Armistice

by Harry Turtledove

  Who? Marian wondered. She supposed he was a chess champion. “Did you ever play, uh, Reshevsky?” she asked.

  “One time,” he said. “In Latvia, in 1937. He beat me. I thought I could maybe get a draw, but he beat me.” He sounded prouder of his defeat than he would have over a victory against lesser competition. “He tied for first at that tournament. Me, I came in twenty-third. Best I ever done.” He sounded proud of that, too.

  “You were working then, right? And you had your family?” Marian said. Fayvl nodded. Marian stared at him. “How did you find time to practice?”

  “You don’t find time. You make time,” Fayvl said. “Or else you don’t, and then you don’t play so good.” Now he sounded stern. People who didn’t know him well might not think he looked like much, but there was iron in him. If there weren’t, he wouldn’t have survived Auschwitz. He would wear the number on his arm for the rest of his life.

  They said two could live cheaper than one. Three together could definitely live cheaper than three apart. They began saving a little money—not a lot, but Marian liked that. Like so many others who’d gone through the Depression, she thought highly of money in the bank. She didn’t know what the Depression was like in Poland. Fayvl salted money away whenever he got the chance, though.

  “Is better when you can,” he said. “Tomorrow don’t take care of itself. You got to take care today of tomorrow.”

  “I’m not arguing,” Marian said. Even if she hadn’t been that way on her own, living with Bill would have brought her around. He was a bookkeeper when he wasn’t blowing cities off the map: a suspenders-and-belt man if ever there was one.

  And she and Fayvl didn’t argue much anyway. Oh, they snapped at each other every now and then. They were human beings. But they didn’t have the kind of quarrels that festered for days or weeks. Neither of them worked to get under the other’s skin. They did fit together well.

  One night (perhaps not so coincidentally, it was after a week when they’d been able to bank more money than usual), Marian asked, “Have you ever thought about a little brother or sister for Linda?”

  Fayvl had been reading the Weed Press-Herald. He looked up with an expression of pleased surprise. “Of course I think it,” he said. “I don’t want to say nothing about it so soon, though. I wonder if is maybe too quick for you. But yes, I would like a little child. Maybe a boy, to say kaddish for me after I’m gone. But a girl is fine, too.”

  “Well, then, we won’t worry about rubbers for a while,” Marian said. Fayvl was as wryly resigned to them as Bill had been. But if you wanted to fool around and you didn’t feel like knitting little booties, what else were you going to do?

  Fayvl coughed. “We have a child, you and I, I would like to raise it Jewish, you don’t mind too much.”

  “I don’t mind at all!” Marian was glad she was able to say that quickly. She’d thought about it before she mentioned anything to Fayvl. She’d been brought up a Methodist, but she hadn’t been to church for years. Her religion, such as it was, meant little to her. The Nazis had almost killed Fayvl on account of his. No wonder he wanted to see it go on for another generation.

  “T’ank you,” he said. Before she could wave that aside, he went on, “Not so easy here. We don’t even got enough Yehudim in Weed for a minyan, I don’t t’ink. But I do what I can.”

  “For a…?”

  “A minyan. Ten grown men to worship together.” He shrugged. “In Poland now, not hardly enough for a minyan in the whole country.”

  Marian didn’t know how many Jews had lived in Poland before Hitler overran it. Lots—she knew that. Millions, probably. No more. Never again. Many of those who hadn’t died had got out, as Fayvl had. “Everything will be fine,” she said.

  “Alevai omayn,” her husband answered. “May it be so.”

  She turned the subject a little: “Linda will be glad to have a brother or a sister. She’ll be big enough to help take care of the baby, too, at least some.”

  “You have a baby, you go meshuggeh,” Fayvl said. “Is what babies is for, to make the mother and father meshuggeh.”

  That was a Yiddish word Marian had learned. She nodded rueful agreement. Even one baby outnumbered both parents. She couldn’t imagine how people with twins or triplets coped. Odds were they didn’t.

  When Marian was pregnant with Linda, she’d had what they called morning sickness. Only she hadn’t just had it in the morning. Any time at all, any reason at all or none…She’d made it to the toilet every single time, but she’d sure had a couple of close calls. She hoped she would have a nice, quiet pregnancy with the second baby.

  Of course, what you hoped for didn’t always match what you got. If it had, she wouldn’t have been sitting here in Weed with Fayvl. Not that this was bad. It was better than she’d thought it would be, in fact. But it wasn’t what she’d hoped for up in Everett. All you could do was go on.

  —

  The Independence landed at O’Hare and taxied to a stop. Its four big props windmilled down toward stillness. A Cadillac limousine rolled across the runway to take Harry Truman into Chicago.

  “Nice to be in a part of the country where everything’s still standing,” the President said.

  “Everything’s still standing in Philly, too,” Joseph Short said.

  Truman eyed his press secretary over the tops of his glasses. “Fool luck, and you know it as well as I do. If that Bull hadn’t clipped something on the ground and crashed, Philadelphia would have gone up in smoke along with Boston and New York and Washington.” The Russian bomber’s tail still stood in that field in New Jersey. Truman was thinking about ordering it preserved as a monument to a war whose major monuments were mostly detectable by Geiger counter.

  Secret Service men preceded the President out of the DC-6. They worried about assassins more than he did. If somebody wanted to bump him off, he just hoped the son of a bitch could shoot straight. But you couldn’t stop Secret Service men from guarding, any more than you could stop pointers from pointing.

  When they got to the bottom of the wheeled staircase, they waved to show it was safe for him to descend. Down he went, Short behind him. Mayor Martin Kennelly stepped out of the limousine, his white hair gleaming in the afternoon sunshine. “Welcome to Chicago, sir,” he said, extending his hand.

  “Thanks.” Truman shook it. They were both professional politicians with polished grips. The clasp was so smooth, it hardly seemed there at all. “I was just telling Joe it was nice to be in a part of the country where it’s all still in working order.”

  “Chicago’s called itself the Second City for a long time,” Mayor Kennelly said. “Maybe we’re the first one now. I don’t know.”

  “I don’t, either. Just between you, me, and the wall, Mr. Mayor, I don’t think I know much any more,” Truman said.

  Martin Kennelly’s smile slipped. “Well, let’s take you to the hotel and let you relax till the dinner tonight.”

  “Okay by me.” Truman and his press secretary got into the limo with the mayor. The big black Caddy had plenty of room for all. The driver put it in gear. The Secret Service had men in lesser vehicles ahead of it and behind. Flanking those, in turn, were cars full of Chicago’s finest, their red lights flashing and their sirens wailing like damned souls. The motorcade streamed into town. More cops stood at intersections on the route to block cross traffic and make sure its progress stayed smooth.

  Watching those upstretched arms in police blue, watching stopped motorists swear and shake their fists at the cops, Truman chuckled and said, “Nice to see you know how to make the voters love me.”

  “Don’t worry about it, Mr. President,” Kennelly said. “They won’t blame you one bit. They’ll go, What’s that damn fool in City Hall got his flatfoots doing now, and how late is it gonna make me?”

  Truman laughed. Laugh or not, he knew the mayor had it right. Politics was local. You blamed the guy you could reach with your vote. If Kennelly tried to run again—not obvious, not when he
was already in his mid-sixties—some challenger would throw this motorcade in his face.

  However it might play out in Chicago politics, the traffic control made the trip to the Loop quick and easy. The limo pulled up in front of the Blackstone Hotel, at the corner of Michigan and Balbo. Truman had stayed at the Blackstone before. It was a landmark of sorts, with red and white walls and a green roof.

  The Secret Service men piled out of their cars to cordon off the vehicle that carried the President. Truman disliked having so much security around; it put him in mind of Hitler and Stalin. But the times were what they were. He didn’t see how he could do without his human hunting dogs.

  He walked in, got his key from the manager—no standing in line at the front desk—and took the elevator up to his room to shower and to relax till he came down to eat rubber chicken and make his speech to well-heeled Democratic contributors in the Grand Ballroom. The whole ritual was as stylized as a Catholic Mass. The only differences were, most of the drinks wouldn’t be wine and he wouldn’t have to make the speech in Latin. With so many Irish and Italian movers and shakers here, they might have understood it if he did.

  The mattress was too soft. Hotel mattresses almost always were. He turned on the radio to drown out the noise from the hallway and dozed for forty-five minutes. When he woke, he splashed cold water on his face, combed his hair, and put on his shoes. Then he stepped out. He was ready for action.

  One of the Secret Service men rapped on Joseph Short’s door when Truman emerged. Short popped out like a jack-in-the-box. “I’ll take you down to the banquet room, sir,” he said.

  “How can I say no?” Truman murmured.

  The banquet room was an enormous sea of tables, white linen, and uncomfortable chairs. Truman had seen a million like it, in other words. The platform against the wall held the high table where he and the other big, big shots would sit. The carpet, a horror of crimson and gold, was ugly even by hotel banquet-room standards, but he’d seen worse.

  Waiters and cleaners were still getting things into shape. A colored sweeper came up to Truman and said, “My brother Louie, he’s in the Army. He jus’ made staff sergeant, suh, an’ he says he never coulda done that without you killin’ segregation in the service.”

  “Thank you.” Truman held out his hand, and the janitor shook it. The President went on, “When I hear something like that, it makes me surer than ever that I did the right thing.”

  “Yes, suh,” the Negro said. “Should oughta do it all over everywhere.” He went back to work without waiting for a reply. On the whole, Truman agreed with him. Only the enormous row the South would kick up continued to hold him back.

  Chicago being a cow town (Truman tried not to remember The Jungle), dinner proved to be overdone steak in place of rubber chicken. Mayor Kennelly introduced Truman as the man who’d won two World Wars. It wasn’t a title Truman wanted, but he could see he’d be stuck with it. He waved to the applauding Democrats as he walked over to the lectern.

  “I hope no one else ever has to fight a world war. With all my heart, I do,” he said. “That’s what makes the Republicans, especially the Nixon-McCarthy wing of the Republicans, so dangerous. Their symbol should be the ostrich, not the elephant. They want to stick their heads in the sand and pretend the rest of the world isn’t there.

  “I’m going to mangle John Donne to show what jackasses the elephants are. No nation is an island, entire of itself; every nation is a piece of a continent, a part of the main. Any nation’s trouble diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind. And therefore never send to know for whom the air-raid siren tolls; it tolls for thee.”

  He got several seconds of the thoughtful silence that is a higher compliment than any applause. Then he got the hand, too. “Thank you,” he said. “Thank you very much. The other thing I need to tell you is, we still have a ton of work to do, around the world and here at home. And we have to keep working for engagement and involvement no matter who’s President after me. I hope and expect that will be Governor Stevenson.” More applause, loud and fierce. Truman held up a hand to quiet it. “Even if we aren’t lucky, even if the Republicans bamboozle America, we still have to keep working for what we believe in. The country can survive a Republican. It can’t survive forgetting what makes us great.”

  He wasn’t surprised at a knock on his door later that evening. There stood Adlai Stevenson. His bald head and glasses made him look like an intelligent, amiable egg. Truman waved him in and closed the door behind him.

  “So you don’t think I can win, either,” Stevenson said.

  “It’s not your fault, Adlai,” Truman said, busying himself with a bottle of bourbon for both of them. As they clinked, he continued, “The people are sick of the party that got them kicked in the face. They’re sick of me, but I’m afraid they’ll take it out on you.”

  “Losing to Eisenhower…I can deal with that,” Stevenson said. “If it’s Nixon and I lose, though, I want to jump off a tall building. Before him, no one ever campaigned on the slogan ‘Throw the rascals in.’ The man is a disaster.”

  “So is a hurricane. We get over them. I do think it’ll be Ike,” Truman said. “Here’s hoping, anyway.” They drained their glasses. He poured them full again.

  —

  Aaron Finch slid two cartons of Chesterfields and a five-dollar bill across the counter at the Rexall near his house. The checkout girl rang him up, put the cigarettes in a bag, and gave him his change, then asked, “Anything else?”

  He snapped his fingers. “Darned if there isn’t. Be right back.” Luckily, no one was in line behind him. He went to the aisle full of medicines, pulled a bottle of Cheracol off the shelf, and brought it back to the counter. “Need something with codeine in it. My little boy’s got a nasty cough.”

  “I hope he gets better,” the girl said. “That’ll be another dollar and nine cents.” He paid her and put the cough medicine in the sack with the cigarettes.

  It had warmed up while he was in the drugstore. The Los Angeles area could get into the upper eighties any month of the year. This was one of those days in October. The bag would have sweat stains on it by the time he finished the fifteen-minute walk home.

  Ruth greeted him with, “You have the Cheracol, right?”

  “I almost forgot it, but I didn’t,” Aaron answered. “How’s Leon doing?”

  “He’s coughing like he’s been smoking longer than you have,” his wife answered. As if to confirm that, Leon barked from his bedroom. When he was willing to stay in bed during the day, you knew he felt rotten.

  “C’mere, Leon!” Aaron called. “Daddy brought home cough medicine for you.”

  Leon came, but paused at the kitchen door like a nervous wild animal on the point of bolting. “Does it taste yucky?”

  “Lemme see.” Aaron poured a couple of drops into the bowl of a teaspoon, then stuck the spoon in his mouth. A demon made him want to froth and fall down. He suppressed it. “Nah, not too bad. Kinda like cherries.”

  Leon let himself be dosed. “Waddaya think, kiddo?” Ruth asked him.

  “It’s not too bad.” Leon had the air of a man who’d just heard they’d only have to pull two teeth, not four. He went back to the bedroom, probably to tell his Teddy bear how his father and mother mistreated him.

  “Codeine makes most people sleepy, too,” Ruth said. “Maybe he’ll take a nap.”

  “Alevai!” Aaron exclaimed. Leon hadn’t slept much the night before, and his coughing woke Aaron up several times. He turned on the fire under the coffee pot, waited till it got perking hard, and poured himself a new cup. After adulterating it with sugar and Pet condensed milk, he sipped.

  “Turn it back on,” Ruth said. “That’s a good idea.”

  They gravely touched cups when hers was ready. Aaron said, “Darned if I know what parents did before people found out about this stuff.”

  “They went bonkers, same as they do now, only they were sleepy all the time while they did it,” Ruth answered.

>   The phone rang. Aaron picked up the handset. “Hello?”

  “Hello, trouble.” That tenor belonged to Marvin. The tenor of his younger brother’s voice had always graveled Aaron. Marvin went on, “How about you guys come over here for the afternoon?”

  “No can do—sorry.” Aaron got to beg off without even lying, an unexpected bonus. “Leon’s sick. He’s barking louder than Caesar.” Marvin’s German shepherd was wolfy enough to leave Leon scared that he’d get eaten when they visited.

  “Ah, that’s too bad. Tell him I hope he feels better.” Marvin sounded as if he meant it. He and Leon did get on well. Aaron wondered whether that was a judgment on his brother or his son.

  “I’ll do it,” Aaron said. “How’s by you? What’s up with your gang?”

  “We’re fine,” Marvin answered. “I’m doing my due diligence on what may be the way to do business for the next fifty years.”

  “What is it this time?” Aaron asked. Marvin had been through more fly-by-night schemes than Charles Lindbergh. He got enthusiastic. He worked like blazes for a couple of weeks, sometimes even for a couple of months. Then, when he failed to set the world on fire, he went back to doing very little till the lightning struck again. He was the hare in the family, Aaron the tortoise.

  “Franchising,” Marvin said now, in portentous tones. “Say you’ve got a hot-dog stand. No, say you’ve got the idea for a hot-dog stand.”

  “Okay, I’ve got the idea for a hot-dog stand,” Aaron said agreeably. “I go out and I get a hot-dog stand. I sell hot dogs, maybe chili on the side. I hope I make enough money to live.”

  “That’s the old-fashioned way to do it.” Marvin’s voice dripped scorn. “With franchising, I get a chain of hot-dog stands. They all look the same. They all sell the same stuff. The help all wears the same clothes, even. The managers get the stuff and the uniforms and all from me, and they pay me a chunk of the profits. It’s like a license to coin money, I swear to God it is.”

  “If there are any profits, yeah,” Aaron said. “What happens if your managers fleece you or if they lose gelt from the start?”