“And you wanted the Schnorkel the way you wanted another head, too,” the rear admiral said. He did understand why Lemp’s boat had it, then. Well, anybody with three working brain cells would.
“That, too, sir,” Lemp agreed. “But he’s worked out well. He keeps the snort going-and when it isn’t going, he keeps the regular engineering officer posted so we don’t end up asphyxiating ourselves.”
“All right. That’s good to hear. I said we wouldn’t take notes, but do you mind if I write that down so it goes in his promotion jacket?”
“Of course not, sir,” Lemp said. “I’ll put it in writing myself, if you like.”
“Never mind.” The rear admiral scribbled. “If he gets promoted away from you, will you still be able to use the Schnorkel?”
“Oh, absolutely, sir. He’s trained a couple of my petty officers. They don’t quite have his feel for it-he acts like he grew up with it-but they can take care of it well enough and then some.”
“Good.” The rear admiral didn’t say I was hoping you’d tell me something like that. He’d assumed an officer smart enough to command a U-boat was smart enough to see that an important piece of equipment shouldn’t depend on one man’s mastery of it. And he’d been right. Lemp shuddered to think what would have happened to him had he confessed to the board that only Beilharz could make the snort behave.
One thing he didn’t have to worry about, anyhow. But there were others that he did. A captain who hadn’t spoken before said, “This isn’t an engineering question, but it is important to the performance of your boat and crew.”
“Sir?” Lemp did his best to project attentive interest.
“Are your men thoroughly loyal National Socialists, ready to follow the Fuhrer ’s lead with iron determination?”
That was the last question Lemp had expected. But even Clausewitz had defined war as the extension of politics by other means. And politics, more and more, got extended into this war. If the rumored deal with England and France came off… Worry about that later, Lemp told himself. He answered the question as simply as he could: with a crisp, “Yes, sir!”
But the captain didn’t seem satisfied. “How do we know they are?” he pressed.
Because they didn’t mutiny and take the boat to England. Lemp swallowed the flip comeback. These people, and the people set over them, would only hold it against him. He said, “Sir, we were ashore here when the traitors tried to strike against the Fuhrer. Not a man went over to them. Not a man said a word anyone could imagine disloyal.”
“We have reports that there is grumbling during cruises,” the captain declared.
Lemp cast his eyes up to the heavens. Whatever this fellow might have done, he’d never made a wartime cruise in a submarine. “Sir, they’re U-boat men,” Lemp said, hoping the other officers on the board had some idea of what he was talking about. In case they didn’t, he spelled it out: “They’re crammed into the pressure hull. The food is bad. No one has a bunk or any privacy at all. Nobody washes much. The heads don’t work all the time. Oh, and the lads’re liable to get killed. I’d worry about them if they didn’t piss and moan.”
“About the Fuhrer?” The captain sounded disbelieving.
“About anything and everything,” Lemp answered, as firmly as he could.
“This cannot be permitted.”
“I don’t know how you can stop it.”
“Summary punishments might do the job.”
“Maybe, sir, but I think they’d help the enemy more than us, and I’d be surprised if you found any other U-boat skippers who told you different.”
The board members looked at one another. Maybe they had heard the same thing from other U-boat commanders. If they hadn’t, Lemp’s comrades in arms had missed the chance of a lifetime to speak truth to the powers that be.
At last, the captain who acted like the National Socialist loyalty officer spoke in a grudging voice: “We have received no complaints about your dedication to the Reich, Lieutenant Lemp.”
“I’m glad to hear it, sir.” In half a dozen words, Lemp spoke his own truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. If the higher-ups suspected him, they wouldn’t just beach him, not the way things were since the failed coup against the Fuhrer. They’d fling him into a camp, and things would roll downhill from there.
Maybe something of that abject, alarm-tinged relief got through to the rear admiral who headed the board. A smile stretched his face into angles that looked unnatural. “This is secondary, Lieutenant. The data on the Schnorkel are what we needed most. After your refit and liberty, we’ll give you something new to try.”
“Sir?” Lemp said: a one-word question.
He wondered if the senior man would deign to explain. Rather to his surprise, the rear admiral did: “Things are heating up in the Baltic. The Ivans need their ears pinned back.” He spoke with unveiled contempt. Lemp only nodded. The Baltic’s shallow, narrow waters would be different, all right. But any place where he didn’t need to worry about the Royal Navy sounded goddamn good to him. ummer in Munster. A lot of the time, it seemed a contradiction in terms. It could be cool or rainy or foggy in July as easily as not. It could be, but it wasn’t always. Not today, for instance. The sun shone down from a blue, blue sky. It was about twenty-five degrees: warm but not hot. You couldn’t ask for more.
A blackbird hopping through the long-unmown park grass fluttered away from Sarah Goldman as she and Isidor Bruck came toward it. He carried a picnic basket. Even when times were hard for everybody and harder for Jews, a baker’s son could come up with enough rolls and such for a Sunday-afternoon lunch.
Other picnicking couples and families dotted the grass. It was so tall, you could hardly see some of them. “If we don’t sit too close to anybody, they won’t notice our stars,” Sarah said.
“How about over there?” Isidor pointed. “It’s by the trees, so we can go into the shade if we start to toast.”
“Do you have to talk about your work all the time?” Sarah teased. They both laughed. She hurried toward the spot he’d suggested. It was a good one, so good she was surprised nobody else had taken it. She spread out a couple of towels and sat down on one. The grass rustled. It got mowed less often than it had before the war, because most of the gardeners wore Feldgrau these days. Something small and green and many-legged jumped onto her knee. She yipped and brushed it away.
Isidor sat down beside her. He opened the basket and took out rolls and ripe plums-where had he come up with those?-and a real treasure: a tin of sardines. Sarah’s eyes widened. Her stomach rumbled. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen any, let alone tasted them. A couple of bottles of beer to wash things down, and…
“I’ll explode!” she said. “Did you rob a bank?”
“Two of them,” Isidor answered. She giggled. Every moment where you could forget the big things and enjoy the little ones was a moment won. A hundred meters away, a little blond boy ran beside a yapping dog. He didn’t even know about the big things yet. The little ones were all he had. Sarah envied him.
Even now, the big things intruded. The plane buzzing overhead was a Bf-109. Sarah didn’t need to think to recognize the shape and the engine note. By the way Isidor raised one dark eyebrow, he knew what it was right away, too. Who in Germany wouldn’t, these days? Sarah took another swig and emptied her bottle. She didn’t have to think about it, or about anything else that wasn’t right here.
“Is there any more of that beer?” she asked.
“There sure is.” Better than a stage wizard pulling a rabbit out of a hat, Isidor pulled another bottle out of the basket for her. She drank eagerly. Beer helped blur the big things. Isidor produced a fresh bottle for himself, too. By the way he drained it, he didn’t care to see them clearly, either.
They both tensed when a policeman wandered through the park. Sarah didn’t look especially Jewish, but Isidor did. But the man in the black uniform with the swastika armband didn’t even notice them. He ambled away.
Along with the afternoon heat, seeing him prodded them to move over under the shade of the trees. They’d be less noticeable in the shadows-and the grass was even longer there. Most of the picnickers went on basking in the sunshine; they knew it might not last. If their hides were red and tender tomorrow, well, so what?
Isidor put his arm around her. She snuggled against him. The two of them against the world? Not quite-but, although the big things blurred, they didn’t go away. When he kissed her, she responded with a fervor that probably astonished both of them. If the beer couldn’t do it, maybe this would let her forget everything that wasn’t right here, at least for a little while.
They lay back on the blankets, and the world did seem to disappear-in green. Anyone could come up and see them. Anyone could, but no one did. Isidor reached under her skirt. He’d tried that before, but she’d always slapped his hand away. Now… Now she discovered she didn’t want to. Before long, he got where he was going, and gently began to rub.
And, amazingly soon, Sarah got where she was going, too. He was still kissing her when she did, which muffled the noises she made. As she came back to herself, she stared at the boughs swaying in the breeze above her head. It was like what she sometimes did in the dark-like, but altogether different.
“You’re crazy,” she whispered.
“Crazy for you,” Isidor answered, also in a low voice. “This crazy.” He took her hand.
The bulge he set it on was like nothing in her nighttime aloneness. “What do you want me to-?” she asked.
He undid his fly. There it was, in the open between them. If anybody came by now, they wouldn’t get in trouble just for being Jews-although whoever came by would know he was. “Take it and-” he said. Awkwardly, she did. He gasped, but after a minute or two he told her, “It helps if you spit in your hand.” So she did. She didn’t know if it helped her, but it sure seemed to help him. He gasped again, on a different note, and grunted. None of the mess he made got on her clothes, for which she was duly grateful.
She wiped her hand as clean as she could on the grass. She didn’t want to use even an old towel for that. Isidor quickly set himself to rights. She sat up and looked around. No one was rushing toward them-or running off to bring the policeman back. They’d got away with it.
All the same, she said, “I think we’d better go home.”
“Whatever you want,” Isidor said. If she’d told him he was on fire, he would have agreed as readily. He beamed at her. “You’re wonderful-do you know that?”