The Cowards (37 page)

‘Wow!’ said Haryk. The Sunday school teacher ran to the preacher’s aid and they both started clobbering the German. Then Houba tried to pull off his jackboots and, though the German kicked like mad, finally got them off, too. It was a weird sight – Rebarbora straddling the guy’s back and thumping away at his head, Houba pulling the guy’s pants off including his belt with its revolver and hooked-on hand grenades.

‘There!
Du Verdamntes deutsches Schwein!’
Reverend Houba said in good high-school German and then let go of the guy. Rebarbora stood up, too. The German got up and started running. His long white underpants flashed in the sunlight as he sprinted across the lawn, heading west.

‘Good morning,’ I said to Reverend Houba.

‘Good morning,’ he said, gazing after the fleeing German. ‘The scoundrel!’

‘What happened?’ I said.

‘He wanted to hide in the church!’ the preacher said indignantly.

‘Really?’

‘We caught him just in time.’

‘Well, you certainly got rid of him,’ I said.

‘May it be a lesson to him – the barbarian,’ the preacher said. He looked around. ‘Where’s his gun?’

‘Here,’ said Mr Rebarbora, picking the rifle up. It was a handsome though obviously battle-worn German rifle. The preacher took it, looked it over, and said, ‘God only knows how many lives this thing has on its conscience.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Do you know how to use it?’

‘Know how to use it?’ said the preacher as if I’d insulted
him. ‘I’ll have you know I was a Czech Legionnaire. I’ve had plenty of experience with toys like these in my time.’

‘Maybe this one’s different, though.’

The preacher scowled and pulled back the bolt. The bullets flew out of the gun on to the grass.

‘No different,’ he said.

‘Well, then, that’s fine,’ I said. ‘Are you going over to the brewery also?’

‘No, I’m staying right here. I’d just like to see somebody else try to hide out in my church!’

‘I’d hardly recommend it,’ said Haryk.

‘I guess not,’ said the preacher with a grin.

‘Not unless somebody’s eager to walk around in his underwear.’

‘Well, good-bye, Reverend,’ I said.

‘Good-bye,’ said the preacher, and everybody mumbled their good-byes and the preacher and his Sunday school teacher went back into the church and we went on our way. After a while Lucie said, ‘Haryk, are you sure you’re all going to be all right?’ she said.

‘What’s there to worry about?’ said Haryk. ‘You can see for yourself the Krauts are on the run, can’t you?’

‘Well, sure. I just hope the SS won’t come through.’

‘Oh, no. Don’t worry,’ said Haryk. We went along the path by the river till we got to the brewery. Others were headed there too – most of them wearing armbands. The brewery was completely hidden behind fragrant blossoming trees. Some women were standing around in front of the gate. Men and boys, their faces set in patriotic expressions, were saying good-bye to them. A few of the women were bawling. We stopped and Lucie said, ‘Well, take care of yourselves.’

‘Good-bye, Lucie,’ I said and held out my hand. She squeezed it and smiled at me. I gave her a meaningful smile. Then she shook hands with Pedro and said good-bye to him, too.

‘See you,’ said Pedro. I watched to see whether Lucie and Haryk would kiss. They held hands and looked at each other.

‘Well, ’bye, Lucie,’ Haryk said.

‘ ’Bye,’ said Lucie. Then she put on one of those vaguely
distant expressions girls get when they’re with their boyfriends, even when there are other people around. Haryk kind of grinned. I stared at them and knew I was staring and knew I shouldn’t be staring but went right on staring anyway. Then Haryk leaned over and kissed her.

‘Good-bye,’ sighed Lucie and pulled away from him and then she said good-bye to us all again and we all said so long and then she turned and hurried off. I went in through the gate. The first people I bumped into were Benda and Vahar. They were standing around at the edge of the crowd, looking disgusted. Benda was still doggedly wearing his black fireman’s helmet. I said hello but they didn’t bother to answer.

‘What’s new with Prema?’

‘Still locked up,’ said Benda.

‘You mean old Cemelik hasn’t let him out yet?’ asked Haryk.

‘Hell, no.’

‘Are they going to let us in to see him, at least?’

‘No.’

‘Boy, I sure don’t envy him. Two days sitting around in that cellar,’ said Haryk. I looked around. The squad leaders were standing out in front of the main building, dressed in their hiking outfits, waiting. They were chatting together. They looked kind of pale. Major Weiss stood up by the door with Lieutenant Rubes and Captain Kuratko. All three were in uniform.

‘Well, what’re we going to do?’ I said.

‘Some uprising,’ said Haryk.

‘Three cheers for the Republic,’ I said.

‘Bottoms up,’ said Pedro.

‘Good morning, men,’ somebody said behind us. It was Benno with Fonda and Lexa.

‘Hi,’ I said.

‘Well, are you all steeled in your devotion to the holy cause of freedom?’ asked Lexa. ‘You hear Sabata’s speech?’

‘No. When?’ I said.

‘Last night over the public address system.’

‘I didn’t hear it,’ I said. ‘What crap did he come out with this time?’ I asked, and thought back to what I’d been doing then.

‘Oh, about devotion to the holy cause of freedom,’ Lexa said. ‘About how everybody should be prepared to sacrifice everything for their country if necessary.’

‘And especially about how everybody should obey orders so they won’t have to sacrifice anything,’ said Haryk.

A bugle blew. The bugler disappeared from the window of the main building and Major Weiss took his place. Major Weiss was holding a sheet of paper. It was getting hot as hell. The Major’s voice reached us clearly even though he was a long way off.

‘Order number twelve,’ he read. ‘All those who have not yet undergone military training are to report immediately behind the icehouse where they will be given basic instruction in military technique. Signed, Colonel Cemelik.’ Then Major Weiss held up another paper. ‘I will now read the names of those to whom this order applies, compiled on the basis of the induction forms,’ he said and started reading off names.

Boy, they’ve certainly got things running efficiently now, I thought, and then I remembered Prema and his naïve Robin-Hood notions of how to stage an uprising. This was the real thing, all right. With lists of names and everything. And the basic training in military technique. I watched the guys start off after their names had been called out, heading for the other side of the brewery yard. I saw Hrob’s red head, then Benda, Prochazka, and Vahar, then that little squirt Dobrman, who was hardly five feet tall, trotting eagerly across the yard. Then Weiss read off Zdenek’s name and I saw him in his mountain-climbing pants and his jacket with leather-patched elbows and left shoulder, wearing a Tyrolean hat with a knapsack on his back. He elbowed his way through the crowd towards the icehouse, his leg muscles bulging under his woollen knee socks. I still couldn’t see what Irena saw in him. And at the same time I wished she could see the same thing in me and wondered what it was that makes girls like Irena fall in love with somebody. When I heard my name called, I straightened up and went over to the icehouse, too. The untrained forces were sitting on the grassy bank that sloped up to the fence at the edge of the woods. Most of them had taken their jackets off and were
loafing around in the grass in the shade of the loading ramp trestle. The shadows of the trestle fell like a checkerboard across the men and the grass. Zdenek was sitting up next to the fence, already settling down to eat. He was just squatting there with his knees spread apart and his pants stretched tight across his thighs. He peered out at me from under his Tyrolean hat and I thought that with those big thighs crammed into those mountain-climber pants and with all those black hairs crawling out from under his sleeves and with that big suntanned mug of his he looked pretty repulsive. In fact, everything about him was repulsive. He was eating with his mouth open, gnawing away at some bread or whatever it was and I could hear him smacking his lips as I got closer. And this was the guy Irena had picked out. I couldn’t understand it. I would have loved to sock him in that big munching jaw and I didn’t have a doubt in the world but that I was better than he was and that Irena would be better off with me, but then it struck me maybe I really wasn’t all that much better than he was and when it came to what really counted with girls maybe he was better than I was, and just better in general since, after all, Irena was so wild about him and so I went up and said hello and sat down beside him.

‘How do you do,’ Zdenek said to me. ‘How’s it going?’

‘Same as with you, I guess.’

‘Look,’ said Zdenek. ‘I get the feeling all this doesn’t make much sense.’

‘All what?’

‘All this organization.’

‘Well, that’s an original thought,’ I said.

‘Boy, we had a troop that was really organized. All mountain climbers, see?’

‘Must’ve been great,’ I said.

‘I’ll say,’ went on Zdenek. ‘Tonda was our leader and it was just guys from the club.’

‘What happened?’

‘They disbanded us. I guess they’ve forbidden any kind of private organization. That’s what this army’s for and anybody who doesn’t obey will be treated like an outlaw.’

‘A bunch of crooks themselves,’ I said. ‘What’s Irena doing?’

‘She signed up for the Red Cross. Hey, there’s Tukes!’ Zdenek said suddenly and whistled their signal. Tukes, another mountain climber, came across the grass towards us. He had buckteeth and was wearing a ski cap and two other guys were with him. They were both wearing mountain-climbing pants with leather knee patches and jackets with more patches and Tyrolean hats.

So I quickly said to Zdenek, ‘Gee, there’s Benno. I’ve got to talk to him. See you later!’ It was all the same to Zdenek. He didn’t even hear me and he didn’t even look at Benno.

‘Well, greetings, gentlemen, greetings,’ he yodelled at them. ‘Come on, come on over!’

I went over to Benno and the other guys from the band who’d just shown up and just walking over there made me feel better. I’d always felt funny around Zdenek and all those sportsman types from the Alpine Club. I wasn’t the athletic type. I belonged to the band. The Alpinists made me sick with their knapsacks stuffed with bread and butter and their patented butter holders and all their talk about the beauties of the sun going down on the cliffs and about traversing here and chimneying there and about pietons and etriers and belaying and roping down. The whole business gave me a big pain and I only went around with them on account of Irena, because she did, and that’s why I floundered around, up and down the Ledecsky Rocks, dabbing my skinned knees and torn hands with iodine, and swinging all tangled up in loops of rope far out over the tops of the pine and spruce trees with the blue sky up above and grey cliffs in between whose sides had been gashed and etched by some primeval sea and flayed by the winds while down below, deep in the gulch over which I dangled, the moss grew soft and wet and dark in the shadows and there I was, clinging to those ropes like an untalented spider. Like the time I crossed from Five Fingers to Sleave Peak. It felt awfully weird up there on those ropes but it really gave you a good feeling, too, because there was Irena sitting over on Sleave Peak in her yellow sweater and those pants with the leather heart over her fanny, and she was watching me tensely
and telling me what to do next so it wasn’t half bad. It was kind of fun, in a way, to be a mountain climber and crawl everywhere with Irena and sleep beside her and the others at night in the cabin down under the cliffs. All that was great, except I was no mountain climber. They had to pull me along the rope with loops and I’d always fall at Chimney Rock and my knees would knock going up the side of the cliff. I just wasn’t built for that sort of thing. I was just interested in Irena and I did all that just on account of her and, man, what all I hadn’t done! But almost everything I ever did was on account of girls. Just like every other guy I ever knew. Only some were lucky enough to be able to do things they were cut out for, things they loved doing and were talented at and that the girl loved doing too. No such luck for me. I loved playing jazz and I was good at it and I didn’t enjoy crawling over cliffs and I was clumsy as hell at doing it. Irena was all for cliffs and nature and for getting up at half past three to see the sunrise and she said herself she wasn’t musical and she wasn’t. She’d only taken piano lessons because her daddy wanted her to and she couldn’t tell the difference between a trombone and a trumpet, but she didn’t even care. I did. I was happiest when we were up in Benno’s room, listening reverently to Armstrong’s ‘Ain’t Misbehaving’ or else when I was sitting at the Port Arthur sucking on the tenor reed and fiddling with the valves on its nice, cool, metallic body. That was the life for me. That was life and none of these other things were.

I went over to Benno and the others and joined them without a word. There was a big crowd behind the icehouse now. It looked like things should start any minute. We waited a while longer and then Major Weiss appeared around the corner of the icehouse in his elegant uniform. There was some other guy with him, a short guy with sergeant’s stripes on his arm. He was squat and stubby and looked like a stump.

‘Jeezuz,’ said Benno. ‘Is
he
going to instruct us?’

‘Looks that way,’ said Lexa.

Major Weiss blew his whistle and everybody stopped talking. He waited till everything got quiet and then said, ‘Men, I’m turning over command of this group to Sergeant Krpata who
will give you the necessary basic training. His orders must be obeyed without question, as you yourselves pledged to do when you signed up. Good luck!’

‘Thank you, sir!’ a couple of idiots called out feebly. Major Weiss said a few words to Krpata who clicked his heels and saluted. Major Weiss touched his cap casually and left. Company Sergeant Krpata looked us all over.

‘We’re in for a great time now,’ said Benno.

‘Don’t forget, it’s for the fatherland,’ Lexa said.