Red Love Page 5

  Sammy looked around at the furious faces. There was only one officer left, Stern, who had been a sergeant in the U.S. Army. Sammy went over to him. “Kuznekov, don’t come near me. I don’t want any command here. From now on I’m just a plain fucking soldier. Because this is a slaughter that no army would permit and I don’t want any part of it. So I’m just a soldier, man.”

  Sammy led the men to the first-aid station, a kilometer behind the lines. A group of Russian cavalry, former Cossacks with lances, approached them.

  Sammy said in Russian, “Devil take you, why are you pointing lances at us?”

  “Oh!” the first man said. “He’s one of ours.”

  He said to Sammy, “We’ve received orders from the brigade to bring all of you in.”

  They were taken to the brigade in the field. Most of the men were so exhausted they lay down on the ground. Sammy and eight others stood. Pohoric suddenly appeared with General Krauss, a German.

  “You Americans are a goddamn disgrace,” Pohoric said in English, and added in German to Krauss: “They’re nothing but shit.”

  Speaking in Russian, Sammy said, “Comrade Commander, that isn’t true. Do you know that we’re the only remnants of the entire battalion?”

  “Well, it’s too goddamn many,” Pohoric said. “You guys came here to play with your social theories about revolution. You don’t even know basic principles. Soldiers must learn how to die! And I’m going to teach you, friends. I’m making an example of you.” He turned to Krauss and said, “Arrest all the men who are standing.”

  The men were taken to the wine cellar. Sammy and the eight other men were separated from the others and locked up. Exhausted and almost delirious, most of them screamed with delight when they saw the huge jars of wine. They drank and laughed and reeled and threw up. Sammy did not drink. He sat silently in a corner.

  General Krauss came down to visit them. Krauss was a typical German military officer: tall, very well built, and clean cut, with glasses. He stood straight as a ramrod. He greeted the nine men with a smile. He handed them a pack of cigarettes.

  Sammy refused.

  “How come?” Krauss asked.

  “Young Communists don’t drink, smoke, or screw around,” Sammy said, looking at him steadily.

  “Oh,” Krauss said. “I see.”

  Krauss paused. “Remember, whatever happens, be proud.”

  He turned to the others and added, “You will all be sentenced to death. And I wanted you to know that this is nothing personal. This will be an objective trial. In fact, I can personally assure you that the balance of your subscriptions to the Daily Worker and other progressive literature will be transferred to your families in the States.”

  The men had stopped drinking. It was very quiet in the room. Krauss continued. “Listen, this is a revolutionary necessity, so please act correctly. Be solid Communists.”

  As there were no questions, Krauss put the package of cigarettes on the floor, waved, and marched out the door.

  The nine men were taken upstairs to a high-vaulted cave lit by sooty lamps and candlelight. They saw their own shadows on the walls and heard their comrades below in the basement, laughing and retching and throwing up the wine. General Krauss sat hunched over a little table raised on a platform with a group of judges: the Spanish commissar, who knew only Spanish; the French commissar, who knew only French; the Russian commissar, who knew only Russian; and the Bulgarian commissar, who knew Russian well. Four interpreters sat beside Krauss. Pohoric sat off to the side.

  The men waited in the flickering light for the trial to begin. The minutes passed, and many of the men sprawled on the floor and began to snore. Sammy, sober, remained alert.

  Krauss began to speak in German. After each sentence, the first interpreter translated into Spanish, the second into French, the third into Russian, and the fourth into Bulgarian.

  Krauss said, “Comrades, the reason these Americans are so weak is that they do not have any proletarian history whatsoever, whereas the German working class, the European working classes have a mighty proletarian tradition developed over the centuries. It’s simple. These poor Americans are not individually culprits—”

  Sammy raised his hand. “Tovarishch” Sammy said, “look, you’re trying a group of Americans. The language of America is English. Now the least any court could do is provide an interpreter for the defendants. Am I asking too much?”

  “Ach, not important,” Pohoric said, wriggling his fingers.

  But the jury conferred for a moment. The Bulgarian addressed Sammy. “Look, you understand Russian. That’s enough. We’re not going to cater to you damn Americans.”

  Sammy leaned down to the other men and told them what the Bulgarian had said. He had to shake some of them to make sure they heard him. “Aw, fuck this shit,” said Rob Mason, a steelworker from Youngstown. “Let them get it over with.”

  Krauss cleared his throat and continued. “Comrades, I was contrasting the measly American working class with our splendid German workers. The German progressive tradition goes back to the Bauern-Kriege, the peasant wars. As early as the sixteenth century and the time of the Reformation, the peasants and artisans of Germany formed their own militias and fought against the city bourgeoisie, yah. That, comrades, is tradition. Let me describe for you the nature of the battles throughout our glorious German history that illustrate my thesis.”

  Krauss spent an hour and a half on his illustrations, pointing his finger at the Americans, concluding his sentences with “Yah!” and occasionally stamping his foot, making the candles shudder. Some of the interpreters also stamped their feet. The men beside Sammy were snoring, and from below in the basement, he heard chairs thrown and dishes breaking and the roar of voices drunkenly shouting.

  “Viva el ejercito popular!”

  “Viva las Brigadas Internationales!”

  “Viva la victoria final!”

  “It is illuminating, comrades,” Krauss droned on, “that the German working class and the German general staff were one and the same, for one reason, holding to the current ideological perspective: it was in the interests of the bourgeoisie, and in the interest of the nobility to keep the motherland united, yah yah yah! You get it? The only elements that stood for German unity were the peasants and workers of Germany! This advanced consciousness continued all through the eighteenth century.”

  Whatever Krauss was saying, Sammy noticed that each interpreter diluted it further until little of his meaning, such as it was, came through. Thus, the Spanish translation was: “Krauts are all pals, yah yah yah! They stick together, always, Bolsheviks and Stalin’s goody-goodies. So get on the wagon and push!”

  The French version went: “The boche bastards are all the same. What else is new?”

  Sammy thought, Well at least I’ll live until morning at this rate. Yet he too had trouble staying awake.

  “And at the time of the Napoleonic Wars, dear comrades,” Krauss continued, “there were young revolutionaries who later formed the German general staff. Up until 1848 it was only the revolutionaries that wanted a united Germany. It was the Fichtebundler, because Professor Fichte believed in a just state. Fichte,. Fichte, Fichte, comrades! Remember Fichte! Fichte can be considered the father of German nationalism and German socialism all in one! Fichte was a 1 Hegelian, and it was Hegel who believed that in order to bring about social justice, you must have a social state. And that social state, must be a strong, a very strong, advanced state, which is the state of Marxism. In all of these phases of history, the German working class took a progressive part.

  “And what did beloved Hegel say? He said world history occupies a higher ground… . Moral claims which are irrelevant must not be brought into collision with world-historical deeds and their accomplishments. The litany of private virtues: modesty, humility, forbearance, and philanthropy, must not be raised against them. … So mighty a form as the State must trample down many an innocent flower—crush to pieces many an object in its path. Yah ha hah!�
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  A very tall Soviet general, Pashin, walked into the room and looked around. Pashin sat down beside Sammy. Krauss droned on. Sammy realized that Pashin had to wait for the Russian translation, which followed the French version. That took some time, since it was translated into Spanish first, and Sammy could understand it immediately. What the hell, he thought, and leaning over, he interpreted for the general. “Regarding then the Fichtebund,” Krauss continued, “many of the German nationalists, especially the Prussians, escaped from Germany, yah. Let us not forget Scharnhorst, yah, let us not forget how he advised Pavlov, the commander in chief of the Russian Army who fought against Napoleon at the battle of Borodino. How Scharnhorst advised Pavlov about every move he made before and after the battle—”

  Sammy noticed that as he interpreted for the general, the man was getting red in the face and breathing heavily. He suddenly stood up and bellowed in a rage: “Swallich! What? Goddamn sausage-suckers—no goddamn sausage-eater is going to tell me that General Pavlov had to be told anything. Maybe he let the little Kraut creep wipe his boots—”

  The French commissar shouted, “Sacrebleu! I’m not going to listen to this bullshit that a filthy boche had anything to do with defeating our great emperor Napoleon!”

  “Hey Sammy, what’s going on?” A couple of the Americans were jabbing Sammy on the shoulder. The noise had awakened them.

  “Well, actually, guys,” Sammy said, “Krauss’s political line is kind of stale. Where’s the Popular Front in all this? I think he’s gotten himself into a little hot water.”

  The Russian and the Frenchman shouted at once until the Russian announced that he was Pashin, commander of the Soviet tank corps. When the French commissar realized who the man was, he shut up.

  The commissars bolted to attention, standing on their toes.

  General Pashin turned to Sammy. “What’s going on here? This is the most stupid bullshit session I’ve ever heard. Don’t they have anything better to do with their time?”

  “Well actually, sir,” Sammy said. “This is not a bullshit session. I’m on trial, and will probably be executed by morning.”

  “You are being tried—by them?”

  Pashin pushed himself to the front of the room, pushed over the table, picked up the five-foot-six Pohoric in his arms and threw him against the wall. Pohoric fell over. “You son of a bitch. You have the nerve to try one of our boys?”

  “He’s an American!” Pohoric screamed.

  “Don’t tell me. I know one of our boys when I hear him and see him.” Pashin pointed to the commissars and asked Sammy, “Who are these monkeys?”

  Sammy answered, “They’re the judges, and the German is the prosecutor.”

  Pashin’s face had turned beet red. “I heard what you did today,” he shouted at Pohoric. “You slaughtered a whole battalion uselessly, uselessly. And these are the few remnants, huh? And the only thing you can think of is killing them. Don’t you know what you do with demoralized young troops, you asshole? You bathe them, you clothe them, you give them a few drinks, get ‘em all fucked, and then you reorganize them. If you don’t understand these elementary facts of life, you should be ashamed of yourself.”

  The Americans were poking Sammy in the shoulder and asking what was going on, but he was too busy to answer.

  General Pashin had turned back to Sammy. “And as for you, bastard, this is what you get for associating with foreigners. What’s a nice Russian boy like you doing associating with all these scum?” he said, pointing at the Americans.

  The commissars had slunk out of the room, including Krauss. Pohoric was left leaning against the wall. Pashin said to him, “I don’t want to hear anything more about trials or executions for now. If you don’t take my goddamn advice, I’ll have your head.”

  Pashin headed for the door. He stopped and turned back to Sammy. “You ought to be ashamed of yourself,” he said. “A young man from the motherland, associating himself with these bastards.”

  The day after the trial, Sammy, flea-ridden and filthy, was ordered to report to brigade headquarters. When he arrived, a sidecar scooted up to him and a mousy man with red hair shouted at him to get in. He drove with insane speed to Madrid and deposited Sammy at a bathhouse for the exclusive use of the Russians. No Spaniards, whatever their rank, were permitted to enter. Two women undressed Sammy, put him in a hot tub, sprayed eau de cologne on him, bathed him, and gave him a manicure. The redhead appeared and handed Sammy silk underwear, a polo shirt, a leather jacket, an elegant pair of trousers, a beautiful pair of Russian boots, and a Russian tank uniform. Then Sammy was driven back at the same speed to headquarters and presented to a Major Vorov, who asked him to fill out a biographical form. When Sammy came to “nationality,” he hesitated for a moment and almost wrote “Jew.” Then he made the smartest move of his career in Spain. Sammy wrote, “Russian.”

  Vorov asked him, “What did you do when you lived with these foreigners in America?”

  “I was a seaman, Comrade Major.”

  “First mate, second mate, or captain?” Vorov asked.

  “No, just a seaman,” Sammy said.

  Vorov looked astonished. “You left the motherland to become a common seaman?”

  “Yes, comrade, but I was an organizer of the union,” he replied.

  Vorov registered no reaction.

  “And I was secretary of the Young Communist League on the waterfront of New York City.”

  Vorov beamed. “Ah, now I understand.” Then he told Sammy of the high honor in store for him. Sammy was to join the Soviet tank corps. “Well, comrade,” Vorov said, “how does it feel to be back with your own?” “Very good,” Sammy replied.

  He was now stationed with the Russians.

  Sammy was driven to Alcala de Henares, the secret headquarters for Russian tank operations located behind an eight-foot whitewashed stone wall. Soviet sailors relayed messages to Russia from mobile equipment in the curtained backseat of a Buick with three retractable fifteen-foot antennas.

  Vorov called him in for another pep talk. “You’ll get along fine,” he said. “Of course, be careful of the Jews.”

  Sammy had a conversation with Vorov about the purges of the Red Army that had taken place in Moscow. He was especially curious about how Vorov felt about the purge of Marshal Tukhachevski, who was after all the commander of the tank corps. Vorov had praised Tukhachevski to Sammy many times.

  “Well, there’s a silver lining in this thing,” Vorov said.

  “What is it?” Sammy asked.

  “I’m not a major in Russia. I’m a captain. Here I’m a major. But who knows, now maybe they’ll even skip me over some ranks. Now that they’re getting rid of all these Jews, who knows?”

  “Uh huh,” Sammy said.

  A new group of Russian soldiers arrived at Alcala de Henares. They talked freely with Sammy, since he was one of them. They marched with the goose step, an innovation. They talked about these aliens, the Jews, constantly. Jokes about the little kike who sold things and robbed things. About the one Russian Jewish officer who always tried to show off and was killed at Brunete.

  Vorov liked to drink and talk with Sammy until three in the morning. Vorov was also an orphan, one of the thousands of waifs in the early 1920s—the kids whose parents were killed in the civil war. They lived in the streets, stealing, always running from the cops. Vorov had never known his parents. The Bolsheviks had taken the orphans and made them the proletarian guard of the revolution, used them to put the old Bolsheviks in their place. They were given education and power, and the beauty of it was that they had no morals. They were placed in the NKVD or became guards in the concentration camps.

  “Boy,” Vorov told Sammy, “in the old days no one could swipe a wallet as good as me. I was like a wild animal. Sometimes I’d cut and not just the coat; I’d even cut into the asshole of some old broad. One time a regiment of soldiers showed up at a railroad yard where a bunch of us were sleeping. They rounded us up and said, ‘You guys are
going to have a punishment worse than death. You’re going to school.’ One day they gave us spoons to eat with. I threw mine away. The next day, the bowl of kasha was on the floor instead of on the table. The teacher said, ‘Get down and eat it.’ He rubbed his foot in it and spit on it and said, ‘Eat it, goddamn it. That will teach you to throw spoons away.’ And I ate it, in front of my friends. I didn’t mind that, but the laughing and snide remarks and humiliation. But I took it like a man, and then I got to do the punishing.

  “In the G.P.U. we didn’t have any sympathy for the bastards who didn’t know how to outrun the cops. We had these old blabber-mouths, these damn Jews we arrested who would tell you about the old days: ‘I was a great revolutionary. I went to jail.’ Piss on them if they had served time.

  “They cried to us, and I’d say to them, ‘You son of a wolf—how could you be a great revolutionary?’ They’d cry, ‘I fought with Lenin.’ And I’d say, ‘So I was a great pickpocket. So what, asshole?’ “ Vorov roared with laughter, throwing the empty vodka bottle at the wall.

  Sammy, the only American tank commander in a Russian unit, served with the Russians for fourteen months in Spain. His rank was second lieutenant. His Soviet B.T.-5 tank weighed twenty tons and could easily jump over a fifteen- to twenty-foot ditch and land smoothly.

  In May, the Soviet commander, Lieutenant Colonel Buslov, called Sammy into headquarters and explained his plan to frontally attack Fuentes del Ebro with fifty Russian tanks and head for Saragossa.

  “But Comrade Colonel,” Sammy said, “the terrain there is green on your map. In Aragon that means irrigation ditches. We’ll never get across.”

  Buslov glared at Sammy. “Second lieutenants in the Red Army are seen and not heard.”

  Sammy was silent.

  The tanks moved slowly across the rocky stubble field. Sammy’s riflemen clawed to the rear railings. Within fifty feet, Sammy saw they were plowing through a field of high vegetation. The weeds were higher than the turrets. The dust was impenetrable. The only way to orient themselves was to keep in sight of the church steeple in Fuentes del Ebro three thousand feet ahead. Sammy’s tank fell down into a ditch. It was saved by its fluid shock absorbers.