Drunks, of course, also didn’t make the best mechanics. The first glimpse Mouradian got of the SB-2s that flew against the Japanese besieging Vladivostok made him blurt, “This must be your junkyard.”
Captain Boris Novikov looked pained. “No, no, no. These are the runners. You’ll get one of them. You want to see the junkyard, come with me.”
He exhaled fog and vodka fumes. He wasn’t immune to the Russian national voice. He didn’t wobble as he walked, though. Like a lot of his countrymen, he could hold his liquor. Was that national virtue or vice? Mouradian had pondered the question for a long time. Nothing he could do about it now.
He followed Novikov down a path that had probably started as a deer track. It wound through snow-draped pines that looked as if they belonged in a Christmas scene-only Christmastime was months gone. Stas was glad he had a good pair of valenki. The felt boots would keep his feet from freezing even in weather like this. He hoped.
“Don’t worry,” Novikov said brightly. “We haven’t seen a tiger in weeks.”
“I’m so glad,” Mouradian answered. He was unarmed. Novikov had a pistol. Whether he could draw it if he did see a tiger, and whether it would do any good if he could, were questions the Armenian preferred not to contemplate.
His response made Novikov laugh. Stas wasn’t sure why. They’d come more than half a kilometer. If a tiger did bound out and charge them, no one would hear them shriek. The beast could enjoy a leisurely luncheon.
Suddenly, the path opened out into a clearing. Captain Novikov waved a mittened hand. “Now this, Mouradian, this is the fucking junkyard.”
And it was, too. Wrecked planes, bits and pieces of wrecked planes… Stas saw SB-2s, monoplane and biplane Polikarpov fighters, and other aircraft he had trouble naming. Some of the junk was new. Some was ancient and rusty. Some… If that wasn’t a French fighter left over from the last war, Mouradian didn’t know what it would be.
“When we need parts, we just come out here and take them,” Novikov said. “It’s a hell of a lot faster than ordering them from some bigger base that’ll probably just go and pull them out of its junkyard, if it bothers answering us at all.”
“But…” Stas tried to put his objections into words: “Quality won’t be very high, will it?”
“It’s a part,” Novikov said patiently. “The fucking airplane will fly better with it than without it, right?”
“That’s the idea, yes,” Mouradian answered, which wasn’t exactly agreement.
If Novikov noticed, he gave no sign. “Well, there you are, then.”
“Yes, Comrade Captain. Here I am.” That wasn’t exactly agreement, either.
They went back to the main base. Groundcrew men were bombing up the SB-2s Mouradian had taken for junk. He met his new copilot and bomb-aimer. Second Lieutenant Nikolai Chernenko was new, all right-he couldn’t have been more than nineteen. They shook hands. “I’m sure you’ll teach me a lot, Comrade Pilot. Here’s to us!” Chernenko pulled out a flask. He talked with a Ukrainian accent Mouradian found hard to follow.
“To us!” Mouradian sipped vodka. Handing back the flask, he said, “Let’s not drink too much before we go.”
“What else is there to do?” Chernenko asked, honest curiosity in his voice. Stas had no good answer for him.
The fellow who actually dropped the bombs-and who fired the machine gun in the SB-2’s dorsal turret-was a sergeant named Innokenty Suslov. He reminded Stas of Ivan Kuchkov: he was foul-mouthed and burly. He wasn’t so ugly and hairy as the Chimp, but those were just details.
When the engines started up, they sounded better than Stas expected. Maybe Novikov ran a tighter ship than Mouradian thought. Or maybe it was fool luck. He had his opinion, which might or might not be worth anything.
Up into the air the SB-2 went. The formation the bombers flew was ragged, but most Russian formations were. Keeping right in place for the sake of keeping right in place was a German affectation. So the Red Air Force felt, anyhow.
Flying over Siberia’s vast forests showed the sweep of Russia almost as well as getting here on the Trans- Siberian Railway. If not for the compass, Mouradian would have had no idea of his bearing. Everything down below looked the same in all directions.
But only one direction included Japanese fighter planes. The flight leader shouted a warning that dinned in Stas’ earphones. Then he saw the fighters himself: monoplanes with fixed landing gear and wide wings. They were almost ridiculously maneuverable.
But they were supposed to be just as lightly built. And, for once, Intelligence knew what it was talking about. Pursuing another bomber, a Japanese fighter flew right in front of Stas’ plane. He hardly had to aim before firing the forward machine guns. Pieces flew from the Japanese fighter. It seemed to break up in midair, then plummeted in flames toward the snow-covered trees far, far below.
“Good shot!” Chernenko whooped. And it was. Mouradian had just killed a man. He’d worry about it later. For now… For now, he would try to kill as many more men as he could with the SB-2’s bombs. That was different. He didn’t have to watch them. Or maybe it just felt different.
The SB-2 felt different after the bombs fell from it: lighter, friskier, eager to get away. Stas was also eager to get away. He gunned the bomber back toward the base hacked from the Siberian wilderness. It wasn’t much-he’d already seen that. But going back to it beat the devil out of meeting the ground with a terrible, final thump like that poor goddamn Japanese fighter pilot.
Shopping time for Jews in Germany was late afternoon: after the Aryans had got everything worth getting. With the war a year and a half old, Sarah Goldman found she minded that less than she had before the shooting started. She’d felt really deprived then. Nowadays, there was so little for everyone that even leavings weren’t much worse than top of the line.
When you had to make do with old turnips and wilted cabbage and potatoes with black spots while other people ate veal and mutton, you felt it. When everybody stewed up turnips and cabbage and potatoes, so what if yours weren’t quite so fine to start with as those of the Germans across the street? Sarah missed fresh milk, but so did the rest of the Reich. The only people who got any were small children and pregnant women.
One phrase seemed to be on everyone’s lips: “To hell with the Russians.” As soon as the fight in the east started, things on the home front got worse. It was as if the government had shaken itself and at last realized the war wouldn’t be quickly won. And if it wouldn’t, everything had to stretch as far as it would go.
People the age of Sarah’s parents didn’t just curse the Russians. They also said, “It was like this the last time, too.” Sarah had heard about the terrible Turnip Winter of 1917 as long as she’d been alive. Now she heard the one finally passing mentioned in the same breath.
As proof the winter was finally passing, rain poured down from a dirty-wool sky in place of snow. Sarah’s umbrella leaked. She had no rubber overshoes. No one did, not any more; the state had collected them to reuse for the precious war effort. If she didn’t come home with pneumonia, it wouldn’t be for lack of effort.
If she didn’t come home with bread, pneumonia might not matter. She and her parents were liable to starve before disease could carry them off. That thought wasn’t the only one to make her smile as she walked into the Bruck bakery.
Isidor Bruck, the baker’s son, was her boyfriend. For a professor’s daughter, that kind of boyfriend was a long step down-or would have been, before things went sour for German Jews. Now no one sneered if you found little bits of happiness wherever you could.
And having someone in Isidor’s line of work had advantages it wouldn’t have before rationing began to bite. The first time he gave Sarah an unofficial extra loaf, she felt guilty about taking it. But her stomach, and the thought of her parents’ stomachs, had a logic of their own. Take the bread she did, and she never said a word afterwards except Thank you. Too bad Isidor couldn’t get away with it more often; the Nazis closely monitored the flour the Jewish bakers used.
When Sarah walked in this afternoon, she was disappointed not to see Isidor behind the counter. His father stood there instead. David Bruck wasn’t so plump as he had been before times got hard. He didn’t look so happy as he had back in what Sarah increasingly thought of as the good old days, either.
He did manage a smile of sorts for her. “How are you today?” he asked.
“ I’m fine.” Sarah asked the question that could have so many horrible answers: “But how’s Isidor?”
