The Cowards (50 page)

‘Enough,’ she said.

‘But, Irena …’

‘Enough,’ she said. ‘Come on – over here next to me.’

I moved over as close as I could and stretched out beside her on the sofa.

‘Give me your hand,’ she said. I gave her my hand and she took it and held it.

‘Are you a bit happier now?’ she asked.

‘Yes.’

‘I want you to be,’ she said.

I loved her. I was absolutely wild about her.

‘Irena,’ I said, ‘I …’

‘Well, what?’

‘I’d like to say something nice, but I can’t think what to say.’

‘Then just be quiet, Danny, and lie here next to me. You don’t have to say anything.’

I didn’t say a word. We lay there next to each other and the room was flooded with the brownish-yellow light and flies hummed and buzzed around the ceiling light. I could hear Irena breathing and see her bosom rising and falling and I loved her and wanted to touch her breast but couldn’t. The flies buzzed and the clock ticked and gradually my thoughts started to settle down. I lay there next to Irena, thinking about her, her lips and warm shoulder, and about how good it felt to be there with her, and the flies went on buzzing and then suddenly I noticed that Irena was breathing very regularly and I looked at her and saw that her eyes were closed and her lips parted and something glinted inside her mouth, and I realized she’d fallen asleep, that she was probably all worn out from last night, and I lay there without stirring so I wouldn’t wake her up and I looked at her face, sweetly sleeping, and at her breasts under the green-striped material and at her stomach and lap and suntanned legs and as I looked at her, I started thinking again, thinking about her, about Irena, and about how things would be in the future. And I thought that maybe Zdenek had got himself killed after all. Then, I thought, I’d have sweet Irena all to myself and she’d come up to my room, but I didn’t have a room all by myself and so I thought how it would be when I was living in Prague and I hoped I’d find a good-hearted landlady, too, and that Irena would come to see me at my place which would be in some dark old apartment building, a room like this one, and Irena, wearing a transparent hooded raincoat over her corduroy suit, would jump off the streetcar in the rain and the streetlights would be reflected on
the cobblestones and Irena would come along barelegged, past the lit-up shop-windows and between the evening pedestrians in their raincoats, looking like a bright cloud, beaming and beautiful, and her coat would glisten with raindrops and then she’d turn into one of those dark and shabby apartment houses with two plaster Herculeses over the doorway and walk through the dim hall with its plaster stucco trim and pictures of castles and up the stairs to the third floor where there’d be a view out through the big window with its etched-in landscape, a view of the backs of other houses and then she’d stop in front of a door and ring the bell and I’d come to the door in my bathrobe and let her in and Irena would take off her raincoat and then we’d sit down on the couch and Irena would tell me what she’d done all day and then I’d kiss her and then she’d stop talking and I’d kiss her again and Irena would put her arms around me and we’d lie down next to each other and Irena would press up close to me and I’d undo the buttons at her neck and keep right on kissing her and then Irena would take off her skirt and everything so would I and we’d kiss each other over and over and then we’d be together and I’d say ‘darling’ to her, ‘darling, you’re so sweet’ – and afterwards we’d lie side by side and then Irena would get dressed and comb her hair in front of the mirror and I’d watch her and then I’d get dressed, too, or maybe just see her to the door and then there I am, all by myself, thinking about her again. It was wonderful, to think about, so I started – thinking it through all over again: she comes up to my place, takes off her raincoat, she’s sweet and affectionate, and then we’re doing this thing together, and it’s still with us, even in cafés and at the movies and the theatre lobby and during the lectures we sit through and out on the street, and we’d always be doing it and we’d talk about it, too. I thought about it some more and then about how I’d graduate and Irena and I would get married and what the wedding would be like and how all my friends would stare when they saw Irena and be secretly furious at me for having walked off with such a sweet lovely girl because in the meantime they’d married real cows or hadn’t got married at all and we’d be married in church and my uncle, the one who’s a
priest in Budejovice, would perform the ceremony and somebody would be playing the organ and I could see Irena standing there in front of the altar in a beige suit and me putting the ring on her finger and then off we’d go to live together and we’d have children and I imagined Irena in a hospital with a baby boy or maybe a girl all wrapped up in a blanket and we’d call it Daniel or Irena and then I left off thinking about the future and only thought of all those kids we’d have – three or four or five, for instance, or three sets of twins or maybe we’d have as many as twelve – and suddenly I wished I had them already and I could just see myself, old and jolly, with about seven sons and five daughters and the Smiricky line growing and spreading out from me, from me, the last of the line, and how these sons would have their own children and so on and then I realized this was getting pretty absurd so I went back to thinking about Irena coming over to visit me, and her hair and her breasts, and my eyes closed and my head grew heavy and, next to me, Irena was breathing regularly and I thought about her and then my thoughts got all mixed up and I was so tired I started drowsing off and then I fell asleep.

When I woke up, the room was almost dark. The evening sun was just going down outside the brown shades and the room was quiet. Even the flies had stopped buzzing. Irena lay beside me, her left hand under her head and her face turned towards me, her eyes closed and her eyelids dark, her eyelashes making two softer darker arches. I could see two little white teeth gleaming between her parted lips and I was overcome with an awful, yearning love. She’d unbottoned the collar of her dress and I could see the tender white flesh of her body. I put my arms around her and kissed her on the forehead. She nestled closer to me and put her right arm around me. But her eyes were still closed. I kissed her cheek again and whispered, ‘Irena.’ She opened her eyes a bit and then suddenly moved very close to me. I held her tight and wanted to kiss her on her mouth. But she turned her head so I couldn’t and just hugged me.

‘Irena,’ I said.

She hugged me again and started to say in a low, rapid voice,
‘Danny, I’m so scared something’s happened to him. I just know something’s happened to him.’

‘Don’t be scared, Irena,’ I murmured into her ear. ‘Don’t be scared,’ and at the same time I had an awful yearning for her and I was mad at her and it would have been fine with me if he’d been drawn and quartered.

‘I’m so scared, Danny, I’m so scared,’ she kept saying, and she trembled as if she was cold.

‘Don’t,’ I said, and I felt awful. She didn’t say anything. I could feel she was still trembling, though. So I started caressing her hair and mumbling, ‘Irena, darling, easy, easy,’ and she stopped trembling but then all of a sudden she was sobbing softly. I kept on mumbling, ‘Don’t cry, Irena, darling, don’t,’ but she sobbed all the harder with her face dug into the arm of the sofa and I drew her very close and suddenly she turned her face to me and it was wet with tears and all red but incredibly sweet, and I kissed her on her wet cheek and then on her nose and one eye and then her cheek again and then on the other eye and I kept on kissing her and knew that this was what life was all about and I wanted it to last as long as it could. It was getting dark and Irena sighed every once in a while as we lay there side by side in the twilight and I thought frantically about her body and I could feel how fantastically hot and alive it was and I loved it, but suddenly it wasn’t only because of the pleasure it gave, because she’d denied that to me, but for the life in it, for the fact that it was Irena and because of that little soul of hers which was dumb, maybe, but was still the living and tortured soul of a woman.

Then finally she sat up suddenly and put her hand to her hair. I watched her comb the tangles out of her hair and then she got up and smoothed her dress. I stood up, too, and smoothed back my hair. We both stood there. Then Irena said, ‘Let’s go, Danny.’

‘All right,’ I said. I felt like an idiot.

‘Zdenek won’t be coming any more now,’ she said.

‘Oh, he’ll come back all right,’ I said, just to make her feel good. She turned to me and put her hand over my lips.

‘Shh! Don’t say that,’ she said. I didn’t understand. ‘If we say
it too often it won’t come true,’ said Irena. So that was it. I stumbled out into the street behind her. It was already night outside and chilly and full of stars. The old lady hadn’t even appeared. I took Irena’s arm and we started off towards town. We went down the hill and along the main street towards the square. The front of the church shone in the starlight and the windows of City Hall were all lit up. The blackout was over now. There was a meeting going on at City Hall. People were standing around talking in the square. Irena and I walked past in silence. There was a big poster next to the church. We stopped and read that tomorrow at ten o’clock there would be an official welcome for the Red Army on the square and that General Jablonkovski would be there in person.

‘Are you going to go, Irena?’

‘Hm,’ she said. We walked on. I wondered how to ask her whether she’d go with me if Zdenek didn’t come back, how things were going to be if he did, but I couldn’t. All I could do was keep quiet. We walked along together towards the station and crossed the tracks and walked past houses under the stars and on towards the bridge. Then we turned off and stopped in front of Irena’s house. The dark river and the leaves in the forest rustled behind me. I took Irena by the hand and looked into her face. Her face was white as milk and her eyes and lips were dark. That was practically all I could see of her and yet she was all there.

‘Darling,’ I said.

‘Good night, Danny,’ she said softly.

‘Irena …’

She stood there for a little while, then kissed me quickly on my mouth, whispered good night, turned, and hurried into the house. She disappeared like a phantom right in front of my eyes. I turned around and felt a sharp pain in my heart. Yes. It hurt. I hurried home. I was almost bawling. I climbed up to the third floor, unlocked the door, and tiptoed into the kitchen.

‘Is that you, Danny?’ Mother’s voice came from the bedroom.

‘Yes. Good night,’ said Mother.

I tore off my clothes and curled up under the blanket and
closed my eyes. I couldn’t think of anything but Irena. I lay there, feeling like I was going to die. That it was impossible to go on living in such pain. I remembered Betelgeuse and opened my eyes and saw it, red and glowing in the sky, and then closed my eyes again with Betelgeuse inside them. And then the bleeding pain took hold of my heart again and all of a sudden I started bawling, because of Irena, because she didn’t want me, because there wasn’t anything else in the world, and as I bawled under my blanket, I felt relieved just like everybody else, smart or stupid, feels when they cry and then I fell asleep and slept under the window while outside Betelgeuse went right on shining, and I slept without knowing whether I dreamed that night or not.

On Friday, I wandered over in front of the loan association office. It was nine. It was going to be another warm spring day and there were flags in the windows and bedding had been hung out to air. There were banners hanging all over the place. The shops were closed like on Sunday and there were all kinds of displays in the windows – pictures of Masaryk and Benes and little flags and flowers and coloured streamers. The revolution was definitely over now and I sauntered on towards the square. Mr Dluhon was standing in front of the open showcase of his book shop and rummaging around inside with a chicken-feather duster. I stopped behind his hunched blackcoated back and his shiny bald spot surrounded by a wreath of hair. Poor guy, he’d been practically driven out of business by Kulas’ Kostelec Books, Inc. Kulas was one of those voracious businessmen whose showcases took up the whole ground floor of an apartment house so Mr Dluhon’s little shop next door was completely lost. Mr Dluhon lived with his family in an empty garage because, before the war, he couldn’t afford to pay rent for an apartment and, during the war, there wasn’t anything to be had. I looked at his carefully-arranged window display and couldn’t believe my eyes. There, on a Czechoslovak flag, flanked by a couple of geraniums, stood a bust of Dr Kramar.
*
I didn’t know much about politics during the First Republic, but I did know that Kramar wouldn’t be very popular right now. Mr Dluhon was just brushing off Dr Kramar’s face with his feather duster. I decided to do a good deed.

‘Good morning,’ I said.

Mr Dluhon turned and bowed respectfully. ‘Good morning to you, Mr Smiricky.’

‘I don’t know, Mr Dluhon,’ I said, ‘but maybe it would be better if you left that Kramar bust out of your window.’

He smiled nervously. ‘Oh? You think so, Mr Smiricky?’

‘Well, it’s just an opinion,’ I said, ‘but I think you’d be better off.’

Mr Dluhon smiled nervously again. ‘But your father was always a National Democrat. Just ask him.’

‘I know, but the Bolsheviks are here now.’

Mr Dluhon leaned over to me and said confidentially, ‘Oh, just you wait until all this blows over,’ he muttered. ‘After things quiet down, Dr Kramar’ll be respected again.’

‘I’m not so sure,’ I said.

‘Wait and see, Mr Smiricky. You’re still young. You don’t remember. But just ask your father.’

I didn’t know quite what I was supposed to ask and why he was sticking Kramar in his window right now when the storm hadn’t even begun to blow yet that was supposed to blow over, but I acted as though I knew. So I said, ‘Yes, well, but maybe you might put in Benes until things do quiet down.’

‘No, Mr Smiricky, I think not,’ said Mr Dluhon. ‘I’ve always been a Kramar man and I’ll remain one till my dying day.’