The Cowards Page 2

  When we’d finished the piece, Benno said, ‘I sure missed that in Schlausen, and that’s a fact.’

  ‘I’ll bet you did,’ said Fonda. ‘Only you came in half a bar too late on your solo.’

  ‘Like hell I did,’ said Benno.

  ‘Well, you did. It’s supposed to go like this: tadlladadataaaa,’ Fonda sang out, waving a finger and tapping his foot and bobbing that curly little head of his on top of his long neck. Fonda was infallible. Every note was right on pitch and it had an authoritative sound.

  ‘Yeah?’ said Benno, humbled. Then he lifted his trumpet to his lips, played the opening bars, and looked at Fonda.

  ‘No,’ said Fonda and sang it out once again. Benno repeated it. It was just right this time. I expected Fonda to find something wrong with my playing, too, but he didn’t.

  All he said was, ‘We’ll take it from the top,’ then waited for us to quiet down, rapped, and we started in again. In those days we didn’t dare improvise very much and just went by the score. We had a great band though. Better than anything for miles around, that’s for sure. We played Bob Crosby-style Dixieland very well. The only trouble was in the bass. Fortunately, though, the bass played so softly that it didn’t make much difference. I’d memorized my part. I just closed my eyes and fingered the keys on my sax, thinking how nice it would be to start daydreaming again, as usual, since dreaming’s been a habit with me for as long as I can remember. Ever since ninth grade, to be exact. That’s when I fell in love with Judy Garland and that’s when it all began. I thought about myself and about her, but mainly about myself, and I thought how things would be if. And usually the thoughts themselves were so wonderful that they were enough for me. Sometimes I even thought it was probably better just to think about something than to actually live through it in real life, at least in some ways. So I started daydreaming again. It was really a wonderful feeling to sit there playing a piece of music that had practically become a part of your own body and at the same time to be daydreaming with your eyes closed. The syncopated rhythms echoed through my skull and I thought about Irena, or rather about myself, how much I loved her and how wonderful it would be to be with her, and how it was really better to be with her this way than for real and not know what to say or what to do. This way I didn’t have to say anything at all, or just say something and then listen to how it sounded in my imagination and not to think about anything particular, just about Irena in general. There was supposed to be a revolution coming up and it was nice to think about that, too. And have your last will and testament all written up, like I did. Saying that I’d never loved anybody in my life except Irena and that all I wanted in the world was for her to know, as she read these lines, that everything I’d done and gone through was important only because it had all been in some way connected with her, that I’d lived and died only for her and that I’d loved her. The best part of the whole thing was the past tense. But the rest was pretty good, too. That part about ‘these lines’ and how I’d ‘never loved anyone else in my life’ and that ‘I don’t want anything in the world’. Words like that – ‘world’ and ‘life’ – sounded great. They were impressive. And when I thought about it honestly, it was a good thing, too, that I was in love with Irena and that she was going with Zdenek and maybe I was better off just daydreaming and writing testimonials to my love. Of course it would have been nice, too, if I’d been going with her myself. Everything was nice. Absolutely everything. Actually, there wasn’t anything bad in the whole wide world.

  ‘Benno,’ said Lexa when we’d finished, ‘come on, tell the truth. You practised while you were in the concentration camp, didn’t you? Your blues sound like Armstrong.’

  ‘It was the bedbugs. They really bothered me,’ said Benno.

  ‘Honest? There were bedbugs?’

  ‘What did you think, man? The place was crawling with them.’

  ‘Why, Benny’s still scared of them,’ said Helena.

  ‘Scared stiff,’ said Benno.

  ‘Where at?’ said Lexa.

  Helena raised her eyebrows and pretended she hadn’t heard. ‘He practically takes the bed apart every night before he goes to sleep. Why, he even leaves the light on all night long.’

  ‘Why?’ I said.

  ‘Bedbugs are scared of light,’ said Benno.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Sure. A simple trick like that’s enough for them. As long as the light’s on they don’t come out. They’re awfully dumb.’

  ‘They sure are,’ said Lexa.

  ‘Except in camp we weren’t allowed to keep the lights on and that was rough. Bedbugs leave some people alone, but I was all chewed up by morning.’

  ‘Well, they had plenty to work on with you,’ said Lexa.

  Benno didn’t say anything.

  ‘You put on a little weight while you were away, Benny,’ said Haryk.

  ‘Maybe he had pull with the camp boss,’ said Lexa.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Benno. ‘I had to shine his boots every morning and pull ’em off for him every night.’

  ‘No kidding.’

  ‘Sure. Man, it was like something out of Good Soldier Schweik.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, I’d always stick out my ass …’

  ‘Benny!’ said Helena.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘You know I don’t like you to talk dirty.’

  ‘But, honey …’

  ‘No, I won’t stand for it. One more dirty word out of you and I’m going home.’

  ‘But ass isn’t such a dirty word.’

  ‘I’m going,’ said Helena, and got up. Benno jumped up and rushed after her. He waddled, he was so fat and lazy, and his white shirt stuck to his back.

  ‘But, baby,’ he said.

  ‘No, I told you not to use dirty words and you said it again.’

  ‘Aw, come on, baby!’

  ‘No. Good-bye.’

  We all watched the scene with interest and I stopped daydreaming. Benno was completely under Helena’s thumb. Henpecked. A classic example. I couldn’t understand it. She could make him do absolutely anything. He trotted behind her and the folds of his sticky shirt quivered.

  ‘Aw, baby!’ he implored in a frightened whine. He ran up and grabbed her hand.

  ‘Leave me alone,’ she said.

  ‘But, honey, where you going?’

  ‘Home.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because you said a dirty word.’

  ‘But I didn’t say anything!’

  ‘Yes, you did. Don’t deny it.’

  ‘But it wasn’t that bad.’

  ‘No. I said you weren’t supposed to use words like that. You know I don’t like it.’

  ‘Aw, come on, baby!’

  ‘Leave me alone! Let go of me!’

  ‘Don’t be mad at me.’

  ‘Let go!’

  ‘Helena, please, don’t be mad at me!’

  ‘I said let go of me!’

  ‘Come on, baby! Please! Stay here.’

  Helena stopped pulling away. You could see how she led him around by the nose. He had a soft heart, like they say all fat people have. I don’t know whether it’s true in all cases but Benno anyway sure had one helluva soft heart. Helena looked sulky.

  ‘Apologize!’ she said.

  ‘Helena, please excuse me,’ he muttered in a fast whisper. We were all listening, fascinated.

  ‘Promise you won’t ever say any more dirty words.’

  ‘I’ll never say any more dirty words again.’

  ‘Not one!’

  ‘Not one dirty word.’

  ‘No, the whole thing!’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Say the whole thing.’

  ‘Again?’

  ‘Uh huh.’

  ‘But, baby …’

  ‘Benny!’

  ‘But, baby …’

  ‘Well, are you going to say it or aren’t you?’

  ‘But, baby, I just said it!’

  ‘A
re you going to say it or aren’t you?’

  I couldn’t understand how he could be so dumb. Not dumb in general, just dumb with her.

  ‘I’ll never say a single dirty word again.’

  ‘And apologize.’

  ‘Helena, please excuse me and I’ll never say a single dirty word again,’ he said quickly and softly to get it over with. He was annihilated.

  ‘All right, now go and play,’ said Helena and sat down. He turned and obediently trudged back to his place. We acted as though nothing had happened. I picked up my sax from the stand and slung the cord around my neck.

  ‘Let’s go. What’ll it be now?’ I said.

  ‘Wait a minute,’ said Fonda. ‘What’s the story about taking off those boots?’

  ‘Yeah. What happened, Benno?’ said Lexa.

  Benno picked up his trumpet. ‘Well, I always had to stick out my rear and grab his leg between my knees and he pushed against my rear with his other foot until I pulled off his boot.’

  ‘I see,’ said Lexa. ‘Yeah, I know what you mean.’

  ‘Let’s play, gang. Let’s get going,’ I said again.

  ‘Okay,’ said Fonda. ‘Get out the “Bob Cats”.’

  There was a shuffling of paper as the boys hunted for ‘Bob Cats’. I found it right away, and as I shifted around in my chair to get comfortable I noticed the way Lucie was making eyes at Haryk. She had pretty eyes. The green soda pop in front of her still sparkled like emeralds, and behind her the sky outside was blood red and the windows in the castle glittered. A whole row was lit up on the first floor, where the ballroom named after Piccolomini was, and then two or three windows on the second floor. The big shots were probably starting to panic. A little star twinkled right over the turret of the castle. Fonda rapped four times, Brynych started off on a drum solo. We waited till it was over and then we all came in, Venca with a wonderful, gutty glissando sliding up and down the scale and Lexa’s heartbreaking moan. It was good. We hit it just right. I saw a smile spread over Fonda’s face. Then I started thinking about Benno. It was funny, I knew, but this was something I couldn’t and probably never would understand. Allowing yourself to be roped up and led around and humiliated like that, losing control over yourself that way. I’ve never lost control of myself. I could never get so mad at anybody that I’d really blow my top, and love never made me lose my head either. When I had my arms around some girl and was jabbering away, I had to act as though I was talking like that out of sheer ecstasy and excitement and all that kind of thing. I really could have talked pretty sensibly, only that probably would have made her mad, and so I’d always talk a lot of nonsense. I had to act like I was completely gone on her and that she took my breath away and so on, and at the same time I always had an embarrassing feeling that girls could see right through my act and that they were laughing at me. But none of them ever really saw through it. They asked for it. Probably everybody talks that way in such situations, so it doesn’t seem funny to girls. Only it was hard to imagine a guy really meaning what he said. God knows. Certainly none of the girls ever found out. Probably boys really are smarter than girls. All of a sudden it occurred to me that I ought to be thinking about Irena if I was supposed to be in love with her. So I started thinking about her. At first I couldn’t. I tried to picture her and I couldn’t. So then I remembered how I’d looked down her bosom at the swimming pool recently and then it worked. I thought about how nice it would be to sleep with her and that Zdenek was sleeping with her and I started to be pleasantly jealous and that was fine. Then it was my turn for the tenor solo and I started to gulp away in the middle registers where the tenor sax sounds best and I forgot all about Irena, but she was still there in the back of my mind while I played my big solo from ‘Bob Cats’. My nice big solo and I felt fine. I didn’t even mind that there was probably going to be a revolution and that it wouldn’t be so nice to really get hurt or killed. Instead, it was nice to think about my Last Will and Testament and heroism and things like that. When I finished my solo, I looked up and noticed old Winter sitting behind the tap staring into nowhere with those bloodshot eyes of his. He had dull eyes that wobbled in a watery kind of way and he was daydreaming just like me, except not about Irena but probably about the station restaurant he’d wanted to lease ever since he’d been a kid like us, or about some big hotel with four waiters, or maybe just getting hold of some real good Scotch and selling it to us. He didn’t drink himself, maybe just to be different or something, or maybe he really did have progressive paralysis. His bald head glistened behind the taps and the brass pipes gleamed. Outside the windows the blood-red glow darkened and the stars began to shine. We finished ‘Bob Cats’ by heart, playing it in the dark.

  ‘Helena, turn on the lights over there, will you?’ said Fonda when we’d finished. Helena reached up above her head, felt along the wall for a minute, then found the switch. The bulb in the ceiling came on and the way things looked surprised us all. All of a sudden you could see everything clearly. I noticed Lucie’s mouth, how red it was in the electric light, and how dark it had got outside the windows. Haryk started strumming some kind of bouncy, romantic improvisation on the guitar and he grinned over at Lucie. I leafed through the sheet music.

  ‘I saw Uippelt from Messerschmidt today,’ said Haryk, ‘heading out of town on his bike as fast as he could go.’

  ‘What about his old lady?’

  ‘I don’t know. He was all by himself.’

  ‘Anyway, it’s funny he stuck around here so long since everybody knows him and the kind of bastard he is,’ said Lexa.

  ‘You should have pushed him off his bike and grabbed it,’ said Fonda.

  ‘Very clever. And then he pulls out a gun and kills me, right?’

  ‘Don’t forget, there’s a revolution going on,’ said Lexa.

  Benno called out from the back, ‘That’s been postponed until further notice.’

  ‘You really think anything’s going to happen?’ asked Fonda.

  ‘Why, sure.’ Lexa spoke with an authoritative tone because the Germans had executed his father. Since then, he always knew more than we did. But as far as this was concerned, I knew more than he did.

  ‘No,’ said Benno. ‘You don’t think our city fathers can do anything, do you?’

  ‘Well, wait and see.’

  ‘I’ll have to wait a long time then. They’re all scared shitless. The revolution’s simply going to be put off indefinitely, that’s all.’

  I looked over at Helena, but she didn’t say anything. She was reading the paper.

  I said, ‘No, not the city fathers. You’ll see, though. Something’s going to happen.’

  ‘And Chief of Police Rimbalnik’s going to run the whole show I suppose?’

  ‘Not him. You just wait.’

  ‘You talk as if you were mixed up in something,’ said Haryk.

  I laughed. I was glad the boys didn’t know what was going on. They didn’t believe me because they weren’t in on anything themselves but they weren’t sure whether maybe I wasn’t. I wasn’t in very deep but at least I knew a little bit. I knew about something, but wasn’t too sure myself what it really added up to. I’d found out about it from Prema and wasn’t supposed to tell anybody.

  ‘Oh, come on, kid, don’t act so mysterious,’ said Benno.

  I didn’t feel like acting mysterious because that was silly. Even though the others didn’t know anything, they still knew enough to realize that anything I was mixed up with couldn’t be anything very earthshaking. So for a while I just kind of played like I was somebody who’s in on a secret, and then I told what I knew. Prema had told me, and he was in contact with Perlik who’d been arrested by the Gestapo a month ago. He must have known something. It couldn’t have been much, though, because probably nobody knew much. Anyway, the whole thing was just being improvised. But I didn’t care and I was glad to get it off my chest and it made me seem important and if nothing finally came of the whole affair, the boys would forget about it.