Tilting The Balance (60 page)

“They are as nasty as people say?” the Pole asked.

How was he supposed to answer that? Slowly, he said, “They aren’t as vicious as the Germans, and they aren’t as smart, either – or maybe it’s just that they don’t understand people any better than we understand them, and that makes them seem dumber than they are. But they can do more with machines than the Germans ever dreamed of, and that makes them dangerous.”

“you’reason like a priest,” the farmworker said. It wasn’t quite a compliment, for he went on, “Ask a simple question and you get back, ‘Well, sort of this but sort of that, too, because of these things. And on the other hand-’” He snorted. “I just wanted a yes or a no.”

“But some questions don’t have simple yes-or-no answers,” Anielewicz said. Though he’d been a secular man, his ancestry had generations of Talmudic scholars in it – and just being a Jew was plenty to teach you things were rarely as simple as they looked at first glance.

The Pole didn’t believe that; Anielewicz could see as much. The fellow took a flask of vodka off his hip, swigged, and offered it to Anielewicz. Mordechai took a nip. Vodka helped you get through the day.

After a while, the Pole said, “So what did you do to get yourself run out of Warsaw and show up in a little town like this?”

“I shot the last man who asked me a question like that,” Anielewicz replied, deadpan.

The farmworker stared at him, then let out a hoarse guffaw. “Oh, you’re a funny one, you are. We got to watch you every minute, hey?” He leered at Mordechai. “Some of the girls are watching you already, you know that?”

Anielewicz grunted. He did know that. He didn’t quite know what to do about it. As leader of the Jewish fighters, he hadn’t had time for women, and they might have endangered security. Now he was just an exile. His training in underground work insisted he still ought to hold himself aloof. But he was a man in his mid-twenties, and emphatically not a monk.

Grinning, the Pole said, “You go out to the backhouses at night, you have to be careful not to look toward the haystacks or under the wagons. Never can tell when you’re liable to see something you’re not supposed to.”

“Is that a fact?” Mordechai said, though he knew it was. The Poles were not only less straitlaced than the Jews who lived among them, they also used vodka or brandy to give themselves an excuse for acting that way. Anielewicz added, “I don’t see how anyone is up to doing anything except sleep after a day in the fields.”

“You think this is work, wait till harvest comes,” the Pole said, which made Anielewicz groan. The local laughed, then went on more soberly: “All the old-timers, the ones left alive, they’re sneering at us, on account of we’re having to make do without tractors and such, so I shouldn’t give you a hard time, friend. You pull your weight, and every pair of hands we can find is welcome. We want to keep ourselves fed through winter, we better work now.” He stooped, tore out a weed, moved ahead.

He probably didn’t care what happened two kilometers outside Leczna, but he’d put his finger on a worldwide truth there. With so much farm machinery out of commission or out of fuel, people everywhere were having to do all they could just to stay alive. That meant they were able to do less to fight the Lizards, too.

Anielewicz wondered if the aliens had planned it that way. Maybe not; some of the things Zolraag had said suggested they hadn’t expected people to have machines, let alone readapt to doing without them. But if the Lizards reduced all of mankind to nothing more than peasants grubbing a bare living from the soil, would people ever be able to get free of them? He shook his head like a horse bedeviled by gnats. He couldn’t see it.

Then rational thought went away for a while as the ancient rhythm of the fields took over. The next time he looked up from the furrows, the sun hung low in the west, sinking into the mist that rose from the flat, moist land as it cooled with approaching evening.

“Where does the time go?” he said, startled.

He’d spoken more to himself than to anyone else, but the Polish farmworker was still close enough to hear him. The Pole laughed, loud and long. “Got away from you, did it? That happens sometimes. You wonder what the devil you’ve been doing all day, till you look back and see what you’ve done.”

Mordechai looked back. Sure enough, he’d done a lot. He was an educated man, a city man. No matter how necessary farmwork was, he’d been sure it would drive him mad with boredom. He didn’t know whether to be relieved or alarmed that that hadn’t happened. Relief seemed natural, but if someone like him could sink down to the level of a farmer with no thought past his fields, what did that say about the rest of humanity? If the Lizards pressed the yoke of serfdom down on their necks, would they wear it?

He shook his head again. If he was going to start thinking, he would have preferred to start with something more cheerful. The mist rose; the sun sank until he could stare straight at its blood-red disk without hurting his eyes. The Pole said, “Hell with it. We’re not going to get any more done today. Let’s go back to town.”

“All right by me.” Anielewicz’s back protested when he stood up straight. If aches bothered the Pole, he didn’t show it. He’d worked on a farm all his life, not just for a couple of weeks.

Leczna was an ordinary Polish town, bigger than a village, not nearly big enough to be called a city. It was small enough for people to know one another, and for Mordechai to stand out as a stranger. People still greeted him in a friendly enough way, Jews and Poles alike. The two groups seemed to get on pretty well – better than in most places in Poland, anyhow.

Maybe the friendly greetings came because he was staying with the Ussishkins. Judah Ussishkin had been doctoring Jews and gentiles alike for more than thirty years; his wife Sarah, a midwife herself, must have delivered half the population of the town. If the Ussishkins vouched for you, you were good as gold in Leczna.

Most of the Jews lived in the southeastern part of town. As was fitting for one who worked with both halves of the populace, Dr. Ussishkin had his house at the edge of the Jewish district. His next-door neighbors on one side, in fact, were Poles. Roman Klopotowski waved to Anielewicz as he came down the street toward the doctor’s house. So did Klopotowski’s daughter Zofia.

Mordechai waved back, which made Zofia’s face light up. She was a pretty blond girl – no, woman; she had to be past twenty. Anielewicz wondered why she hadn’t married. Whatever the reason, she’d plainly set her sights on him.

He didn’t know what to do about that (he knew what he wanted to do, but wasn’t nearly so sure it was a good idea). For the moment, he did nothing but walk up the steps onto the front porch of Dr. Ussishkin’s house and, after wiping his feet, on into the parlor.

“Good evening, my guest,” Judah Ussishkin said with a dip of his head that was almost a bow. He was a broad-shouldered man of about sixty, with a curly gray beard, sharp dark eyes behind steel-rimmed spectacles, and an old-fashioned courtliness that brought with it a whiff of the vanished days of the Russian Empire.

“Good evening,” Mordechai answered, nodding in return. He’d grown up in a more hurried age, and could not match the doctor’s manners. He might even have resented them had they not been so obviously genuine rather than affectation. “How was your day?”

“Well enough, thank you for asking, although it would have been better still had I had more medicines with which to work.”

“We would all be better off if we had more of everything,” Mordechai said.

The doctor raised a forefinger. “There I must disagree with you, my young friend: of troubles we have more than a sufficiency.” Anielewicz laughed ruefully and nodded, yielding the point.

Sarah Ussishkin came out of the kitchen and interrupted: “Of potatoes we also have a sufficiency, at least for now. Potato soup is waiting, whenever you tzaddiks decide you’d rather eat than philosophize.” Her smile belied the scolding tone in her voice. She’d probably been a beauty when she was young; she remained a handsome woman despite gray hair, the beginning of a stoop, and a face that had seen too many sorrows and not enough joys. She moved with a dancer’s grace, making her long black skirt swirl about her at every step.

The potato soup steamed in its pot and in three bowls on the table by the stove. Judah Ussishkin murmured a blessing before he picked up his spoon. Out of politeness to him, Anielewicz waited till he was done, though he’d lost that habit and his stomach was growling like an angry wolf.

The soup was thick not only with grated potatoes but also with chopped onion. Chicken fat added rich flavor and sat in little golden globules on the surface of the soup. Mordechai pointed to them. “I always used to call those ‘eyes’ when I was a little boy.”

“Did you?” Sarah laughed. “How funny. Our Aaron and Benjamin said just the same thing.” The laughter did not last long. One of the Ussishkins’ sons had been a young rabbi in Warsaw, the other a student there. No word had come from them since the Lizards drove out the Nazis and the closed ghetto ended. The odds were mournfully good that meant they were both dead.

Mordechai’s soup bowl emptied with amazing speed. Sarah Ussishkin filled it again, and he emptied it the second time almost as fast as the first. “You have a healthy appetite,” Judah said approvingly.

“If a man works like a horse, he needs to eat like a horse, too,” Anielewicz replied. The Germans hadn’t cared about that; they’d worked the Jews like elephants and fed them like ants. But the work they’d got out of the Jews was just a sidelight; they’d been more interested in getting rid of them.

Supper was just ending when someone pounded on the front door. “Sarah, come quick!” a frightened male voice bawled in Yiddish. “Hannah’s pains are close together.”

Sarah Ussishkin made a wry face as she got up from her chair. “It could be worse, I suppose,” she said. “That usually happens in the middle of a meal.” The pounding and shouting went on. She raised her voice: “Leave us our door in one piece, Isaac. I’m coming.” The racket stopped. Sarah turned to her husband for a moment “I’ll probably see you tomorrow sometime.”

“Very likely,” he agreed. “God forbid you should have to call me sooner, for that could only mean something badly wrong. I have chloroform, a little, but when it is gone, it is gone forever.”

“This is Hannah’s third,” Sarah said reassuringly. “The first two were so simple I could have stayed here for them.” Isaac started banging on the door again. “I’m coming,” she told him again, this time following words with action.

“She’s right about that,” Judah told Anielewicz after his wife had gone. “Hannah has hips like-” Having caught himself about to be ungallant, he shook his head in self-reproach. As if to make amends, he changed the subject “Would you care for a game of chess?”

“Why not? You’ll teach me something.” Before the war, Anielewicz had fancied himself as a chess player. But either his game had gone to pot after close to four years of neglect or Judah Ussishkin could have played in tournaments, because he’d managed only one draw and no wins in half a dozen or so games against the doctor.

Tonight proved no exception. Down a knight, his castled king’s position not well enough protected to withstand the attack he saw coming, Mordechai tipped the king over, signifying surrender. “You might have gotten out of that,” Ussishkin said.

“Not against you,” Mordechai answered. “I know better. Do you want to try another game? I can do better than that.”

“Your turn for white,” Judah said. As they rearranged the pieces on the board, he added, “Not everyone would keep coming back after a string of losses.”

“I’m learning from you,” Anielewicz said. “And maybe my game is coming back a little. When I’m playing as well as I can, I might be able to put you to some trouble, anyhow.” He pushed his queen’s pawn to open.

They were in the middle of a hard-fought game with no great advantage for either side-

Mordechai was proud of avoiding a trap a few moves before – when more pounding on the door made them both jump. Isaac shouted, “Doctor, Sarah wants you to come. Right away, she says.”

“Oy,” Judah said, cultivated manner for once forgotten. He pushed back his chair and stood up. “The game will have to keep, I’m afraid.” He moved a pawn. “Think about that while I’m gone.” He snatched up his bag and hurried out to the anxious Isaac.

Anielewicz studied the board. The pawn move didn’t look particularly menacing. Maybe Judah was trying to make him think too much… or maybe he really was missing something.

He looked at the board again, shrugged, and started to get ready to go to sleep.

He hadn’t even pulled his shirt off over his head when the thrum of aircraft engines, overhead made him freeze. They were human-made planes;

he’d heard and hated that heavy drone for most of a month on end in 1939, when the Luftwaffe systematically pounded a Warsaw that could hardly defend itself. These aircraft, though, were coming out of the east. Red Air Force? Anielewicz wondered; the Russians had flown occasional bombing raids after Hitler invaded them. Or are the Nazis still in business over there, too? He knew German ground forces had kept fighting inside the Soviet Union even after the Lizards came; was the Luftwaffe still a going concern, too?

He went outside. If the bombers unloaded on Leczna, that was the worst place to be, but he didn’t think the little town was anybody’s primary target – and it had been a while since humans tried an air raid on Lizardheld territory.

Several other people stood in the street, too, their heads craning this way and that as they tried to spot the planes. Cloud cover was thick; there wasn’t anything to see. The pilots probably hoped the bad weather would help shield them. Then, off to the south, a streak of fire rose into the sky, and another and another. “Lizard rockets,” somebody close by said in Polish-Zofia Klopotowski.

The rockets vanished into the clouds. A moment later, an enormous explosion rattled windows. “A whole plane, bombs and all,” Anielewicz said sadly.

A streak of fire came out of the clouds – falling, not rising. “He’s not going to make it,” Zofia said, her tone echoing Mordechai’s. Sure enough, the stricken bomber smashed into the ground a few kilometers south of Leczna. Another peal of man-made thunder split the air.