“For you maybe,” Irene said. “Not so much for us.”
“You think it was bad here?” Ivan said. “You should see what the Fascists did in Russia.”
“Well, that’s in the past now,” Irene said easily.
Alex glanced at her, thinking of Erich. Things she would never know.
She raised her glass again. “To Moscow.”
“To Berlin,” Sasha said, clinking his glass to hers. “Someday I’d like to come back, see what it’s like then.”
“Like Moscow,” Irene said, fingering her glass.
“No. Something new. I don’t know what, but new. All of this gone.” He waved his arm, as if clearing the rubble outside. “You know what I saw today? They leveled the Chancellery. The whole building. And I asked one of the men, what happens to the stone? Marble some of it, nice. And he said the best goes to the Soviet memorial in Treptow and the rest to a U-Bahn station. Like what happened in Rome—you take the good stone and build something else, a new city right on top of the old one. It’s interesting to think about Berlin that way, no? One city on top of the other.”
“And what happens to the people in the old one?” Irene said.
“I thought you were in Aue,” Alex said, breaking in. “There was some trouble, you said.”
“Trouble, no. An overreaction. Some workers left the job. This happens all the time. And you know they are always found. No need to sound the alarms. Bah. And there I am, on those roads at night because some fool panicked.”
“They just walked away?”
“A truck, apparently.”
“And they can’t do that?”
“At the end of their contract, yes,” Sasha said, slurring a little. “A man has to live up to his contract. Anyway, these were POWs. For them it’s not a question of choice.”
For a moment no one said anything, as if Sasha had committed some impropriety, broken a delicate vase.
“POWs,” Irene said finally. “Germans, you mean. Do you know who they are? The runaways.” The word somehow making it a lesser violation.
Sasha shrugged. “Somebody must. They have lists. So they find them. But meanwhile it makes trouble for everybody—the morale, you know? And what can one do? The work has to be done. For the uranium.”
“Sasha,” Ivan said, putting his finger to his lips.
“I read about that,” Alex said quickly. “The mines in the Erzgebirge.”
“Yes, that’s right. The Erzgebirge. It’s not a secret,” Sasha said, looking at Ivan.
“Well, half a secret,” Alex said. “The area’s cordoned off. That’s what they say anyway.”
Sasha nodded, a little bleary. “We had to do it. The Americans were offering people jobs, more money. They send agents to the villages, to recruit the best workers. It’s a distraction, something like this. When there are quotas to fill.”
“And who fills them?” Ivan said. “Every time? Who gets Moscow?”
“It’s high grade?” Alex said as they drank again. “Good enough to make a bomb?” Trying it.
“Of course we’ll make a bomb,” Sasha said, answering a different question. “They think we won’t catch up, but we will. What should we do? Let them destroy us? No. There’s nothing more important than this,” he said, leaning forward, confiding. “That’s why I was promoted. I gave them what they wanted. Every quota. High grade? So we have to make it higher. But we’ll do it. Some worker doesn’t like it—what, the work is too hard? Some Fascist who tried to destroy us? We should be soft with him?”
Irene looked up, watching him.
“People complain? So complain. Nothing is more important than this. Our future. Our safety—” He stopped, aware that his voice was getting louder. “Nothing,” he said quietly. “What’s a few workers when this is at stake?”
“But we’re a society of workers,” Alex said, just to see how he would respond.
For a second, a delayed reaction, Sasha just blinked, then slammed his hand on the table. “Fine. Then let them work. Not shirk. For that, no excuse.”
“You have to admit,” Ivan said drunkenly, “a worker should work.”
Sasha started to laugh. “But they don’t. You have to make them. Sometimes a carrot, sometimes a stick.”
“A stick,” Ivan said, nodding.
“I’ll be right back,” Irene said, standing up abruptly. “The ladies’.”
“She’s upset,” Ivan said, watching her make her way through the crowded tables. “She’s upset you’re leaving.” A playful punch to Sasha’s arm. “Don’t you see that? Such an oaf not to see that. Talking about workers. Talk about her. That’s what they like.”
“I know what they like,” Sasha said.
“To women,” Ivan said, clinking his glass against Alex’s. “You’re married?”
“Divorced.”
“Yes? You were seeing other women?” The only logical explanation.
“I came home—here. She stayed in America.”
“That’s right, Irene said you went over there. And now back. Maybe you want to offer my workers jobs too? Did they send you here to do that?”
Ivan thought this was funny. “That’s it, take Sasha’s workers. Now that he’s going to Moscow.”
“Don’t worry, they’re safe. I wouldn’t know who to ask. I’ve never been in a mine.”
“They don’t want the miners,” Ivan said. “They’re nothing. Muzhiks. They want the scientists.”
“Well, I don’t know anything about that either.” He turned his hands up, empty.
“You think Sasha knows? Numbers for the quotas, that’s all. What more do you have to know? Remember at Leuna?” he said to Sasha. “The heavy water? Sasha doesn’t know, he thinks it means it’s heavier to carry. You should have seen the look on their faces. The big boss, and he doesn’t know what it means. So they try to explain and who knows what they’re talking about? Remember? Protons, neutrons—Greek.”
“Oh, and you knew. A scientific expert. You understand everything.”