Striking the Balance

They started dickering about how much food would buy Nieh how many shells, and when and how to arrange deliveries. As he had before, Nieh kept the contempt he felt from showing. On the Long March, he’d dickered with warlords’ officers and bandit chieftains over things like this. In China now, though, what survived of the once-mighty Imperial Japanese Army was reduced to bandit status; the Japanese couldn’t do much more than prey on the countryside, and they didn’t even do that well, not if they were trading munitions for food.

Nieh resolved not to tell Liu Han any details about how he was negotiating with the Japanese. Her hatred for them was personal, as it was for the little devils. Nieh hated the Japanese and the scaly devils, too, with an ideological purity his woman could never hope to match. But she had imagination, and came up with ways to hurt the enemies of the People’s Liberation Army and the Communist Party that he would never have dreamt of. Success, especially among those who did not form large-scale policy, could make up for a lack of ideological purity-for a while, anyhow.

Major Mon was not the best bargainer Nieh had ever faced. Two Chinese out of three could have got more supplies from him than Mori did. He gave a mental shrug. Well, that was Mori’s fault, for being a barbarous eastern devil. The Japanese made good soldiers, but not much else.

As far as he was concerned, the same went for the little scaly devils. They could conquer, but seemed to have no idea how to hold down a rebellious land once under their control. They didn’t even use the murder and terror the Japanese had taken for granted. As far as Nieh could tell, all they did was reward collaborators, and that was not enough.

“Excellent!” Major Mori exclaimed when the haggling was over. He slapped his belly. “We will eat well for a time.” The military tunic he wore hung on him like a tent. He might once have been a heavyset man. No more.

“And we will have a present for the little devils one day before too long,” Nieh replied. Even if he could do what he hoped with the 150mm shells, he aimed to try to blame it on the Kuomintang. Liu Han would not approve of that; she’d want the Japanese to receive the scaly devils’ wrath. But, as Nieh had said, the Kuomintang was more dangerous in the long run.

So long as the little scaly devils did not blame the People’s Liberation Army for the attacks, talks with them could go on unimpeded. Those talks had been building in size and importance for some time now; they needed to continue. Something of greater substance might come from them than the stalled negotiations about Liu Han’s baby. Nieh hoped so, at any rate.

He sighed. If he’d had his choice, the People’s Liberation Army would have driven the Japanese and the scaly devils out of China altogether. He didn’t have his choice, though. If he’d ever needed reminding of that, the Long March would have given it to him. You did what you had to do. After that. If you were lucky, you got the chance to do what you wanted to do.

He bowed to Major Mori. The major returned the compliment. “Miserable war,” Nieh said again. Mori nodded.But the workers and peasants will win it, here in China and all over the world,

Nieh thought. He glanced at the Japanese officer. Maybe Mori was thinking victorious thoughts, too. Well. If he was, he was wrong. Nieh had the dialectic to prove it.

Mordechai Anielewicz stepped out onto the sidewalk in front of the building on Lutomierska Street. “I can deal with my enemies,” he said. “The Nazis and Lizards are not a problem, not like that. My friends, now-” He rolled his eyes in theatrical despair.“Vay iz mir!”

Bertha Fleishman laughed. She was a year or two older then Mordechai, and normally so colorless that the Jewish resistance of Lodz often used her to pick up information: you had trouble noticing she was there. But her laugh stood out. She had a good laugh, one that invited everybody around to share the joke.

Now she said, “Actually, we’ve done pretty well, all things considered. The Lizards haven’t been able to get much through Lodz to throw at the Nazis.” She paused. “Of course, not everyone would say this is a good thing.”

“I know.” Anielewicz grimaced. “I don’t say it’s a good thing myself. This is even worse than being caught between the Nazis and the Russians. Whoever wins,we lose.”

“The Germans are living up to their promise not to attack Lodz so long as we keep the Lizards from mounting any moves from here,” Bertha said. “They haven’t thrown any of their rocket bombs at us lately, either.”

“For which God be thanked,” Anielewicz said. Before the war, he’d been a secular man. That hadn’t mattered to the Nazis, who’d dumped him into the Warsaw ghetto all the same. What he’d seen there, what he’d seen since, had left him convinced he couldn’t live without God after all. What would have been ironic in 1938 came out sincere today.