for milking before they were for ogling? If men didn’t admire them and grab them and lick them and suck at them, how many babies would get born to nurse from them? Not many, by God!
It was like the chicken and the egg, only a hell of a lot more fun to think about. If he brought it back to the Abe Lincolns, they’d argue about it for days, if not for weeks. It was more interesting than what the lousy Nationalists were liable to try next, no two ways about it.
Deftly, La Martellita switched Carlos from one side to the other. He ate like a pig. If he didn’t know when he had a good thing going, he was no son of Chaim’s. When she put him up on her shoulder and patted his back, he belched as if he’d been drinking Coca-Cola instead of milk.
She reached a finger inside his diaper. “Wet again,” she said resignedly, and set about fixing that. Chaim would have been afraid he’d stick the kid with a pin. La Martellita wasn’t, and she didn’t.
Carlos wasn’t circumcised. Chaim had never seen a Spaniard who was. He felt a pang of tradition flouted. Jews had had that covenant with God for thousands of years. Never mind that the top of Chaim’s mind made a point of not believing in God. He felt the pang even so.
He didn’t say anything about it. If he were going to take Carlos and La Martellita back to the States, he might have. But they’d stay in Spain. Carlos would have to fit in as best he could. A funny-looking cock wouldn’t help.
He tried something less likely to cause trouble: “Thanks for letting me visit you. Thanks for letting me see my son.” Technically, they remained man and wife. She hadn’t divorced him yet. Having a baby probably kept you too busy to worry about something you could take care of any old time. He knew too well the writing was on the wall.
She nodded as she started rocking Carlos in her arms. The baby’s yawn showed off pink, toothless gums. His little crib only cramped her tiny flat even more.
“It’s all right,” she said. “You aren’t the best Communist ever, but it’s not like you’d go over to the other side.”
She really did think that way. Not whether he was a good guy, not whether he’d make a good father, but how good a Communist he was. Chaim admired such dedication without sharing it. He would have wanted to jump on her adorably padded bones if she were Marshal Sanjurjo’s mistress. Hell, he would have wanted to jump on her bones if she headed up Sanjurjo’s General Staff.
She hummed a lullaby to ease Carlos down into sleep. Chaim thought the tune sounded oddly familiar. Was it one American mothers used, too? Then he recognized it and started to laugh.
“ Now what?” La Martellita asked after making sure his silly noises hadn’t bothered the baby.
“Nothing-I suppose. But how many kids go nighty-night to the Internationale?”
“And why shouldn’t he?” La Martellita would have bristled more, but she was easing Carlos down into the crib. He made a little noise as she slid her arm free, but only a little one. Then he kind of sighed and went on sleeping.
“No reason at all,” Chaim said. “It did surprise me, though.”
A soft answer turned away wrath. Sometimes. When La Martellita didn’t feel the overwhelming urge to rip somebody a new asshole. Chaim braced himself for tsuris. It didn’t come. Instead, La Martellita sat down on the edge of the narrow bed where Carlos had got started. A sigh whistled out of her. “You have no idea how tired I am,” she said.
Actually, Chaim thought he did. La Martellita had done a lot for the Republic and the revolution, but he didn’t believe she’d ever fought in the line. When you spent most of a week on a couple of hours’ worth of snatched catnaps… Some battles petered out just because both sides got too goddamn exhausted to keep going any more.
But if, for once, she didn’t feel like squabbling, Chaim wouldn’t go out of his way to provoke her. All he said was, “I know raising kids isn’t easy.”
La Martellita nodded. “It would be harder still if I’d had to invent a last name for Carlos, or if he had to do without one.”
“I’m glad to give him mine,” Chaim said, fearing he knew what was coming next.
“I’ll bet you are.” La Martellita smiled cynically. “You got the fun that goes along with being married.”
Got. Past tense. Chaim’s Spanish wasn’t perfect-nowhere close-but he understood that, all right. He felt as if he were defending the Ebro again, back in the days before England and France went to war with Germany. Not much hope, but he was damned if he’d retreat. “Bits of it,” he said, “when I could come back into Madrid. And if you didn’t have some fun with me, you ought to be in the movies, on account of you sure acted like it.”
She flushed. He’d managed to hit a nerve, even if that was all he’d managed. “There were… moments,” she admitted.
“There could be more.” Chaim wanted like anything to sound debonair and suave. He had the bad feeling he seemed horny and desperate instead. Well, he was-both.
“No. It’s over.” La Martellita, by contrast, sounded altogether sure of herself. When didn’t she, dammit? “I have gone to the Palace of Justice to register the dissolution of our marriage.”
In the Republic, that was all you needed to do. Very simple. Very clean. Very civilized. “Aw, shit,” Chaim said in English. He’d known all along it was coming. That should have made it easier when it got here. Somehow, it didn’t. La Martellita didn’t speak English. He translated for her: “Mierda.”
“I don’t mind if you want to keep seeing the baby,” she said-she really was trying to be civilized. “But…” She didn’t go on, or need to. If he tried to touch her again, he’d leave without his cojones.
“Shit,” he said again. No, it didn’t hurt any less. More, if anything. He got to his feet. “Take care of yourself, querida. You could do worse than me.” He couldn’t help a little vinegar: “And I bet you do.”
“My worry. Not yours.” La Martellita looked toward the door. Out Chaim went. He headed for the bar a few blocks away, the one from which he’d taken her on the night they started Carlos. He brawled with a guy half again his size, and left him moaning and bloody on the floor. El narigon loco — the crazy kike-was on the loose again.
Vaclav Jezek listened to the impassioned Yiddish pouring out of the American International. The Czech guessed he was getting maybe two words out of three. That was plenty to understand what was wrong with the other guy.
“Women,” he said in his own slow, clumsy German when the American finally paused for breath. “Nothing better than a woman to drive a man nuts.”
He hadn’t cared about any one woman since he had to leave Czechoslovakia. When he got the urge, he went to a whorehouse and laid his money down. It was easy and quick. If it didn’t give him everything he might have wanted… Well, what did? Especially in wartime?
“Man, you got that right,” Chaim said. “I never thought I’d get this one to begin with. To get her and then to lose her like that-it’s a bastard and a half.”
“You had her for a while. That’s better than not having her at all,” Vaclav said.
“Is it? I fucking wonder,” the American replied.
Was it? Wasn’t it? Vaclav was trying for sympathy, not philosophy. He didn’t know. He didn’t think anybody could know. And, right now, it wasn’t his worry any which way. He unbuttoned his breast pocket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. “Here. Have one of these.”
“Thanks. You’re a mensh, you know?” Chaim had an American lighter he fueled with brandy these days. Its blue flame was almost invisible, but lit his cigarette and one for Vaclav. They smoked together, and both stashed their tiny butts in tobacco pouches-waste not, want not. Chaim went on, “That was good. Not as good as pussy, but good.”
“You do what you can,” Vaclav answered with a shrug.
“Yeah. And when you can’t, you don’t.” The International reached out to touch the long barrel of Vaclav’s antitank rifle. “I hope you do, pal. I hope you blow that cocksucker Sanjurjo’s head from here to Bilbao, you know?”
“You do what you can,” Jezek repeated. People kept telling him to finish off the Nationalist leader. Nobody told him how, though. Wait till he shows up, then shoot him. That was what it boiled down to. If it were so easy, by now Sanjurjo would have as many holes in him as a colander. But only another sniper would understand that.
Or maybe not. “You can do it,” Chaim said. “Honest to God, you can. That Big Bertha you carry, it can reach farther than those Nationalist tukhus-lekhers really imagine.”
