovite to piss him off, the least he could do was return the disfavor.
She said something so incandescent that a little old woman with a face like a Roman bust that was starting to crumble crossed herself. In the aggressively anticlerical Spanish Republic, that was shock indeed. Someone might denounce you for showing you believed.
As for Chaim, he understood most of what his very pregnant sweetheart called him. He would have murdered any man who said a quarter of that to him, and not a jury in the world would have convicted him, either. Plenty of Spaniards would have decked a woman who talked to them like that. (Some would have got a shiv in the ribs after decking them, too. Spain was a lively country.)
He’d already proved he was a soft American-and no one who tried belting La Martellita would have had joy of it afterwards. So, instead of making a fist and playing the goon, he gave her his blandest, stupidest smile. “?Que?” he said sweetly.
She started to explode. Then she saw he was waiting for that. She sent him a glare acid enough to etch glass. Instead of shrieking, she asked, “Are you playing games with me?” in a deadly quiet voice.
“You’re the one who’s been playing all the games,” Chaim answered. “Yes, you’re going to have a baby. I didn’t rape you. I did marry you. What else do you want from me?”
Unfortunately, he knew what else she wanted. She wanted him not to be so short and stumpy. She wanted him to have a handsomer face. He wouldn’t have minded a handsomer face himself, but he was stuck with the mug he’d been issued. His looks weren’t the real problem, though. Even his being Jewish wasn’t the real problem, though in a way it came closer. The real problem was, he wasn’t a good enough Communist to suit her.
Maybe that had something to do with his being Jewish. It sure as hell had something to do with his being American. He was so used to thinking for himself, he did it without thinking, so to speak. La Martellita was made for knocking unorthodoxy flat. She would have been great in the Inquisition-she had the full measure of Spanish zeal. If he’d really wanted to hurt her, he would have told her so.
“You didn’t rape me,” she agreed, and well she might-any man who tried to have his way with her without her consent would leave his cojones behind. “But I wasn’t sober when you did me, either.”
“Neither was I, the first time,” Chaim said, which was at least partly true. “But we both were the next morning.”
“There wouldn’t have been a next morning if there hadn’t been a first night.”
Chaim sighed. That was also true, dammit. He spread his hands. “All we can do now is try and make the best of it. Yelling at me all the time doesn’t help. It just gives me a headache.”
“I don’t yell at you all the time,” La Martellita said. “When you’re up at the front, I can’t.”
“No, all they can do up there is kill me,” Chaim said. She looked at him in incomprehension. It wasn’t his Spanish, either; he’d said what he meant. But she didn’t get it.
She was beautiful. She was dangerous. The combination was irresistible to Chaim, much as a tiger’s terrible beauty had to be to a beast-tamer. One split second of inattention, one tiny mistake with the chair, and you’d be lying on the ground in the middle of the center ring bleeding your life out, and all the marks in the bleachers would go Oooh! Life with La Martellita was a lot like that.
Too much like that? For what had to be the first time, Chaim wondered. Yes, she was beautiful. Yes, she was dangerous. Yes, the combination was intoxicating. But, when you got right down to it, how bright was she really?
Intoxicated, Chaim had never stopped to worry about it. He’d never stopped to think it might matter. Not thinking was most unusual for him, and telling testimony to just how head over heels he was about her. Most of the time, he thought convulsively, propulsively, continuously. If he hadn’t turned Red, he would have made a yeshiva- bukher to be remembered for generations. If he thought about La Martellita instead of remembering what touching her felt like…
“Why are you looking at me like that?” she asked.
“Like what?” Chaim feared he knew like what, but he didn’t want to acknowledge it, even-especially-to himself. For a while, you imagine that something broken will put itself back together by magic. But magic is in desperately short supply in the material world.
“Like the way you’re looking at me, that’s like what.” It was obvious to La Martellita. “Like I just died or something.”
“No, not you,” Chaim said sadly. He’d never imagined himself a prophet, but he could see the future all too clearly now. It was a future where he didn’t see the son or daughter swelling in La Martellita’s belly. It was a future where he didn’t see her, either, and probably one where she told the child nothing but bad things about its father. He’d just watched his love die, and he had no idea what he could do about it.
“What, then?” she demanded. It wasn’t obvious to her. He could see why not, too. She’d never been in love with him. If he’d thought she was, it was only because he’d made her reflect what he most wanted to see.
He could tell her. What difference would it make? Not much, which was part of the problem. But, like a wounded soldier who won’t look to see how badly he’s hit, Chaim didn’t want to bring out the fatal words. He said “Never mind” instead, hoping against hope the wound wasn’t mortal after all.
Chapter 16
Nothing in Central Europe or France had braced Vaclav Jezek for summer outside Madrid. Dust. Blazing sun. Air that sucked moisture from your body like a vampire. The only thing that hadn’t changed was the stink of death. That stayed the same everywhere. It was bound to be the same in hell, assuming this battlefield wasn’t one of Satan’s ritzier suburbs.
Vaclav wasn’t the only one to feel the heat, either. Several of his countrymen got carried off the field with sunstroke. He heard later that one of them had died.
Through it all, Benjamin Halevy went about his business as calmly as if it were an April day in Paris or Prague. He might have been made of metal. Whatever he was made of, the savage Spanish heat couldn’t melt him.
“Why aren’t you baked like the rest of us?” Vaclav snarled. The weather left him short-tempered, too.
“It’s hot,” Halevy said. “But my people came out of the desert, remember. I guess the memory of it’s still in my bones.”
He sounded serious. As Jezek had seen, though, he often sounded that way when he was anything but. “Desert, my ass,” the sniper said.
“Well, if your ass seems cooler than the rest of you, maybe it came out of the desert, too.” Halevy eyed him. “Have to say you don’t look like you’ve got any Jews in the woodpile.”
What first sprang to Vaclav’s mind was something about Halevy’s mother. But he could see for himself how Halevy would parry that. You didn’t want to get into a manure fight with a guy who ran a fertilizer factory. Halevy thought faster and nastier than he did, and that was all there was to it. Instead of being bitchy, Jezek asked, “Have you heard anything about when Marshal Sanjurjo will inspect the trenches again?” He waved toward the Nationalist lines, taking care not to raise any part of his arm above parapet level.
Benjamin Halevy grinned crookedly. “I’ve finally sucked you in, huh? You want him?”
“Bet your sweatless ass I do,” Vaclav answered, and the Jew laughed out loud. Undeterred, Vaclav continued, “If I pot the fat old bastard, they’ll pin a medal on me. They’ll promote me, so I get some extra pay for real and more besides in promises. They’ll send me back to Madrid and let me drink and fuck as much as I want. Maybe they’ll even pay for the spree. So, yeah, if Sanjurjo shows up, I’ll punch his ticket for him.”
“You’ve got all kinds of good reasons,” Halevy allowed. “And, on top of it, it might even help the war effort.”
“That, too,” Vaclav agreed. The damned Jew started laughing again. Vaclav couldn’t see why. If it had provoked him enough, he might have taken a swing at his buddy. Halevy was an officer now, so that could have
