Striking the Balance

Ludmila wouldn’t have thought of it, either. The world outside the Soviet Union had corruptions new to her, along with its luxuries.Decadent, she thought again. She shook her head. She’d have to get used to it. No going back to therodina, not now, not ever, not unless she wanted endless years in thegulag or, perhaps more likely, a quick end with a bullet in the back of the head. She’d thrown away her old life as irrevocably as Jager had his. The question remained: could they build a new one together here, this being the sole remaining choice?

If they didn’t stop Skorzeny, that answer was depressingly obvious, too.

Anielewicz said, “I’m going back to the fire station: I have to ask some questions. I haven’t worried much about thenafkehs- the whores,” he amplified when he saw Ludmila and Jager didn’t catch the Yiddish word, “but somebody will know all about ’em. Men are men-even Jews.” He looked a challenge at Jager.

The German, to Ludmila’s relief, didn’t rise to it. “Men are men,” he agreed mildly. “Would I be here if I didn’t think so?”

“No,” Anielewicz said. “Men are men-even Germans, maybe.” He touched a finger to the brim of the cloth cap he wore, reslung his rifle, and hurried away.

Jager sighed. “This isn’t going to be easy, however much we wish it would. Even if we stop Skorzeny, we’re exiles here.” He laughed. “We’d be a lot worse off than exiles, though, if the SS got its hooks in me again.”

“I was just thinking the same thing,” Ludmila said. “Not about the SS, but about the NKVD, I mean.” She smiled happily. If two people thought the same thing at the same time, that had to mean they were well matched. But for herself, Jager was all she had left in the world; not believing the two of them were well matched would have left her desolately lonesome. Her eyes slipped to the bed. Her smile changed, ever so slightly. They were well matched there, that was certain.

Then Jager said, “Well, not surprising. We haven’t got much else to think about here, have we? There’s us-and Skorzeny.”

“Da,”Ludmila said, disappointed out of the German she’d mostly been speaking and back into Russian. What she’d taken as a good sign was to Jager merely a commonplace. How sad that made her showed how giddy she was feeling.

On the table lay a chunk of black bread. Jager went into the kitchen, came back with a bone-handled knife, and cut the chunk in two. He handed Ludmila half of it. Without the slightest trace of irony, he said, “German service at its finest.”

Was he joking? Did he expect her to take him literally? She wondered as she ate her breakfast. That she didn’t know and couldn’t guess with any real confidence of being right bothered her. It reminded her how little she truly knew of the man she’d helped rescue and whose fate she’d linked with her own. She didn’t want to be reminded of that-very much the contrary.

When she’d flown away with him, he’d come straight out of the hands of the SS. He hadn’t had a weapon then, of course. Anielewicz had given him a Schmeisser after he got to Lodz, a sign the Jewish fighting leader trusted him perhaps further than he was willing to admit to himself. Jager had spent a lot of time since with oil and brushes and cloth, getting the submachine gun into what he reckoned proper fighting condition.

Now he started to check it yet again. Watching how intent his face grew as he worked made Ludmila snort, half in annoyance, half in fascination. When he didn’t look up, she snorted again, louder. That distracted him enough to make him remember she was there. She said, “Sometimes I think you Germans ought to marry machines, not people. Schultz, your sergeant-you act the same way he did.”

“If you take care of your tools, as you should, they take proper care of you when you need them.” Jager spoke as automatically as if he were reciting the multiplication table. “If what you need them for is keeping yourself alive, you’d better take care of them, or you’ll be too dead to kick yourself for not doing it.”

“It’s not that you do it. It’show you do it, like there is nothing in the world but you and the machine, whatever it is, and you are listening to it. I have never seen Russians do this,” Ludmila said. “Schultz was the same way. He thought well of you. Perhaps he was trying to be like you.”

That seemed to amuse Jager, who checked the action of the cocking handle, nodded to himself, and slung the Schmeisser over his shoulder. “Didn’t you tell me he’d found a Russian lady, too?”

“Yes. I don’t think they got on as well as we do, but yes.” Ludmila hadn’t told him how much time Schultz had spent trying to get her trousers down as well as Tatiana’s. She didn’t intend to tell him that. Schultz hadn’t done it, and she hadn’t-quite-had to smash him across the face with the barrel of her pistol to get him to take his hands off her.