The Widow Killer (42 page)

“It’s a point of honor for the police, if you’re interested, to protect Prague from both the Germans and its own citizens,” Beran began. “Using only our own modest forces we’ve met the demands of our political and military leaders: an impassable city, the Germans in it momentarily paralyzed. The sad thing is, the Czech delegation fell apart before they ever came together.”

He saw that Morava did not understand.

“I think of myself as one of a dying breed of civil servants, who stood apart from factions so they could serve the community. I’ve been involved in this for weeks, as you know, and, in my neutrality, I’ve been more and more horrified at what I see. It was clear to both sides that an uprising would increase the chances that Prague would be destroyed, and it had no real military value given the massive front movements. But there was still a political value in deciding whether to rebel. The winning side will be the one that’s best at anticipating the pious wishes of whichever Allied force ends up in control here. Finally, the democrats started it off; they bet on the Americans, encouraged by their quick advance, but now they’ve got the losing hand. At the moment the Communists hold the trumps, because the Western Allies have stopped outside Plzeü.”

“No…!” A gasp escaped Morava.

“Yes. The Big Three have apparently decided that the Red Army will liberate Prague. I take it I don’t have to tell you what the consequences will be.”

“I had no idea,” Morava admitted honestly. “When will they get here? It’s just a hop from Dresden and Linz; those claws would cut Schorner off from the rest of the Reich and that would end the war.”

“Remember the Warsaw and Slovak uprisings,” Beran answered glumly. “They let them bleed to death.”

“On purpose? But why?”

“A liberator never likes it when people free themselves first. They don’t get the gratitude they need to stay in power.”

Morava was shaken.

“So the Communists have renounced the uprising?”

“On the contrary. They’re trying to seize control of it.”

“How?”

“Very simply. They didn’t start it, and now they’re claiming they’re obliged to salvage what they can. If it’s successful they’ll be the ones who give the Soviets the keys to Prague. If we’re defeated, they’ll claim the democrats are soldiers of fortune who are responsible for needless losses and damage. Today they blocked the decision to offer the Germans an unhindered retreat to the west in return for capitulation. Suddenly they were calling it a separate peace that would disappoint the Allies—read: the Soviets. As a result we’ll be fighting a force that outguns us many times over.”

“So it’s a cynical game?”

“Why cynical? History proves that the worst atrocities are always committed by the keepers of a sacred truth, who truly believe in their mission. And that mission includes destroying all other truths—which, of course, are nothing but lies—along with anyone who supports them.”

The telephone rang.

“Good to hear your voice.” Beran sounded relieved. “When it hit I was really afraid for you. Yep, be right down.”

He hung up and gave a sad grin.

“Brunat is supposed to bring me to the council meeting. More bull… bullyragging, apparently.”

“I’ll hold down the fort here.”

“You’ll do nothing of the sort; you’re going to sleep. Have you forgotten what a day you’ve had?”

He remembered. His wife and child’s funeral. And a bit of war. Suddenly an unbearable heaviness rolled over him. Beran took him by the arm almost tenderly.

“Get up, Jan… can I call you by your first name? I’ve been meaning to ask for a while, and I may not get the chance again. Get up and go lie down. You’re absolutely right; the best thing you can do for your country is catch him. I’ll give you Litera.”

Then a listless stroll past Jitka’s desk.

Then bed, and a fall into darkness.

Then the dream about Rypl, and his mother.

Then waking up with the picture of his mother and Jitka.

Now a sharp memory of his conversation with Beran.

And finally the hope that when he managed to fall back to sleep he would meet those two dear beings again.

Once they had cut a path through all the rubberneckers and cowards they found a skinny redhead tagging along, who had picked a Panzerfaust from the arsenal the Germans left.

“ ‘Scuse me, can I come with you? You’re tough guys; you can make the Nazis swallow anything, hairs and all!”

“C’mon, you’re not even fifteen yet,” Lojza probed.

“Sure I am.”

“Don’t try it. If you wanna come, own up, we don’t take liars.”

“I will be in six months,” he admitted, “but nothing fuckin‘ scares me.”

“Your parents let you go?”

“Pop bit it and my mom can go fuck herself,” he explained maturely. “She had her way I’d be wearing a skirt.”

This caught his attention.

“You an only child?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“She ever beat you?”

“Like to see her try! She knows I’d send her flying.”

He was confused.

“You’d hit her… ?”

“Why not? Not like I asked to be born. And I don’t give a shit if I survive, either. So why should those fuckin‘ Nazis live? Well, can I come?”

“Why not,” he said to the other two. “Maybe he’ll learn a few new words too.”

He would watch the boy. He had to figure out how he got free FROM HER.

They were a scant two hundred yards uphill from the radio building when the crescendo of a motor caught their attention. At first he thought it was a tank and his eyes darted to the boy’s Panzerfaust, but when he turned around, he saw an unusual-looking airplane appear above the buildings. A large cigar separated from it and dropped toward the ground. Immediately a detonation rolled past, so powerful that it shook the cobblestones beneath their feet. Lime-white dust rolled upward from the radio building, and tiny bits of concrete whizzed through the air toward them.

“Good fucking show!” the boy rejoiced. “That’s what they get for taking the Nazis’ side.”

Everyone had to laugh at that.

Garlanded with guns, they trudged uphill along the main avenue side by side. The people hurrying downhill to help moved respectfully aside to let them pass. The fighters soon realized they would not have much fun that day. The citizens of Prague had gone crazy; their latest hobby seemed to be prying up and hauling around paving stones. Rain began to pour down, and in a wide area around the barricades the naked roadbed quickly changed into mud under the countless footfalls of their builders.

They were not dressed for this work.

“Where do we go for the night?” asked the youth, who had told them to call him Pepik.

“I’m from Brno,” he said, half truthfully. “I don’t have an apartment here.”

Ladislav lived on the opposite—and therefore inaccessible—side of the city, Lojza had found a new guy at his girlfriend’s, and there was no question of going to the boy’s mother’s. After a long while the caretaker on the embankment flashed through his mind. Why not finish him off and then stay there… ?

“For God’s sake,” Lojza said, lighting up, “there must be loads of empty apartments from the Germans. I know one that’s pretty close, in fact. Belongs to the director of a glue factory—where I worked till the bastard handed me over to the Work Exchange. Everything that happened to me after that was his fault.”

“What if they’re still there?” Pepik inquired.

“Their bad luck. They kept a goat at their Vysocany plant and since I was the second watchman there, I brought them milk every day at noon. Twice I caught another guy in the apartment; I think my boss’s wife sweet-talked her husband into bringing the milk himself in the evening, so he cut me loose. I’d like to kiss that whore’s ass good-bye.”

The intimately familiar word grabbed his attention. He approved.

The turn-of-the-century street far from the main avenues was trying to pretend it had nothing to do with the rebellion. No one reacted to the night bell. The bald man swore regretfully.

“The evening’s still young…” The stoker repeated what was evidently his only joke.

He did not want to give up so easily.

“We can open it. Anything handy?”

“Could always blow the fucker open with the Panzerfaust.” The boy grinned.

No one even laughed. They were dragging an entire armory with them and it was useless. His years with the theater, however, had taught him that in a pinch anything would do. Now he remembered his knife. When he drew it out to its full length from the pouch tied around his body, Lojza whistled appreciatively.

“Nice poultry knife. You a butcher, by any chance?”

“No,” he said, “but I like butchering.”

The lock clicked on the first try. They lit matches. The apartment Lojza led them to took up the entire third floor. The doorplate had no name on it, understandably. They rang. Nothing. They gave a longer ring. From the depths of the apartment they could hear the bell. Still nothing.

“The blade?” the boy asked impatiently.

Then they heard a woman’s footsteps: When she opened the door, chain in place, and he shoved his foot between the door leaves, he felt the excitement. It grew as Lojza tried to persuade her. Of course she should let them in; they’d been sent to protect her and she knew him, after all, he used to bring her milk from the factory…

“Ick habba eenen tseegenmilk haulen, gnaydigga frau…”

From then on, though, everything was different. Lojza and Ladislav played with her for an hour like cat and mouse; they let her change out of her nightgown and bathrobe into the clothes she’d wear to the assembly point for Germans; of course she could take her valuables with her. She outdid them in obligingness, and his mouth began to water when she poured a half liter of scrambled eggs into a pan.

Slowly she regained some color, repeating ad nauseam how grateful she was to Mr. Alois (as she called Lojza), because he was a personal acquaintance of theirs. Her husband must have been delayed over in Vysocany; Mr. Alois of all people knew how decently they’d both treated the Czechs.

He ate his fill, but otherwise kept quiet. Conversations with women weren’t his specialty; after all, he’d only ever had one (that time in the train), and look how it had turned out. But what about her? Wasn’t she a woman too? How does it work, he began to wonder: are mothers women to their sons or not? She clearly had been, and such a strong one that he’d never had room in his life for another. The one time he’d been curious what he was missing, that woman had mocked him. He punished her on the spot, and since then he had either hated other women or simply ignored them. Now, for the first time, he could observe how men treated them and what they might want from them. Only his hellishly tight self-control stopped him from gaping open-mouthed like the boy.

They let her wash the dishes—so the Czechs who would come to live here, the bald one urged her, wouldn’t think Germans were pigs— and then they all accompanied her as she went to make the bed. She continued to nod and obey them until Lojza gave her an almost friendly order to undress.

“Tsee dick aus!”

Once again she turned ashen and began to beg. He was very surprised that she chose him from among the four of them as her intercessor. Before he could react, Lojza’s sharp slap silenced her.

“See this mess?” He bared his half-toothless gums at her. “That’s your pig-husband’s fault, for sending me to the Reich. So now you’ll let us have some fun and we’ll call it even. Agreed?”

She stood as if turned to stone, making not a sound. And her horrified eyes never left him. Why?

“We’re not going to rape you,” Lojza continued. “As Czechs we’d never stoop that low; but we could give you fifty on your backside, which is more what you deserve.”

He pulled up his sweater and undid a thick belt. He cracked it with a whistling sound on the edge of the brass bed.

“You’ll sleep at least a month on your stomach with a sore ass, guaranteed. Or is my first offer better? Might be more enjoyable. What do you say?”

He raised his hand again, but did not need to demonstrate any further. She began to undress as meekly as she had earlier cooked and washed.

He was excited now as well. He had never seen a woman naked before and the effect was even stronger amid three armed men. He found it disturbing, the way she kept looking at him when she wasn’t EVEN TIED UP.

“A gag!” he suggested.

“Why?” Lojza joked. “This way she can tell us who does it best.”

“So she won’t shout…”

As if she’d understood the instruction, she let out a yelp, but a lot of water had gone under the bridge since that tart in Brno, and his skills had improved. In the twinkling of an eye he whipped out his handkerchief and stuffed it into her mouth, pushing her back onto the bed as he bent her legs. One hand held both hers in an iron grip, while the other fished under his coat for the straps. Then, with the help of the others, he tied all four limbs to the cornerposts of the bed. She lay stretched out like on a medieval rack, unable either to move or speak.

“You’re a fucking grenade,” Ladislav marveled belatedly.

“For that you can start her off!” Lojza offered appreciatively.

The boy just rolled his eyes and swallowed with excitement.

His cheeks flushed; he hoped no one would see it in the glow of the small night-lamp. He played for time, managing to laugh.

“She’s your girl!”

“No problem,” the bald man responded. “Anything for a friend.”

It’s crazy, the thought crossed his mind; it starts the same way.

My two missions have met!

“So help yourself,” the stoker said, a bit impatiently.

He had already recovered and was ready.

“I’m sorry, but never with a German.”

“No cunt stinks too bad for me.” Lojza laughed toothlessly. “You don’t wanna, then leave her; I’ll start for old times’ sake, gnaydigga frau.”

He did not even take off his pants, just unbuttoned them, releasing an engorged member, and lay down on the German woman. For some time he moved up and down on her, grunted twice, and got up, satisfied, buttoning his fly.

“Take a number, step right up!”

Ladislav’s turn lasted longer and involved much heavy breathing. At the end he let out a few sounds resembling moos.