The Cowards (36 page)

‘Warte, Fritz,’
said the one with the rifle and, leaning it up against the barrier, he adjusted his helmet. It had been knocked crooked, probably when the guy from the crowd tried to grab his rifle away from him. The other two stood there, watching him. I looked around and saw Mr Habr and some other guys flattened up against the walls at the entrance to the bank, eyeing the Germans. Suddenly, all around it was quiet as a tomb and it seemed to me I must look pretty ridiculous sitting there in the middle of that empty street, just staring at those Germans. So this was an uprising. The German straightened his helmet, then all three of them turned and, draped with hand grenades, moved on. As soon as they’d disappeared beyond the barrier, people swarmed out of the doorways and a big crowd gathered around me.

Mr Habr hurried over. ‘Are you hurt, Mr Smiricky?’

I scowled and got up. The crowd pressed in and stared at me.

‘No,’ I said. ‘When you all took off, somebody ran into my stomach, that’s all.’

You could tell they were disappointed. Nobody had been
hurt. The Germans had just fired into the air. The crowd broke up and drifted away. I went around the corner to Haryk’s place. A family of gipsies was cooking something in a kettle over a little fire under a bunch of trees on Jirak Square. I rang the doorbell and Haryk leaned out the window.

‘Hi,’ he said.

‘Throw down a key,’ I said. Haryk disappeared and in a little while leaned out again.

‘You going over to the brewery?’ I asked.

‘We’ve got to,’ said Haryk, and tossed down the key. ‘Come on up. I haven’t finished breakfast yet.’

Upstairs somebody was playing ‘Heartbreak Blues’ on the piano. I opened the door and there was Lucie sitting at the piano, wearing a striped dress. Haryk was sitting at the table behind a big mug of coffee and Pedro was stretched out on the couch.

‘Greetings,’ he said to me. Lucie stopped playing and spun around towards me on the piano stool. She spun too hard, though, so she had to spin it back down a little.

‘Hi, Danny,’ she said.

‘Hi. Are you going over to the brewery, too?’ I asked.

‘No.’ She cocked her head to one side and, in an affected tone added, ‘Women have no business in a place like that.’ Her bare feet looked pretty in her white sandals.

‘Well, I don’t agree with that,’ I said. ‘So what are you going to do for your country?’

‘I volunteered as a first-aid helper.’

‘Jesus,’ I said. ‘I hope I don’t get wounded.’

‘Irena volunteered, too,’ said Lucie.

‘She did?’

‘Yes. We went over to sign up together,’ Lucie kept her face very blank and non-committal.

‘Well, then, guess I’d better let myself get wounded – but not too seriously.’

‘Oh? Why not?’ said Lucie. She sounded disappointed.

‘Why should I?’

‘I thought you’d suffer anything for Irena.’

‘Well, sure. Within reason.’

‘Would you let them cut off a leg, for instance?’

‘A leg? Sure,’ I said breezily.

‘Or an arm?’

‘Sure.’

‘Both arms?’

‘Gladly,’ I said, but as soon as I’d said it I realized that’d be a dumb thing to do because then I couldn’t even touch Irena.

‘Wait a minute,’ I said. ‘One arm but not both.’

‘Why not?’

‘One would be enough, wouldn’t it?’

‘But what if you had to lose both?’

‘Why would I have to lose both arms?’

‘Well, just supposing.’

‘Oh well, then, if I had to choose then I guess I’d rather lose an arm and a leg.’

‘But I want to know whether you’d give up both arms,’ said Lucie, swinging around on the piano stool and stretching out her legs.

‘Well, okay. Sure,’ I said.

‘But you had to think about it first, didn’t you?’

‘Well, it isn’t so simple – losing both arms.’

‘You should have said yes without even giving it a second thought.’

‘Well, but I said I
would
, didn’t I?’

‘You’re just like Haryk. You’re all the same.’

‘I beg your pardon?’ Haryk chimed in.

‘Well, aren’t you?’

‘No,’

‘Oh no?’

‘Well, how do you mean – the same?’

‘Well, for example I want you to shave off those awful-looking sideburns and you won’t do it.’

‘And I don’t want you to dye your hair and you don’t pay any attention to me either.’

‘But
you
’re supposed to listen to
me
.’

‘Oh, well isn’t that interesting? Why me and why not you?’

‘Because you’re a man,’ said Lucie and turned back to the piano. ‘Or at least you look like one,’ she added and she started
playing ‘In the Mood’ real fast, the way she’d heard it played over ABSE, the American Broadcasting Station in Europe. She played well. Her slender fingers with their red nails played a hard, sure bass boogie. She wore a wide blue bracelet on her bare wrist.

‘What a woman!’ Haryk said to the two of us. You could tell he was bragging. And she really was something to brag about, too. Lucie was as silly as every other girl but she really knew how to play the piano and dance boogie like nobody else and she took ballet lessons and she was awfully pretty. I liked her a lot. Irena didn’t know how to play the piano. All she could do was plunk out some bad Beethoven or stuff like that, but she didn’t know ‘Heartbreak Blues’ or ‘Canal Street Blues’ or ‘West End Blues’ like Lucie did and which Irena never did and when Lucie played she looked like Mary Lou Williams, only prettier. And Irena didn’t dye her hair either or paint her fingernails like Lucie and she didn’t have a swell house with a swimming pool below the castle, but then again I remembered the cliffs and how I’d clung to the rope together with Irena that time at Spider Rock and all those evenings and nights I’d spent with her up there on the cliffs, but then Lucie started playing ‘Nobody’s Sweetheart’ and I was all wrapped up in her again and didn’t know for the life of me who I really had a crush on. Oh to hell with it, I said to myself, and went over to the couch where Pedro was sprawled out and sat down next to him. Pedro pulled in and let go a big long yawn.

‘Damn,’ he said.

‘Shall we go?’ I said.

‘Just a second,’ said Haryk, and he got up from the table and went over to the wardrobe. I looked over at his bed. It was still unmade and he had a big picture of Lucie on his bedside table. That reminded me to show him the picture of me with my submachine gun. I got out my wallet and took out one of the snapshots.

‘Look,’ I said to Pedro, and handed it to him. Pedro took it, looked at it, and said, ‘Oho!’ Then he turned and called over to Haryk.

‘Haryk!’

‘What?’

‘A portrait of Partisan Smiricky. Want to take a look?’

Haryk came over to the couch and Lucie noticed and stopped playing.

‘Lord!’ said Haryk. ‘I’d sure hate to meet you on a dark night.’

‘Let’s see,’ said Lucie. She got up and sat down next to me.

‘Lord!’ she said, just like Haryk. ‘Very impressive, Danny!’ She laid it on very thick.

‘You think so?’ I said, taking the picture and sticking it back in my wallet.

‘Why didn’t you have your picture taken too, Haryk?’ Lucie said.

‘We should have,’ Haryk said to Pedro. ‘We were stupid not to.’

‘We missed our big chance, all right,’ said Pedro.

‘Okay, let’s go,’ I said. ‘You can still get your pictures. People are taking the Germans’ guns away from them all over the place.’

‘Really?’ said Haryk.

‘That’s right. Let’s go.’

‘Better take along something to eat, Haryk,’ said Pedro.

‘Not a bad idea.’

Haryk went into the kitchen and Pedro got up off the couch. He went out in the hall and I heard him go into the john. I stayed there alone with Lucie. She stretched out, one leg dangling over the side and the other on the couch. I felt like flirting with her like I always do when I’m alone with a pretty girl. Maybe it was a fresh thing to do but I’ve never known one of them to object. So I started right in.

‘Lucie.’

‘Hmm?’

‘You’re beautiful.’

‘Oh, God.’

‘You’re the most beautiful girl in all Kostelec.’

‘How about Irena?’

‘Compared to you? Nothing.’

‘She ought to hear that!’

‘Let her. It wouldn’t make any difference to me.’

‘Oh, no?’

‘I mean it, Lucie.’

‘Oh, I
believe
you, Danny.’

‘Honest. When I’m with you. I don’t even think about her.’

‘Some love!’

I smiled cryptically.

‘Well?’ said Lucie.

‘Lucie,’ I said quietly. ‘If there’s anybody I’m in love with, it’s you.’

‘Mmmm.’

‘Lucie,’ I said, ‘you’re a wonderful girl.’

‘I’m surprised at you!’ said Lucie. ‘Boy, I sure wouldn’t like to be in Irena’s shoes.’

‘Why not? You mean you wouldn’t like me to be in love with you?’

‘Well, not that so much, but I mean I’d rather have nobody than somebody like you,’ said Lucie ‘All right, you just said you love me, didn’t you?’

‘I do, Lucie.’

‘As faithfully as you love Irena?’

‘Much more,’ I said, and slid closer over to her. She put her hand on my arm so she could push me away just in case.

‘Well,’ she said. ‘And that’s saying a lot, isn’t it?’

Just then Haryk’s voice boomed out from the hall. ‘Let’s go!’

His voice startled me and I jumped, but when I saw nobody was looking in through the door I turned to Lucie again. She’d pulled back a bit but when she saw nobody was coming she laughed and her eyes sparkled and she got up off the couch, and as she did she ran her hand with those red fingernails of hers up along my arm and the side of my face and into my hair and then she tugged it.

‘You stinker,’ she said and went to the door. I got up, too, stumbling after her as if I was drugged, and at the door ran my hand gently over her rump. She grabbed my hand and pushed me away. ‘Cut that out!’ she whispered, and then ran up to
Haryk, took the lunch bag out of his hand and, pretending to be awfully interested all of a sudden, said, ‘Let’s see what you took!’ She looked and then she said, ‘That’s not going to be enough!’

‘All right, all right,’ Haryk said impatiently, and took back his lunch bag. ‘Let’s go.’

‘I won’t be hungry,’ Lucie said.

‘I’m sure you won’t,’ said Haryk, and steered her out into the hall. Pedro was already standing on the stairs. Haryk locked the door. We walked along Jirasek Boulevard but had to wait a while before crossing over towards the side street where the movie theatre was. The German Army, on bikes and on the double, was just making its way down the main street of Kostelec. Those on foot were mostly unarmed, had no helmets, and were being herded along by a handful of scowling Krauts, helmeted and armed with submachine guns, who were trying to carry out some sort of organized retreat. You could hear a steady crossfire of swearing and see the few diehard fanatical Nazis dragging their feet, marching slowly, still refusing to admit they were retreating. They stood out from the rest – their lips thin, their faces so full of fury their helmets looked like they were going to lift right off, like lids on top of steaming pots.

‘I’ll bet they’ve really gone through hell,’ said Pedro gravely.

‘How do you mean?’

‘Well, just think who’s coming after them.’

Pedro was a regular little Goebbels. But even I had a funny feeling in my stomach. I remembered the communist leaflet Prema had showed that winter – about how the uprising against the Germans would have to be transformed into a social revolution that would bring down the bourgeoisie and give the power to the workers, and so on. It had been printed in Rohnice and Prema showed it to me with that grim gangster face of his, looking like something out of a Blok poem somebody had loaned me in my sophomore year and that had stuck in my mind somehow – about men with cigarettes between tight lips, caps pulled down at an angle, jail staring out of their eyes – only now they were getting closer and God only knew
what would happen next. Which was silly, too. If I was worried it was because all I knew about what could happen was what Goebbels had dinned into us and what Mr Prudivy had told us ominously one night when he and his wife came over to our place and what Mr Skocdopole had said. He’d been in Russia with the Czech Legion and he hadn’t just filled us up with horror stories either. He’d simply said that ‘the poor people supported the Bolsheviks’. The poor. That was the whole thing in a nutshell and that was just the trouble. We weren’t poor. But then we weren’t millionaires by a long shot either. My father hadn’t even been able to save up enough to buy a car. Call that rich? Well, in any case, the best thing to do was to see the whole thing as a big adventure. Let the people who owned a lot of real estate worry. I didn’t own anything. Just my saxophone, which I wouldn’t want them to take, but why should they? So what the hell. For now anyway, the best thing to do was just take in this big, mixed-up, shabby parade – all those men and cars and guns and pistols and the end of their splendour.

We crossed the street, passed the movie theatre and went through the arcade to the patch of lawn in front of the Czech Brethren Church. Refugees in concentration camp rags or Allied uniforms were straggling across the lawn and here and there you could spot a grey German uniform. They were fleeing across the green grass under the hot sun. We crossed the lawn with Lucie in her flowered dress which stood out bright against the grass, but the fleeing people didn’t even notice her. I was the only one who was looking at her. Her skin was a delicate, almost creamy white – the kind a few girls have and which you can hardly believe is real and that makes you want to touch it to find out – and her lips were rosy with lipstick and her blonde hair looked great and her skirt was long like in a fashion magazine she’d dug up somewhere that said women would be wearing clothes like that after the war. She dodged her way between the pack-bearing, heavy-booted men who trudged past in silence, their mouths hanging open from exhaustion. We crossed the little bridge over the creek and headed towards the Czech Brethren Church. It was surrounded
by trees covered with white blossoms. We were just going by the front of the church when suddenly a coatless and unarmed German soldier came running towards us. Reverend Houba and Mr Rebarbora, the Sunday school teacher, were right on his heels – Houba holding a rifle, Rebarbora a German Army coat. Then, without slowing up, Reverend Houba dropped the rifle and made a beautiful flying tackle, just like an American football player, and brought the German down. They both made perfect belly-landings, flat out.