troops got more a couple of hours later. The Russians got full bellies for a change.
More raids like that followed. Some of them succeeded in grabbing the booty. Others only cost the Red Army casualties. The Japanese began using field kitchens to bait traps. It worked as well with the Russians as it would have with any other wild beasts.
Because of such things, Fujita wasn’t astonished when white flags started flying in the Russian trenches. He got a glimpse of grim-faced Soviet officers coming through the Japanese lines to confer with his superiors.
It wasn’t peace, not yet. But it wasn’t war. You could stand up and show yourself, and the Russians wouldn’t shoot at you. Some of them came into the Japanese lines to beg. They weren’t starving yet, but they were skinny. A lot of them had very fine boots. Fujita acquired a buttery-soft pair for a couple of mess kits of rice.
A Red Army man who spoke a few words of Japanese said. “Nobody come help we. Why go on fight?”
Because giving up makes you a thing, not a person, Fujita thought. But he wanted the Russian’s belt, so he didn’t say what was in his mind. He went on dickering with the fellow, for all the world as if he’d personally grown the rice he was offering. He got the price he wanted. The Russian couldn’t say no, not if he aimed to get any food at all. Hunger was a terrible thing.
So was defeat. After three days of talks, the Red Army officers surrendered Vladivostok and the surrounding territory. They’d reached the same conclusion as the soldier with the belt: no one was coming to help them. Fujita wondered how many Russians were giving up and what the Japanese authorities would do with them all. He shrugged. It wasn’t his worry.
One of the bright lads in Willi Dernen’s company had managed to hook a radio to a car battery and make noise come out of it. The noise, at the moment, was a German newsman. “Radio Tokyo announced today that Vladivostok has at last passed under Japanese control, ending the second long siege in twentieth-century conflicts between the two countries. Having lost to Japan in the east, Russia will now surely also lose to the Reich in the west.”
“How do they figure that?” a soldier said. “Now Stalin’s only got us to worry about. He isn’t in a big two-front war any more, ’cause he’s already lost just about all of what he can lose way the hell over there.”
A considerable silence followed. No one seemed sure what to say about the comment. The Landser had a point, which only made matters worse. At last, Willi took a shot at it: “Why don’t you open your mouth a little wider, Anton? Then I can stick a land mine in there, and you’ll blow your own head off next time you talk.” If you haven’t done it already, he added, but only to himself.
“Huh? What do you mean?” Maybe Anton was God’s innocent, because he sounded as if he had not a clue.
Willi wasn’t about to spell it out for him. Then again, he didn’t have to. Corporal Arno Baatz took care of things with his usual style: “He means you sound disloyal, that’s what. And you goddamn well do. If they say we’ll whip the lousy Russians, we’ll whip ’em, and that’s flat.”
“Oh, yeah?” Anton wasn’t in Awful Arno’s section, and had more leeway sassing him than Willi would have. “Has anybody told the lousy Russians about that?”
The Germans huddled in what had been some middle-class Frenchman’s parlor. The power was out; otherwise, the bright boy wouldn’t have needed his magic trick with the battery. Willi could watch Corporal Baatz turn red anyhow. “The Fuhrer knows what’s what!” he shouted. “We’ll tell the Russians when we march through Moscow!”
“Moscow? Have you got any idea how far from Poland that is?” Anton said.
“I’ve got an idea that someone doesn’t care a pfennig for Germany’s leadership,” Awful Arno said in a deadly voice. “And I’ve got a good idea of what happens to people like that, too.”
“Only if some stoolie rats them out,” somebody behind Baatz said. It should have been Anton, but maybe he really didn’t know what happened to those people. If he didn’t, he was one of God’s innocents.
Awful Arno whirled as if his ass were on ball bearings. “Who said that?” he yelled. He wasn’t red now; he was purple. “I’ll smash your face in!”
No one told him a thing. That made him angrier than ever. Now that he’d twisted in a new direction, he gave other people the chance to talk behind his back. And someone was quick to take advantage of it: “Shut up and let us listen to the music, Baatz.”
It was good music. Barnabas von Geczy was supposed to be Hitler’s favorite band leader. Listening to Komm mit nach Madeira, Willi wished he were on a subtropical beach with a girl, not stuck in a lousy French village with a bunch of smelly soldiers. A bunch of other smelly soldiers, he amended-he was none too clean himself. If the almost-engineer would rig up some hot water, now… Too much to hope for.
Corporal Baatz heaved himself to his feet and stormed out of the battered house. “He’s going to blab to the officers,” someone predicted gloomily.
“As long as he doesn’t blab to the SS,” Willi said. He scowled at Anton. “You and your big yap.”
“Me? What did I do? I was only looking at the military possibilities,” the other soldier said.
“That’s what you thought,” Willi said. “Don’t ask questions, man. Keep your trap shut and do your job. After the war’s over, we’ll straighten out whatever’s gone wrong.”
Anton eyed him. “Aren’t you the guy who…?” He paused, not sure how to go on.
“The guy who what?” Willi growled, though he didn’t have to be a bright boy himself to know.
“The guy whose buddy ran off,” Anton said.
“I don’t know what happened to Wolfgang. I wish I did.” Willi wasn’t lying. He’d warned Wolfgang Storch to run off because the SS was about to grab him. And run Wolfgang had-toward the French lines. Willi hoped he was sitting in a POW camp somewhere in southwestern France. He would be… if the poilus hadn’t plugged him instead. No way to know, not for Willi. Guys who tried to give up did get plugged sometimes, no matter what the Geneva Convention ordained.
“You clowns should put a cork in it, too,” another Landser said. “Or take it outside, anyway.”
Willi wanted to listen to the music, so he shut up. Anton left in a huff. Some people didn’t even know when they were getting themselves in trouble.
When the song ended, somebody sighed and said, “That’s not bad, but it isn’t jazz, either.”
All the other German soldiers in the battered parlor edged away from the music critic. In his own way, the fellow-Willi thought his name was Rolf-was as naive as poor dumb Anton. The way things worked in the Reich these days, your taste in records was a political choice. National Socialist doctrine branded jazz as degenerate music, nigger music. If you liked it, maybe you were a degenerate or a nigger-lover yourself. The Gestapo would be happy to find out.
As a matter of fact, Willi was fond of jazz, too. But he liked his own skin even better. He wouldn’t tell anybody he didn’t trust about anything that might be dangerous. If you wanted to get along, you had to think about such things. Or, better, you had to tend to them so automatically, you didn’t need to think about them.
He sat there, listening and smoking, for another hour. After a repeat of the news, an opera tenor started blasting out an aria. He got up and left then. The Fuhrer loved Wagner. It put Willi in mind of cats being choked to an overwrought musical accompaniment.
For the time being, the Germans had the village pretty much to themselves. Only a few French families had stayed behind when the Wehrmacht rolled through. The rest packed up whatever they could and ran. Now they were stuck somewhere on the wrong side of the line… if they hadn’t got bombed or machine-gunned from the air while they were on the road.
Off to the west, French 75s barked: a very distinctive sound. The shells didn’t come down on the village, for which Willi thanked the God in Whom he had more and more trouble believing. It wasn’t as if plenty hadn’t already landed here. One of these days before too long, the Germans would fall back some more. Poilus in khaki would take the place of Landsers in field-gray. And German 105s would kill a few French soldiers, mutilate a few more, and knock down some houses that had stayed lucky so far.
And then, maybe, the people who’d run for their lives would come back to see what was left of the things around which they’d built their civilian existence. And they would cry and wail and swear at the Germans and shake their fists… and somebody would yank on a booby-trap left behind for the poilus and blow off her hand. Then the crying and wailing and cursing would start all over again, louder than ever.
“War is shit,” Willi muttered, sincerely if with no great originality. He started to cross the main street, the only one in town you couldn’t piss across. Then he stopped. The main drag ran east and west, straight enough to
