In the Balance

The workers in the fields converged on the Germans. None of them put down their hoes and spades and other tools. Several, young women and old men, carried firearms-pistols stuck in belts, a couple of rifles slung over shoulders. Some of the men would have seen action in the previous war. Jager thought he and Schultz could have taken the lot of them even so, but he didn’t want to find out the hard way.

He turned to the gunner. “Do you speak any Russian?”

“Ruki verkh! — hands up! That’s about it. How about you, sir?”

“A little more. Not much.”

A short, swag-bellied fellow marched importantly up to Jager. It really was a march, with head thrown back, arms pumping, legs snapping forward one after the other. The kolkhoz chairman, Jager realized. He rattled off a couple of sentences that might have been in Tibetan for all the good they did the major.

Jager did know one word that might come in handy here. He used it: “Khleb-bread.” He rubbed his belly with the hand that, wasn’t holding the Schmeisser.

All the kolkhozniks started talking at once. The word “Fritz” came up in the gabble, again and again; it was almost the only word Jager understood. It made him smile-the exact Russian equivalent of the German slang “Ivan.”

“Khleb, da,” the chairman said, a broad grin of relief on his wide, sweaty face. He spoke another word of Russian, one Jager didn’t know. The German shrugged, kept his features blank. The chairman tried again, this time in halting German: “Milk?”

“Spasebo,” Jager said. “Thank you. Da.”

“Milk?” Schultz made a face. “Me, I’d rather drink vodka-there, that’s another Russian word I know.”

“Vodka?” The kolkhoz chief grinned and pointed back toward one of the buildings behind him. He said something too rapid and complicated for Jager to follow, but his gestures left no doubt that if the Germans wanted vodka, the collective farm could supply it.

Jager shook his head. “Nyet, nyet,” he said. “Milk.” To his gunner, he added, “I don’t want us getting drunk here, not even a little bit. They’re liable to wait until we go to sleep and then cut our throats.”

“Likely you’re right, sir,” Schultz said. “But still-milk? I’ll feel like I’m six years old again.”

“Stick to water, then. We’ve been drinking it for a while now, and we haven’t come down with a flux yet.” Jager was thankful for that. He’d been cut off from the medical service ever since the battle-skirmish, he supposed, was really a better word for it-that cost his company its last panzers. If he and Schultz hadn’t stayed healthy, their only chance was to lie down and hope they got better.

Another old woman-a babushka in the grandmotherly sense of the word-hobbled toward the Germans. In her apron she carried several rings of dark, chewy-looking bread. Jager stomach growled the second he saw it.

He took two rings. Schultz took three. It was food fit for peasants, he knew; back in Munster, before the war, he would have turned up his nose at black bread. But compared to some of the things he’d eaten in Russia-and especially compared to nothing at all, of which he’d had far too much lately-it was manna from heaven.

Georg Schultz somehow managed to cram a whole ring of bread into his mouth at once. His cheeks bulged until he looked like a snake trying to swallow a fat toad. The kolkhozniks giggled and nudged one another. The gunner, his face beatific, ignored them. His jaws worked and worked. Every so often, he swallowed. His enormous cud of bread began to shrink.

“That’s not the best way to do it, Sergeant,” Jager said. “See, I’ve almost managed to finish both of mine while you were eating that one.”

“I was too hungry to wait,” Schultz answered blurrily-his mouth was still pretty full.

The babushka went away, came back with a couple of carved wooden mugs of milk. It was so fresh, it warmed Jager’s cup. Its creamy richness went well with the earthy, mouth-fifing taste of the bread. Peasants’ food, yes, but a peasant who ate it every day was likely to be a contented man.

For politeness’ sake, Jager declined more, though he could have eaten another two dozen rings-or so he thought-without filling himself up. He drained the mug of milk, wiped his mouth on his sleeve, asked the kolkhoz chief the most important question he could think of: “Eidechsen?” He necessarily used the German word for Lizards; he did not know how to say it in Russian. He waved his hand along the horizon to show he wanted to find out where the aliens were.

The kolkhozniks didn’t get it. Jager pantomimed short creatures, imitated the unmistakable screech of their airplanes as best he could. The kolkhoz chief’s eyes lit up. “Ah-yasheritsi,” he said. The peasants clustered round him exclaimed. Jager memorized the word; he had the feeling he would need it again.