Republic Of Whores Read online

  Lieutenant Hezký expanded his scrawny chest and said in his nasal voice: “Comrade Major, permission to speak.”

  “Permission granted.”

  “This is the second vehicle of the first troop of the first squadron of the Seventh Tank Battalion. Its identification number is T34/8697 and its crew is as follows: tank commander: Sergeant-Major Smiřický; gunner: Sergeant Žloudek; driver: Corporal Střevlícek; loader: Private Bamza. The backup driver — Private First Class Hlad — is to be found at the present time in the base infirmary, room number —”

  “Summon the tank commander,” the major interrupted.

  “Tank Commander Smiřický,” Hezký honked obediently.

  On the other side of the armour-plating, Smiřický moved like lightning. In his haste he almost broke some bones, but within the regulation three seconds he was ready to utter the regulation formula:

  “Comrade Lieutenant, Tank Commander Smiřický.”

  “Comrade Tank Commander,” said the Pygmy Devil ominously. The tank commander made the regulation quarter-turn to the right. “Comrade Tank Commander,” the major continued, in the darkest and gloomiest voice his short vocal chords could muster, as though he were about to pronounce a death sentence. “I compliment you on a well-executed pit. This pit can stand as an example to the other pits — as you were — to the other comrades.”

  “I serve the people,” the astonished tank commander managed to bark. The first thing that flashed through his mind was that such official praise went into the record book of rewards and punishments; he’d soon be looking for a job, so his personnel record was starting to become important. He’d have to remind the battalion registrar to enter it. The major then ordered him back to his tank, and as he slammed the hatch shut behind him in combat position, he heard Andelín say, “Now ain’t that a good fucking joke!”

  “You can say that again,” said the tank commander.

  * * *

  The fog had lifted and the yellow early-morning autumn sun touched the crowns of the oak forest on the slopes opposite Old Roundtop. The grass on the hillsides glistened with dew and the grey combat vehicles looked like a herd of elephants at rest. My stint is coming to an end, thought Tank Commander Smiřický, and all at once it felt good to be in the army, and with the tanks. When things come to an end, they suddenly seem good. Life, as he often said to himself, was all a matter of the past.

  In a few weeks, this do-nothing existence would be over and he’d have to make a living. In Hronov he’d supported himself for not quite two years — or, more precisely, he had been supported by the dear, sweet daughters of the local farmers, who longed to graduate successfully (which they did) and to marry early (which they didn’t, at least not with him). He’d been the only unmarried teacher at the school and, had he stayed on, it wouldn’t have lasted. But he wasn’t ready yet to stumble into marriage, and that was why he didn’t want to go back to teaching. He also wanted to stay away from the country and small towns, where life was so easy and so aimless. He wanted to go to Prague, to that tease Lizetka. He didn’t want to marry her — not that he could, with Sergeant Robert Neumann on the scene. He only wanted to get her into bed.

  A light breeze rippled through the rusty chestnut trees on Old Roundtop. The hillside dazzled in the glow of the morning sun, and there was a dusky, intimate light inside the tank. His clunky, ill-fitting army boots made him feel calm and sure of himself. Yet, he reflected, the time was fast approaching when he too would find a girl and get married. A girl from a good family — cultivated, pure, silk and nylon, and with a slowly expanding midriff from too many pastries. The kind of girl he used to dance with at soirées put on by the American Institute before the Communists took over. They smelled of perfume and imported linen and, unlike Lizetka, their heads were usually vacuous. Given what he wanted from her, Lizetka’s wits were only an impediment.

  He heard footsteps on the motor casing. Through the observation slit, he could see a pair of officer’s breeches and riding boots. Then there was a banging on the hatch. He reached behind his head and flipped it open with a practised move. Silhouetted black against the sky was First Lieutenant Bobby Kohn.

  “Leave your hatch open. I’ll navigate,” said the officer.

  “Yes, sir,” said the tank commander politely.

  First Lieutenant Kohn, who seemed to gain in dignity when his superior officers were safely absent, was in a communicative mood. “Some trick,” he said sarcastically. He had been with the political division in Martin and it was wise to be wary around him. He had the reputation of being a real rat. But his hopes of advancement had been dashed by his own exceptional laziness, and his wife’s exceptional interest in his fellow officers and, recently, even draftees.

  “Some trick!” he repeated. “You don’t seem to realize that you’re just playing games. Wait till there’s a real war. Then you’ll wish you’d learned how to dig a real pit!”

  The tank commander made a face behind the armour-plating. He always felt strangely moved by the thought of a soldier about to die in a real war and regretting, now that it was too late, some inattention to a crucial part of his training. Their officers saw war as a test of maturity, a final exam to be passed successfully only by those who hadn’t weaseled out of morning exercises, who had dutifully studied recoil mechanisms in the evening. In this worldview, only the lazy lost their lives; the diligent learned the arts of dodging incoming shells and bullets, gas, and atomic radiation.

  The tank commander’s crew, being intellectually simpler, didn’t content themselves with sarcastic thoughts.

  “There was nothing wrong with our pit,” came Žloudek’s voice from inside the tank.

  “That’s because the major had both eyes closed,” said Bobby Kohn. “You’d all be shot for a pit like that at the front.”

  “You’d shit your pants first,” Střevlíček howled into the intercom. Danny looked anxiously up at Kohn, but the officer clearly hadn’t heard. He stood indifferently on the turret, his hands on his hips, his sharp eyes surveying the terrain.

  “Are you on the air?” he asked.

  “The radio’s on the fritz,” said Danny.

  “On the fritz? Why can’t you just admit you don’t know how to operate it.”

  “Really, it’s on the fritz.”

  “Don’t talk rubbish!” shouted the officer. “You may think you’re going home in a few weeks; but just be careful we don’t slip you another year so you can learn how to operate a radio.”

  He stopped, savouring the moment. His black eyes scanned Old Roundtop, where a sign saying BAZOOKA had just been raised into battle position. Through the morning silence a thin, small voice came wafting across the valley.… “You’ll live to regret this!” Someone over in the enemy lines was getting chewed out. They never heard what the unfortunate soldier would live to regret, because just then a flare whistled out of the trees and into the lightening sky. It was deep red, almost purple, and it looked beautiful.

  “Driver — advance when ready!” roared the tank commander, pushing his contact mike closer to his throat. The electric starter growled, Střevlíček pumped the accelerator several times, and the engine caught. It sounded like the roar of a rhinoceros about to trample a bothersome tourist to death. The driver put the tank into reverse and it rose slowly out of the pit, backwards.

  Through the rear observation window, Tank Commander Smiřický could still see riding breeches: Lieutenant Kohn was standing on the tank with his legs apart. While Střevlíček shifted gears, the tank commander ran his periscope over the side of Old Roundtop. To their right, another tank shot out of the bushes and roared up the hill.

  “Driver, advance! Full speed!” said the tank commander into the intercom, but it was too late. The astute Bobby had quickly spotted his opportunity.

  “Get a move on, man!” he yelled. “Look where you’re going! Get into line! I’ll have your hides if you don’t smarten up!”

  Střevlíček shifted into second and they bol
ted forward with the engine roaring, as if shot from a cannon. Danny lifted his head out of the open hatch, looked up towards Kohn’s ominous face suspended above him, and roared his excuse: “The rest of them had shallow pits, they drove straight out.”

  “Cut the backtalk. Guide your driver!” Bobby yelled. Kiss my ass, the tank commander thought. He grabbed the handgrip on the ceiling with his right hand and held tight to the periscope with his left, bracing his padded forehead against the padding on the periscope. Střevlíček accelerated like a madman. Like all the drivers in the unit, he had so often conquered this peak that was now lifting its bare crown to the cold sun that he knew the route by heart. Into the intercom, the tank commander sang, We walked into the catacombs, along the line of yawning graves, amid the coffin’s icy draught, she took my hand, and then.… From where Kohn was standing, it looked as though Danny were directing the driver. There was no risk of being overheard: the motor was roaring, and the ammo boxes and tools scattered around the compartment were all clanking like a load of scrap iron. They drove out of the bushes and onto the bare hill. On either side Danny could see other tanks, some too far out in front, others still emerging from the bushes. Seen through the observation slits, they seemed to be standing still, and it was only by their flashing tracks that he knew they were in motion. It felt like being in a movie; it made him feel manly, and a pleasant sensation of safe adventure — an officer’s feeling — washed over him.

  Bobby’s high-pitched voice pierced the confusion of noises and the whistling wind: “Hold the line, damn it!” Danny could also hear the clear and cocky voice of Andělín Střevlíček over the crackling intercom: “Hang on, my friends, I’m going to dump the sonofabitch.”

  They were approaching the first line of trenches. The tank commander looked around at the loader, who wasn’t wearing a radio helmet and therefore hadn’t heard Střevlíček’s warning. But in this familiar combat situation no instructions were necessary. The loader stood braced against the cupola, holding onto the grips with both hands. Danny turned back, tensing all his muscles, gritting his teeth, and pressing his padded helmet tight against the periscope.

  “Boom!” said Střevlíček, and the tank pitched forward, then backwards, and then, with a deafening crash that rattled everything inside, lurched forward again. The tank commander looked up and straight into the livid face of Bobby Kohn. The manoeuvre hadn’t worked.

  “That swine of a driver!” Bobby shouted above the din. “He’ll spend Sunday on the obstacle course. And you’ll be learning how to navigate!”

  “I am navigating,” the tank commander shouted.

  “The hell you are,” Kohn roared back. He looked around and yelled, “Give orders to destroy enemy anti-tank cannon at trig point two.”

  There was a stiff, pleasant breeze blowing into the open hatch. The tank commander tried to remember what trig point two was, but couldn’t.

  “Did he fall off?” asked Střevlíček.

  “No!” Danny shouted, and then haphazardly bellowed the only version of the order they had ever used: “Enemy ATC at five hundred; driver stop, gunner fire when ready.” The crew was supposed to respond immediately. It didn’t.

  “Driver, stop!” Danny shouted into the intercom. But Střevlíček still didn’t stop. He was trying to make up for lost time.

  “Are we going to bloody shoot or not?” yelled Kohn from above.

  “Damn it, Andélín, stop!” shouted the tank commander. In his earphones came the calm reply: “He can shove it.”

  “Why isn’t the gunner traversing his gun?” Bobby went on. “What kind of jerk is he, anyway?”

  “Karel, move the goddamn cannon,” Danny implored, and Žloudek played around with the aiming handle. That silenced Bobby for a while.

  The tank commander looked through the periscope again. A tank was roaring along about twenty metres to the right, about even with them. Slightly behind him but close together and to the left there were two more. An ideal target, Danny thought. Ahead of him he could see the horizon line approaching, and against it rose a small figure holding a sign that said THREE SHERMAN TANKS. Quickly, and with obvious delight, the soldier fired off three flares in rapid succession at the approaching tanks.

  “Answer his fire!” said Bobby, who’d recovered his wits. “Can’t you see the enemy’s opened fire? Christ almighty, I’ll make you eat this one!”

  The tank commander let go with his left hand, tapped Bamza to catch his attention, and gestured him to load the cannon. Bamza made an inaudible remark, no doubt vulgar, but he got up, braced himself against the recoil buffer, and rammed a blank shell into the breech. Just then, Andělín braked sharply and the whole crew lurched forward. There was a loud, harsh explosion and the compartment filled with acrid smoke. As Danny crashed into Žloudek from behind, he heard someone say over the intercom: “Andělín, you fucking cunt!”

  “Why in hell’s name did you fire?” asked the tank commander as he scrambled back up on his seat.

  “I didn’t fire, man,” said Žloudek. “I caught hold of the bloody lever and the fucking thing blew up.”

  At this point Kohn chipped in: “What the hell was that supposed to be? Firing while you stop? You can’t hit shit that way. Who gave you the order?”

  Danny succumbed to the temptation to pass the buck. “Not me!” he shouted. He felt ashamed right away, but before he could make up for his lapse, he was treated to another of Bobby Kohn’s strident sermons.

  “Not you, eh? Your crew is so democratic they fire whenever they feel like it? And what’s that dumb cluck of a driver doing just sitting there? In real combat you’d all be in the bag ten times over.”

  “Andělín, advance! Go like hell!” the tank commander yelled into the intercom. He looked around. The whole hillside behind him was crawling with tanks. Some were just emerging from the brush, others were already climbing the hill. One of them was nose down in a ditch with its rear sticking helplessly in the air; the commander was just crawling out of the hatch.

  Another sudden lurch and their tank leaped forward again, throwing everything in it, living and inanimate, to the rear. They came over the crest of Old Roundtop. Before them lay a gentle sloping plain with clusters of trees and churned-up ruts across it and, in the distance, the white houses of Okrouhlice. They swanned down the side of the hill at full speed, passing tanks to the left and right. They were going too fast.

  “Slow down, Andělín!” the tank commander yelled over the intercom.

  “Keep in line!” Bobby Kohn shouted, like an echo. “And tell the gunner to bloody well keep his cannon moving or I’ll have his balls.”

  “Karel, move that thing about. Make the poor bastard happy,” Danny said.

  “Let the stupid fucker eat shit,” said Žloudek, but he began moving the controls back and forth.

  “Orders!” yelled Bobby.

  “ATC dead ahead,” roared the tank commander, no longer caring what was outside. Žloudek yelled something back. From his right, Bamza piped up with a remark about shit, but he said it like a loader responding to a gunner’s order. The tank clanked and rattled and crashed and roared, Bobby was shouting, the intercom was crackling, and everything was being tossed back and forth; it took all their strength to hang on. Danny abandoned the periscope for fear of breaking his nose. Suddenly the tank tipped forward precariously, something inside it snapped, and they were again roaring downhill. They ran over a large obstruction, something broke loose inside the turret and fell to the floor, and then, just as suddenly, they were moving forward smoothly again. They had driven over the Okrouhlice Road into the ditch and then back off into the countryside. In doing so, they had broken through enemy lines, and they were approaching the rallying point.

  “Gott in Himmel, that driver’s a pig!” said a shaken Bobby Kohn through his teeth as he clung to the turret. “I’ll have him locked up. And is that any way to command a tank? The gunner could have rammed the cannon into the ground. Hasn’t he ever heard of elevation? I
n a real battle, you’d have —”

  At that moment, Střevlíček jammed on the brakes.

  “What now?” asked the tank commander.

  Andělín’s voice came back: “A green flare, my friend. They’re going to fry our balls.”

  Through the observation slit, Danny saw a jeep, and standing up in it was the little major. The driver was using semaphore flags to signal all subordinate commanders to rally on the jeep.

  “You all stay where you are!” shouted Bobby, and jumped down. Danny pulled himself out of the turret and sat in the open hatch. Bobby walked around the tank to the driver’s hatch.

  “What circus did you learn to drive in?” he hissed at Střevlíček.

  “It won’t go into second, Comrade Lieutenant,” replied Andělín calmly. “And the clutch is slipping.”

  “Slipping, my foot. You don’t know how to drive.”

  “But the clutch is slipping.” Danny could tell by the driver’s tone that Bobby’s reprimand had irked him.

  “Don’t blame it on the bloody machine. A good driver can drive anything, even a wheelbarrow.”

  “But not a piece of junk like this.”

  “Do you realize what you’re saying? These machines have been through several Soviet offensives.”

  “It sure as hell shows.”

  Bobby Kohn’s mouth was open and his black eyebrows were twitching. But before he could come up with a politically correct riposte, a new flare swished up from the jeep, flew like a gob of green spittle into the now golden sky, and burned out over a stand of birches by a pond. Kohn looked around and discovered some officers converging on the jeep, so he merely said in a sinister voice, “I’ll settle this with you in the presence of the commander.” And then, on legs that were spindly and slightly knock-kneed, he trotted off to join the dispirited group of officers — the most prominent of whom was Captain Matka, his tired face a glowing red.