Last Orders

CHAPTER 25

Peggy Druce scooped bacon out of the frying pan with a slotted spatula and set the rashers on paper napkins that would soak up the grease. After cracking eggs into a bowl that already held some heavy cream and stirring the mix, she started scrambling them in the pan.

Watching from the kitchen table, Dave Hartman blew a stream of cigarette smoke up toward the ceiling. “You’re so smooth when you do that,” he said admiringly.

“Practice,” Peggy answered. “Not like it’s the first time I ever fixed bacon and eggs.” At her age, there weren’t many things left to do for the first time. Too many of the ones that were left had to do with getting old and getting feeble and dying. The longer she didn’t find out about those, the happier she would stay.

But Dave took her words in a different sense. “That’s it!” he said, and nodded in complete concord. “That’s just it! You remind me of a guy who’s been working a drill press so long, he knows in his sleep all the things it can do and all the things he can do with it. When I mess around in the kitchen, I’m more like somebody who’s maybe heard of a drill press but hasn’t hardly seen one.”

“I’ll bet you do fine.” Peggy had trouble imagining Dave as less than competent at anything to which he set his hand. She served up breakfast. “Do you want another cup of coffee with this?”

“Sure. Thanks, sweetie.”

After she poured for him and for her, she put the frying pan in the sink and filled it with soapy water. That would save on elbow grease when she did the dishes. Things wouldn’t dry out and stick to the inside of the pan like cement. “Why can’t they make a frying pan where it’s enamel or something else smooth in there, so you could wash it easier?” she said.

“You could …” Dave stretched out the word, and the silence after it, while he thought things over. Then he went on, “I bet it’d be swell to begin with. After a while, though, you’d bang on the enamel with your spatula and your big fork and your serving spoon, and the surface would get as scratched up as steel does, or maybe worse. Same with the grit from cleanser, and you couldn’t use steel wool. If you had nothing but wooden kitchen tools and you washed your frying pan with a sponge and soap all the time, it might stay okay long enough to be worthwhile.”

“I guess.” Peggy was glad he didn’t make her sound like a jerk even while he picked to pieces what she’d thought was her good idea. She continued, “There ought to be something like enamel that food wouldn’t stick to but that you wouldn’t need to baby.”

“Yeah, there ought to. Only trouble is, I have no idea what that’d be,” Dave said. “I wish I did-I bet I could get rich off it.” He shrugged. “I’m not a metallurgist, or a chemist, either. Working with metal and stuff, you pick up bits and pieces, but bits and pieces are all I’ll ever have. For a guy who quit school halfway through the tenth grade, I’ve done okay for myself.”

“You sure have. Your hands know just what they’re doing.” Peggy winked at him. “They probably do when you’re at work, too.”

He blushed like a kid still wet behind the ears, though her language hadn’t been even slightly blue. He was more straitlaced about those things than Herb. Talking dirty had made Herb laugh and got him excited. It shocked Dave, all the more so since he thought of her as a high-class lady. That didn’t stop him from enjoying her company when they were together in bed, or why would she have just cooked him breakfast? It did mean she behaved differently with him from the way she would have with her ex-husband.

Herb hadn’t been Peggy’s first man, though she didn’t know if he knew that. He had been the first whose likes and dislikes she’d paid close attention to. Now she was learning somebody else.

And somebody else was learning her, too. They’d fumbled some to begin with, each finding out what worked with the other and what didn’t work so well. That seemed strange and interesting. She and Herb had known the right answers without thinking, which might have been part of the problem. The other part was that, after she got back from Europe, they’d known without caring.

Care Dave did. If he was as precise with his lathes and presses and punches as he was with her, he had to be the best machinist in Pennsylvania, if not in the whole country. And he still seemed surprised she wanted to fool around with him. She found that flattering and funny at the same time.

He glanced over at the clock above the stove. Her eyes followed his. It was a few minutes before eight. “Want I should turn on the radio, see what’s gone wrong since last night?” he said.

“Sure. Just because it’s Sunday, that doesn’t mean everything’s perfect,” Peggy said.

She’d never had trouble living without much in the way of religion. Neither had Herb, who was too cynical to believe in things he couldn’t see for himself. Dave wasn’t somebody who sang hymns in church, but he took for granted the beliefs he’d soaked up as a kid. Peggy hadn’t exactly shocked him, but she had made him blink a few times.

He clicked the knob on the little kitchen set. When the sound came up, a smooth-voiced announcer was flogging Bon Ami cleanser. He claimed it didn’t scratch. Dave’s raised eyebrow called him a liar.

“This is Lowell Thomas with the news,” came next. “The Soviet Union has declared martial law in newly annexed Lithuania after two assassins, one armed with a bomb, the other with a submachine gun, murdered Field Marshal Ivan Koniev, Stalin’s military governor, as he traveled by car from his residence to his office in Kaunas. Kaunas is currently the capital of Lithuania, though the recently incorporated Vilno may take the other city’s place.

“Speaking from Finland, Lithuanian exile groups call Koniev’s assassination a powerful blow for liberty. Russian reprisals in occupied Lithuania are said to be very harsh, although not much news has come out of the USSR following the announcement of the killing.”

“God help the Lithuanians,” Peggy said. “Stalin will jump on them with both feet, and he’ll put on hobnailed boots before he does it, too. He’s not quite Hitler, but the choice between them was always the choice between worster and worstest.”

Dave hoisted an eyebrow again. “You talk funny sometimes, know that?”

“No comment has come from the White House yet,” Lowell Thomas went on. “The United States has not officially recognized the Russian occupation of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, any more than we have officially recognized the German occupation of Czechoslovakia.”

“But we ain’t gonna fight about any of them,” Dave put in. Peggy nodded; it looked the same way to her.

“American freighters continue to carry trucks, tanks, planes, and other military supplies to Murmansk and Archangel,” the radio said. “No one expects anything the USSR does in Lithuania to hurt the Russian-American alliance against Tojo’s Japan.”

Peggy nodded again. Sure as hell, that sounded like the way the world worked. The little peoples, the Estonians and Latvians and Lithuanians and Czechs, got the shitty end of the stick while the big countries did as they pleased. The Iroquois and Cherokees and Apaches might sympathize with the minnows on the other side of the Atlantic. They sat on reservations; their European counterparts were under martial law. And the sympathy wouldn’t do anybody any good.

“American bombers pounded Wake Island again,” Lowell Thomas said. “And fast American patrol and torpedo boats-PT boats, the Navy calls them-have raided the fringes of the Japanese Empire and inflicted damage all out of proportion to their size. Our submarine war against Japanese shipping also is producing important results.”

He could say it. People here would mostly believe it. Why not? They couldn’t very well hop aboard one of those PT boats to check for themselves. German and Russian propaganda worked the same way. Did truth lie behind the words?

When she put that question to Dave Hartman, he just said, “We’ll all find out, won’t we?” And that was about the size of that.

Kurt Poske nudged Saul Goldman. “How’d it feel to see your folks at last, Adi?” the loader asked.

“Weird. That’s the only word I can think of,” Saul answered. “I mean, I’m glad they made it through the bombings. I’m glad they’re safe. But I don’t belong there any more.”

“Huh,” Poske said, chewing on that.

Saul wished he were talking to Theo instead. Theo would understand what he was talking about: Theo didn’t fit in anywhere, either. No wonder he played goalkeeper. Kurt was too sane, too normal, to get it.

Or Saul thought so, till Poske said, “You’ve been at the front too long, is what it is.”

“That sure may be some of it,” Saul said. “Although my old man was in the trenches the last round, so he knows about that. Now he knows I know about it, too. But the big thing is, I like being a panzer man better than I liked anything I was doing when I used to live here. Even if I weren’t, ah, what I am”-even now, he had trouble saying he was a Jew-“I wouldn’t have anything going for me except this.”

“You’re not the only guy I know who talks that way,” Poske said. “Me, I want to get home. My old man’s a cabinetmaker. Well, he’s in an aircraft plant now, but that’s what he does. It’s a good trade. I did some before I got called up. I’ll be able to handle more now, maybe take over the business when my dad decides to pack it in.”

“I don’t have anything like that to go back to,” Saul said. And wasn’t that the truth! No matter how much his father wished he would, he cared nothing for ancient history. He’d learned some in spite of himself, but it didn’t do anything for him.

“You could play football,” Kurt said. “You’re good enough. You might make some real money doing that, not Wehrmacht pigeon feed.”

“For a little while, I might. Not for long. I’m already twenty-seven, so I’ve got maybe six years, tops,” Saul said. “If I tear up a knee or break an ankle, it’s all over right there. I love to play-you know that. But I can’t count on football.”

Poske’s gray eyes met Saul’s brown ones. You always thought of the loader as the dummy in a panzer crew because he had the simplest job. But Kurt, Saul realized, wasn’t such a dope after all. He said, “Can you count on the Wehrmacht? Do you still want to be a Stabsobergefreiter when you’re forty-five? Will the big shots want you in that slot then?”

“Scheisse,” Saul muttered-that was much too good a question. The Wehrmacht didn’t officially know he was a Jew, of course. But what it officially knew and what it knew were two different things. No Mischling or Jew could become even an Unteroffizier. They all topped out at the highest grade of senior private. Or they did now. Saul said, “I hope the rules will change now that the Nazis aren’t making them any more.”

“Well, there is that,” Kurt allowed. “They went overboard, no two ways about it. What could you do, though, when they’d kill you or toss you into Dachau if you complained?”

If everybody had complained, right from the start … If everyone’s clothes had sported yellow stars when Jews were ordered to wear them … But how often did human nature work that way? Most of the time, people were just glad to watch somebody else get it in the neck. That meant they weren’t. You thought of yourself first, then of your kin, and then of other folks like yourself.

You had to have an elastic soul to stretch it wider than that and think of people not much like you as your fellow human beings. Most folks’ tolerance didn’t go so wide. The Nazis weren’t dopes. They’d understood that, all right.

So Kurt wasn’t a hero and he wasn’t a martyr. Hardly anybody was. You admired those few brave people, but who wanted to imitate them? “You couldn’t do anything,” Saul said. “You always played square with me, and that was plenty.”

“Thanks, Adi.” Kurt Poske eyed him again. “That’s not even your real name, is it?”

“No, but so what?” Saul said. “By now I’m more used to it than the one I was born with.” He meant that. He’d been Adi Stoss all through the war. Trying to go back would just confuse him. Like the rest of the world, he already felt confused enough.

If they changed the rules, if they turned Jews into citizens again, they might let him become a noncom. He thought he would make a pretty fair sergeant and panzer commander one of these days. Nobody would try to push him around, that was for sure. And when he wondered what he needed to do and how to go about doing it, he could model himself on Hermann Witt.

That was funny, wasn’t it? The son of a professor of classics and ancient history hoping to become a Feldwebel and go on telling a panzer crew what to do? It would have been hysterical, not just funny, if he hadn’t thought his father would be proud of him rather than horrified.

You wanted to defend your country if it needed you. Of course, you also wanted your country to defend you if you needed it. Hitler’s Reich hadn’t done so well on that score, not if you were a Jew. The Salvation Committee was bound to do better there. It couldn’t very well do worse.

If they ever figured out that Adalbert Stoss and Saul Goldman were the same person, more than his religion might stand between him and sergeant’s rank. There was the small matter of a murder charge. Or there might be. His panzer had helped smash the Rathaus in Münster to charred rubble. If his file there hadn’t gone up in smoke, water from fire hoses might have turned it to unreadable pulp. He could hope so.

Here came a kid in black coveralls with a Schmeisser in his hands and a worried look on his face. Seeing Saul and Kurt sitting on the grass by their Panzer IV, he said, “Excuse me, but is this the machine that needs a new driver?”

“That’s right,” Saul answered. “It was my slot till our commander got shot. I didn’t know if they’d send us another sergeant or a new driver.”

“Looks like they’re gonna put you in the turret to stay, Adi,” Kurt said. “Congratulations, man.”

“Thanks,” Saul said. He turned back to the kid. “If you’re going to drive, I guess I am in charge of this traveling madhouse for a while. I’m Adi Stoss, and this other lazy bum here is Kurt Poske. Who the hell are you?”

“I’m Claus Valentiner.” The new man presented his Soldbuch. The pay book showed that he was indeed a trained panzer driver, that he’d seen a little action with a unit in Belgium, that he’d come back to the Vaterland to recover from a leg wound, and such less relevant details as his gas-mask size (1-small) and blood group (B).

“Welcome to the zoo, Claus.” Adi wasn’t sure how welcome Valentiner would be. One more new guy to find out about him. He reminded himself that Judaism probably wasn’t a capital crime any more. He reminded himself, yes, but he still had a hard time believing it.

“Doesn’t seem like there’s a whole lot of fighting left,” Poske said. “If they were going to send us down to help take Munich, they would have done it by now.”

“Too bad. I’d like to go after the blackshirts,” the kid said. “My uncle went into Mauthausen. He died in there. Heart failure, the telegram said. Right! You kill somebody, sure his heart stops.”

He’d back the Salvation Committee, then. He would if he was telling the truth, anyhow. Having told a pile of his own lies, Saul always wondered about that. Well, nobody would say anything important in front of this new guy till he showed what he was. Theo wouldn’t say anything in front of him any which way.

Saul waved at the panzer. “Want to take a look at your new home? If I’m really going to command a full crew, I’ll clear my junk away from the driver’s seat.”

“Sure. Thanks,” Valentiner said. They walked around to the left front of the machine. Saul opened the hatch. The kid climbed inside.

London. But it was a London Alistair Walsh barely remembered, a London that might as well have been at peace with the whole world. London wasn’t quite. The UK remained at war with Japan. But Japanese planes weren’t going to drop bombs on London Bridge and the British Museum. The blackout was over. Rationing remained, but if you had money to spend you could have yourself a hell of a spree.

On a staff sergeant’s pay, Walsh couldn’t buy himself that kind of spree here, the way he might have in India or Alexandria. In India or Alexandria, though, he would have celebrated along with other long-serving noncoms. When you were part of the Army’s backbone, naturally you made friends with your fellow vertebrae.

In London, to his lasting wonderment, he had Friends in High Places. That came from his unplanned meeting with Rudolf Hess, too. Winston Churchill did his best to keep Chamberlain’s appeasement-minded government from throwing in with the Fritzes. Winnie was glad to discover Walsh felt the same way. Walsh still marveled that a great man should have wanted to know what he thought, much less cared.

Then a drunk in a Bentley ran Churchill down. They said he was a drunk, at any rate. Walsh never believed it. It was too convenient. The Nazis and the Reds arranged “accidents” like that. They weren’t supposed to happen in civilized countries like England.

Only this one had. Because it had, younger MPs who couldn’t stand the German alliance, men like Ronald Cartland and Bobbity Cranford, noticed Alistair Walsh. He’d resigned from the Army in disgust, but he still had military connections that they used to help overthrow Chamberlain’s successor, the even more pro-German Lord Halifax. Coups d’état weren’t supposed to happen in civilized countries like England, either. So much for that.

And now Walsh sat in the warm, smoky comfort of the Lion and Gryphon, the pub near the Houses of Parliament where big chunks of the coup had been plotted. With him sat Cranford, Cartland, and several of the others who’d helped hatch the plot. Walsh had a pint of best bitter in front of him. Most of the rest preferred whiskey, but they made sure his mug stayed full.

Once in a while, they even let him buy a round-they knew he didn’t care to be carried all the time. Never mind that they could have bought and sold him as they pleased. A man’s a man for a’ that, he thought-a Scot’s sentiment, but one a Welshman understood, too.

He went off to the jakes. When he came back, he found his pint magically refilled. “Obliged, gentlemen,” he said.

“My pleasure.” Ronald Cartland had fought in France, too, as a captain. That made Walsh take him even more seriously than the others. They spoke the same language, as it were. Cartland went on, “It’s good to see you back, and back in one piece.”

“Thank you, sir,” Walsh said. “Have we got a peace here, or is this just a rest before we all start thrashing about on the floor again?”

The Tories looked at one another. “A peace or not a peace-that is the question,” Bobbity Cranford misquoted. Walsh had no idea where his nickname came from, but everybody used it. He clowned more than the others, perhaps to live down to his silly handle.

“If 1919 taught us anything, it taught us not to hope for too much,” Cartland said. “The War to End War … didn’t. Chances are this one won’t, either. When we go back-ay, there’s the rub.”

“Not until the Yanks and the Russians finish with the Japanese. That gives poor, battered Europe a little breathing spell, anyhow,” Cranford said. The other Tories nodded.

So did Walsh: it made sense to him. But he asked, “What about us and the Japanese?”

“With Singapore and Malaya and Burma gone, I fear we’re riding the Yanks’ coattails in that war,” Ronald Cartland said. “The logistics are impossibly bad for us to go it alone that far away. We may get back what we’ve lost-I don’t see how Japan can hope to stand up against enemies like that. How long we can keep it once we do get it back is another question, though.”

“How do you mean?” Walsh asked. England had ruled the lands that made up her empire longer than he’d been alive. As far as he was concerned, that meant she could and would keep on ruling them throughout his lifetime and beyond. That came as close to forever as made no difference.

Not to his way of thinking, at any rate. But Bobbity Cranford replied in mournful tones: “With Japan spurring them on, the Burmese have declared their independence.”

“The same way Slovakia did when Hitler told it to.” Walsh’s lip curled. That cut no ice with him.

“It looks as though Slovakian independence will stand,” Cranford said. “If enough of the people in those parts don’t fancy being ruled from Prague, trying to drag them back into the fold would start a new little war. And if enough of the Burmese can’t stomach rule from London, the same applies there.” He picked up his whiskey glass, tossed back what was left in it, and waved for reinforcements. Then, his tone more mournful yet, he went on, “The same applies to India, of course.”

“India!” Walsh exclaimed. India was far and away the most important part of the empire on which the sun never set. Without it … Without India, it would feel as if the sun were setting on the British Isles.

But all the young Tories gave back somber nods. “Gandhi and Nehru and the Hindus want us gone. So do Muhammad Ali Jinna and the Muslims. Heaven only knows what they’ll do to one another if we should leave, but they all want us to pack up and go.”

“They’ll likely slaughter one another by the carload lot,” Bobbity Cranford said. “They want us to pack up and go all the same. You rule an empire because the people you’re ruling don’t think they’ve got any better choices of their own, and so they let you choose for them. It’s not like that any more. We’ve spread nationalism across the whole world, and now-”

“It’s coming home to roost,” Walsh finished for him.

“That’s about the size of it,” Cranford said.

The barmaid came by to fill up the politicos’ whiskey glasses and Walsh’s pint mug. She was a cute young thing. Walsh wouldn’t have minded a go with her, but she had eyes only for Ronald Cartland. He’d always been like catnip for those of the female persuasion.

After a pull at his fresh pint, Walsh said, “That’s about the size of it unless you’re a Czech or a Lithuanian or some poor bugger like that.”

“I can tell you the difference,” Cartland said-he didn’t seem interested in the barmaid, even if she was interested in him. “The difference is, the Germans and the Russians don’t care how many people they kill to keep the rest quiet. We haven’t the stomach for a policy like that these days.”

“Is that our blessing or our curse?” Walsh asked.

“Probably.” Bobbity Cranford could sound cheerful and foolish about anything. Walsh had taken a while to realize that just because he sounded that way didn’t mean that was how he felt.

“We went to war to keep Hitler from killing swarms of Czechs and other folks he didn’t care for,” Walsh said. “So much for that.”

“So much for that,” Ronald Cartland agreed. “But then again, Hitler went to war to conquer all of Europe-the whole world, for all I know. So much for that, too. And so much for Hitler with it. When you try to put the pieces back together again, you shouldn’t be amazed if no one comes away with everything he might have wanted.”

“Mm.” Walsh stared down into his mug of bitter. He hadn’t looked at things from that angle. “You’ve got a point, sir. But it seems like a devil of a cost to leave everybody unhappy walking out of the play.”

“You’re right. It does,” Cartland said. “Of course, I’ve also heard diplomacy called the art of leaving everyone dissatisfied.” Walsh hadn’t heard that. He wasn’t sure he liked it, either. Like it or not, though, it seemed to be what the world had.

These days, Sarah Bruck was never sure what she’d get when she turned on the radio. The Salvation Committee didn’t run things nearly so smoothly as Dr. Goebbels had. Goebbels, these days, was holed up in the Italian embassy in Berlin. Sarah wondered how long that would last. Mussolini was having trouble of his own hanging on to the reins. If he got shot down like Hitler or had to run for his life, the new government might well throw Goebbels to the wolves.

News certainly sounded different now. Broadcasters quoted foreign reports, sometimes even when they said unkind things about Germany. There were also stories about the crimes and cruelty of the SS and the SD. Of course, it was in the Salvation Committee’s interest to let people know how foully the Nazis had behaved while they held power. Then the people would be less likely to want the bastards back.

The civil war was almost over. A day or two could go by without Sarah’s hearing gunfire. Diehards still held out in the Bavarian mountains and in a few places in Austria, but even they were starting to see it was a losing fight.

Bit by bit, the country was starting to seem as if it might remember what peace was like. They’d started printing new banknotes and postage stamps without the swastika on them. Old ones still circulated-there were too many to get rid of them all. But one of these days the hooked cross might go back to being just a decoration.

The Salvation Committee quietly went about dismantling other Nazi excesses, too. Toward the end of a newscast, an announcer said, “It has been decided that the Reich Citizenship Law of September 15, 1935, is no longer in effect. Persons whose status changed from citizen to resident under the provisions of that law are restored to full citizenship so long as, in the interim, they have not been convicted of a crime that would entail the loss of that right. All marks of distinction formerly required of such persons, whether on their identity documents or on their daily attire, are abolished from this time forward.”

He went on to talk about something else. Sarah stared at the radio. If she hadn’t been paying attention, she would have had no idea what he’d meant. That might have been part of the idea. He’d gabbled on like a bureaucrat. He hadn’t mentioned Jews once, not in so many words. Plenty of listeners might not have noticed what he said. The Reich Citizenship Law of 1935 didn’t matter to them.

It did to Sarah. She ran into the kitchen, where her mother was peeling potatoes. “They’ve canceled the law!” she exclaimed. “We can be people again!”

Hanna Goldman needed a moment to understand what that meant, but only a moment: certainly less time than anyone not a Jew would have. “That’s so good!” she said. “Does that mean we can take the stars off our clothes?”

“It sure does,” Sarah answered. “I want to do it right now and burn them.”

“I want to take them off and save them,” her mother said. “If you ever meet someone new and have children of your own, they should see what happened to us.”

Sarah frowned, then nodded. “Well, you’re right. Father would say you have a better sense of history than I do.”

“Father … Did the radio say whether the Jews whose jobs the Nazis stole would get them back again?”

“It didn’t say one way or the other,” Sarah replied. Samuel Goldman wasn’t the only one of those, of course. They ran into the tens of thousands. Professors, lawyers, doctors, dentists, civil servants … Sarah wondered how many of them were even still alive. Because he was a wounded veteran of the last war, Father’d had it easier than most, and so had his family. Not easy, never easy, but easier.

Mother’s mouth turned down at the corners. “Chances are that means no. Well, what can you do? We’re all still here, thank God. Even Saul’s here! I wish he’d come back again.”

“He’s not the same as he was-or else he’s more the way he was than ever,” Sarah said. “He doesn’t fit in with us very well any more … except with Father. Father may not get along with him, but he understands him.”

“They’ve both been through the war,” Mother said. “Father used to wake up screaming in the middle of the night once or twice a month. He hardly ever does any more, but he used to. Do you remember?”

“Not really. I never thought about it,” Sarah said.

“You were little. It was just something that happened, and it didn’t worry you. It worried me-I’ll tell you that!” Hanna Goldman said.

“Do you suppose Saul wakes up like that these days?” Sarah asked, adding, “I hope he doesn’t.”

“I hope he doesn’t, too, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he did,” Mother said. “Do you want to grate some horseradish for me?”

“Sure.” Sarah scraped the long, pale root over the grater. Mother didn’t want to talk any more about people she loved waking up screaming, and who could blame her for that? Sarah didn’t even want to think about it. The more she tried not to, though, the more she did.

When Father came home, he was practically hopping up and down, he was so excited. “They’ve decided we’re Germans after all!” he said, and then, “Well, they’ve decided that, since the Nazis said we weren’t and the Nazis were wrong about everything, we have to be. That’s almost as good. It’s good enough! I’m going to burn my yellow stars.”

“I said the same thing,” Sarah told him. “Mother said we should save them so we can show them to the ones who come after us.”

“Did she?” Samuel Goldman’s eyes swung toward his wife. “Did you? That’s a good notion, dear. The things we most want to forget are the ones we most need to remember. Sometimes, anyhow.”

Was that why he’d woken up screaming? Because he couldn’t forget? It looked that way to Sarah. She didn’t ask him. She didn’t want to make him remember anew. Instead, she said, “You should go over to the university and pay people a call.”

He laughed. “That would scare them, wouldn’t it?” But then his gaze sharpened in a different way. “You know, I just might visit them. I’d like to find out if Friedrich came through in one piece.”

Friedrich Lauterbach had studied under Father. After he got his own academic position, and after Hitler made it impossible for Jews to teach any more, Lauterbach had bought articles from Father and published them under his own name. It was as much as anyone could safely do for a Jew, and far more than most would have done. But then he’d gone into the Wehrmacht, so that had dried up.

Of itself, Sarah’s hand fluffed at her hair. Friedrich Lauterbach was reasonably young and reasonably personable. Before he put on Feldgrau, he’d as much as said he might have been interested in her if she weren’t a Jewess. She didn’t know that she would have been interested in him that way, but she didn’t know that she wouldn’t have, either. Once upon a time, Germans and Jews had often intermarried, and no one except the Nazis and a few extremely Orthodox Jews got upset about it.

Now? Now Sarah supposed it was legal again. She had no idea what that meant to Friedrich Lauterbach. She also had no idea what it meant to her. Even if he still liked her, even if something sparked inside her when she saw him, would she want to have anything to do with someone who hadn’t gone through the troubles she and her people had known?

By the way Father watched her from under his eyebrows, he was thinking along with her. She had no idea whether any of it meant anything. Lauterbach might lie in a poorly marked grave in Belgium or Russia. Even if he’d come back, he might have found an Aryan sweetheart. And even if he hadn’t, he might not care for her any more. Or she might decide she didn’t care for him.

But she answered, “Yes, that would be good to know.” And so it would. Because if the war had taught her anything, it taught her that you never could tell.