The Cowards (4 page)

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 Benno 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.’

‘Sure,’ said Benno and we started off. Our steps echoed in the darkness. We went past the County Office Building and the sound of our footsteps boomed through the arcade.

‘Are you coming over tomorrow?’ Benno asked me.

‘I don’t know. It all depends.’

‘You really think something’s going to happen tomorrow?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe.’

‘Listen, what do you really know?’

‘Oh, nothing.’

‘Don’t play dumb with me. Come on, tell me.’

‘But if … it’s kind of hard.’

‘Tell us, Danny,’ said Helena.

‘But really, I don’t know anything.’

‘What was that you said about the radio then?’

‘What radio?’

‘About Radio Prague stopping broadcasting.’

‘Oh well, yeah. I heard something like that.’

‘What?’

‘Well, just that Prague’s supposed to stop broadcasting and that that’s supposed to be the sign it’s going to begin.’

‘Where? Here, too?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe just in Prague. I don’t know.’

‘Who told you?’

‘Some kid, that’s all.’

‘Listen, I’m scared those kids are up to some kind of trouble.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘It’s always the same gang, isn’t it? Skocdopole and Vahar and Perlik and Benda – that whole crowd, right?’

‘I don’t know. Well, maybe.’

‘Don’t kid me. You know what they’re up to all right.’

‘No, I don’t. Honest.’

‘But you’re always hanging around with Skocdopole.’

‘Yeah, but he never tells me anything.’

‘Still, you know more than you’re letting on you do.’

‘I do not. They’re up to something but Prema won’t tell me what, and I’m not going to pump him if he doesn’t want to tell me himself, am I?’

‘But they are planning to do something.’

‘Could be. But I don’t know what.’

‘They’re nuts. A bunch of idiots like that’ll mess around and all they’ll do is get the Germans mad and then we’ll all be in the shit.’