The Cowards (9 page)

‘Aufstehen!’
he ordered icily. I decided to preserve at least a remnant of decorum. I got up slowly and, as I rose, brushed off my jacket, taking my time about it. I felt I’d brushed off the bad impression I’d made, now that I looked decent again. In the movies, the hero always gets the first punch. Slowly I drew
myself erect. The officer was watching me with cold scorn. He raised the muzzle of his revolver.

‘Hände hoch! Schnell!’

I knew how to do that. Like they did it in Chicago. I could see myself like in a gangster movie. I was glad I was wearing such a sharp-looking jacket. I grimaced and slowly raised my hands over my head. Taking my time. And not too high. I bent my arms at the elbows and raised my palms so they came to about my ears. Nice and slow. I stood there with my feet planted wide, watching the officer. I felt like Al Capone and the square looked like Bloody Corner after a gun battle with the cops. Soon the G-men would come and take me away. I stared the officer right in the eye. I held his eye but it seemed to me as though all his anger had gone out of him. Naturally he’d had a steady diet of discipline, but after all, Hitler was dead and the Russians only a few miles away. It seemed to me he was looking at me with disgust. I gave him a sneering smile. The officer turned away. Behind him stood two guys with submachine guns.

‘Haftnehmen!’
said the officer. The two guys stepped up to me, one on each side. I turned around.

‘Los. Gehn Wir!’
one of them said. We started off. I turned around to see Irena. She was standing in the window, one hand clenched to her mouth. I made a face and winked at her.

‘Danny!’ she screamed hysterically.

‘Don’t worry,’ I called to her.

‘Los, los!’
said one of the guys beside me and grabbed my arm. I tried to turn around again to see Irena, but he yanked me back. The other one grabbed my other arm.

‘Let me go. I’ll walk by myself,’ I said in broken German.

‘Na gut,’
said the guy on my left and let go of my arm. I looked at him and saw he was the same beefy-faced soldier who’d talked to me before.

‘Machen Sie keine Dummheiten, es hat doch keinen Zweck,’
he advised me again in a confidential tone.

‘Okay,’ I said and went quietly with them. They led me to the church. A couple of soldiers and one civilian were standing in front of the door to the choir loft. We came closer. I recognized
him. It was Lenecek, the hairdresser. Another patriot. So they’d picked him up too. He was pale as death and looked solemn. I winked at him. He smiled gloomily and then looked as glum as before. My soldiers put me beside him.

‘What’d you do?’ I whispered.

‘I slugged one of them. And you?’

‘Oh, something like that.’

We stopped talking. We stood by the church and the sun shone down on us. The church had a nice, massive, flaking, yellow-painted wall. Hell, I thought, they might stand us up against that wall! But when I looked at Lenecek, it didn’t seem possible. I couldn’t picture him slumping over, crumpling up. Too crazy. Or me either. Crazy too. They’d lock us up and let us out in a couple of days. But it would be a damn shame to be locked up now. I looked over at the officers. They were conferring about something. Lenecek stood there, white-faced and motionless. The officers’ conference broke up and they looked over at us. My heart was in my throat. They were going to line us up against the wall. Jesus! Suddenly I was scared. Not that, for Chrissake, don’t do that! Anything but that! One of the officers gave an order of some kind and the soldiers lined up, a group on each side of us. Oh God! Oh damn! They’re taking us off now. Lenecek turned even whiter.

We started off. Oh God! Oh God! Oh Jesus! This was really bad. We marched out of the square at a brisk pace. You couldn’t even take your own sweet time. I had to step along like in some kind of fireman’s parade. Jesus! You ought at least to be able to go to your death elegantly. We turned off on the street that led past the Sokol
*
Hall. Yes. They were taking us to the high school. That was where the garrison was. And they’d shoot us in the courtyard. Oh Jesus! The street was empty. Our steps echoed rhythmically. The doorways were jammed with people. You could tell they were scared. We went past them. I looked at them, huddled and trembling in the doorways, and I couldn’t help making a face at them. The fools! Safe as houses and still scared shitless. And here we were, being led away to our execution. A chill ran down my spine. Just then I saw Lucie. She’d poked her head out of Manes’s store. She saw me. I
saw how surprised she was – astonished. Good. I stuck one hand in my pocket because I knew that made nice folds in my jacket and I gave Lucie a big smile. Then I noticed Haryk watching behind her. And Pedro Gershwin’s face above Haryk’s head. One on top of the other, those three heads, and they were looking at me and didn’t know what to say. I grinned and nodded my head at them. They gaped back at me stupidly. Then we passed them. Lenecek marched alongside me, his head held high. Almost too high. It looked as though he had a crick in his neck. Otherwise he held up well. We hurried down a narrow street and past the savings bank and around the print shop. Everybody was watching us. And past Sokol Hall. All our friends were watching us. We were national heroes. We marched along and everybody knew us and we were surrounded by silent Germans in their grubby uniforms, draped with weapons. St Matthew’s Church rose beyond the viaduct and behind it the big yellow high-school building. My heart dropped, then rushed back up into my throat again. Boy, was I scared! Oh, Jesus God, this was all wrong! I certainly didn’t feel like dying. Not even for my country. My country could get along without my life but I couldn’t. Oh, this was bad. Now maybe Irena would reconsider. Now maybe she’d drop Zdenek and start going with me. It would really be dumb to have to die now. My God, would it ever!

We went past Welch’s stationery store towards the viaduct. We were getting closer to the high school. I looked frantically around me. There was nobody there. Not a soul. And then all of a sudden my heart started jumping around inside my chest. Prema was heading towards us from under the viaduct. His pockets were stuffed with something and then he saw me and stopped. Behind him Jerry and Vasek Vostal appeared and a bunch of other guys. I could tell that Prema understood right away what was going on. He just looked at me and I looked at him. One glance was enough. Then he whirled around and said something to the boys. Prema! We turned off around the viaduct. Prema waited. By now it was clear we were going to the high school. I stared hard at Prema. Prema nodded and gave me the V-for-Victory sign. Prema was great. Then all the boys
ducked around the corner and started to run. The path behind the viaduct was the shortest way to Skocdopole’s warehouse. There were guns there. That I knew. My brain started working again. I quickly calculated how long it would take them to get to the warehouse. Then how long it would take before the Germans had led us into the big schoolyard and shot us. If they had some kind of ceremony first, the boys might just make it in time. Awfully risky. But terrific, too. So this was how the Kostelec revolution was going to start. All on account of me, really. Yes. Great. I tried to picture how it would be when the boys would turn up. A shot. An explosion. Part of the high school blown up and falling in. We’re standing up against the wall facing a row of armed Krauts, and all of a sudden part of the high school blows up and boys jump over the fence into the yard, carrying rifles and submachine guns. They had them too. Prema told me they’d disarmed a whole platoon of Germans some place. I believed him because Prema didn’t kid around. I could just see them jumping over the principal’s garden fence through the smoke and dust and hollering. And the Germans throwing away their guns. Or, no – they’d fight back. And the two of us would dash away from the wall, I’d jump that officer and now he’d be all mixed up and I’d sock him in the eye and take away his revolver and we’d move in on them from all sides. Lenecek would tell Irena all about it afterwards when she’d go to his shop for a permanent. I could just see those Germans huddled together and then moving back against the wall of the gym and we’d be blasting away at them and they’d drop, one after the other. And then I saw Prema, saw him taking an old egg-shaped Czech Army grenade out of his pocket, pull the pin, count three and pitch it, and the grenade exploding right in the middle of the huddle. Germans fall in all directions, their weapons drop from their hands and we move through the high-school yard, our guns smoking, and so the Kostelec revolution begins.

We were getting closer to the high-school gate. I could see the gatehouse that stood beside it. A soldier with his bayonet fixed was marching up and down in front of the gatehouse. A row of windows on the side of the high school gleamed in the
sunshine and here and there a German face stared out. Inside you could hear the quiet buzz of many voices, just as though school was still in session. It always sounded like that in high school during recess. Exactly the same. You couldn’t even tell it was German buzzing. We marched past the house where the Sisters of Mercy lived, straight towards the school gate. Their Franciscan swans’ caps shone whitely behind the closed windows. The sisters were probably crossing themselves. This made me think of death and I started feeling pretty bad again. Christ. Christ! There were the four big windows of the chapel above the school entrance. Memories of how we used to go there every Sunday flashed through my head. My God, maybe there really is a God. And hell and heaven and stuff. Oh God! And heaven’s weeping now. It couldn’t help but weep after all the sins I’d committed. Ever since sixth grade. We sixth-graders used to sit in the first row in chapel and we behaved ourselves pretty well because we were still scared of the religion teacher. But by the time we were in seventh grade we’d already started sinning. We’d moved back to the second row so they couldn’t see us so well from the altar and we weren’t so scared of the teacher any more, and instead of praying and singing hymns we fought and horsed around. During every mass we committed one sin on top of another. And then in eighth grade we were in the third row. Oh, boy! And in ninth grade and so on until we didn’t sit downstairs any more. We had chairs on the platform up alongside the organ. And we’d think up dirty words for the hymns. And we’d egg on Josef Stola who played the organ and he’d play a foxtrot from
Rose Marie
, for instance, during the elevation of the Host, or ‘San Francisco’, and the religion teacher would even commend him for it. He liked those preludes so much that he recommended Joska to the choir-master at the cathedral but when Joska played there for the first time and had the nerve to play a prelude from
Rose Marie
, the choirmaster, who played the fiddle on week nights in a town night-club, recognized it immediately, kicked Joska out of the organ loft in the middle of the prelude, and told the teacher on him. So Joska got a D– in deportment and he had to do a lot of penance before he was allowed to play again, in chapel at least.

Oh Christ! That’s how we’d sinned. And it was wonderful to remember the past – all those memories of high school were wrapped in a sunny haze now. And now there the school stood in front of me, big and yellow, and the Germans were taking me in for my own execution. My legs balked and I got the absolutely crazy idea that I simply wouldn’t go any farther. But I went. I still couldn’t believe what was happening and how it was happening. The high-school gate loomed closer. I looked over at Lenecek. He was white as alabaster now, but he was still holding his head up. Christ! Why act like a hero on top of everything else? But why not act like a hero, after all? What’s the point of being scared to death if there’s no help for us any more anyway? Sure. It’s better to stand up straight when you’re facing a firing squad, and maybe even yell something. No, not that, though. Better not. That’s the kind of thing Chief of Police Rimbalnik would do. No. Ask for a cigarette or something like that. Except I didn’t smoke. And when the officer raises his sword over his head, then make a face at him. If he actually does have a sword, that is. We stopped right under the school motto inscribed over the gate:
‘Cultivate feeling, enlighten reason and, oh school, plant the roots of resolute character!’
Oh God! Or wouldn’t it be better to just forget about being so resolute and get down on my knees and ask forgiveness for all my sins. Except maybe there really wasn’t any God anyway, so why should I? I didn’t want to make a fool of myself like that. Just like I’d never quite been able to make myself make a clear and obvious sign of the cross when I passed the church, like the priest always told us to do. I’d just kind of scratch myself on the forehead and then slide my thumb down over my face and scratch myself again on the chest. Because there might actually be a God after all. But it’s not for sure. If it was, then I’d fall down on my knees right here and that would certainly soften him up. But the thing is, you can’t be sure. So a person’s got to be scared all the time – of God, if there is one, and of looking like a fool if there isn’t.

The officers went on past us and into the high school. ‘
Los
,’ said one of the soldiers and we followed them in. Light came through the row of windows and the corridor was clean and
bright. We turned off towards the principal’s office and there we stopped. Only the officers went inside. The doors swung shut behind them. Instead of the old name plate, there was a sign there now with the inscription
KOMMANDANTUR
. I looked at Lenecek. I felt like talking to convince myself that this was all just a joke.

‘Well?’ I said.

‘We’re in for it now,’ said Lenecek.

‘You think they’ll bump us off?’

‘I think you can count on that, Mr Smiricky.’

‘Jesus!’ I said. All of a sudden the word sounded unpleasantly sinful. So I added, ‘That’s bad.’

Lenecek didn’t say anything. He was so pale by now he looked almost transparent. The Germans guarding us stood there mute and listless. I wondered whether I shouldn’t say something to them. But what? I looked out the window. The schoolyard looked like it always did. Even the volley-ball net was up. The Germans had probably been playing volleyball. My God, so now it’s all over. So now – and suddenly I remembered my Last Will and Testament. And then I realized that this was it. Instinctively. So now my will would serve its purpose. Irena could read it now. About how I’d never loved anybody else in my life, only her, how I didn’t want anything in the world except now, as she reads these lines, for her to know that everything I’ve done and lived for was important only because it was all somehow for her, that I’d lived and died only for her, and that I’d loved her. And how nothing mattered to me, even dying, because there was no sense in living since she didn’t love me. Tears came to my eyes. I could see her, see her walking behind the coffin and it would really be some funeral, too, because I’d be a hero and it would be a great feeling – only there wouldn’t be any feeling at all! Now was the time for feeling, I suddenly realized, and afterwards, when it was all over for me, I wouldn’t feel anything at all. Brrr! Not that. To hell with Irena. My Last Will and Testament was great when I wrote it. No Last Will and Testament was ever better. To hell with the will. I’d rather stay alive without Irena. She should try dying herself sometime. I didn’t want to. Let Irena do it instead
of me. It’d be better if I could go to her funeral instead of her going to mine. That certainly roused plenty of feelings. And what feelings! How sad I would be and crushed and noble and alone. Christ! I’d a thousand times rather be lonely than not be at all. Absolutely. But soldiers with guns were standing around me and that was a bad feeling. I thought about Prema again, wondering if he’d make it. God, let him make it! God, let him get here in time! God, please, please, God, let Prema get here in time!