The Cowards (16 page)

‘You going to enlist too?’ I said to him.

‘Yes.’

‘Me, too,’ I said, and that was all.

Hrob said nothing. He never talked much. We stood there mutely and the line moved slowly into the building. We got into the hall and shuffled forward. The others who’d been through already came out, pulling on their armbands. Another guy in uniform stood by the office door with a fixed bayonet and whenever someone came out, he let in another one. The line was quiet. Nobody shoved. I was already nearly up to the door. They let Hrob go in and I stayed outside. The soldier with the bayonet was kidding around with some guy behind me. Then the door opened, Hrob emerged with a glowing face, reverently clutching his armband. I went in. Mr Kuratko sat at the desk wearing a captain’s uniform and with a big ledger opened up in front of him. Four paper flags – Czechoslovak, Soviet, American, and British – stood on his desk in a little vase. There was no water in it. On one side of Captain Kuratko sat old Cemelik with colonel’s stars on his epaulets and on the other side was Mr Manes with a blue armband with red trim and the inscription,
NATIONAL COMMITTEE
, in gold letters. Around a little table in the corner sat Dr Sabata, Mr Kaldoun, Mayor Prudivy, and Krocan the factory owner. So it wasn’t Mr Kaldoun who’d hauled in the flag, I realized. All of them were wearing those blue armbands with the red trim. The men behind the desk were watching me.

‘Good morning,’ I said, but Mr Manes and old Cemelik acted as if they didn’t recognize me. They were acting very grim, like men at war. There they all sat, staging an uprising. People were pushing and shoving to get in and lay down their lives for their country while these men, in their own way, were doing their bit for their country, too. Mr Kaldoun, Mr Krocan, Dr Sabata. They’d all got along pretty well with the Germans. Now they were running a revolution. Nobody could find any fault with them. Everybody was mobilized. Everybody had to obey. So everything was fine. And Colonel Cemelik was giving the orders.

‘Name?’ Captain Kuratko asked me.

‘Daniel Smiricky.’

Mr Kuratko wrote my name down in the first column of his ledger and put a number in front of it. Then he went on.

‘Occupation?’

‘Student.’

‘Date of birth?’

‘Twenty-seventh of September, 1924.’

‘Where?’

‘In Kostelec’

‘Kostelec County. Address?’

‘Kostelec.’

‘Street?’

‘123 Jirasek.’

‘Religion?’

‘Roman Catholic’

‘Inducted?’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Have you been inducted?

‘No.’

‘Has not done his military service.’

Mr Kuratko wrote a long sentence in his ledger, then took a mimeographed sheet of paper from a pile beside him, wrote something on it and handed it to me.

‘Read this and sign it.’

It read:
‘I, Daniel Smiricky,’
which Mr Kuratko had written in by hand,
‘pledge on my honour and conscience that I will
loyally obey all orders given by the local commander of the Czechoslovak Army in Kostelec and that I am ready if necessary to lay down my life for my country, the Czechoslovak Republic. Kostelec, – May
,
1945.’
I took a pen, wrote in the date, May 6th, and signed my name. Mr Kuratko gave the sheet of paper to Mr Manes and he put it into a file in front of him. Then Mr Kuratko shook hands with me.

‘Thank you,’ he said.

‘You’re quite welcome,’ I said. Then old Cemelik shook hands with me, and Mr Manes, too. He gave me a red-and-white armband from the basket beside the table. The basket was full of them.

‘Thank you,’ I said and turned around. I opened the door and the soldier was already shoving somebody else inside. So now I was a private in the Czechoslovak Army. Now I belonged to the revolutionaries. I pulled on the armband and felt it looked silly. But nobody was looking at me any differently than usual. So this was an uprising. I went out of the building. The brewery yard was swarming with people. They were standing around in clusters, wearing all kinds of coats and jackets and raincoats, and they had knapsacks on their backs. They were smoking and talking. They looked more like a hiking club getting ready for an outing. But they were an army. These were revolutionaries. There wasn’t much you could do about it. Colonel Cemelik was at the head of the army and the supreme commander was Dr Sabata. It was an army. And I was in it.

I went down the stairs and looked for the boys. It had started raining again. Coat collars were turned up in the courtyard and people ducked into various doorways and sheds. But a lot of them still stood out in the yard. I buttoned my jacket up to my neck. Hell, why hadn’t I worn a raincoat? I headed across the yard towards the icehouse. I didn’t see the boys there but I heard the signal. We’d used that signal for as long as I can remember. It had caught on in town; even kids who didn’t have anything to do with the band used it. I looked around. The rain started pouring down on the worn cobblestone pavement that led to the stable. People stood pressed up against the sides of the buildings. I heard the signal again and looked
around to see where it came from. I saw Benno’s red face under his sheepskin cap and Haryk in his green raincoat. They were standing under a woodshed over by the fence. I hurried over to them.

‘Greetings, brother,’ Haryk said to me.

‘Greetings. Let me under,’ I said and crept in under the roof. It was dark and chilly and there were lots of other people in there, but you could hardly make them out in the dark. I stood between Benno and Haryk and looked out at the rain. It swept in sheets over the pavement and the fine chilly mist cooled my face. It felt good, standing there in the dark shed looking out at the rain.

‘All actions cancelled because of the weather,’ said Benno.

‘In its first attempt to seize the offensive, the First Army Company got its feet wet,’ said Haryk.

‘The offensive was repelled by Colonel Cemelik’s unexpected attack of rheumatism,’ said Benno.

‘Shut up,’ said Fonda from inside the shed. The boys stopped. I turned around and all I could make out in the darkness were a lot of pale faces and eyes. There was a little hole in the back wall of the shed that let in some light. We didn’t say anything for a while. More people rushed over to the shed and pushed inside. But there was still plenty of room. By now all I could see was a patch of the courtyard over the dark heads of the people in front of me. Colonel Cemelik, wearing a green cape, walked across that little patch; the water trickled off his cap and down his face but he went on valiantly, taking his time. When he disappeared, the space was empty again. I leaned out and saw there was hardly anything left of the line now, just a handful of people up by the door. They must have been soaked to the skin by now. Then Cemelik appeared again and behind him came Hrob, his face glowing with enthusiasm, carrying a load of rifles on his back.

‘Hey, look, reinforcements,’ said Haryk. Cemelik, with Hrob at his heels, disappeared into the main building. The rain kept on falling. The revolution was called off. Couldn’t go on in a downpour like this. I could just imagine how glad this rain must have made Dr Sabata feel. Sound the retreat and then
there goes the army into a shed. Above the brewery the sky was white and grey with rain.

‘Danny, is that you?’ I heard behind me. It was Rosta. I recognized his voice immediately.

‘Yeah, where are you?’

‘Here. Come on and sit down.’

I turned, but it was too dark to see. Somebody switched on a flashlight. The cone of light travelled over the ground. A pile of small logs was stacked up in the back of the shed. Some people were sitting on them, but there was still room. The flashlight gleamed from the top of the pile. Behind it I could see Rosta’s face.

‘Okay,’ I said and started to scramble up over the logs. It wasn’t easy, but I made it. I sat down beside Rosta. The logs were rough so you could feel them on your behind, but it was better to sit down than stand up.

The rain was falling steadily on the roof of the shed, making an awful racket. We sat there high up in the dark on a pile of wood, and now I couldn’t see into the yard at all. All I could see were the dark silhouettes of people standing at the edge of the shed and the milky gloomy light beyond. I was overcome by a feeling of security. The drumming of the rain on the roof awoke all sorts of recollections. About the Giant Mountains and Ledecsky Rocks, about a shed like this one, only that one was for hay, at Ledec. And how I sat there that time with Irena and Zdenek and black clouds were scudding low and crooked across the sky, but there was still a narrow strip of blue sky at the horizon and the rays of the sun came through that strip of blue and shone on the tops of the rocks. And there in that strip of blue, birch trees swayed in the wind and a dead man was hanging from one of them and Irena screamed and clung to Zdenek. It was dark in that shed and I felt lonely and rejected and there were those black clouds and the light disappeared behind them and the rain streamed down over the cliffs. Irena’s teeth were chattering and she clung to Zdenek and I crawled out of the shed and stood under the leaking eaves. Rain dripped on me as I stood out there looking down into the valley at the gilded tops of the cliffs and at the rainbow bulging above them
and at the birch trees and at the dead man hanging there and at the dark pine woods in the rain, and behind me in the cabin was Irena with Zdenek and I was all alone and alone and alone.

It was dark inside the shed and suddenly warm and then suddenly cool again. It was very nice and we sat on the damp logs and for a while said nothing.

‘Listen,’ said Rosta.

‘What?’

‘Aren’t you fed up with this?’

‘I’ll say.’

‘Me, too.’

‘You look tired.’

‘I am.’

‘Why? What’d you do yesterday?’

‘We had a binge up at the cabin.’

‘With Honza?’

‘Yeah.’

‘And some girls?’

‘Naturally.’

I didn’t say anything. I knew Rosta pretty well and I knew what was on his mind.

‘How’s it going with Dagmar?’ I asked.

‘Don’t ask me.’

‘She still giving you a hard time?’

‘I’ll say.’

‘And you’re still crazy about her?’

‘I sure am. How’s it going with you?’

‘What?’

‘With Irena?’

‘Oh. Well, I’m still in love with her.’

‘So we’re in the same boat, huh?’

‘I guess we are.’

Rosta fell silent. Then, ‘You know what we are?’ he said. ‘We’re a couple of …’

‘Fools. I know.’

‘But still, you know something?’

‘What?’

‘I don’t know quite how to say it, but I just wish those dumb
girls had some idea how much a guy has to suffer on account of them.’

‘Yeah. You’re right. But it’s all for nothing – all that suffering.’

‘You think so?’

‘I know so!’

‘Listen, though, I’m still going to marry Dagmar someday.’

‘Well, anything’s possible.’

‘No, honest.’

‘Yeah, sure. You might do in a pinch.’

‘What do you mean by that?’

‘Just what I say.’

‘Which is?’

‘Well, I mean if she goes on horsing around.’

‘You mean –’

‘Yeah, with Kocandrle. If he knocks her up –’

‘You know something? That wouldn’t even bother me,’ said Rosta.

‘I know it wouldn’t.’

‘Honest. I’m so crazy about her she could be a whore if she wanted to and it wouldn’t make any difference to me.’

‘I know.’

‘Anyway, everything I do is just for her sake anyway.’

I thought about my Last Will and Testament. That’s what I’d written in it, too. Everything I’ve done has been for you only, Irena, or something to that effect.

‘Rosta,’ I said.

‘What?’

‘Did you know that I’ve already written my Last Will and Testament?’

‘Really?’

‘Yes.’

‘And what’d you write in it?’

‘Well, it’s actually a letter to Irena, understand?’

‘Yeah.’

‘A farewell message.’

‘Gee, I should have done that, too.’

‘Well, you still can.’

‘Who’d you give it to?’

‘I’ve got it in my wallet. I addressed it to her.’

‘What’d you write in it?’

‘Everything. How much I love her and so on.’

‘Hell, why didn’t I write something like that, too?’

‘It’s not too late yet.’

‘Yeah, but where?’

‘When it stops raining.’

‘I will, too,’ said Rosta, and then he fell silent again, thinking. After a while he said, ‘Just imagine how it’ll be when the girls get them.’

‘Boy how about that!’

‘Just imagine how they’ll bawl.’

‘Or maybe not.’

‘Yeah, maybe not. But at least it’ll make them feel pretty strange.’

‘Except it’s never going to come to that.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You don’t really think anybody’s going to get killed in this thing, do you?’

‘Maybe.’

‘Maybe. But I wouldn’t count on it.’ I was silent. I could tell that Rosta didn’t really believe anyone would get killed either. We sat there in silence looking at the light outside the shed.

‘Oh, well,’ I said.

‘Yeah, you said it,’ said Rosta. It felt good to sit there and talk about girls and not to mean anything very seriously. And to go into this revolution as unhappy lovers. As I recalled, I was always most in love with Irena when I was in some kind of fix. That time with the sabotage at the factory. Or when they arrested Father and I was expecting them to arrest me, too. Still the trouble couldn’t be too serious. When it was then I forgot all about Irena. Like yesterday when they were taking me off to be executed. Now, though, things weren’t that bad. Now it was good, being in love with Irena and thinking about her.

‘Listen,’ I said.

‘What?’

‘What are you here for anyway?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Why are you risking your neck here?’

‘Well …’

‘I’m here on account of Irena,’ I said hurriedly so he couldn’t get in ahead of me.

‘Sure. Me, too. On account of Dagmar,’ said Rosta. Then he went on. ‘You think anything’ll come of all this?’