The Cowards Read online

  ‘All I know,’ I said, ‘is that something’s supposed to start when Radio Prague stops broadcasting.’

  ‘Where’d you hear that?’

  I shrugged.

  ‘I know it.’

  ‘Come on. Who told you?’

  ‘Look, I had to promise I wouldn’t tell, but you just wait and see.’

  ‘Don’t tell me you guys really think something’s going to happen?’ said Fonda.

  ‘Well, what d’you think?’

  ‘Nothing’s going to happen. Anyway, the Germans are done for – finished.’

  I laughed. I agreed with him but I had to laugh because it wouldn’t have looked right for me to agree with him now. I was supposed to be mixed up in something and I had to want something to happen. Besides, I didn’t have any objections to it. It opened up all those different possibilities as far as Irena was concerned. Heroism. And Zdenek getting killed maybe. Yes, I realized, he could get killed. That would be better than if I got killed, though there was something to be said for that, too. But I didn’t mean it seriously. Not now, because now I wasn’t daydreaming. It opened up a whole new perspective that, this way, I could get rid of Zdenek very effectively. If he was killed, I’d be glad to go to visit his grave with Irena. Irena would feel that was very noble of me and I’d be very gentle and understanding so as not to awaken any painful memories in her. I’d go visit his grave with her absolutely unselfishly. With Zdenek out of the picture, I’d be extremely unselfish. So I didn’t have anything against an uprising. But that was the only good reason I could see for fighting for any patriotic or strategic reasons. The Germans had already lost the war anyway, so it didn’t make any sense. It was only because of Irena that I wanted to get into it. To show off. That’s all. So when Fonda said the Germans were already finished, I laughed as if I thought they were anything but.

  ‘No, listen. I mean, what’s the point?’ Fonda persisted.

  ‘I’m not saying what the point of it all is. I’m just telling you what I know,’ I said.

  ‘Well, anyhow, there’ll be a lot of laughs,’ said Haryk and he winked at Lucie again. She sat there with her elbows propped on the table and the straw between her lips, sipping her soda pop. When Haryk grinned at her, she squinted up her eyes. Boy, were they in tune. It got under my skin.

  ‘It’ll be a laugh, all right, the day Pop closes the store and starts out after the Germans with his squirrel gun,’ said Benno.

  ‘And when old Cemelik leads the attack on the high school,’ said Haryk.

  ‘Has your old man had his uniform cleaned already?’ asked Lexa.

  ‘You bet,’ said Fonda. ‘And the moths had really done a job on it.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘On the ass,’ said Lexa.

  ‘Lexa!’ bleated Haryk so he sounded exactly like Helena.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You know you’re not supposed to talk dirty.’

  ‘But, honey …’

  ‘All right, boys. That’s enough of that!’ screamed Helena.

  ‘Apologize!’ continued Haryk.

  ‘Helena, ple … ple … please forgive me,’ Lexa stuttered and Helena kept yelling, ‘Now you quit that right now or I’m going home!’

  ‘Aw, honey,’ said Lexa. Helena rose, turned, and opened the door. Then she left without a word. There was a clatter behind me as if somebody had knocked over a music stand and then Benno’s voice.

  ‘Helena! Wait! Where you going?’ Benno bumped into me from behind as he hurried towards the door with that waddling gait of his. His white shirt glimmered in the dark hallway and then he disappeared after Helena.

  ‘Well, he’s really in for it now,’ said Lexa and laughed.

  ‘Jesus, Benno’s dumb,’ said Haryk.

  ‘I’ll say. And she sure does make the most of it.’

  ‘If only she was worth it.’

  ‘She hasn’t got a brain in her head,’ said Lexa.

  ‘Oh,’ said Fonda, ‘she’s not all that bad.’

  ‘Jeee-sus,’ said Haryk.

  ‘Well, she’s got a nice face anyway.’

  ‘Her ass is better,’ said Haryk.

  ‘Haryk! Remember, Lucie’s here,’ said Lexa.

  I looked over at Lucie.

  ‘I’m used to it,’ she said.

  ‘Used to a foulmouth like Haryk? That’s saying a lot, if you ask me,’ said Lexa.

  ‘Look who’s talking,’ said Haryk.

  That was the way they usually talked. They never meant it seriously – just thought that kind of talk was very witty, and maybe it was. In reality, I mean. Books and novels always bubble with wit and sparkling repartee but in real life there’s nothing very witty. Usually all it amounts to is a kind of teasing, the way boys and girls tease each other when they’re together, though boys do it even among themselves. I don’t know whether girls talk that way among themselves, too, but boys do. Because if you can’t at least get each other all worked up by talking, then there really wouldn’t be anything to talk about if nothing special happens to be going on right then – like at a dance, for instance – or you don’t have anything really urgent to say. There wouldn’t be any point in talking all that junk you talk about at dances if it weren’t for the fun of teasing. Between boys and girls it’s as natural, as the day is long. Talking is probably about the same for them as sniffing is for dogs – and that’s the honest truth, nothing dirty or exaggerated about it. I know it and I think everybody else does too, except not everybody admits it. I do. Boys say all sorts of things and crack all sorts of corny jokes just so finally they can kiss their girls out in the hall. That’s true, at least as far as boys talking with girls is concerned. And it’s certainly true when boys talk among themselves in front of a girl. Maybe it isn’t always like that when they’re by themselves but then boys usually talk about girls when they’re by themselves, so even then it’s true, too. So that’s probably how it is with witty talk in general.

  Then Benno appeared in the doorway with Helena. He was looking as deflated as before and Helena sat down, looking peeved.

  ‘Let’s finish up early today. I’ve got to get back home,’ he said.

  ‘How come?’ said Lexa.

  ‘I’ve got to take a bath.’

  ‘First time since you got back from concentration camp, huh?’

  ‘Aw, no. You ought to know Benny better than that,’ said Fonda.

  ‘Shut up. Let’s go through “Riverside” again, then I’m taking off.’

  ‘Aw, don’t be silly.’

  ‘I’ve got to.’

  ‘Well, you don’t have to get so mad about it.’

  ‘What the hell? I’m not mad. I’ve just got to go home, that’s all.’

  ‘Take it easy on him. I’m going home early too,’ I said.

  ‘How come? Helena got you wrapped around her little finger, too?’ quipped Lexa.

  ‘Not Helena, Irena,’ said Haryk.

  ‘Okay,’ I said calmly. ‘Let’s play, shall we?’ I didn’t mind Haryk saying what he did because in general I didn’t mind if the boys knew about it. I’d got so I didn’t mind anything that had to do with Irena, I was so crazy about her. Fonda rapped on the piano.

  ‘All right, “Riverside” then. And Venca, watch out so you don’t louse up the beginning again.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Venca and emptied out his trombone. I looked into my sax and saw a little puddle shining at the bottom. The bigger the puddle, the more fun it was to empty it out.

  ‘Ready?’ demanded Fonda.

  ‘Ready,’ said Benno.

  Fonda rapped slowly and the brush on the cymbals led into ‘Riverside Blues’. Old Winter was dozing behind the counter and white drops trickled down from the tap into the mug underneath. Helena was browsing through another newspaper, bored. Music bored her, but she liked being married to the best trumpet player in the county so she stuck it out. Some old geezer stood planted in the doorway with a half pint of beer in his hand, staring at us. I could read his mind
. His eyes looked like two bugles and he had a mouth like a tuba. He certainly didn’t think the stuff we were producing was music. We didn’t either, really. Not just music. For us it was something more like the world. Like before Christ and after Christ. I couldn’t even remember what it had been like before jazz. I was probably interested in soccer or something – like our fathers who used to go to the stadium every Sunday and shout themselves hoarse. I wasn’t much more than a kind of miniature dad myself then. A dad shrunk down to about four foot five. And then along came Benno with his records and jazz and the first experiments in Benno’s house with a trumpet, piano, an old xylophone I’d dug up in the attic and two violins that Lexa and Haryk were learning to play because their parents wanted them to. And then Jimmy Lunceford and Chick Webb. And Louis Armstrong. And Bob Crosby. And then everything else was After Jazz. So that it really wasn’t just music at all. But that old geezer over there couldn’t understand that. He’d been ruined a long time ago by soccer and beer and brass band music. Hopelessly ruined and for all time. But Lucie wasn’t ruined, sitting there over what was left of her soda pop, her tanned legs gleaming underneath her skirt, one knee crossed over the other, and I remembered the greatest joke I’d ever thought up in my life, when I asked her to kiss me in the Petrin hall of mirrors so it would be like a thousand kisses all at once, and I began to regret I’d ever thrown her over, but then I realized it hadn’t been me at all but her who’d thrown me over, though I still had hopes there, plenty of hopes, and then my conscience bothered me that I wasn’t thinking about Irena so I started thinking about her and I joined in on the lament with everybody else and we wound up ‘Riverside’ like we never had before. Like we never had about twenty times before.

  When we’d finished, Helena got up and said, ‘Let’s go, Benny.’

  ‘Sure, right away, Helena,’ said Benno and put away his music.

  Fonda got up. ‘All right, that’s all. Boys, we’re going to play for a dance down at the spa any day now.’

  ‘You already lined it up?’ asked Haryk.

  ‘Yes. Medilek’s cleaned up the outdoor dance floor so we can go any day now.’

  ‘Great. That means money, men,’ said Venca.

  ‘That’s right. Millions,’ said Haryk, and put his guitar in the case.

  I got up and unscrewed the top of the saxophone. Then I tipped it over on one side where there aren’t any valves on the bottom and poured the puddle out on the floor. I put in the brush and twirled the tenor elegantly in my hand. The weight dropped out through the narrow end and I had a good feeling as I slowly pulled the brush up through the saxophone. Then I put it into the case, took the head, pulled out the mouthpiece and cleaned it with a wire. I unscrewed the reed, dried it, and wiped off the bakelite mouthpiece. Then I put everything into the case, locked it, and put on my coat. Everybody else was ready. There was always more work with a saxophone. I went over to old man Winter and paid my bill. All I’d had was one beer. With his drowsy eyes, old Winter got up behind the counter and gave me back fifty German pfennigs change. That reminded me of the revolution. ‘Good night,’ I called after the others into the May night.

  It was warm and starry, and as I came out into the darkness I was sort of blinded. At first all I could see against the greyish black of the night mist hanging over the town was a bunch of dark silhouettes. The windows of the castle still glittered on the other side of the valley. They weren’t paying any attention to the blackout. The dark figures in front of the Port Arthur were saying good-bye. ‘So long,’ I said and tagged along with Benno’s short fat figure and Helena’s female form. The others headed left towards the hospital. We were the only ones who went down towards the woods and around the brewery and over the bridge to the other side of the river where Benno’s house was. It was quiet. Our footsteps beat a three-part rhythm on the pavement and we didn’t talk. The silence was like before a storm. But maybe that was because I knew what was probably going to happen. Otherwise it was an ordinary kind of silence. We went past Dr Stras’s villa where German officers were quartered. The main gate was open; the Germans had probably already left. It’s always like that. The big brass clears out leaving the poor soldiers holding the bag. They’d made a field hospital out of the hotel on the square and there the wounded lay or hobbled around, sick and full of lice and pus. But Herr Regierungskommissar Kühl wasn’t around any more. He’d had a five-room apartment in the hotel until not long ago. And now God knows where he was. He left the whole job up in the air. The town was without a ruling military commander. Wounded Wehrmacht soldiers were hanging around dejectedly in Kühl’s apartment, which he’d generously turned over to the wounded. Everywhere it was quiet. People were holed up at home, waiting. An ordinary kind of silence. It was only the fact that I knew what was going to happen before very long that made this silence seem like the silence before a storm. We reached the brewery and turned left, down towards the bridge. It arched gently over the river and the bulging paving stones glimmered whitely. Beyond it the road ran straight to the railroad station. A red light shone at the crosing. The huge smokestack of the power station stood out against the phosphorescent sky.

  ‘Wait a minute, boys,’ said Helena, and she stopped. We stood there in the middle of the bridge. Helena leaned against the railing and we leaned over, too, on either side of her. I looked down. Beneath us the tranquil river flowed and you could feel how its dark surface was moving silently. The woods on the right were low and dark and the trees on the shore dipped their lower branches in the water. It was quiet. I strained my ears, but couldn’t hear a thing. If you listened carefully, you could sometimes hear shooting from the front. On Black Mountain you could even hear the heavy machine guns sometimes. Now, though, I couldn’t hear a thing. Just quiet. And that absolutely inaudible and subconscious rushing of the river underneath the bridge. Benno sighed.

  ‘Oh Jesus,’ he said and spat over the side of the bridge. The big white blob fell downward like a woman in a white veil committing suicide and splattered on the surface of the water.

  ‘What’s wrong, Benny?’ said Helena.

  ‘I don’t feel good. I’ve got a fever.’

  ‘Let me feel,’ she said, touching his forehead. ‘No, you don’t.’

  ‘I do, too.’

  ‘No, you don’t. You’re just imagining things again.’

  ‘No, I’m not. I got it from the camp.’

  ‘Well, come on, then. You’d better lie down.’

  ‘Wait,’ said Benno, and he was silent for a moment. ‘I just feel sort of stupid and sad.’

  ‘But why, Benny? Everything’s going to be all right soon.’

  ‘Yeah, I know. But I still feel lousy.’

  Helena didn’t say anything. She just reached over and took Benno’s hand. I stood beside her and all of a sudden it was as if there were only two people standing there next to each other. Oh, I knew why Benno felt sad. I did, too. I hadn’t ten minutes before, but now I did. It wasn’t a terrible kind of sadness, like Benno’s maybe, because he’d been in a concentration camp and half his relatives had died there, but just sad because of the river and those poor German clods with their skulls all bandaged up in the hotel, and because of the front which was getting closer and which was already senseless, and because of the woods and the little stars and everything. And because of Irena. Mainly because of Irena. And because now all of a sudden something was ending, something big and long, six years long, something which wouldn’t ever happen again. I looked across at Irena’s house on the other side of the river. I could see her window through the leaves on the tree that grew in front of her house and the light was on. She was probably reading or necking with Zdenek. I felt a terrific yearning to kiss somebody, too. And I was sad. Beside me, Benno and Helena were cooing to each other and I was standing there next to them, alone and melancholy and all too aware of how lonely I was. So what? What the hell. Maybe nobody understands me and that’s why I’m alone. Maybe I really can’t love anybody. Not in the dumb way Ben
no loved Helena. I remembered them all, Vera and Eva and Jarka and Irena, and it was as though I’d never loved any of them. I’d forgotten what being in love with them felt like. All I could remember were all kinds of problems and difficulties and embarrassing feelings. That was all. Maybe I wasn’t made for it. It would have been nice to know that there was at least one girl in the world who wouldn’t leave me feeling like that. Just one. I had a saxophone and I’d been on the honour roll in my senior year and my father had influence and everybody figured I had it good and that I was satisfied. I wasn’t, though I had lots of success with old ladies. I talked politics with them over the tea cups. Boy, did I ever talk. And I was awfully mature and sensible for my age. And at home I wrote sentimental Last Will and Testaments for Irena and I wanted to love her and I’d held on to this feeling that I loved her for a long time. But I couldn’t always and for ever. And then I felt sad. Maybe it really would be better if I got knocked off in this revolution. I worked up a big ball of spit in my mouth and leaned over the railing. I let it go slowly and watched it fall. It fell straight because there wasn’t any wind. It grew rapidly smaller and disappeared in the dark. All you could hear was a faint splat. The river below rushed on quietly and evenly. I looked at the couple beside me. They stood there with their arms around each other’s waists and their heads together, watching the river. Suddenly I was above them. Superior to them. Well, all right. What did they have anyway with their hugging and cooing and bothering the life out of each other? I was alone and free. Wonderfully free. And the revolution was approaching and I could hardly wait for it. And then later I’d go away. To Prague and to foreign countries and who knows where. But then it all collapsed inside me. Go away to what? And what would I do there? Live. Yes, just live. Look around at things and eat and fall in love with lots of girls. Yes. Well, yes, then. Well, all right, why not? It’s interesting enough, living. Better than getting knocked off in some revolution. The river rippled and hummed and it was warm and dark. I stood up straighter. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘let’s go.’