The Cowards (17 page)

‘Could be.’

‘It sure doesn’t look that way, though, does it?’

‘Well, nothing’ll happen down here at the brewery. But the communists’ll pull something.’

‘You think so?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘Well, fine. It’s all the same to me.’

‘Me, too,’ I said, and it was. Not quite, though. I wanted them to pull something since it was pretty clear this army here wouldn’t do much. And something had to happen. If the revolution had already started, then something had better happen, and I thought about Irena. The rain eased up a little. It was just drizzling now. We sat there in silence, thinking our separate thoughts. Time passed. All of a sudden some of the guys in front rushed out of the shed.

‘What is it?’ I called.

‘They’re going to read a proclamation,’ somebody yelled up in front.

‘Should we go?’ I said to Rosta.

‘Okay,’ said Rosta and got up.

We climbed down the pile of logs and brushed off our pants. Outside, the yard was full again. The crowd had gathered in front of the main building. There on the steps by the front door stood Colonel Cemelik, Major Weiss, and Dr Sabata. Colonel Cemelik wasn’t wearing his cape any more and he was holding a sheaf of papers. The crowd, in their hiking outfits and raincoats, with their knapsacks strapped on their backs, pressed forward around the steps and stared up at the colonel. Cemelik started reading out something but we couldn’t understand a
word. The crowd buzzed and there were yells of ‘Quiet!’ and ‘Listen!’ Cemelik stopped reading and looked out over the crowd and gradually it quieted down. Then Cemelik started reading again, but he had such a weak voice you could just barely hear him. He said something about all squads being divided up into six-man patrol squads, each under the command of an older, more experienced soldier and that, in order to assure order and security, these teams would conduct three-hour patrols through the town. That really made me sore. I’d thought this army would at least put up anti-tank traps or something and lie in wait for the enemy. But patrol? Then Cemelik raised his voice.

‘First Lieutenant Dr Panozka!’

‘Here!’ somebody called out from the crowd.

‘Lieutenant, you’ll take charge of patrol team number one,’ said Cemelik. Then he told him to stand over by the icehouse and read out the names of his squad. He held the list in front of him and his voice sounded very crisp and military. Lexa and Pedro were in it. I could see them working their way through the crowd towards Dr Panozka. He stood over by the icehouse in his hunting coat, his hands folded over his paunch, waiting for the members of his squad. I listened some more. They were all there. Mr Moutelik, Commissioner Machacek, Attorney Frinta, Mr Jungwirth. They were all older, more experienced soldiers and they each got their six picked privates. A magnificent army. And it was in good hands. Then all of a sudden Cemelik read out my name, too, and I belonged to Dr Bohadlo’s patrol. I knew him, too. He was a lawyer. I saw him standing by the icehouse in his tight-fitting knickers, a plump guy with a big bottom, chubby legs, a pudgy face, and a blue beret on top of his head. Benno in his cap and Haryk were already standing beside him and three other guys I only knew by sight. I joined them.

‘How do you do?’ I said to Dr Bohadlo.

‘Hello there. Welcome,’ he said benignly, and his mouth stretched a little as if he were smiling.

‘Hi,’ said Haryk.

‘Hi,’ I said.

Then we all stood there silently and waited until the army had been divided up. It was already noon and I was hungry. I’d had about all I could take of this rain and this hunger and these patrols and this army. I wanted some food. I wondered what was going to happen now. Whether they’d dismiss us to go home for lunch or whether they had a field kitchen somewhere and were going to serve soup. I would rather have gone home because it was Sunday. But a soup kitchen had its attractions, too.

‘Jesus, I’m hungry,’ I said.

‘Me, too,’ said Haryk. ‘Aren’t you, Benno?’

‘Shut up,’ said Benno. He was mad. With his dimensions, it was no surprise. I was convinced you could have heard his stomach growling with hunger if it hadn’t been for all the noise. We looked at Cemelik. The crowd around him had thinned out and broken up into small groups scattered around the yard. Then Cemelik stopped reading and announced that all patrol commanders should report to his office for further instructions.

‘Well, I’ll be going, boys,’ said Dr Bohadlo. ‘You’ll wait here for me, right?’

‘Yes,’ said Haryk.

‘Sure,’ Benno and I said.

Dr Bohadlo left. He trotted off on his chubby little legs, bouncing along because he suffered from shortened tendons or something. We stood there. It started raining again so we got up next to the wall of the icehouse and looked around. Steam rose from the woods beyond the brewery. It was noon-time and quiet. I could imagine the fires crackling in kitchen stoves all over town and the pots on top of the stoves bubbling away and giving off good smells. But the menfolk wouldn’t be coming home for lunch today because they’d patrol the town. It was like a county Sokol festival or something. And then I thought about Irena again. Christ, I thought about her all the time. A two-seat Aero roadster drove into the yard and Jirka Krocan jumped out. He had on a leather coat. A Czechoslovak flag fluttered from the radiator cap. I thought about Irena. God, maybe that was all I could think about. And I was supposed to
be one of the intelligentsia. I would have liked to know what the intelligentsia thinks about and if they really think about the things they say they do. Naturally, inventors and scientists and people like that think about their bacteria and electrodes and so on. But I meant the ordinary intelligentsia. Like me and Benno and Haryk. And Irena. Irena told me once that she went into the woods by herself with the dog to think. About literature and politics and I don’t know what all. And I felt secretly embarrassed when she told me that, because when I’m alone usually all I ever think about is girls, and I felt inferior compared to her. But that had been a long time ago. An awfully long time ago. I wasn’t like that any more. I didn’t trouble my head with thoughts any more. I’d already caught on to what it was all about, to what really mattered. Nothing really mattered. Or, if anything did, then it was girls and having as much fun as you could with them. I wondered what Benno was thinking about and figured he was probably thinking about lunch now, and then once in a while about Helena and music, and Haryk was probably thinking about music, about ‘Swingin’ the Blues’ and ‘Sweet Sue’ where he’s got a big guitar solo, but you don’t really think about music, you just get the whole band playing in your head and you play all the instruments simultaneously, getting dazzling effects from the trombone’s lowest registers and letting the trumpet squeal away. That’s how you think about music, and you don’t need intellect for that either. In general, it seemed to me that intelligence was something awfully vague, even non-existent, and that probably the only intelligent people were Socrates and Einstein and people like that. But besides them nobody. And so, so what if I was thinking about Irena? I liked thinking about her, about her mouth and her breasts and her hips and about how it’d feel to have it all there under your hands and about what’s under her skirt and my thoughts were as common as dirt and I felt fine all the same.

‘Shit,’ said Benno.

‘What’s wrong?’ said Haryk.

‘What’re they shitting around for? They want us to, sit around here all day without having lunch?’

‘It looks that way.’

‘You’d think they could at least set up a goddamn field kitchen!’

Benno was so mad he couldn’t see straight. Rain dripped off his cap and his ruddy face looked dangerous. The gentlemen with the blue-and-red armbands emerged from the main building. Each carried a sheet of paper. As they stepped out into the rain, they started turning up their collars and stuffing their papers into their pockets. Then each walked off to his own squad. Dr Bohadlo, his face glowing and pompous, came over to us.

‘Well, boys, let’s form up and get going,’ he said. ‘Where?’ said Benno.

‘We’ve been assigned the centre of town as far as Pozner’s factory, then down around the old Jewish Cemetery, through the ghetto, and then back here to the brewery.’

‘And what’re we going to do?’

‘We’ll make the rounds every three hours and then have three hours free.’

‘And we’re going right now?’

‘Yes. It’s half past twelve now, so this time we’ll make an exception and patrol for only two and a half hours.’

‘You mean we’re not going to have any lunch?’

‘You’ll survive. This once,’ smiled Dr Bohadlo.

‘That’s a lousy trick to pull. Without food I’m not going anywhere,’ said Benno and he meant it.

Dr Bohadlo took it as a joke though and he laughed. ‘Fine, then. A small sacrifice for the Fatherland,’ he said. ‘You’re in the army now. Line up two by two behind me.’ Then he turned his back on us and lifted his hand like they do in Sokol when you’re supposed to fall in.

‘Shit,’ said Benno softly.

The three guys whose names I didn’t know promptly fell in behind Dr Bohadlo. The third one looked around at us and Benno shoved Haryk up to stand next to him. Haryk struck his hands in his raincoat pockets. Meanwhile Dr Bohadlo still stood there with his arm up in the air and his knickers stretching across his fat behind. The two boys in the first row stood at
attention behind him. The guy next to Haryk did, too. Haryk stood hunched over, his collar turned up against the rain.

‘In step now – hup!’ said Dr Bohadlo and flung out his left leg. The three boys leaned suddenly to the left and started off on their left feet, too. Haryk lagged behind, but soon got in step. Benno and I brought up the rear. Before long we were pretty far behind the others.

‘Damn,’ I said.

‘Jerks,’ said Benno and then we hurried up to join the column. With Dr Bohadlo in the lead, we marched along over the cobblestone pavement towards the gate. It wasn’t so bad, marching along in step. I looked around and saw nobody was looking at us. So it wasn’t too bad. Anyway there were plenty of other centipedes just like us all following their red-and-blue armbanded leaders. As we neared the gate, I saw it was closed. A man in uniform stood in front of the gate, a sergeant’s insignia on his epaulets. He held a rifle with a fixed bayonet. Dr Bohadlo headed straight for the gate. The sergeant raised his rifle, opened the gate, and we swung right through like the London Horse Guard. Dr Bohadlo executed a faultless left turn. We marched along the highway towards the bridge. I looked left, off towards the Fort Arthur. Then we crossed the bridge and I looked up at Irena’s window. Nobody there. Not a face in sight. We marched quietly towards the station. Mrs Manesova was standing on the corner in front of the County Office Building. When she saw us, she hurried after us.

‘When are you coming home, Benno?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know.’

‘When will they let you go?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Aren’t you hungry? Don’t you want something to eat?’

We kept marching along at an unslackened pace with Mrs Manesova trotting alongside.

‘Got anything with you?’ asked Benno eagerly.

‘No. I thought you were coming home.’

‘I don’t know when I’ll get back. No idea when they’ll let us go.’

‘Where are you going?’

‘To Pozner’s and back.’

‘So then I … I’ll pack you a lunch and wait here for you, all right?’

‘Yes. Do that.’

‘All right,’ Mrs Manesova stopped. Benno turned.

‘Or else, maybe … how about bringing it to the brewery for me.’

‘Where?’ said Mrs Manesova, hurrying after us again.

‘To the brewery, by the gate.’

‘All right. I’ll wrap you up a piece of the rabbit. Would you like that?’

‘Yeah. And some salami.’

‘Yes. By the brewery gate, is that right?’

‘Yeah. So long now.’

‘Good-bye.’

Mrs Manesova stood there looking after us. I glanced over at Benno. He was satisfied. Haryk turned around.

‘Then you’ll be ready to fight – right, Benno?’ he said.

‘Right.’

‘Quiet, boys. No talking on patrol,’ said Dr Bohadlo.

We stopped talking. We crossed the tracks and turned up past the Messerschmidt plant on Jirasek Boulevard. There were only a few people out. Most of the men had gone to the brewery and the women were sitting at home. I saw my parents looking out the window. Father was an invalid from the First World War so he didn’t have to take part in this. I pretended I hadn’t seen them. I didn’t know quite how I should have greeted them. We passed under our window and kept on going. Marching right out here on the street was the bad part. It was silly, marching around without any guns. Still, the few people we did come across looked at us respectfully. And it went right on raining. I was starting to feel cold. We marched across the square, around Sokol Hall, past the high school and down Kocanda Street to Pozner’s factory. Pozner’s house stood silent and the blinds were all down. I wondered what Blanka, Pozner’s daughter, was doing. She always came to high school in a car driven by a chauffeur and I knew she must be scared now since she was hysterical any way. Lucie had told me once
that Blanka got temper tantrums and rolled all over the floor, and that she gave the servants there a very rough time. Lucie and Blanka had been sort of half friends but not close at all since Blanka wasn’t really friendly with any of the local girls. And last year she’d gone off to take dancing lessons in Prague every week by car. I thought about her, because she was really very pretty, a special kind of beauty that was all mixed up with those millions that were waiting for her. Actually, they weren’t waiting for her now since old Pozner would be locked up. Not that anybody really wanted to lock him up since none of the local bigwigs had anything special against him. They’d more or less all gone along with him, at least until up to just recently. But he’d compromised himself too much. It couldn’t be overlooked any more. And then there was young Pozner. Rene, with his gold rings and sports clothes. And his post as chief engineer out at the factory. And going hunting with Miss Arnostova who came all the way from Moravia as Rene’s fiancée and went out with the family to chamber concerts and to banquets thrown for the German officers. A stupid family, the Pozners. Lada Serpon was a millionaire, too, but he was a great guy compared to Rene. Rene was a dunce. I didn’t have anything against millionaires or feel any envy at all, but Rene was a stuck-up jackass. I really wanted those Pozners to be sitting in their living-room or somewhere trembling all over with fright. We turned back around the factory and into the ghetto, past the old Jewish Cemetery with its toppled gravestones. There weren’t any Jews in the ghetto any more. We passed the old Jewish school and I thought about Mr Katz, the cantor I used to go to for my German lessons, and it made me feel sad. On Jew Street, the rain came down in an even more melancholy way than before and the battered old school stood there. I remembered the evenings long ago in the cantor’s kitchen when we’d forget about grammar and literature for a while, forget about Goethe and Schiller and Chamisso, and just talk about the Germans and grumble and the old cantor would lament. What we Jews have gone through, he said, that is something nobody knows – nobody. And from the corner where the stove was and where the embers glowed, the cantor’s
fat old wife would murmur her agreement and the cantor would start telling me what the Germans were planning to do to the Jews and I’d reassure him that it wasn’t going to be like that, but knew it would be, so then I’d change the subject and talk about the cantor’s little granddaughter Hannerle, and then the cantor would forget all about everything else and take out the Hebrew primer he’d already bought for when she’d start to school, but she never did because less than a year later they were all shipped off to the gas ovens. They never came back. I thought about grubby ugly little Hannerle and about her black-haired mother and about the matzohs the cantor always gave me on holidays and about the times I’d cautiously slip out of school so nobody – not even any of my best friends – would notice that I still went to the cantor’s house. And then as we marched through the ghetto, I remembered Bondy who used to live farther on down the street and at whose house we first began to put our band together, and the old xylophone on which I used to play ‘Donkey Serenade,’ and Bondy’s rotting old grandfather dying in the next room of paralysis, and Mr Bondy who hung on to his shop until the very last minute, and his pianist’s fingers and his Mendelssohn, and as we passed the synagogue with its broken windows I remembered the cantor’s daughter’s wedding when the synagogue was full of hats and the rabbi’s wedding sermon full of optimism and joy, and all the Kostelec Jews were there in all their finery, Mr Pick, a director at our bank, Dr Strass, all white and tiny, the Steins and the Goldsteins and the cantor’s daughter and all the mystical talk about the prenuptial ceremonies for an Orthodox Jewish bride. I could imagine it all again, absolutely clear and distinct. I imagined her naked in the bath with all the Jewish women of Kostelec around, washing her and mumbling prayers. I didn’t know whether that was the way they really did it or not but it was nice to think about and we kept on going, past the well with the Hebrew inscription at the end of the ghetto, and somehow it all made me feel terribly sad. Dr Bohadlo, stuffed into his silly-looking knickers, the back of his fat little neck all red, marched along briskly. But all those others were gone – the cantor and the rabbi and Hannerle and
all of them. Tears came to my eyes and my throat tightened up. Christ! I’m as sentimental as an old whore. But I felt sad. What did I care about the rabbi? What did I care about them? It was probably just all those memories. But they were nice memories. But then memories always were.