The War That Came Early: West and East (35 page)

Off in the distance—
far
off in the distance: a couple of kilometers away, at least—a machine gun stuttered. Louis and Marc and even the bellicose Napoléon suddenly looked apprehensive. Yes, things could go wrong up here. This wasn’t basic training any more.

Luc grinned at them: a sneering, acrid grin, also modeled on Sergeant Demange’s. “That was one of ours, my dears,” he said. “That won’t kill you … except by accident, of course.” The grin got nastier yet. He cocked his head to one side, listening and waiting. Sure as hell, the Germans didn’t let the French burst go unanswered. An MG-34 fired back. Luc raised an index finger. “There! That’s one of theirs!”

“But they both sound the same,” Marc protested.

“You’d better learn the difference pretty goddamn quick, that’s all I’ve got to tell you,” Luc said. “Make a mistake there and you won’t get a chance to make a whole lot more.”

“What
is
the difference?” Louis asked—he couldn’t hear it, either.

“Theirs fires faster,” Luc answered. “They can change belts faster than we can change strips, too.”

“It sounds like you’re saying their guns are better than ours.” Napoléon sounded as scandalized as a society matron at an indecent proposal.

“Damn straight they are,” Luc said. “Look, the
Boche
is a bastard. He does all kinds of horrible shit, and he does it in France. But you’ll only get killed for nothing if you think he’s a stupid bastard. He knows what he’s doing in the field, and his engineers know their business just as well.”

The new fish gaped at him as if they’d caught an archbishop celebrating a Black Mass. “But—they’re the enemy!” Louis sputtered.

“Very good. Nothing gets by you, does it?” Luc sure did sound like Sergeant Demange, and he didn’t have to step away from himself to hear it now. “But they’re not the stupid buffoons the papers make them out to be. They wouldn’t be so fucking dangerous if they were. You get that, sonny?”

“I … think so, Corporal,” the raw private answered.

“You’d better. All of you had better. Otherwise, somebody in the Ministry of War will send your family a wire no one wants to get. And you, you’ll be a black-bordered photo gathering dust on the mantel, and you’ll never suck on your girlfriend’s titties any more or try to talk her into jerking you off. Do you get
that
?”

Louis nodded. So did Marc and Napoléon. Their eyes were big and round as gumdrops. They looked as if he’d hit them where they lived. He hoped he had. He wanted them to live. He also wanted them to learn the ropes as fast as they could. Troops new to the front did stupid things. That could get them killed in a hurry, and it could bring trouble down on the more experienced men who had to keep company with them. Luc didn’t want to get killed for no better reason than that Marc, say, was an idiot.

Come to that, he didn’t want to get killed at all.

He gave the new men a last once-over, as withering as he could make it. Louis flinched, so he didn’t do too bad. Sergeant Demange would have had every one of them trembling in his clodhoppers. Well, they’d meet the sergeant soon enough—too soon to suit them, Luc was sure. “Let’s go, you lugs,” he said. “Keep your heads down. Don’t let the Germans see you moving. They’ve got mortars and artillery zeroed in about every ten meters. If they start shooting at you, they can hit you. They can hit me, too.”

He wished he could have the last handful of words back. He didn’t want them to realize he could get jumpy himself. They heard the words, but they didn’t hear the tone that informed them. They probably thought he’d give them all a kick in the slats if he got wounded. They didn’t know a wounded man just lay there and thrashed and screamed and bled. Well, they’d find out.

Luc led them through trenches to the ruins of a village. Digging like moles, damming like beavers, the Frenchmen had done a lot to improve the ruins. Unless you were very tall, you could move around freely without worrying about sniper fire. There were underground galleries where you could eat and sleep and shelter from artillery fire. It wasn’t the Maginot Line, but Luc had been in plenty of worse places.

Half a kilometer to the east, the German lines boasted about as many comforts. If you weren’t advancing or retreating, you settled down and made yourself at home.

The new fish exclaimed at what the soldiers dug in here had done. Luc enjoyed eating well and sleeping soft, too. Unlike Napoléon and Louis and Marc, he knew too well that these good times wouldn’t last. The Nazis had almost knocked France out of the war with their winter onslaught. They’d grabbed more of the country this time than they did in 1914, and made it harder for England to send help across the Channel. And, unlike Germany, France hadn’t had its heart in the war from the beginning.

It did now. Getting your whole northeast occupied would do that to you. And the Germans were fighting Russia now. A lot of Frenchmen with Red leanings had seen the whole war as a struggle between two sets of oppressive imperialists: as none of their business, in other words. But if Hitler threatened the Soviet Union, the font of world revolution, obviously he was a monster who needed suppressing. The Communists were singing the Popular Front song again, as loud as they could.

So, eventually, there would be big pushes forward. They’d leave this place behind. The people who lived here would come back and try to put the pieces together again. None of the offensives yet had been the real thing. But it was coming. And all the horrors that went with a war of movement would come with it.

“Sweet suffering Jesus, Harcourt, why didn’t you wipe your ass before you came back here? Look at the dingleberries you brought with you.” Sergeant Demange eyed the replacements as if he’d never seen anything so disgusting in his life. The twitching Gitane in the corner of his mouth only amplified his scorn.

“This is Sergeant Demange, men,” Luc said. “He commands the section. You’d better listen to him, or—”

“Or I’ll fucking well whale the shit out of you,” Demange broke in. “Well, you syphilitic scuts, what do they call you?” One by one, the new men hesitantly named themselves. Demange clapped a hand to his forehead. “Napoléon?
Merde alors!
Well, I won’t forget that—unless you get
killed quick. Go round up canteens and fill ’em at the well. Go on—move! You never want me to have to tell you something more than once. Believe it, punk. You don’t.”

Thus encouraged, Napoléon moved. Marc and Louis gaped till Demange found fatigues for them, too. Luc smiled. He’d been on the other end of those growls not so long ago. This was better. Oh, yes. Much, much better.

Chapter 15

P
ete McGill had never figured he would walk into a shop that sold carved jade and other jewels. Then again, he’d never figured he would fall in love with a White Russian taxi dancer. Life was full of surprises. He was enjoying this one a hell of a lot more than, say, getting stomped by half a dozen Japanese soldiers with hobnailed boots.

All the same, he’d come to the Jade Tree Maker out on Yates Road by himself. If he’d had any of his buddies along, they would have told him he was pussy-whipped. They might even have been right. But that would have made him more likely to try to punch them out, not less.

A Eurasian man in a sharp silk suit stood behind the counter. “Good day,” he said in smooth English. The way he dipped his head was almost a bow. “How may I help you today, sir?”

“Right now I’m only looking,” Pete said.

“Of course.” The proprietor or clerk or whatever he was pretended the American Marine didn’t exist. He was good at it. A white man would have kept sneaking glances Pete’s way. This fellow didn’t. He had the Oriental knack for not seeing what lay right under his nose. You needed that knack
if you were going to live in the crowded warrens of Peking or Shanghai without going nuts.

If Pete tried to heist something, now … The man in the suit would turn out to have been watching all along. Understanding as much, Pete kept his hands to himself as he examined the merchandise.

Jade trees, sure enough. They came in all sizes from three inches to three feet tall, all qualities of jade—jadeite was a much more brilliant green than the cheaper nephrite—and all degrees of elaboration in the carving. Prices started at a few dollars Mex and went straight up like a mortar bomb.

He thought—he hoped—Vera would like a jade tree. He had cash in his pocket. A corporal’s pay was nothing back in the States; in Shanghai, it made him well-off. He had nothing to spend his money on but cigarettes and booze—both cheap—and his lady love. Spend he would.

He picked up a jade tree: not a very big one, but full of detailwork in the carving of branches and leaves, and of peasants and cattle on the base. When he took it over to the counter, the Eurasian man dipped his head again. “You are a man of taste,” he said.

Which meant the dicker would be harder. “How much do you want for it?” he asked.

“The price is on the tag here.” The man in the silk suit tapped it with his forefinger. “One hundred twenty-five dollars Mex.”

That was about forty bucks U.S.—a month’s pay, more or less. The exchange rate went up and down, often wildly. Pete didn’t get mad or storm out. He’d played these games before. “I know that’s what the price tag says,” he said patiently. “But how much do you really want for it?”

“You are an American,” the Eurasian said.
You’ve got lots of cash. Why do you care about getting gouged?
Everybody in Shanghai thought that way, and with some reason. But only some. Even Vera thought that way. Pete might be head over heels, but he wasn’t blind. He didn’t think so, anyhow.

He stayed patient now. “I’m not an American general—I’m an American corporal. A hundred and a quarter Mex is too steep for me.”

“What a pity,” the man behind the counter murmured. For a moment, Pete thought there’d be no haggle after all. But then the fellow’s narrow
shoulders shifted as he sighed. “Perhaps, from an American corporal, I might take a hundred and ten.”

Pete ended up getting it for seventy-five dollars Mex. He’d hoped to beat the Eurasian down to half the price on the tag, but this wasn’t bad. The man swaddled the jade tree in cotton batting and wrapped it in newspapers full of incomprehensible Chinese hentracks. “Much obliged,” Pete said. It wouldn’t look like anything special as he carried it down the street. In a town where thievery was as much a sport as a crime, that mattered.

“Not at all, sir. A pleasure matching wits with such a good bargainer,” the Eurasian replied. Of course he’d still made a profit at the price Pete paid—he wasn’t in business for the fun of it. How much had he made? Was that a polite
You sucker!
? His face gave away nothing. Pete was glad not to have to face him across a poker table.

Bauble in hand, he walked down Yates Road. He knew where he was going next, and 332 was on the other side of the street from 343. Crossing meant risking his life, but he made it.
KEN KEE—EMBROIDERY AND UNDERWEAR,
the sign over the door said, with a picture of a lofty pagoda next to the words and some Chinese above them. Pete drew himself up straight before going in, as if advancing on an enemy trench. If you wanted something fancy in the way of lingerie, he’d heard, this was the place that had it.

The shopgirl who greeted him with a bright smile could have made a mint dancing in any of Shanghai’s fancy clubs. She was tiny and gorgeous. “Yes, sir?” she said, her voice ringing like silver bells.

“Just looking,” Pete mumbled again. This was harder than going up against a trench full of Japs. They just scared you; they didn’t embarrass you.

He’d never bought lingerie before. He’d never dreamt he might want to buy lingerie. But when you found yourself with a gorgeous girlfriend, didn’t you want to make her even gorgeouser? (The English teachers who’d rapped his knuckles at every mistake and helped encourage him to drop out of high school and join the Marines would have flinched, but not a goddamn one of them was within 5,000 miles of Shanghai.)

He nervously eyed a gown. He’d also never dreamt even silk could be
so transparent. You could see the more substantial blue thing behind it right through the fabric. He wanted to touch it, but didn’t dare. It looked as if it would tear if you breathed on it. When he thought about seeing Vera through that fabric, he had to turn away from the salesgirl till his hard-on went down.

When he swung toward her again, he coughed a couple of times and asked, “Um—how much for, uh, this one?” He pointed.

“Let me see, sir.” She walked over and looked at the tag. “A hundred dollars Mex, even.”

“Ouch!” Pete exclaimed. “That’s more than I can afford.”

“It’s very fine quality.” She didn’t add
And your girlfriend had better be, if she’s going to put it on
, but he could hear it in her chiming voice. She cocked her head to one said, studying him. “Well, what can you afford?”

No matter what the tags said, there weren’t many fixed prices in Shanghai. “I was thinking, oh, fifty,” Pete answered. Coming back with half the asking price was a standard opening move—a conservative one, but the place intimidated him too much to let him go any lower.